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.

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.