Date: Sun, 24 Dec 1995 18:20:38 -0500
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: James DeMeo <demeo@mind.net>
Subject: Sagan & CSICOP
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu

>On Sat, 23 Dec 1995, James DeMeo <demeo@mind.net> wrote:
>>Sagan is a founding member and fellow of CSICOP, and lends his name to
>>their multitude of attack, smear, distort and destroy activities.  This, in
>>my view, is his worst sin.  Rather like Jung's support for the Nazis,
>>history will remember Sagan for this one fact, at least as much as for
>>anything positive he has accomplished.

>James, Would you please let us know what CSICOP stands for?

CSICOP = "Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal"
publishes "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine, which has carried numerous attack
articles aimed at Reich, and other scientists with unorthodox views.  They
never print rebuttals from defenders of Reich, which I know from having
been named in one nasty article in SI by Martin Gardner attacking orgonomy
with all kinds of horrid allegations and twisted nonsense.  I have an
article "Rebuttal to Martin Gardner's Attack Upon Reich and Orgone Research
in Skeptical Inquirer" which was sent to them, along with a shorter
rebuttal letter -- they did not even have the courtesy (or guts) to
acknowledge receipt of those items.  The response was total silence. SI and
CSICOP, and indeed their entire list of "fellows" stand in serious breach
of scientific ethics for that one affair alone. 

On a more serious note, the statistician Michel Gauquelin (whose work
validated some, but not all, of the claims of astrology)  was so hotly and
maliciously attacked by them as to destroy his teaching career - nobody
would hire him after the intensive attacks by CSICOP and their dozens of
affiliated "skeptics clubs" --  he recently committed suicide.  Amazingly,
CSICOP independently investigated Gauquelin's claims as one of the first
research projects they ever undertook, and validated them.  But they chose
to suppress their own report supporting Gauquelin, and continued to attack
him!!  Marcello Truzzi, then editor of SI, quit CSICOP in protest over this
shabby affair.  Today, CSICOP does no research at all, and certainly is not
a "scientific" group.  They have been sued on a number of occasions for
some of the more hotly malicious things they and their central members have
said.  Such as the recent lawsuit by Uri Geller against James Randi, who
was forced to resign from CSICOP to protect them from inclusion in the
suit.  Regarding Randi, he of course was a participant in the malicious
attacks against Jacques Benveniste, the French scientist who validated
cellular immune responses to homeopathic doses of an antigen, as part of
his activities at the French INSERM laboratory (roughly equal to our
National Institutes of Health).  After the attacks by Randi, et al, (which
involved dirty-tricks by Nature magazine and our own NIH "fraud-buster",
David Stewart), Benvenise (I have heard) was dismissed as head of his
laboratory, and subsequently had a heart attack.  Few or none of these
events are reported in the mainstream press, of course.

Other similarly malicious and deadly examples could be named, and at some
point I should put together an article on the general intolerance of modern
American science. CSICOP is in fact an expression of organized emotional
plague, a major player in setting the tone of what Robert Anton Wilson has
called "The New Inquisition" (read his book of the same title).  Carl
Sagan, Vern Bullough, Mario Bunge, Stephen Jay Gould, Paul MacCready, and
other of their "notable academic"  "fellows" have a *direct personal
responsibility* for this kind of conduct by CSICOP, as they lend their
otherwise good names to CSICOP to use and display in public, on the front
page of SI magazine, which puts a facade of "scientific rationalism" on
their  anti-scientific, smear-tactic, attack-dog activities.  There is as
much nasty, stab-in-the-back goings on in academic science today as there
is in Washington, DC politics.  The only difference between the Washington
hacks and the academic hacks is that the academics are smarter (generally)
and so put up a much better facade than do most of the politicians.  

My rebuttal to the Gardner article was later published in our own research
journal, "Pulse of the Planet" issue #1. That article contains a more
complete discussion about CSICOP, and the history of their attacks, and
Martin Gardner's attacks, against Reich and orgonomy.  I will send a free
xerox reprint of the article to anybody who sends me their postal mailing
address:  demeo@mind.net     A full copy of Pulse #1 (54 pages) is still
available as xerox for $10 postpaid.  

Best holiday wishes to all.  No Illigitimi Carborundum!




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