History of Scientific Skepticism through Pictures

Friend of the blog, Robert Sheaffer has been gracious enough to begin the tiring process of scanning old photos taken back when the world was only in Black and White  (At least this is what I thought when I was a kid)  and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons.  Robert has been a active member of the scientific skepticism world since the beginning and he has the photos to prove it.  Those of us trying to preserve our history really appreciate that.

When James Randi and Ray Hyman met up at a Alice Cooper concert, they discussed forming a club to combat Uri Geller.  They didn't realize then that we would be interested in knowing the history of that time.  They wanted to get things done, not record the moment.  So now 30+ years later we have to find all these old documents and photos and get them in places where we can show our history.  And I can't think of a better place than Wikipedia. 

For your viewing pleasure, enjoy these never before seen images...

James W. Moseley

CSICOP

Paul Kurtz

Banachek 

James Randi

Ray Hyman

Daryl Bem 

Philip Klass

Robert uploaded a lot more, we just don't have the Wikipedia pages written yet to put the photos on.  We stll have a lot of work to do.  Please consider helping out with the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.   We train and mentor.  Contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com or friend me on Facebook or Twitter as Susan Gerbic

Oscillococcinum, Boiron and CFI

So working backwards here is a project that someone might be interested in tackling.  Keeping in mind that Wikipedia Editors are a bit nervous about me sending a bunch of skeptics over to a page for some of this "guerrilla skepticism" stuff.  I think it is called "sandbagging".  Anyway, this arrived in my email a few weeks ago and I thought it might be useful but never got to it.

CFI and CSI Petition FDA to Take Action on Homeopathic Drugs

Apparently CFI and CSI have this going in a press release.  Here is the link to the article.  I haven't looked into it in great depth, so I'm not sure that a press release is a good citation.  There may be links to follow that will get you to something more noteworthy.  Remember a secondary cite is better.  Don't quote the person writing the blog/petition/press release but quote the newspaper/journal/TV news show that quotes the primary cite.

Anyway, I think a mention on the Boiron and the Oscillococcinum pages might be warranted.  Its not every day they get such attention from skeptical groups...or maybe they do?  If so why isn't there already a bunch of mentions on their pages?  We can't just assume that the public knows as much as we do about these products.

Bioron gets about 1,000 hits a month, and Oscillococcinum gets 7,000-8,000 hits a month.  I would avoid the homeopathy page unless you have a really awesome citation and blub.  That is a well-watched page and the editors have worked long and hard coming to some kind of agreement about what should be on the page.  Before editing homeopathy (which is semi-protected) discuss what you want to do on the discussion page, listen to the comments from the other editors.  BTW homeopathy gets about 90,000 hits a month, so people are clearly interested in this topic and coming to Wikipedia for answers.

And don't just stop there, I'm sure there are a lot more places the citation can be used, with slight modifications to the blurb left on the page.  There are a lot of "fringe" smaller pages that the public is reviewing and we need to make sure they are getting the entire picture. 

Remember editing on Wikipedia needs to be neutral, let the article speak for you.  Less is more sometimes and make sure the citation is really good.  Think about the importance of this, over 1 million people are reading the homeopathy page each year, do you think that a well-written blog/podcast on that subject would reach that many people? No pressure or anything.  

CSI Page updated

Finally got a chance to take a good look at CSI's Wiki page tonight.  I didn't look at how long it has been since it was updated, but it must have been quite some time as I was able to add about 20 Fellows to the list they provide.  There are 32 more people who are Fellows but are missing Wikipedia pages.  We probably should take a look at that also.

Here is the "before" page.  And the "after" page. 

I talk about using lists, and creating hyperlinks on earlier blogs.  It is one of the simplest forms of editing besides correcting spelling and grammar.  I added at least 25 hyperlinks on the CSI page to link to other Wiki articles, and corrected the spelling of two words.

Why are adding hyperlinks so important?   We need to use each other as resources, gather hits from one site to another.  Each of the 20 new fellows I added to that list will gain hits just because their name was found on the page. CSICOP received 2,348 hits to its Wiki page in June 2011.  Not tons but we need to maximize each and every lead.  

I'm really torn about adding the people who are Fellows but don't have a Wiki page to the CSI page.  The names would appear in Black and not be linkable to anything, but I think I might just do it on the off-chance that they will get a page, and also that way the CSI Fellows page is complete.  

IIG was not represented on their page, and I soon fixed that.  Also had to update the normal IIG page to show that new affiliates in Washington DC, Atlanta and Denver are now IIG.  There are a couple others almost finished becoming affiliates and when that happens I (or someone) will need to update both CSICOP and the IIG page.

I'm leaving this project unfinished in the hope that someone will take up the ball and help out.

One of the things next to do is to go to each one of the Fellow's Wiki pages and make sure that the affiliation with CSICOP is mentioned.  

I've noticed that there is no mention on Asimov's page of his support (and I believe founding help) of CSICOP.  Whoever updates his page needs to find a citation proving his link to CSI.  Try www.csicop.org for the article(s) to link to. 

The page is on my watchlist, so really looking forward to seeing some editing going on.  As you find (note I didn't say "if") fellows whose pages are neglected and badly need updating, please comment here so others will know. 

Thanks in advance!

General Overview and Plea for Help

We know that shouting and being in people's faces about their lack of critical thinking does not work.  It might make you feel superior for the moment but really belittling people about their beliefs is only going to force them to "circle their thinking wagons" and just defend their beliefs more.  When they can go onto sites like Wikipedia and see a well written blurb about their favorite woo or paranormal belief they might just get curious and start reading links on cold-reading and other methods, maybe even follow the footnote to the actual article.  Once on that site they might look around at other articles and so on...   People change their minds when THEY get to do the research and THEY make the decision that what they once believed is no longer making sense to them.  Wikipedia (which is going to be one of the first hits they receive when searching for a word/phrase/person on the Internet) is the place to facilitate that experience.


Most of us came about becoming skeptics in this same fashion (not necessarily through Wikipedia which has only been around 10 years) but by questioning our beliefs through discussion with ourselves and others.  Articles, TV shows and other media play a big part in getting the conversation going.

Originally I had written this introductory post explaining the overview and philosophy of Guerrilla Skepticism for the JREF TAM committee.  They asked if I would write a blog post that they would put up on their site.  I did so and was selected to present a paper at the Sunday morning session at TAM9 Las Vegas July 2011.  I then decided to pull the blog article from this site so as not to conflict with the blog they were going to be putting up.


I started this personal blog after giving two lectures one at SkeptiCamp: Fort Collins, Colorado in February, and at SkeptiCalCon in Berkeley Memorial Day weekend 2011.  I get a lot of questions about what I'm doing and how can people help.  This blog answers all kinds of those questions.  How you can help is easy.  Just comment on this blog so we can get started.  I could make this a 40 hour work week job for the rest of my life and still not get caught up.

We need lots of help.  I can show you how to edit if you need that kind of help.  (First you need to make an account on Wikipedia).  We need people who are great at writing blurbs for articles that are well cited (this means journal articles, newspaper articles, magazines ect...)  I say start backwards by finding your source first that fits all the Wikipedia requirements and then look at places to put it on, write your blurb and citation and place it in as many locations as possible.

If you don't want to edit Wikipedia you can just work on writing the blurbs.  I read an SI article on the plane yesterday and wrote the blurb on the page of the magazine.  Now all I have to do is type it out, cite it and paste it in.

We need photographers to get to the skeptic pages and update with current images.  Events as well as portraits.  I think we need a whole blog just on this subject which I will get to soon.  Photographers don't need to actually post the pictures on the Wiki site but they will need to open an account on WikiCommons and upload the image and make it available to editors.

People to correct my grammar and spelling before posting it on Wikipedia are easy to find.  I have found having over 1,000 Facebook friends rather helpful.  I get instant feedback on any problems.  Then I can go in and make the changes to my blurb and post.

Barry Karr from Skeptical Inquirer Magazine and I have been having an on-going conversation about a comment that Dr. Eugenie Scott (yes that Eugenie Scott!) made during my lecture at SkeptiCalCon.  She said that SI magazine does not have 100% of its print articles on-line for people to link to.  Barry's concern is that he needs to sell magazines and if the entire content is on-line why would people want to subscribe to a print magazine?  Good point.  I'm not in the business of selling magazines, I just want people to find the article on-line.

So what he proposes is for us to begin by going to the http://www.csicop.org site and find an article we want to write about and then place the link in the Wikipedia article.  That way we know that the article is on-line.  I think this is brilliant and where we should tackle first (working backwards remember).

If you look at my "tag" on Vassula Ryden's page you will see that the footnote does not go to a on-line link.  Only to a print magazine reference.  Most people will just stop there and not research further.  I'm sure if we ask Barry nicely he will put up specific articles like Joe Nickell's on Vassula Ryden.  But in the mean time we should try doing articles that are already on-line.

Barry was pretty excited about the "tag" I put up on Walmart's massive page concerning their support of homeopathy. (See my blog for discussion on this event) He says he "likes the idea" of what we are doing and would like me to write an article for the online version of SI.  Of course I would love to do so but will have to wait until after TAM9 so as not to step on the JREF toes that got me first.

BTW I keep giving SI examples to work on and there are thousands that need to be done.  But that does not mean that is the only area to tackle.  We have many many science and skeptic journals that relate to pseudoscience topics.  Plus we need to keep up our support of those scientists/skeptics who are on the front lines writing the articles and educating people on critical thinking. 

Barry has informed me that CSI gets about 4% of its hits from people following links from Wikipedia.  I'm really glad we have a starting number and with some effort I'm sure we can make that percentage rise.  The IIG gets about 6% of its hits to www.iigwest.org from Wikipedia.  The number has risen from about 5% when I started.  IIG receives most of its hits from UFO Wiki sites on Billy Meyer.  Our Wiki UFO articles have been translated to Japanese as we get the majority of hits from Wiki Japan.  Guess that makes sense.

Anyway, I'm going to "launch" this blog now that I'm over 10 articles.  I'm sure you will get the drift of what I'm advocating by just reading through the blogs.  The skeptical community really needs your help on this.  If you have the desire to reach out and do something that will really make a difference please consider getting involved in this project.

Welcome

Walmart and Homeopathy

Wow this was really a big one in my book. Same SI magazine an article on page 7 about CSI and CFI teaming up to condemn Walmart on its support of homeopathy products. Walmart is a big company and has a massive Wikipedia page. They even have a separate criticism page that I didn't want to use.

Here is the blurb I left

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry [[CSICOP]] and the [[Center for Inquiry]] along with several medical doctors and one [[Noble Laureate]], [[Venki Ramakrishnan]] teamed up to condemn Walmarts promotion of [[homeopathic]] medicines in its stores and websites. Walmart states that Boiron Oscillococcinum is effective against flu-like symptoms, when in fact there is no science that shows Boiron Oscillococcinum or any homepathic solution contains a single active ingredient and performs no better than a [[placebo]].

I had to keep it factual and neutral so I think it is as good as I can get it. Would welcome anyone else who wants to clean up grammar or whatever. The page is semi-protected so not just anyone can go on the page and edit it.

The reason why I didn't want to use the criticism page is because in the discussion area of that page people were saying that there was no evidence of the criticism. Well in the case of CFI and CSICOP there is a lot of evidence. Anyone just needs to follow the hyperlink to homeopathy I left for evidence. This will be my argument if pushed to it. If I have no choice I will move the blurb to the criticism page, but not until pushed to it. Besides on the normal page there looks like there is some criticism already of Walmart's gender relations when hiring/firing/promoting.

So for the moment it is there 5:23pm on Tuesday June 15, 2011. Maybe it will squeak by?

Also a cool note I learned how to make the size of the category text change. I had to leave a category in order to put my blurb so I called it "support for homeopathy" when I looked at what I wrote it didn't match other categories on the page already. So I kept looking and looking when finally I realized that my category looked like this ==Support for Homeopathy== and the other categories were like this ===Support for Homeopathy===. The extra equal sign on each side of the phrase increases/decreases the font. Wow! I'm still a long way from being good at this.