I rarely read his articles but thought I would pass on for your comments. -- X-Philes World-X-Files Movie 2

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Date Posted: 08:34:22 05/16/00 Tue
Author: CW
Subject: I rarely read his articles but thought I would pass on for your comments.

Hi Everybody--found this and thought I would pass it on.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune
Published Thursday, March 23, 2000
Twin Cities Journal: Scientists consider the paranormal -- very skeptically

Chuck Haga / Star Tribune

The man and woman in the Minneapolis Convention Center lobby on Wednesday are dressed better than the people milling around them, but they seem less sure of themselves. They speak in whispers. "Look at this, Scully."
"What is it, Mulder?"
"Here we are at the American Physical Society conference. These are some of the country's foremost scientists, and look at this panel coming up: 'Alien abductions,' and 'Communicating with the dead.' "
"What do you make of that, Scully?"
Walking slightly apart, they enter a large lecture hall.
A man is speaking. An image peers from a screen: a small
creature, human-like but with a large head and vacant eyes.
Scully and Mulder see the image and trade glances. They find seats a few rows apart and focus on the speaker.

Paul Kurtz, chairman of the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, is saying that there is great public fascination with a paranormal conception of the universe. It's "fed in large part by the mass media and encouraged by a number of 'fringe sciences,' " he says. Consider all the best-selling books, such as James Van Praagh's "Talking to Heaven" and "Reaching to Heaven." Consider such films as "The Sixth Sense" -- not to mention TV's "The X-Files."
Science has been investigating people's ability to communicate with the dead for a long time, Kurtz says, and has systematically debunked it. Remember the Fox sisters, Margaret and Kate, who in 1848 claimed that they could receive messages from the spirit world? Their fame swept across the country. However, a committee of doctors found that the girls were tapping out the "spirit" messages with their feet and knees. When they were seated on pillows, there were no taps.
Now we're seeing another boom in such "channelers" -- people who claim to be able to contact the dead.
"This is due in part to the revival of religiosity and spirituality on the broader American cultural scene," Kurtz says. "There is a tremendous psychological need to believe that those you love survived death."
But there is "insufficient reliable or objective evidence that some individuals are able to reach another plane of existence beyond this world or communicate with the dead," he says. "As far as we know, the death of the body entails the death of psychological functions, consciousness and the personality, and there is no reason to believe that ghosts hover and communicate with us.
"I realize that this flies in the face of what the preponderance of humans wish to believe, but science should deal as best it can with what is the case, not with what we would like it to be."

A man asks whether the popular interest in after-death experiences isn't like professional wrestling: entertaining, not real but not particularly harmful. It can be harmful, Kurtz says. "If you're out of cognitive touch with reality, and you allow the fantasy world to intervene, that can harm not only the individual but also society."
The next speaker, Joe Nickell, is senior research fellow at Kurtz's organization. His subject: alien abductions.
It started in the late 18th century, he says: reports of strange airships in the sky. By the 1930s, people were seeing flying discs and alien beings. The first "contacts" were reported in the 1940s. But there was all that evidence of earlier contacts: the pyramids, the big statues on Easter Island. In 1947, the term "flying saucer" was coined. "Unidentified flying object" came later.
Nickell shows slides of reported UFOs. But they really are comets,airplanes, clouds and doctored photographs, he says.
"I've seen UFOs," he says.

Mulder perks up.

"At Niagara Falls, I once saw a large light merge with a smaller light. But as I got closer, I saw that it was lights on a turning helicopter."
The problem, Nickell says, is that people are pointing to strange occurrences and saying, "We don't know what this is, therefore it is a UFO." But if you don't know, you can't say "therefore," he says. "It is a logical fallacy called 'arguing from ignorance.' "

The audience titters.

Nickell shows slides of the wreckage found on a ranch near
Roswell, N.M., in 1947, wreckage that many people believe was from an alien spacecraft. It was paper, sticks, string, tape and pieces of rubber.
"It was most likely from a secret U.S. spy balloon," he says, lowering his voice. "Don't tell anyone I told you this."

More tittering. But Mulder is taking notes.

Nickell moves on, showing slides of crop circles --patterns,
depressions formed in fields of corn or wheat. One spelled out,"We are not alone."
"Of course," Nickell says, "if aliens had left that message, it should be, 'YOU are not alone.'
"This rich "mythology" of aliens among us is not all fun and games," Nickell says. "It can be taken to a frightening extent of absurdity," as in the Heaven's Gate mass suicide.
But these mysteries and people's responses to them should not be dismissed out of hand by the scientist, he says.
"They should be examined."

The discussion ends. Scully and Mulder move back into the
lobby. Mulder tries a little smile."At least we didn't see the cigarette-smoking man," he says.
Scully gives him her look. "They don't allow smoking indoors in Minnesota," she says. She points to a group of people huddled outside. "They're out there," she said.

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