Skeptics, Pseudo-skeptics, Debunkers
Following World War II, popular interest in, and media attention to, scientific matters Increased, including claims not taken seriously by mainstream science: flying saucers (nowadays known as UFOs or UAPs), psychic phenomenon such as extrasensory perception, the possible existence of extinct or entirely unknown animals (“cryptids” — yeti, Bigfoot, coelacanth, Loch Ness monsters: the subjects of cryptozoology).
Around 1980, two groups organized to pay specific attention to such claims. One became the Society for Scientific Exploration, founded by primarily astronomers together with other scientists, engineers, psychologists, and others who believed that a number of these claims were supported by sufficient evidence that they should be seriously investigated. Soon the society's Journal of Scientific Exploration was being published and that continues [1].
The other group established the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP, later just CSI), founded largely by members of the American Humanist Association and others who might be described as evangelical agnostics or atheists, in some cases quite aggressively adhering to the philosophy of Scientism, that science is the only secure avenue to truth. CSICOP also published a journal that continues as Skeptical Inquirer.
As that journal title indicates, claims of unexplained phenomena and scientific anomalies are said to be subjected to highly critical skepticism. However, as Marcello Truzzi pointed out [2], that these groups have adopted the formal designation of “Skeptic” is quite inappropriate: they would properly be called pseudo-skeptics. Skepticism is traditionally understood to be an attitude of fundamental doubt, whereas CSICOP and its ilk are not at all skeptical about the claims made by mainstream science, no matter how extraordinary or hard to believe, as with say quantum mechanics, multiverses, and the like. Moreover, mainstream views have often been wrong [3].
In practice, pseudo-skeptics act most commonly as outright debunkers, insisting that claims for the reality of psychic phenomenon, UFOs, or cryptids (animals not recognized by mainstream science) are simply and definitely not true and represent pseudo-science.
But it should not be difficult to recognize the enormous difficulty of establishing definitive proof that something does not exist somewhere, or indeed did not exist at some time somewhere; as Carl Sagan put it, “Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence”. So debunking is quite contrary to a scientific attitude, even as the pseudo-skeptics claim to be doing things “scientifically”.
My own special interest since the 1960s has been in the possible reality of Loch Ness Monsters, “Nessies”; and since the late 1970s I have been quite convinced that there exists in Loch Ness a population of large aquatic animals whose exact nature we do not yet know [4] but whose existence has been established definitively by evidence from sonar echoes, surface and underwater photography, and films [5].
I have just published, jointly with Roland Watson, a discussion of the illogical and unscientific attempts by debunkers to pooh-pooh the evidence that Nessies are indeed real [6].
We also describe the general strategies that underlie all debunking.
The constant theme is misdirection, the technique used by stage magicians to distract attention from what is really being done.
One type of misdirection by debunkers is to focus exclusively on the weakest evidence and to say as little as possible about the strongest evidence. A second type of misdirection is to emphasize that the anomalous claim is not accepted by mainstream science, which trades on the widespread belief that science represents truth about reality. Those discussions combine to a repeated mantra, how improbable the anomalous claim is; and that constitutes a third type of misdirection, because investigators of anomalies do not claim a high probability, only that there is sufficient evidence to warrant further study.
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[1] https://www.scientificexploration.org/journal
[2] Marcello Truzzi, “Zetetic ruminations on skepticism and anomalies in science”, Zetetic Scholar, 12/13 (August 1987) 7
[3] Bernard Barber, “Resistance by Scientists to Scientific Discovery”, Science, 134 (1961) 596-602
[4] Henry H. Bauer, “Loch Ness Monsters as cryptid (presently unknown) sea turtles”, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 34 (2020) 93-104
[5] Henry H. Bauer, “Genuine facts about ‘Nessie’, the Loch Ness ‘Monster’”; https://henryhbauer.homestead.com/LochNessFacts.html
[6] Henry H. Bauer & Roland Watson, Failings of Nessie debunkers and of debunkers in general, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 38 (2024) 138-54; https://journalofscientificexploration.org/index.php/jse/article/view/2877/2095