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The Arizona Skeptic
A Journal Promoting Critical Thinking
Volume 6, Issue 3             November/December 1992

Report on the 1992 CSICOP Conference: Part One
By Jim Lippard
"Fairness, Fraud, and Feminism: Culture Confronts Science" was the
name of this year's annual conference of the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, publisher of
the _Skeptical Inquirer_.  The conference was hosted by the North
Texas Skeptics at the Harvey Hotel near the Dallas-Fort Worth
Airport on the weekend of October 16-18.  The conference featured
five panel sessions on multicultural approaches to science, gender
issues in science and pseudoscience, fraud in science, crashed
saucers, and the paranormal in China.
          The conference began on Friday morning with opening remarks
by CSICOP chairman Paul Kurtz, who spoke briefly about various
meanings of the term "skepticism."  He distinguished the "total
negative skepticism and unbelief" of Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus
from the "mitigated skepticism" of David Hume and "the new
skepticism" which emphasizes inquiry rather than doubt.  (Not
coincidentally, Kurtz's new book from Prometheus is titled _The
New Skepticism_.)  He commented on the fact that this conference,
like the Berkeley conference last year and other CSICOP
conferences before that, is addressing issues which are not
directly connected with pseudoscience and the paranormal.  The
CSICOP Executive Council has debated "how far afield" it is
appropriate for the conferences to go.

Multicultural Approaches to Science
The first panel of the day, "Multicultural Approaches to Science:
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," was moderated by Eugenie Scott
of the National Center for Science Education, who began the
session by stating that "I believe in objective reality.  I
believe that you exist even if I never saw you. ... I believe the
nominalist/realist debate is irrelevant outside freshman
philosophy."1  She began with these statements because there are
those who disagree, who maintain that consequences of ideas are
more important than their content and that any idea is as valid as
any other.  She gave some examples from some materials criticizing
textbooks for lack of an appropriate multicultural stance which
have influenced textbook decisions in Berkeley, California.  These
materials consist of an excerpt from a textbook, followed by a
comment, a format which Scott compared to the textbook critiques
of fundamentalists Mel and Norma Gabler of Texas.  Scott gave two
examples from this material.  The first criticized a textbook for
claiming that the first people in the Americas arrived over a land
bridge, characterizing this claim as "unsubstantiated theories of
white anthropologists" and pointing out that "Natives believe they
have always been here."  The second example questioned a
textbook's claim that horses were brought to the Americas by the
Spanish, arguing that horses may have always been in America or
have been brought over by Persians in the 12th century.
          The first speaker, Diana Marinez, professor of biochemistry
at Michigan State University and member of the National Academy of
Science's Committee on Standards, commented on "the good."
Marinez maintained that multicultural education is important even
in science classes because science and what scientists do is
influenced by culture.  Science is normally taught as something
isolated from reality, in such a way that students come away
knowing only collections of facts.  By learning science from a
familiar cultural base, students can recognize the importance of
science in their lives, become scientifically literate, and become
motivated towards science as a career.  Marinez gave statistics
showing the paucity of minorities in scientific fields and argued
that this is a problem which multicultural approaches to science
education can correct.  She then gave some examples of how this
might be done using Mayan math and astronomy, American Indian food
plants and nutrition, and Diego Rivera murals.
          The second speaker, Joseph Dunbar, a professor of
endocrinology at Wayne State University, addressed "the bad."  His
talk, titled "Myths of Melanin," described the claims of the so-
called "melanin scholars" that dark-skinned humans have special
abilities in virtue of magical properties of the melanin in their
skin.  Dunbar described different kinds of melanin in skin pigment
(eumelanin and pheomelanin) and how they differ from melatonin
(secreted by the pineal gland) and neuromelanin.  The "melanin
scholars" do not distinguish these things, and use studies
relating to the latter two substances to support their claims that
melanin improves reaction time, allows communication with plants,
protects DNA, converts sunlight into knowledge, and numerous other
outrageous claims.2
          Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, an anthropologist at Wayne State
University (with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry), spoke on "the
ugly."  (Eugenie Scott introduced him with the comment that
"bringing critical thinking to multiculturalism is 'the task of de
Montellano,'" with due apologies to Edgar Allan Poe.)  Ortiz de
Montellano, who has written two articles on multicultural
pseudoscience for the _Skeptical Inquirer_ and one for
_Creation/Evolution_, discussed the _African-American Baseline
Essays_ (also known as the _Portland Baseline Essays_).3  This
collection of essays by promoters of an Afrocentric curriculum was
published in 1987 by the Portland, Oregon school district and has
been distributed to schools around the country as a resource for
setting up a multicultural curriculum.  Detroit, Boston, Atlanta,
Indianapolis, and other school districts have had seminars on this
material, but it is unknown how many are actually using the
material in the classroom.  The _Baseline Essays_ assert that
Egypt is the source of all civilization, that religion and
paranormal abilities are important aspects of scientific
methodology, that Egyptians flew for travel and recreation, and
many other ridiculous claims.  The material on science claims that
the ancient Egyptians used "Maat," religion as a scientific
paradigm, according to which (1) there is a supreme consciousness
or creator; (2) the universe came into existence via divine self-
organization; (3) the universe is alive, all parts of it are
related and are living; (4) man and life itself is a mystery; (5)
there are material and transmaterial causes and effects.  Ortiz de
Montellano looked at some of the specific claims made in the
science essay of the _Baseline Essays_, showing that the purported
evidence for each was weak to nonexistent (or, in some cases,
actually evidence to the contrary, as was the case with the
alleged Egyptian "glider" model, whose dimensions were such that
it could not possibly be flown).

Unofficial Session on Faith Healing
During lunch time, the North Texas Skeptics arranged for Christian
critic of televangelists Ole Anthony to speak at the Excell Inn
next door to the Harvey Hotel.  Anthony was one of the prime
movers behind PrimeTime Live's expos of Robert Tilton, Larry Lea,
and W.V. Grant.  Anthony recounted the various legal tactics
Tilton has been using against him and stated that his group will
be filing a lawsuit against the television stations that air
Tilton's program around the country.  Tilton has sued Anthony for
conspiracy to deprive him of his Constitutional rights under the
First Amendment.  At least one of Tilton's claims was dropped,
regarding remarks Anthony made about his faith healing abilities,
when the court ruled that, as part of the discovery process,
Anthony was entitled to obtain the names and addresses of people
Tilton claims to have healed.
          Anthony stated that he wants to get FCC rules changed to say
that claims made by a living person on a television or radio
broadcast must be verifiable.  When asked how that fits with the
First Amendment, Anthony became angry at the questioner and stated
that fraud is not protected by the Constitution.  (Anthony did not
bother to explain how the FCC would determine what is and what is
not verifiable, nor how this would affect broadcast of such things
as fiction, opinion, discussions of art, or religious broadcasts
of any kind.  The proposal seemed to me to be quite ill thought
out.)
          A fact sheet on Anthony's organization, the Trinity
Foundation, Inc. (P.O. Box 33, Dallas, TX 75221, [phone])
states that the group was founded in 1972 and "sponsors several
non-denominational home church groups with the goal of recapturing
the First-Century Christian experience."  The same fact sheet says
that the group assisted in the production of a Canadian television
documentary titled "Adolph Hitler, The New Age Messiah," which
"shows how New Age philosophy inevitably leads to fascism."  This
and the FCC proposal lead me to question the reliability and
objectivity of this organization, but it has apparently been
effective in getting media scrutiny on a few televangelists.

Gender Issues
The afternoon session was on "Gender Issues in Science and
Pseudoscience" and was moderated by York University psychologist
and CSICOP Executive Council member James Alcock.  Before the
session began, Lee Nisbet, the conference chairman, gave what were
supposed to have been his introductory remarks before the first
session.  They turned out to be as appropriate for this session as
they would have been for the earlier one.  He spoke briefly on
"The Consequences of Inquiry"--how the process of discovery can
destroy old ideas, giving Darwin as an example.  He stated that
our prior likes and dislikes should not determine what we think is
true.
          Alcock began by briefly describing the role of women in
spiritualism (e.g., the Fox sisters, Eusapia Palladino, and the
girls involved in the Cottingley fairies hoax).  He asked why
women were so prominent in spiritualism, why they are more likely
to follow horoscopes, why they are less represented at CSICOP
conferences than men.
          The first panelist, social psychologist and CSICOP Fellow
Carol Tavris, the author of _The Mismeasure of Woman_, began with
a word of annoyance about the title of the conference.  "There are
loony feminists, but they are not the whole of feminism," she
said.  She went on to discuss the role of gender biases in
science.  "Notice how easy it is to see the bias in 'feminist
science,' but not in the name of normal science?" she asked,
suggesting that "chauvinist science" might be appropriate for
science with a masculine bias.  She discussed how research on
sexual selection has assumed active males and passive females, and
how women entering the field have made new discoveries by
neglecting that assumption.  Many bird species, for example, have
now been found to have promiscuous females.  When the male leader
of a harem of birds was vasectomized, all of the females still
conceived.
          Tavris next discussed studies of sex differences in humans.
She described two sources of bias in current opposition theories
of bias:  (1) normal (chauvinist) bias, or the "women as problem"
view; and (2) feminist bias, or the "women as solution" view.  The
first view asks questions of the form "Why aren't women as _____
as men?", filling in the blank with such words as "moral,"
"rational," "intelligent," "aggressive," etc.  The second view
says that women are different from men--they're better.  To
illustrate the point, she described a series of hypothetical study
results from the point of view of each.  With a normal bias,
studies might conclude that women have lower self-esteem, are more
gullible, less self-confident, or have trouble developing
autonomy.  With a feminist bias, the same studies with the same
results might conclude that men are more conceited, too inflexible
about their beliefs, overvalue their work, and so forth.
          Tavris gave as a specific example of these interpretive
biases an experiment with babies who could pull a cord to reveal a
(Halloween?) mask.  After the mask was removed, boys would
continue pulling the cord longer than girls would, which a male
researcher concluded showed that they show more courage,
fortitude, etc. than girls.  A female researcher replied, "no,
girls learn faster."
          Tavris also pointed out that there is a psychiatric disorder
in diagnostic manuals called self-defeating personality disorder
which is based on "chauvinist bias."  When some female
psychologists suggested adding the male converse counterpart,
"delusional domineering personality disorder," they were told that
"there is no rich psychiatric tradition for such a disorder."
          Tavris did maintain that there is one clear difference
between males and females:  that men are more violent.  She did,
however, qualify this by stating that women have been just as
active in wartime as men, "to the extent culture permits," and
that they are just as likely as men to regard enemies as beasts.
          She also discussed one area where women are treated as the
normal sex and men are treated as deficient--studies of love.  For
women, according to Tavris, love is the "feeling of squichiness"
when the object of love is present, while for men love is
behavior, doing things for the loved one.  Studies of intimacy
assume that what is important is the ability to talk about
feelings, while ignoring behavior.  This faulty assumption leads
to the conclusion that men are inferior in this area.
          Tavris rejected studies of biological differences between the
sexes, pointing out that an article in _Science_ arguing for sex
differences in the brain cited a paper on rat brains for evidence
of differently sized corpus callosi in men and women.  The
_Science_ paper meanwhile cited another study of 500 fetal brains
for another purpose, overlooking the fact that that study found no
sex differences.  Tavris stated that not only did _Science_ refuse
to publish letters pointing this out, it has refused to publish
any papers which argue that there are no sex differences in the
brain.  Many studies, she said, are not finding the results
(indicating significant sex differences) reported in headlines of
periodicals such as _Time_, _Newsweek_, and _Elle_.
          Finally, Tavris pointed out that when you look at actual
behavior, gender is not a fixed category.  People act in different
ways in different contexts, and we do not need to attribute
differences to static properties of persons.  For example, people
in the subordinate role in a relationship exhibit "female
intuition," no matter what their sex.
          CSICOP Executive Council member Susan Blackmore began her
talk by asking the question, "Why are so few of us here women?"
She examined and rejected a few possible explanations:  (1) It's
general to all of science.  No, the situation is worse in CSICOP
than in science in general.  (2) Women are more likely to believe
in the paranormal.  Blackmore put up a slide with various quotes
to this effect, including one from Zusne and Jones' _Anomalistic
Psychology_ (1982, Lawrence Erlbaum, p. 189):  believers are
characterized as "female, unintelligent, misinformed, poorly
educated, authoritarian, and emotionally unstable."4  She then
reviewed the literature on paranormal experiences and belief,
including some of her own studies.  Only two studies found
significant sex differences in paranormal experiences and only one
study of sex differences in belief attempted to control for other
factors.  The latter study found no sex differences; the primary
correlates of belief in the paranormal were "paranormal"
experiences, belief in life after death, and practicing dream
interpretation.  So Blackmore rejected this explanation.  (3) The
kind of science that CSICOP is involved in is not attractive to
women.  This seemed to be Blackmore's favored explanation.
          She next put up a slide contrasting features of "masculine"
science with those of "feminine" science, according to feminist
philosopher of science Sandra Harding.5  The contrasting terms
were conquest/discovery, objective knowledge/subjective knowledge,
control/participation, prediction/understanding,
dichotomous/continuous, right-wrong/deeper understanding, fight
and win/progress together.  Blackmore did not come out and endorse
this picture, but instead pointed out that it is itself a (false?)
dichotomy.
          She then shifted gears and described how, in 1982 at the
100th anniversary conference of the Society for Psychical
Research, she criticized parapsychology for accomplishing nothing
in a century.  Parapsychology, she argued, makes no progress, does
not build on past finding, has findings which disappear with
better methods, does no prospective design of experiments, and has
no repeatable experiments.  She proposed doing psychical research
without the psi hypothesis.  Since asking the question "Does psi
exist?" has not been successful, parapsychologists should try
taking the experiences seriously and trying to understand them.
Psi is only one possible explanation of these experiences.6
          Blackmore discussed the Ray Hyman/Charles Honorton "debate"
over the ganzfeld database of parapsychology experiments, Helmut
Schmidt's psychokinesis studies, meta-analysis of random number
generator experiments, and other recent studies in parapsychology
which have had positive results, with the emphasis on Honorton's
ganzfeld experiments.  In response to Hyman's criticisms, Honorton
developed an automated ganzfeld experiment which he repeated
numerous times, reporting his results in "Psi Communication in the
Ganzfeld," _Journal of Parapsychology_ vol. 54, no. 2, June 1990,
pp. 99-139.  Blackmore asked, "What has been the response from
CSICOP?  Where is the panel on meta-analysis? ... It's not here."
She described how the Italian skeptics asked three of the best
known skeptics and three of the best known parapsychologists to
write about the future of parapsychology, with commentaries on all
six contributions by Honorton and Blackmore.  The result?  The
skeptics repeated the same old arguments from the past.  None
mentioned Honorton's 1990 paper.  Two mentioned meta-analysis,
only to dismiss it briefly (one rudely, according to Blackmore).
In other words, the skeptics are now exhibiting the failings which
she criticized the parapsychologists for in 1982.
          The problem, according to Blackmore, is that the dichotomy--
psi or not--puts enormous pressure on both sides not to change
their views.  The solution, according to Blackmore, is to get rid
of our antipathy towards negative evidence, to stop setting
ourselves up as "on one side" or another.
          The third panelist, Steven Goldberg, chair of the sociology
department at the City College of New York and author of the book
_The Inevitability of Patriarchy_, began by disagreeing sharply
with Tavris.  Goldberg stated that most of what she talked about
was not about science _per se_, but about politics or social life.
Bias, according to Goldberg, is only relevant when it leads to
error.
          Almost without exception, scientific results in studies of
sex differences are statistical.  "Men are taller" doesn't mean
"all men are taller than all women."  Heights of men and women are
overlapping bell curves with close means, but to conclude that the
difference is therefore not important is wrong.  A small mean
difference can be a big difference at the extremes.  Almost
everyone over 6'8" is male.
          Goldberg noted (in response to Tavris) that the studies which
don't find sex differences do not cancel out the studies that do.
The experimenter might be using a different method and be looking
at the wrong thing.
          Goldberg described how he came to be involved in these
issues.  In 1971 he was writing a paper in which he stated that
all sex differences are environmental, which he took to be common
knowledge.  He decided, however, to get a citation from the
anthropological literature to support it, but was unable to find
anything which held up under scrutiny.  He found, on the contrary,
that in every society males are stereotypically aggressive and
females are stereotypically nurturing.  You never hear a
stereotype that's totally false, said Goldberg.  You never hear
anyone say that "those damn Jews are dominating the National
Football League."
          Hierarchies are dominated by males, everywhere in all
societies at all times.  Whatever is viewed in a society as having
the highest status is more closely associated with males, whatever
it happens to be.  Men seek it out.  Goldberg said he has offered
a challenge to anyone to produce a single society that is a
counterexample, but every suggested counterexample has proved not
to be one when he examined the ethnography for that culture.
Margaret Mead, he said, admitted that her studies do not show a
reversal of sex roles, but 36 out of 38 recent sociology textbooks
he has examined incorrectly represent her work as showing just
that.
          Social attitudes can sometimes be the crucial determinants of
behavior, according to Goldberg, such as in the prevalence of
premarital sex (maybe, he said).  But for tendency to dominance,
social attitudes are not the crucial determinant, he claimed.  He
appealed to hormonal sex differences that can be hormonally
reversed as evidence of biological differences between the sexes.
Feminists who have argued against him on this point, said
Goldberg, typically refute a straw man (brain hemisphere studies)
while ignoring the hormone studies.
          Goldberg went on to claim that socialization cannot explain
the tendency of male dominance, because it begs the question--why
are males socialized to be dominant, and not females?  On the
contrary, he argued, societies attempt to fit with the
characteristics they observe in the sexes, and so, for instance,
men tend to do the heavy lifting.
          Goldberg concluded his talk by pointing out that he was not
arguing that males should dominate, but only that they do.  You
can't derive what should be the case from what is the case.  How
things work is a scientific question, while how they should work
is not.
          The panelists were then given a chance to respond to each
other, and Tavris stated that while there was a sense in which she
agreed with virtually everything Goldberg had to say, there was
another sense in which she disagreed with virtually everything he
had to say.  They both agreed that in all known cultures men are
dominant in power hierarchies and women are the primary caretakers
of children, but appeared to differ on the explanation.

Keynote Address:  "Viruses of the Mind"
On Friday evening, after a fundraising dinner for the Center for
Inquiry titled "The Price of Reason," Oxford zoologist Richard
Dawkins spoke on the subject of memes--the cultural analogue of
genes.  Children are programmed by evolution to absorb culture and
language, but a side effect of this absorbency is a tendency to
gullibility--making children "easy prey to Moonies,
Scientologists, and nuns."  All of our genes are parasites of each
other, said Dawkins, and the only differences between viral DNA
and ordinary DNA is the way it's passed on.
          He compared DNA and computer viruses.  Both are "copy me"
programs which, in order to be most effective, are not too
virulent and don't wipe out everything immediately.  Lethal genes
for young organisms don't reproduce.
          Are there any other "humming paradises of code replication?"
Dawkins asked.  "Minds," he answered.  Information is exchanged
between minds through language, body movement, etc.  In human
beings is a readiness to replicate ideas and a readiness to obey
what has been replicated.  As examples, he pointed to the fact
that most people are religious and follow the religions of their
parents, to crazes that sweep through schools with similar pattern
to measles epidemics, and the worldwide epidemic of wearing
baseball caps reversed.
          "What would it feel like from the inside if one's mind were
inflicted with a mental parasite, a mind virus?" Dawkins asked
next.  An effective mental virus in the "neurosphere," Dawkins
asserted, would be good at coexisting with other viruses and
disguising the fact that it had been picked up.  A medical
textbook diagnosis of such an infection might read that:  (1) The
patient is impelled by deep inner conviction that something is
true, compelling, and convincing, without any evidence.  (2)  The
patient makes virtue of beliefs not having evidence, and may even
think that the less evidence, the more virtuous the belief.  "Lack
of evidence is a virtue" is itself a self-supporting mental virus.
(3) The patient thinks that mystery is a good thing.  We should
enjoy mysteries, and revel in their insolubility.  (As an example,
Dawkins gave the Catholic doctrine of transsubstantiation--that
wine literally becomes the blood of Christ; the appearance of wine
that remains is "an accidental property that inheres in no
substance."  Dawkins repeated philosopher Anthony Kenny's
observation that if this doctrine makes sense, then "for all I can
tell, my typewriter might be Benjamin Disraeli" and referred to
author Douglas Adams' "electric monk" who does your believing for
you and is capable of believing "things they have trouble
believing in Salt Lake City."7)
          Dawkins enumerated several additional symptoms, such as an
eagerness to be deceived by religious leaders ("Send me your money
so that I can use it to convince other suckers to send me their
money, too").  He was particularly repelled by the view
promulgated by some televangelists that the more difficult it is
to give, the more God likes it.
          He then addressed the question of whether science is itself a
virus, answering it in the negative.  While ideas become
fashionable and spread, he refrained from using the virus analogy
for all ideas because viruses are pointless--they are good at
spreading because they are good at spreading.  Good programs, on
the other hand, spread because they are good programs--good at
performing some function, not just at spreading.  Faith, according
to Dawkins, spreads despite the complete lack of any useful
virtues.  "Religion," Dawkins concluded, "is an infectious disease
of the mind."
          In the question and answer session, Robert Sheaffer pointed
out that religions seem to have some useful characteristics, such
as working as a system to control mutual envy, give rules for
behavior, and so on, and Dawkins answered that "you may be right."
          [To be continued in the January/February _AS_.  In the next
installment:  panels on scientific fraud and crashed saucers, the
CSICOP video, and CSICOP's 1992 awards. --Editor]

Notes
1.  I disagree with Scott's last sentence.  The nominalist/realist
debate _is_ relevant outside freshman philosophy classes--for
example, in _graduate_ philosophy classes.
2.  Dunbar pointed out a couple of cases where there were some
studies which bore some resemblance (though quite distant) to the
claims of the "melanin scholars."  For example, a study did find
that reaction times of people with brown eyes were faster than
those of people with blue eyes for some task.  The "melanin
scholars" claim that this can be attributed to melanin.  What they
don't note is that all the participants in this study were white
males.
3.  "Multicultural Pseudoscience," _Skeptical Inquirer_ vol. 16,
no. 1, Fall 1991, pp. 46-50; "Magic Melanin," _Skeptical Inquirer_
vol. 16, no. 2, Winter 1992, pp. 162-166; "Afrocentric
Creationism," _Creation/Evolution_ vol. 11, no. 2 (issue XXIX),
Winter 1991-92, pp. 1-8.  These articles address the specifics of
the _Baseline Essays_.
4.  The passage continues with "However, there are several reasons
for exercising caution when interpreting these data" and offers
many qualifications.
5.  Harding is the author of a number of books, including _Whose
Science? Whose Knowledge?_ (1991, Cornell University Press).  In
an August 31, 1992 message to the BITNET SKEPTIC Discussion Group,
Bernard Ortiz de Montellano pointed out that Harding in this book
uncritically accepts bogus claims from Afrocentric pseudoscientist
and "melanin scholar" Hunter H. Adams.  Harding cites Adams as a
reference for the claim that ancient Egyptians invented the
telescope, based on alleged Russian discovery of an ancient
Egyptian lens.  Adams in turn cites Peter Tompkins' book, _Secrets
of the Great Pyramid_ (Harper & Row, 1971), which in turn cites
Peter Kolosimo, _Terra Senza Tempo_, published in 1969 in Milan.
Tompkins points out in a footnote that "Several attempts to check
these data with Soviet academicians have so far been without
result."  Ortiz de Montellano points out that Tompkins is also
coauthor of the 1973 book _The Secret Life of Plants_, about Cleve
Backster's claims that plants feel pain, enjoy music, communicate
with humans, and so forth.
6.  Blackmore has taken her own advice, and some of the fruits of
her research include non-paranormal explanations of out-of-body
and near-death experiences and other "psychic" experiences.  See
her "Near-Death Experiences: In or Out of the Body," _Skeptical
Inquirer_ vol. 16, no. 1, Fall 1991, pp. 34-45 and "Psychic
Experiences: Psychic Illusions," _Skeptical Inquirer_ vol. 16, no.
4, Summer 1992, pp. 367-376.
7.  See his book, _Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency_.  A
"holistic detective" investigates a case under the assumption that
all things are connected, and therefore everything is evidence,
reminiscent of Carl Hempel's raven paradox ("All ravens are black"
is equivalent to "all non-black things are non-ravens," so
whatever is evidence for one is evidence for the other).

A Visit to Dinosaur Valley State Park
By Richard A. Crowe
On Sunday, October 18, participants at the 1992 CSICOP conference
had an opportunity to visit Dinosaur Valley State Park near Glen
Rose, Texas, eighty miles southwest of Dallas-Fort Worth.  The two
buses chartered for the trip left the Harvey Hotel at 8 a.m. and
arrived at the park about 9:45 a.m.  After about a one-hour
stopover, the buses departed, returning to the hotel shortly
before 1 p.m.  Glen Rose is the site of many dinosaur tracks
preserved in the limestone bed of the Paluxy River; they were
first given scientific notoriety in the 1930s by Roland Bird.
During the 1970s and 1980s, renewed interest in these tracks
developed when creationists claimed that some of them were "man-
tracks," apparently constituting "hard evidence" that humans lived
contemporaneously with dinosaurs.
          Our trip to Dinosaur Valley Park was guided by physicist Ron
Hastings, who teaches physics and advanced math at Waxahachie High
School and who is one of the co-founders of the North Texas
Skeptics.  Dr. Hastings has been the leading local critical
investigator of creationist claims concerning the Paluxy River
tracks since about 1982.  Hastings became involved in creationist
claims through their misuse of physics concepts and through the
urgings of creationist friends (who he characterized as young-
Earth, flood-geology, Biblical literalists).  One of these friends
showed him a film called _Footprints in Stone_ that documented the
discovery of the alleged "man-tracks" by Reverend Stanley Taylor
in the early 1970s.
          As the buses headed toward Glen Rose, Hastings briefed CSICOP
participants on the history surrounding the tracks and gave us
some insights into what we would see at the site.  The Paluxy
River is one of the few places in the world where both three-toed
theropod prints made by bipedal dinosaurs and round elephantine
sauropod prints made by four-legged dinosaurs are evident in
abundance.  The prints were preserved in the river bed by means of
a three-step process.  First, the animal walked across soft, moist
cohesive sediment.  Second, the imprint filled with sediment of
contrasting texture that did not distort the original print; both
layers then hardened.  Finally, differential erosion removed the
softer rock type on top, leaving the imprint exposed.
          When we arrived at Dinosaur Valley State Park, we stopped to
look at casts made from prints which had long since been
extricated and taken to New York City for display.  Typically such
prints are spaced by 1.5 meters along a trail.  Foreprints often
appear to be distorted due to overlap by the rear feet. Claw
extensions are usually always visible, and the direction of the
middle claw is used to determine which foot made the imprint (left
curves left, right curves right).
          At the river bed itself, Hastings pointed out a number of
theropod and sauropod prints clearly seen under six inches of
water.  We then crossed the river on a rock bridge and were shown
a trail of sauropod prints; one of these was associated with a
groove that Hastings stated could have been due to a "tail-drag."
After an inspection of more theropod prints, we reached a ledge
where Hastings showed us depressions that were alleged by Reverend
Carl Baugh during the early 1980s to be a trail of "man-tracks."
Hastings demonstrated how these depressions were filled in with a
water-oil mixture by some creationist investigators so to as to
resemble human prints.  In fact, the tracks are spaced by 2
meters, and would have been Olympic leaps for humans!  Hastings
reminded us that creationists use the Biblical passage in Genesis
6:4, which says "There were giants in the earth in those days...,"
to explain away this spacing problem for the man-track hypothesis.
Baugh and other creationists in effect used the fallacious
argument "if it looks like a man-track, it must be a man-track" to
justify their claims.  There are in fact many other depressions
along this ledge, described by Hastings as a "track-maker's
Rorschach [ink-blot] test."  Basically, one can find any kind of
track one wants to find (like seeing faces in clouds).  Richard
Dawkins, who joined the tour, then reiterated that point standing
beside the alleged "man-track" and quoting from Shakespeare's
_Hamlet_ (as he did in the BBC production of his book _The Blind
Watchmaker_).
          During the 1980s, Hastings was a key member of an
investigative team that examined on-site the claims of Carl Baugh
and other creationists.  This team dubbed themselves the "Raiders
of the Lost Tracks."  Together, the "Raiders" found that all of
Baugh's "man-tracks" were either erosional features, trace fossil
patterns conveniently interpreted, or genuine depressions
associated with exposed dinosaur trails.1  The most controversial
prints were found at the so-called Taylor site, now on private
property.  Hastings explained to the CSICOP group that due to lack
of time (and lack of permission), we would not have the
opportunity to see these prints first-hand.  Along four of the
dozen or so trails at this site are tracks which were claimed to
be human by creationists.  Some of these trails contain elongated
prints which were not at first clearly recognizable as
dinosaurian.  It was only after investigation by Hastings and Glen
Kuban, spurred by creationist "man-track" claims, that the nature
of these tracks was revealed.  When the elongated (but shallow)
depressions were exposed to air, the tridactyl outline of the
print was revealed by a strange discoloration; apparently, the
outside anterior end of the depression oxidized due to the
presence of some iron-rich compound and turned reddish-brown.2
Evidently, these tracks were made when the dinosaur's "heels"
touched the mud (plantigrade) whereas most of the tridactyl prints
were made by dinosaurs walking or running on their toes
(digitigrade).  Although there are plantigrade dinosaur tracks in
other parts of the world, Hastings and Kuban had not initially
realized this fact.
          As a result of the discovery, a delegation of creationists
from the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) in San Diego was
invited to visit Glen Rose and inspect the tracks.  By 1986, the
official position of the ICR was that it is "improper for
creationists to continue to use the Paluxy data as evidence
against evolution."  The ICR has now screened off the Paluxy "man-
track" section of its San Diego museum from the public, and has
dissociated itself from any "man-track" claims.  Furthermore, the
film _Footprints in Stone_ has been removed from circulation.
Hastings reiterated that "no self-respecting creationist" now
asserts that any Paluxy dinosaur prints are of human origin,
although the "man-track" claims are apparently still being taught
to local school-children.  Moreover, Baugh's "Creation Evidences
Museum," established in 1983, is still in operation near the
entrance to Dinosaur Valley State Park.  Here, Baugh has on
display "man-track evidence" (imitative carvings), as well as
"out-of-order" fossils such as a "hammer in Ordovician stone" (a
l9th-century miner's mallet), human bones in "Cretaceous rock"
(apparently due to a Utah "cave-in" 250 years ago), a "fossilized
Cretaceous human tooth" (a fish incisor), and a "fossilized female
finger" (an iron oxide nodule).3  Unfortunately, the CSICOP group
did not have the opportunity to visit this "museum" (imagine a
group of skeptics showing up there unannounced!); the reason was
somehow appropriate:  it is closed on Sunday morning.

Notes
1.  See Ron Hastings, "The Rise and Fall of the Paluxy Mantracks,"
_Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith_ 40(3, 1988):144-155.
2.  See Ron Hastings, "New Observations on Paluxy Tracks Confirm
their Dinosaurian Origin," _Journal of Geological Education_
35(1987):4-15.
3.  See Ron Hastings, "For Your Information: A Creationist Blunder
Table," _Bulletin of the Houston Geological Society_ (June
1992):39-41.
_Richard A. Crowe is an Associate Professor of Physics and
Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Hilo (HI, 96720)._

The End of Crop Circles?
By Chris Rutkowski
In the latest issue of _The Crop Watcher_ (#12, July/August 1992,
pp. 3-4), a circlezine from England, editor Paul Fuller has this
to say:
                    Even the paranormally-inclined cerealogists have
                    admitted that 1992 produced fakes galore, with few
                    prepared to stick their necks out and claim that a
                    single (NB!) British circle qualified as "genuine."  In
                    some ways, this restrained response could be construed
                    as an over-reaction to last summer's hoax revelations,
                    but in reality the awful truth has dawned on
                    cerealogists everywhere--that most modern crop circles
                    really are man-made hoaxes and that if there ever was a
                    "genuine" phenomenon in the first place it has now been
                    utterly swamped by a smokescreen of wishful thinking and
                    media-inspired mythology.  Sad words indeed but a fact
                    which most researchers now seem to be accepting with
                    some reluctance.
          Later on, Paul notes that "leading cerealogists accept that
they have lost the crop circle battle and that it is time to flee
the sinking ship."  A number of cerealogists are said to be
emigrating to the USA!
          As for the remaining "meteorologically-caused" circles,
Terence Meaden, that theory's main proponent has now stated that
"Anything other than a simple circle is definitely a hoax." and he
has now restricted the number of "genuine circles" to "fewer than
a dozen a year."  Paul further notes:  "It remains to be seen
whether Meaden's meteorological theory can survive such trauma."
          Later in the issue, there appears a map of England, showing
the locations of "Known Crop Circle (Groups of) Hoaxes."  I can't
reproduce it here, but to give readers a flavour for what's on it,
the editor notes that "there are so many known hoaxers that we
couldn't squeeze them all in!"  Good old Doug and Dave, who got
all the publicity, are on there with their small number of
formations.
          In North America, we know that Rob Day [a Canadian skeptic --
Ed] made a few hoaxed circles in Alberta, a farmhand was caught by
my colleagues and I in Manitoba, and at least one set of hoaxers
admitted to some circles in the American midwest.
          So, we wonder, echoing Paul Fuller:
                    Is cerealogy (or, to quote some, "crop circle mania")
                    finally DEAD?
_Chris Rutkowski is a Science Educator for the Royal Astronomical
Society of Canada and an Instructional Designer and a Photographic
Laboratory Curator at the University of Manitoba.  He has
published numerous articles on UFOs (see_ AS_, July/August 1992,
p. 6 for some references to his work).  This is a slightly revised
version of an article posted to the Usenet sci.skeptic group on
September 21, 1992._

Next Issue
The January/February issue of The Arizona Skeptic will feature the
Phoenix Skeptics' predictions for 1993, part two of the report on
the Dallas CSICOP conference, and more.

Upcoming Meetings
The Phoenix Skeptics will meet at the Jerry's Restaurant on
Rural/Scottsdale Road between McKellips and the river bottom, with
lunch at 12:30 on the first Saturday of each month except where it
conflicts with a holiday.

Articles of Note
Steve Fishman, "Hunting for a Miracle," _Health_ 6(1,
          February/March 1992):38-46.  On alleged miracles at Lourdes--
          how the number has declined as scrutiny is increased.
Stephen S. Hall, "Cheating Fate," _Health_ 6(2, April/May
          1992):38-46.  On spontaneous remission.
Jim Moseley, "Beckley Does It Again!" _Saucer Smear_ (November 1,
          1992):3.  Reports on Tim Beckley's "National New Age & Alien
          Agenda Conference" held in Phoenix, at which Jerry Wills
          played guitar in an impromptu rock session.  Wills, whose
          story as a UFO abductee was reported in the pages of this
          newsletter (_AS_, July/August 1988, p. 3), now claims to have
          been one of the aliens who crashed and died at Roswell, New
          Mexico, but was reincarnated as a human.  (See also Robert
          Sheaffer's "Psychic Vibrations" column in the _Skeptical
          Inquirer_, Fall 1991, p. 33.)
Bob Saltzman, "A Disease Called 'The Sound,'" _Harper's_
          285(October 1992):28-29.  An excerpt from an article in the
          July 9 _Taos News_ about a 17 Hz hum which has been
          disturbing Taos residents.
Brian Siano, "Bad Satan Psycho-Juju: False Memories, Broken
          Families, Child Sacrifice, and the New Satanic Panic,"
          _Philadelphia City Paper_ (October 23, 1992):10-12.  The
          "Skeptical Eye" columnist for _The Humanist_ writes about the
          False Memory Syndrome Foundation, the exposure of phony ex-
          Satanists Mike Warnke, John Todd, and Laurel Wilson ("Lauren
          Stratford"), and claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse.
Jon Trott and Mike Hertenstein, "Selling Satan: The Tragic History
          of Michael Warnke," _Cornerstone_ 21(#98, 1992):7-9, 11-14,
          16-17, 19, 30, 38.  Mike Warnke travels the country billing
          himself as a former Satanist high priest turned Christian
          comedian.  He is the author of the 1973 book _The Satan
          Seller_, which played a major role in spawning the recent
          hysteria over satanic ritual abuse, human sacrifice, and
          other conspiratorial activities.  The Christian magazine
          _Cornerstone_ tracked down his friends and family and
          discovered that his story is a fabrication.  The August 17,
          1992 issue of _Christianity Today_ also reported parts of the
          story.  This expos follows _Cornerstone_'s earlier exposure
          (in 1990) of Lauren Stratford's book _Satan's Underground_.
Jay Grelen, "Christian Comedian Set to Close Doors of Troubled
          Ministry," Lexington (Kentucky) _Herald-Leader_, (September
          30, 1992):C13.  Reports that, as a result of the
          _Cornerstone_ expos, Word Records has suspended sale and
          promotion of Mike Warnke's 13 comedy records and two videos,
          some bookstores have ceased selling his books, the IRS has
          revoked his ministry's tax-exempt status, and his ministry is
          shutting down.


_The Arizona Skeptic_ is the official publication of the Phoenix
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Skeptics is a non-profit scientific and educational organization
with the following goals:  1. to subject claims of the paranormal,
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