Censor

Censoring The ParanormalWriter Charles Fort called them "the damned." Debunkers call them superstitious nonsense that threatens to undermine the fabric of science. Christian fundamentalists call them satanic manifestations that undermine faith in God. Other people simply call them anomalies.Anomalies are things, or alleged things, that don't fit. They can be minoroddities, of no interest to anyone except a scientist in a highly specializeddiscipline. Or they can be something else, something hinting at dramaticpossibilities and attracting widespread attention and controversy: a UFOsighting, a psychic experience, an encounter with a poltergeist, or a report of an unusual animal not known to conventional zoology. Anomalies are nothingnew. As long as there have been human beings, people have claimed experienceswith phenomena that, according to the prevailing religious or scientificorthodoxy, were not supposed to exist. Some, such as those unfortunates whomade such claims during the Inquisition, were burned at the stake for it. Today the burning goes on, if only metaphorically.In 1977 a group of prominent academics and journalists -- few of whom hadfirsthand experience with anomaly research -- formed the Committee for theScientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). The committee,whose memebers included such luminaries as Carl Sagan and Harvard zoologistStephen J. Gould, declared as their mission nothing less than the salvation ofWestern civilization from "irrationality" and "dangerous sects," which, because they accepted the reality of anomalies, opposed science -- or so CSICOP charged. In one strange incident, CSICOP official Philip J. Klass, learning of a forumon anomalies research that the University of Nebraska was sponsoring, calledthe school to protest that CSICOP's views were not being represented and that,moreover, in questioning the U.S. government's word on the nonexistence of UFOs, speakers at the conference were seeking "what the Soviet Union does -- to convey to the public that our government cannot be trusted, that it lies, that it falsifies... As a patriotic American, I very much resent [this]." After Klass threatened legal action against the university, it canceled its sponsorship of future conferences of this kind. Klass withdrew the threat and pronounced himself satisfied with the university's action.Since then, satellite groups of debunkers have proliferated all around thecountry, determined to do battle with "pseudoscience," real and imagined. Not content simply to argue the issues on their merits, they have harassed colleges and universities into dropping courses (usually noncredit) in parapsychology, conducted vituperative campaigns against anomaly proponents, and done -- in the words of Philadelphian Drew Endacott, one of their number -- "anything short ofcriminal activity" to get "the point across to people who have no demonstratedfacility to reason."As the antianomaly hysteria has escalated, even some skeptics have begun toexpress alarm. Psychologist Ray Hyman, a respected critic of parapsychology,speaks of "frightening fundamentalism" in all this, a "witch-hunting" mentalitythat has nothing to do with real science. CSICOP cofounder Marcello Truzzi, asociologist who left the organization when he grew concerned that it wasbecoming an "inquisitional body," says that some debunkers have gone "berserk."In fact, many scientists do not share these skeptics' certainty that allanomalies are bogus. In 1969, the Parapsychological Association was acceptedas an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS). 10 years later, the AAAS's newly elected president, Kenneth Boulding,declared, "The evidence of parapsychology cannot just be dismissed out ofhand." In recent years, polls of scientists and academics have revealed aconsiderable degree of open-mindedness on the subject. And in 1976, whenphysicist Peter Sturrock polled the members of the American AstronomicalSociety, fully 80% agreed that the UFO phenomenon deserves scientificattention. Several of the astronomers described their own UFO sightings. If history is any guide, most supposed anomalies will eventually be explainedin conventional terms, either as delusions or as misinterpreted, mundaneevents; and a few will prove rather more interesting than that. Meanwhile,it's time to defuse the hysteria and get back to the serious business ofdispassionate investigation.han th