Viva los Skeptics
I’m on my way back from The Amazing Meeting 5, “Skepticism and the Media,” a conference put on by the James Randi Educational Foundation for people in the skeptics movement. The “skeptics movement” is made up of people who try to critically examine everything, but especially claims of the paranormal, magical, supernatural, or pseudoscientific, following in the footsteps of James Randi. The JREF is most famous recently for its “Million Dollar Challenge,” in which they promise to give $1 million to anyone who can prove paranormal abilities in a controlled scientific experiment (Sylvia Browne and John Edward have not tried, but JREF plans to publicly challenge them). Other leaders in the movement include Michael Shermer 
(publisher of Skeptic magazine and the Skeptic column in Scientific American), Bob Carroll (who wrote The Skeptic’s Dictionary), and Penn Jillette (who does the show Bullshit on Showtime). A lot of skeptics are also atheists or freethinkers, and so Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are also heros in the movement. Another large contingent is made up of libertarians (Shermer and Jillette are both way out there). There were over 800 attendees at this conference, and I was surprised at the diversity of ages and professions represented. There was even a respectable mix of men and women, maybe 65%/35%? (There was a disproportionate number of men with ponytails in attendance compared to the general population, however.)
(publisher of Skeptic magazine and the Skeptic column in Scientific American), Bob Carroll (who wrote The Skeptic’s Dictionary), and Penn Jillette (who does the show Bullshit on Showtime). A lot of skeptics are also atheists or freethinkers, and so Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are also heros in the movement. Another large contingent is made up of libertarians (Shermer and Jillette are both way out there). There were over 800 attendees at this conference, and I was surprised at the diversity of ages and professions represented. There was even a respectable mix of men and women, maybe 65%/35%? (There was a disproportionate number of men with ponytails in attendance compared to the general population, however.) The talks at the conference were excellent and inspiring-- vastly better than the average set of AAS talks. In my opinion, one of the best talks was by Eugenie Scott from NCSE that covered the latest in Creation Science issues (including the selling of a young-earth, pseudoscientific creation book at the Grand Canyon visitor’s center). Neil Gershenfeld from MIT gave a fascinating talk on getting small fabrication labs to developing countries to support micro-industry in developing countries (which was very interesting, but it was more like a TED talk than anything related to skepticism). Lori Lipman Brown talked about working as a secular lobbyist in Washington (and she played some excellent video clips of her holding her own against Bill O’Reilly). Penn and Teller did a short Q&A session in the afternoon. On Saturday, Peter Sagal (from NPR’s “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me”) gave an excellent and surprisingly academic talk on how media and science do not have the same goals and how easy it is to find a news media niche that confirms all of your own opinions. Scott Dickers, the editor of the Onion, did a fun talk about the history of the Onion, and he read some letters from readers who want to know if the stories are real. John Rennie, the editor of Scientific American, gave a good talk on examples of how SciAm has debunked psychics and quacks over the 150-year history of the journal. In the afternoon, Adam Savage from “Mythbusters” did an interview and Q&A, and so did Matt Parker and Trey Stone, the “South Park” guys. On Sunday, there were 5 contributed talks, all of which were excellent. One talk that really amazed me was by a computer science graduate student who wrote a simple genetic algorithm that runs in a web browser to show how “irreducible complexity” (one of the key ideas in some forms of Intelligent Design Creationism) can arise through natural selection.
I had a great time at these sessions, and I had also been looking forward to seeing Julia Sweeney and Jill Sobule perform at the conference on Friday night. Unfortunately, I caught something during my travels on Thursday, and by Friday afternoon I had an uncomfortable fever (I was sitting in the conference hall shivering). I went to bed right after the last talk and slept for about 12 hours. I felt better over the next two days, but I’m still not back up to 100%.
I went to the conference to be inspired (check), to get material for classes and outreach projects (I got more for the latter than the former, but it was still useful), and to meet more people in the movement (check). Since I was sick, I didn’t get to socialize as much as I wanted to, but I still met a lot of interesting people over meals and between sessions. Most importantly, I met lots of people from New England, and I found out that there is a New England Skeptics Society, that they have a podcast, and that the organizer of the group is a doctor at the School of Medicine at Yale! (He gave a contributed talk the last day on the use of the term “natural” in foods and medicine.) So I’m looking forward to getting to know these people and getting involved in their activities.
This was my first visit to Las Vegas, and I hated the location. The conference was at the Riviera, an “old 
school” casino hotel at the north end of the strip. You had to walk through the casino to get anywhere in the hotel (such as from your room to the conference center), and seeing unhealthy people camped out in front of endless rows of flashing and bleeping slot machines was incredibly depressing (and smoking was permitted and practiced everywhere). The layout of the hotel was very confusing, so it was easy to get disoriented. There was no decent vegetarian food in or near the hotel. On Saturday afternoon I went for a long walk down the strip and back, and I found the glitzy hotels just as depressing as the Riviera. Extreme objectification of women, obscene wasting of energy and water, tour and show ticket hawkers obnoxiously doing the hard sell on anyone walking by. One thing that did surprise me was the high proportion of foreign tourists walking around. I wonder for how many people does the Las Vegas strip == the US. Why is The Amazing Meeting always in Las Vegas? Because Randi is friends with Penn and Teller? Do they get a very cheap rate on the conference center? Why not hold it in a city that would be more interesting to skeptics, like Boston, DC, or Madison? Or even Portland or Austin?
school” casino hotel at the north end of the strip. You had to walk through the casino to get anywhere in the hotel (such as from your room to the conference center), and seeing unhealthy people camped out in front of endless rows of flashing and bleeping slot machines was incredibly depressing (and smoking was permitted and practiced everywhere). The layout of the hotel was very confusing, so it was easy to get disoriented. There was no decent vegetarian food in or near the hotel. On Saturday afternoon I went for a long walk down the strip and back, and I found the glitzy hotels just as depressing as the Riviera. Extreme objectification of women, obscene wasting of energy and water, tour and show ticket hawkers obnoxiously doing the hard sell on anyone walking by. One thing that did surprise me was the high proportion of foreign tourists walking around. I wonder for how many people does the Las Vegas strip == the US. Why is The Amazing Meeting always in Las Vegas? Because Randi is friends with Penn and Teller? Do they get a very cheap rate on the conference center? Why not hold it in a city that would be more interesting to skeptics, like Boston, DC, or Madison? Or even Portland or Austin? I had planned to check out the downtown area today to see how it was different, but it turned out that two geologists attending TAM had organized an informal field trip out to Red Rock Canyon for the afternoon. About 20 of us carpooled out for that, and it was amazing. After being in a conference hotel on the strip for 2.5 days, it was just the thing to get out and hike around over fossilized sand dunes for a few hours with a geologist. Note to self: go hiking with geologists more often.
Edit: Welcome to anyone visiting from Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog! I’m an astronomer myself (and a big fan of Phil’s book and website), but this is my personal blog-- you are more likely to find astronomy stuff on my professional page: http://michaelfaison.com.
Sunday, January 21, 2007