I just read an interesting book, UFO Crash at Roswell: The Making of a Modern Myth by Benson Saler, Charles A. Ziegler, and Charles B. Moore (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), which tries to trace the development of the myth around a supposed UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. The authors try to establish what really happened there, but are more interested in the way the story was modified over time by believers in extra-terrestrial contact, documented through publications and interviews with some of the mythographers. I want to return to this subject in a future post, but I was strongly affected, and amused, by an excerpt reproduced from a "newsletter" to members of CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims for the Paranormal. It looks more like a fundraising spiel to me, or more likely a subscription pitch for Skeptical Inquirer, CSICOP's magazine:
By repeatedly showing the public a television world where psychics can see the future, where astrologers read the stars to make important personal and business decisions, TV programmers make possible real life nightmares. How about the scandal in Orange County, California, where treasurer Robert L. Citron allegedly drove the county into bankruptcy -- and used psychics and mail order astrologers to predict interest rates! How about "financial astrologers" who charge up to $10,000 for one consultation? Need more proof of the harm media-driven credulity can do? The United States government spent $20 million on a program called Stargate. "Psychics" and "remote-viewers" were paid to use their "powers" to find ships carrying drugs off Florida, spy on nuclear testing in China and the Soviet Union, and look for a kidnapped American general held hostage by terrorists. Yet today the federal government repeatedly shuts down over budget battles and funding cuts for Medicare, Medicaid, education, and social services.
The overwrought tone here reminds me of mailings I have gotten from other magazines, usually liberal or left-wing in my case, but also of mailings sent out to the faithful by the late Jerry Falwell to warn of the threat from Militant Homosexuals. Rationality is all very well, but it doesn't sell magazines.
I used to read Skeptical Inquirer and found it useful, though I don't recall that I ever subscribed, and I was and remain sympathetic to their goals. But I noticed that CSICOP had some serious blind spots; I think I remember that they bought into biological determinism, especially where homosexuality was concerned, and I gradually stopped looking through it at the library. Which doesn't mean I started believing in psychics, astrology, or flying saucers; they just became less of a concern to me.
On UFOs, I'm firmly agnostic. I don't doubt that people have seen things moving through the sky that have never been identified or explained, but that doesn't mean they necessarily came from outer space. There has always been considerable ambivalence among scientists about UFOs: they know how great the odds are against these objects being visitors from other planets, but they really want to believe that human beings aren't, as the saying has it, "alone in the universe." They also want to believe that human beings will someday be able to travel to other solar systems, and colonize other worlds. The scientists who want to believe these things are not cranks but highly regarded, often media-savvy figures like Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Hawking. Astronomy hobbyist magazines try to be responsible, but they know their readers will snap up issues that deal with the possibility of space flight, so they skate close to the edge of fantasy.
What really jumped out at me from the quotation above was its focus on hucksterism, and while I'm dubious about some of the examples it gives, I agree that astrologers and psychics make a lot of money off the credulous. But they are pikers compared to the respectable institutions of Wall Street, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. The really destructive economic disasters are not brought about by "financial astrologers" but by the financial speculators, aided by rationalists like Alan Greenspan, who nurture bubbles in the belief that they will never break, or failing that, can be managed to collapse gently with minimal damage. I always think of Jim Cramer, the CNBC personality who assured his audiences their money was safe right up to the 2008 crash; one would think his failure to see the coming catastrophe would have had consequences, but aside from some brief embarrassment it didn't, and he's still on CNBC.
Aside from finance, there's war. Astrologers and psychics didn't invade Iraq in 2003, nor did they develop weapons that have killed millions of people. (Not that they wouldn't if they could, I'm sure.) Wartime always spurs interest in the paranormal, from protective medals to communication with the spirits of the dead; bogus, no doubt, but what does Science have to offer the bereaved? And maybe I shouldn't harp on scientific racism, but though it has done a great deal of harm, it's still respectable. So while yes, I'm concerned about commercial media's exploitation of occult mysteries, I'm even more concerned about the spokesmen for Science with a strong media presence who defend the worst of science along with the best. CSICOP has rebranded itself as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry; I should see what they're up to these days.
