This article originally appeared in the June 1997 issue of
Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for
Critical Thinking.
Copyright © 1997 by PhACT. All rights reserved.
Note: a response from David Leiter to this may be found at:
Leiter
alleges censorship by PhACT
David
Leiter braves the Skeptics
On Saturday, May 17, PhACT members gave their open minds a
workout, hearing and questioning David Leiter's presentation,
"Skeptical about Skeptics."
The first part of David's presentationwas a polemic directed
against skeptics in general and James Randi in particular for
ridiculing fringe science groups. Before getting down to cases
David delivered a commercial for the Society for Scientific
Exploration, a group of academics which acts as "a forum . . .
concerning topics which are for various reasons ignored or
studied inadequately within mainstream science." Since this
organization believes in "unprejudiced evaluation based on
objective research" one wonders why it differs from CSICOP.
David's criticism of James Randi, apart from his view that
Randi makes his living by being an outspoken debunker who doesn't
care whom he belittles, was based on comments made by Randi
during his PhACT presentation last November. Randi, who has
tested dowsers and found them uniformly incompetent, had
mentioned a German organization, GTZ, which has used both
conventional and dowsing methods to locate water in arid areas
around the world. Interestingly, the GTZ report indicates a 90%
success rate for one particular dowser; success being defined as
a well having greater than a predefined flow rate at the depth
and position specified. However, the same dowser located a water
pipe only 4 times in 10 attempts when tested in an artificial
environment. This is claimed as evidence that dowsing works.
for more
information on dowsing
David's greatest scorn was reserved for Randi's pooh-poohing
of Ian Stevenson's studies into reincarnation. Apparently Dr.
Stevenson has devoted the latter part of his life to interviewing
children and trying to locate their prior incarnations. He has
recently published two great tomes on the correlation between
birth-marks and the wounds which ended the previous life.
Stevenson's theory, that one's personality is based on more than
just genetics and the environment, makes him "the Galileo of the
Twentieth Century. "
David moved on to his own paranormal experiences. At least
twice he has encountered evidence that he has a doppelganger, or,
as he called it, a "vardogr," that is, a visible spirit which
moves ahead of him. He reported that his wife and son had seen
or heard him come home ten minutes earlier than he himself
thought he had.
David gave an inadvertent demonstration of the difference
between a skeptic and a non-skeptic. A skeptic might have asked
first, "What is the phenomenon to be explained?" "Is it
that
someone saw me come home before I arrived or is it that I came
home in a somewhat detached state of mind and only became aware
of being there some ten minutes later." David's first recourse
was to research folklore to find references to visible doubles.
Research into psychology and fugue states might have been more
profitable.
Finally, David tested the psychic powers of the audience by
having them divine the subjects of three photographs in sealed
envelopes. The photos turned out to show a water-lily, a dog
and
a man's face. One lady guessed two correctly, causing DeeAnne
to
whisper "population stereotypes" in my ear. I'd guessed a steam
train, a pyramid and a kangaroo so I suppose I'll need to turn in
my psychic's badge. (Now I think of it, both a dog and a kangaroo
are animals, the lily looked like a lotus, which is an Egyptian
symbol, and the man might have been a railroad engineer. Gee,
I
did pretty well!)
The presentation was followed by a heated question and answer
session. Members pointed out that experts can be foolish outside
their area of expertise, that some ideas are so way-out that only
ridicule is appropriate, that anecdotes are not evidence, and
that reincarnation means nothing if there is no consciousness of
one's previous life. All in all David was well received by an
audience which he might have expected to be more hostile. It
remains to be seen which party learned more from the experience.
Tom Napier