This article first appeared in the December 1997 issue of Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking. It is copyright (c) PhACT, 1997. All rights reserved. "Weird Encounters Day" a meeting report by Eric Krieg During the PhACT meeting on November 15, we sat in a circle and took turns trading informal stories about our experiences with the paranormalists. To set the tone, program director, Craig Olsen told us about a fellow he knew who believed he could use dowsing implements to locate ley lines and water. Craig fashioned his instruments from pen tubes and coat hangers. He demonstrated how people could subconsciously cause the hangers to move, based on visual cues. He said that people could dowse for more than just water and had us give them a try. I promptly started to dowse for skeptics and located Tom Napier - - who was up next, talking about his friend in Switzerland who claimed to be telepathic. To test him, Tom designed and built an ESP tester which took precautions to avoid the plethora of errors commonly made by ESP investigators. Tom has yet to find anyone able to score above chance. Dave Leiter (bravely defending the pro-paranormal perspective) and Tom discussed their respective involvement in the PK testing done at PEAR in Princeton. (A recent follow up call to this group revealed they had no interest in interacting with us.) Next up was Saul Green, who talked about French homeopath, Jacques Benveniste. Benveniste, who believes that medication increases its power when diluted to the point of having no atoms of the active substance left, now claims to have proved that the "essence" of a remedy can jump from one glass test tube to another. He concludes from this that healing energy can be sent down phone lines. Tom Napier pointed out that this means essences will hop from packet to packet on store shelves, making all homeopathic remedies the same. We were told that the director of the NIH's Office of Alternative Medicine is a homeopath. Unfortunately, alternative health studies by the NIH are not receptive to the advice of skeptics. Included in new NIH funding is several hundred thousand dollars for an investigation into the healing powers of Therapeutic Touch (TT) -- which leads to me. I described the problem of getting any of the 45,000 people trained in TT to submit to double blind testing. Considerable cajoling, confronting, and even schmozing over the Internet has not scared up any subjects. [Scared away, perhaps!] However, a 10 year old girl from Colorado, Emily Rosa, will be publishing in the results of her testing of a number of TT claimants. Emily was featured on the program hosted by Alan Alda. My daughter, Linda, who will soon hit the big 1 0 herself, has gotten permission from her 4th grade teacher to do a science project on investigating the claims of TT. Linda has contacted Emily about replicating her study and has already tested one subject. The local TT headquarters says they will consider how to respond to her request for more subjects at their coming board meeting. So far, limitations like not being allowed to cross the street alone, an early bedtime and five orders of magnitude less funding than pro-TT forces have not stopped Linda from addressing claims left unverified since long before she was born. My media friends believe that a flock of old TT leaders cowering from a little girl with pig-tails and a clip board would clearly be a newsworthy event. PhACT's seminal TT investigator, Bob Glickman told us about an article which describes how a homeopathic nurse defied doctors' orders and slipped a pre-operative patient a highly diluted remedy. She then took credit for the pain abatement more likely caused by Demerol. Bob continues to work on getting articles published and to confront superstitious intrusions into the medical profession. Fred Mitchell presented his heart wrenching involvement with the local cult, "The Church of Bible Understanding." Many attendees were interested in how Fred broke free of the mind-control techniques used to suppress free thought. Fred has helped people question claims of fringe groups via his Internet page at http:// www.mitchellware.com/mitchell/home/fred/skeptic/ To close up a lengthy meeting, I showed part of the video of my appearance on the syndicated Christian (young earth creationism) program . After the meeting some of us reconvened at a nearby restaurant for laughs, refreshments and camaraderie.