In Memoriam

William Jarvis was the founder and president of the National Council Against Health Fraud. He worked tirelessly to inform consumers about quackery in chiropractic, dentistry, and various alleged alternatives to science-based medicine. He appeared frequently on television and radio, and spoke at many professional conferences about the dangers of health fraud. Jarvis authored Quackery and You (1983) and many articles on consumer health fraud. He co-authored The Reader's Guide to Alternative Medicine (1983), The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in America (1993), and Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions (2002).

Jarvis was elected a scientific consultant to CSICOP (now CSI) in 1988.

CSI Fellow Wally Sampson founded The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and for many years was a major force in the fight against medical pseudoscience and fraud. In 1972, he led the charge against quacks promoting Laetrile to cancer patients. He published many papers on so-called alternative medicine.

He served as Chairman of the California Cancer Advisory Council, a major force in combating cancer frauds, and was a board member for the National Council Against Health Fraud (1990-1998). He was also one of the founders of the Science-Based Medicine blog.

He was a leading voice in the movement to abolish the NIH Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (now called the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health). I met him when he taught a course for the Skeptic's Toolbox in 2003 where he taught us to be cautious in giving weight to single studies and to remember that human researchers are susceptible to all the cognitive biases that plague the rest of us. He taught at the Skeptic's Toolbox from 1998 to 2008.

Kit Moser was co-founder (with husband Ray Spangenburg) of the Sacramento Organization for Rational Thinking (SORT). Kit and Ray co-authored more than 50 books and over 100 articles on science, science history, biography, and critical thinking.Their last work together was Carl Sagan: A Biography (2004: Greenwood).

Vic Stenger was a physicist who spent many years opposing creationism/intelligent design and defending atheism. He was a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a lifelong activist for secular humanism. He wrote many books, including God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007), Quantum Gods (2009), The New Atheism (2009), The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning (2011), God and the Folly of Faith (2012), and God and the Atom (2013). God and the Multiverse will be published posthumously. His articles on "Quantum Quackery" and "The Myth of Quantum Consciousness" are classics in the history of skeptical literature.

Edwin Kagin was a co-founder of Camp Quest (with wife Helen), the first secular summer camp in the United States for the children of non-believers. Kagin served as the legal director of American Atheists, the organization founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair in 1963, from 2006 until his death. Kagin was a leader in many legal battles defending the rights of non-believers against the constant intrusion into our lives by government officials who feel they must pray before taking a vote on which potholes to fill and who load up their belief weapons with such phrases as "in god we trust."

Narendra Dabholkar was one of India's leading opponents of superstition and defenders of rational thinking. He was founder of the Maharashtra Forum for Elimination of Superstition (Maharashtra Andha Shraddha Nirmulan Samiti) and editor of Sadhana magazine. At one time he was vice president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations (FIRA). He was also active in IHEU, a global humanist movement. He was outspoken in his criticism of India's so called godmen, who take advantage of the superstitious masses. His efforts to get laws passed against superstition and black magic were met with strong opposition from various Hindu organizations. (NY Time obit.)

Bob Steiner was a friend, magician, writer, raconteur, a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and an all-around good guy. He was a former president of the Society of American Magicians and a member of the Magic Castle in Hollywood. Bob fooled millions of Australians as "psychic" Steve Terbot in 1984. He warned all of us that we could be the next dupe of a con man in Don't Get Taken: Bunco and Bunkum Exposed - How to Protect Yourself (1989).

Bob was one of the founders of the (San Francisco) Bay Area Skeptics. He was involved with James Randi in exposing the fraud Peter Popoff. Robert Scheaffer writes:

Steiner coordinated the entire Bay Area operation of James Randi’s elaborate “sting” of the televangelist Peter Popoff, who was receiving ‘messages from God’ via a concealed radio receiver in his ear. (Steiner invited me to participate, but because of work and family commitments I could not. As a consequence of their strict secrecy, I did not even find out the nature of the “sting” they had under way until its completion.) Steiner lined up the communications expert, Alec Jason, and the primary “patient,” Don Henvick, who three separate times was miraculously chosen from among thousands to be “healed” by Popoff, the last time in drag.

In his prime as a skeptic, Bob performed as a psychic, always revealing that he used trickery and deception at the end of his shows. In his later years, he devoted his magical talents to working with disadvantaged young people in an effort to give them some sort of direction away from drugs.

Leon Jaroff was a science writer who wrote the Skeptical Eye column for Time magazine in which he showed great skepticism in articles about psychics like James van Praagh, healing prayer, Diane Watson and amalgam fillings, psychics in general, homeopathy, John Edward, and dowsing for bombs. He once predicted the end of alternative medicine. He once wrote that "the antivaccine activists demonstrate both medical illiteracy and an appalling ignorance of history." For four years, he was the managine editor of Discover magazine.

“No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.”--Humanist Manifesto II (drafted by Paul Kurtz in 1973)

Paul Kurtz was the founder and past chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) (now called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI)), the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center for Inquiry. He founded Prometheus Books. Kurtz was one of the founders of the skeptical movement in the 1970s that focused on providing a skeptical resource for the media on paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Kurtz started, and remained a leader in, the secular humanist, movement. While skepticism toward the paranormal may have been his first battle, his life demonstrated that his main interest was secular humanism and the establishment of non-religious based social and ethical thought. He was a leading proponent of atheism and an opponent of dogmatic, authoritarian religions.

Kurtz was a philosophy professor at the University of Buffalo for many years. He was a staunch proponent of science-based, as opposed to faith-based, worldviews, ethics, and social systems.

The New York Times published an informative obituary.

CFI's obituary includes the following:

He was one of the most influential figures in the humanist and skeptical movements from the late 1960s through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Among his best-known creations are the skeptics’ magazine Skeptical Inquirer, the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry, and the independent publisher Prometheus Books.

Christopher Hitchens was an eloquent debater of politics and religion who infuriated millions of theists and atheists on the left and the right, an exquisite wordsmith who delighted and educated millions with his prose, and a formidable presence in his later years as a leader among public figures decrying theism.

Among his many books were Hitch 22: A Memoir, Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens, Is Christianity Good for the World?, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (selected and with introductions by Christopher Hitchens), and The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.

"Where others might have beguiled themselves with thoughts of divine purpose (why me?) and dreams of an afterlife, Christopher had all of literature."--Ian Mcewan

Henceforth, Johnnie Walker Black will be known as The Potable Hitchens.

C.E.M. Hansel was a psychology professor who was best known in skeptical circles for his criticism of parapsychology. His 1966 book ESP: A Scientific Evaluation is a classic and perhaps the first of its kind. It served as an inspiration for many critics of parapsychology. An updated version of the book was published in 1980 with the title ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Evaluation. Many of the entries in The Skeptic's Dictionary rely heavily on the research and arguments of Hansel.

McCoy was a Unitarian and former president of the American Humanist Association.

For twenty years, he headed the Society for Sensible Explanations.

Jerry was an internationally renowned magician who created all his own tricks and illusions. Magicians came to him to study his close-up magic. He designed many simple devices to illustrate how the brain works in sense perception and how easy it is to be fooled by "our wonderful brain." For the past few years, he displayed many of those creations at the Skeptic's Toolbox and the Amazing Meetings. Thanks to video and the Internet you can view some of these here and here and here and here.

Popkin taught philosophy at several universities, including UCLA, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of California at San Diego where he and Avrum Stroll founded the philosophy department. Popkin and Stroll co-authored several books.

Among his many honors, Popkin was awarded the Nicholas Murray Butler Medal by Columbia University (where he earned his Ph.D. in 1950) and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Klass was senior avionics editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology for over thirty years.

Because he never validated a UFO report as probably being an alien craft, he was often criticized by those who refuse to accept explanations of sightings in terms of celestials bodies, aircraft, weather balloons, tricks of perception, or any other non-alien explanation.

He was very critical of the way hypnosis has been used to encourage hallucinations and false beliefs about sexual abuse, alien abduction, and past life regression.

Mayr wrote more than 20 books and over 600 scientific papers, two-thirds of which were published after he retired from Harvard in 1975. Five of his books were published while he was in his 90s.

He was awarded the Balzan Prize in 1983, the International Prize for Biology in 1994, and the Crafoord Prize in 1999. There is no Nobel prize for evolutionary biology; otherwise, no doubt Mayr would have been awarded that prize as well.

Read Randi's "eulogy" here.

Truzzi considered most skeptics to be pseudoskeptics, a term he coined to describe those who assume an occult or paranormal claim is false without bothering to investigate it. A kind way to state these differences might be to say that Marcello belonged to the Pyrrhonian tradition, most of the rest of us belong to the Academic skeptical tradition.

Stephen Jay Gould was the most well-known evolutionary theorist since Charles Darwin. His field was paleontology (Ph.D., Columbia University 1967) and his specialty was fossil mollusks and snails. He authored dozens of books and hundreds of articles, including essays in each of 300 consecutive issues of Natural History magazine. He was a gifted writer without equal among science writers. He could tie together disparate threads in colorful and interesting ways and connect arcane scientific issues with mundane events like baseball games.

Gould is best known for his theory, with Niles Eldredge, of punctuated equilibrium as an alternative to the gradualism favored by most evolutionary biologists.

Gould was also known for his public attacks on pseudoscientific "creation science" and for debating creationists on the issue of teaching evolution. Gould's view was that non-scientific theories like creationism do not belong in the same classroom as scientific theories like evolution. In The Mismeasure of Man, he attacked pseudoscientific theories used to support racist ideologies.

Two months before his death, Gould published his magnum opus, the 1433 page tome he called The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.

And, oh yes, he sang in the choir.

Steve Allen was mainly known as an entertainer, but he was very active in CSICOP, Critical Thinking and the Skeptical Movement. He was a co-chair of CSICOP's Council for Media Integrity and most recently had been waging a campaign against the filth and violence that dominates television and films.

In addition to being the first host on the Tonight show, he wrote and produced Meeting of Minds, which brought together for dinner and conversation historical figures such as Attila the Hun, Charles Darwin and Marie Antoinette. 

Each program featured one great woman from the past to be played by his wife Jane Meadows.

He also authored 53 books and recorded 52 albums. Shortly before his death he finished the manuscript for another book about violence and vulgarity in the media, tentatively titled Vulgarians at the Gate. He was also a jazz musician, and many know him as the one who played Benny Goodman in the 1955 story of Goodman's life.

Steve Allen was one of the truly heroic figures of our time.

Though he is mostly recognized for his science fiction and fantasy works, de Camp wrote several important non-fiction books in addition to The Ancient Engineers, viz., Great Cities of the Ancient World, The Day of the Dinosaur, Darwin and his Great Discovery, The Great Monkey Trial (the Scopes evolution trial), as well as biographies of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan).

Martin Orne was a psychiatrist who pioneered the use of hypnosis in therapy and in criminal investigations He also became one the most vocal critics of abusing hypnosis in both settings.

He was considered an expert in multiple personality disorder and examined Kenneth Bianchi, known as the Hillside Strangler, who had been diagnosed as an MPD by Dr. Jack Watkins.

Orne convinced the court that  Bianchi was not a true MPD and had faked both the hypnosis and the personality "Steve." The defense tried to blame this "alter" for the murders of several women. Bianchi.was sentenced to life in prison.

Orne cautioned that people under hypnosis can regress to past lives, but that the past lives were confabulations, as are many of the "memories" induced by hypnosis and other methods of suggestion.

He authored many extraordinary books, including Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, The Natural Superiority of Women, The Elephant Man: a study in human dignity, Growing Young, Touching, and the Ignorance of Certainty.

Montagu concerned himself with real problems, such as worldwide corporal punishment and genital mutilation of children, rather than pseudo-problems such as satanic rituals and child sacrifice.

While much of America became afraid to touch, hug or display any physical affection for children, Montagu insisted on our species' need for touching and love to survive.

His works should be studied to remind us of just how much of our humanity is lost the further we depart from early childhood when we loved to be held and touched, when we were boundlessly curious and playful, when we were joyful and loved learning new things.

He introduced and perfected a methodology which analyzes great masses of data over years, such as arrest records, to discern patterns of violence and crime. Such  studies are now common in the social sciences.

He was the first to document, beyond anecdotal evidence, that a disproportionate number of crimes are due to a few chronic juvenile offenders. 

His work influenced legislative bodies and criminal justice policy makers around the world. He was most proud that his research findings were used in the Supreme Court's Furman vs. Georgia decision (1972) which held that the death penalty as then applied by states was racially biased and unconstitutional. 

In television programs, interviews, articles in popular Sunday magazines such as Parade, and in numerous books, Carl Sagan demonstrated by his life and works the wonders not only of science but of what it means to be a human being. 

There are very few who are capable of doing what Carl Sagan did, for very few share his skeptical attitude, his vast scientific knowledge and his passion for teaching others. I feel as if I have lost a friend. I know I have lost a mentor. Carl Sagan was truly a candle in the dark. 

Stein was a valued Technical Consultant to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.