The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 357

Saturday, August 26, 1989 "PASADENA 100 AT' ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES PAGE THREE 'An education group for open-mindedness' In search of reality, Skeptics organization challenges faith healers and coal walkers Jy jj. grees, is among the many members who have professions outside of science fields. "I'm 42, and when I went to high school, no one believed in astrology," said Linse, who lectures as a Skeptic on the roots of New Age beliefs. Linse sees societal dangers in the easy answers of New Age medallions that are sold to cure pollution and the concept of Karma endorsing a "you-deserve-to-suf-fer" attitude. "Society funnels its resources according to its beliefs," said Linse.

"It's one reason we're trying to make people better educated." Linse says putting paranormal and psychic claims to the test could conceivably strengthen legitimate claims. "I would love to see a flying saucer," said Linse with a laugh. "I'd settle for Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster." Today's complicated society in and of itself isn't the cause of an increase in the interest in the paranormal. "Times have always been confusing," said Randi, noting diseases and financial ruin have plagued different centuries. "Every age has its own problems." Dispelling easy answers It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.

Motto appearing on LASER, a publication of Southern California Skeptics By DEBRA BEHR, Special Sections Writer If soothsayers can predict the future, why are they telling fortunes for $15 rather than making fortunes on Wall Street. If Uri Geller bends spoons through mental powers, then why does he have to hold a spoon in his hand to make it bend? Couldn't the spoon be lying on a table? Why should you listen to a faith healer who wears a hearing aide? Ah-haa, some may say. Why didn't they think of that? Exactly. Sometimes the trick is knowing how to question. Teaching people critical-thinking skills is an underlying goal of Southern California Skeptics, a Pasadena-based organization best known for logically reviewing paranormal claims.

Since it was founded in 1985, members have walked on coals to show that physics not special powers enabled even an untrained soul to be a fire walker. They also proved that one faith healer's seemingly heaven-sent insight was actually due to surreptitious electronic messages. And they pointed out known facts that were curiously missing from "non-fiction" books about the Bermuda Triangle. Not naysayers But Southern California Skeptics are not "scientific naysayers," says Al Seckel, founder and executive director of organization. Skeptics will be out to prove the point in a new season of monthly public lectures starting Sept.

10. "The whole theme for the upcoming series is not to debunk things and not to deal with the same, tired topics of UFOs and channeling and biorhythms and pyramids, but to actually give the public a better understanding of science and scientific method and reasoning skills," said Seckel, a physicist who volunteers much of his time to the Skeptics. The lineup of lectures hardly suggests gripes or dull, academic talks. "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: Or a Hilarious Catalogue of Individual and Organized Stupidity" is the theme of Seckel's kick-off presentation in Baxter Lecture Hall on Caltech, which is co-sponsoring the lecture series. Topics range from Steve Allen's "Dumbth: And 78 Ways to Make Americans Smarter" to Nobel Laureate Francis Crick revealing "What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery." Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas Hof-stadter will speak on "Ambigh-rammia: Battleground of Creation Versus Discovery." and inventor Paul MacCready will present "Flying Bicycles, Sun-Powered Cars, Flying Reptiles and Innovative Ways to Approach Tomorrow." "There are all sorts of seemingly magical things that science does and accomplishes which need to be communicated to the public," said William McCarthy, assistant research psychologist at UCLA, who is on the board of directors of the Skeptics.

MacCready, another board member and the inventor of man-powered flight, says the Skeptics is "very much an education group for open-mindedness, so the title is a bit misleading." Although he endorses the value of healthy skepticism, he calls "skeptics" a "lousy word" because it has negative connotations. What drives Skeptics is a search for reality, says MacCready. According to Seckel, the fourth that is missing from reading, writing and arithmetic is reasoning. "People are taught mainly what to think rather than how to think," said Seckel. Skeptics are more concerned with the how.

Teaching reasoning Seckel's interest in teaching reasoning skills led to the formation of the Skeptics. A graduate in math and physics from Cornell University, Seckel stopped work on his doctorate at Caltech to devote time to the Skeptics. "It seemed to me it was evident we had all this new technology, but the thinking process had not changed. That we were still making the exact mistakes as we had in the past, and there was no reason to think they were going to change in the future. That now we had the ability for the first time in history to completely exterminate this planet, but the thinking process leading people to decisions had not changed." Knowing "you can't get up on a pedestal and say, 'I want to teach the world how to Seckel chose a popular subject pseudo-sciences as his means to the end.

Southern California Skeptics is affiliated with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal based in Buffalo. N.Y., an international organization that publishes the Skeptical Inquirer. Reports of debunking The Southern California group has its own publication, LASER (Los Angeles Skeptics Evaluative Report) uniting its 3,000 members with informative and lively reports ranging from New Age products to past life regressions to does Sunny the Wonder Dog really count (no) to an article on a dog that convincingly watches TV. And there have been updates on handwriting analysis, perpetual motion machines and Uri Geller. Last year, there was a story on Nancy Reagan and astrology.

"It seems like every society wants simple solutions rather than ones that require years of training and science to understand," said McCarthy. "It's understandable. People are cognitive economizers. If they can find an explanation that's succinct and seems to require less effort to explain as a phenomenon than the traditional scientific route, then why not?" McCarthy learned about the Skeptics when he attended a fire-walking seminar with his friend Bernard Leikind, a physicist. Leik-ind later explained that the difference between temperature and heat enabled anyone to walk on coals.

He had used the example of a cake baking in an oven at 400 degrees. The air in the oven, the cake and the pan would be about the same temperature, but what would burn at the touch would only be the cake pan. The reason is air has a low heat capacity, and the cake pan has a high heat capacity. Now consider firewalking: Coals have a low heat capacity, and the human body has a relatively high heat capacity. For this reason, during fire walking a foot cools the embers which are topped by even cooler ash faster than the skin heats up.

And, fire-walkers often walk on wet grass, which gives bare feet an insulating layer of moisture. "I was more interested in the motivations that people brought with them to these experiences," McCarthy said. "I was struck at that time by what some people might call the need for fast-food therapy. They wanted quick solutions to long-standing problems." During the school year. Seckel lectures at high schools in the Greater Los Angeles area, luring Please see SKEPTICS, Page 6 should be aware.

Whether you accept it or not is a different matter altogether." Investigating fraud Randi, who was named a Mac-Arthur Fellow in 1987, has used his firsthand knowledge of magic to investigate fraud for more than 40 years. He discredited the Israeli Uri Geller (who used sleight of hand) and showed "The Tonight Show" guests how psychic surgery is merely an illusion. One case that stands out to Randi is his investigation of faith healers. He discovered believers who were never heard from after they left meetings because they had died. His work is reported in the book, 'The Faith Healer." Randi prefers the term "investigator" to debunker.

"I'm the policeman, not the judge." People naturally look at the world through "mental blinders" influenced by prior experiences, MacCready said. Skeptics encourage individuals to be more open-minded and "clean off mental spectacles so they can really see reality better." In today's world, that is a serious concern. "I think a country that can't reason won't stand up well in international competition." said MacCready. Or stand up to the limitations of the earth's resources. Appeals to evidence The Skeptics' devotion to looking at evidence appeals to artist Pat Linse.

a Skeptics lecturer and illustrator, who, with two art de When the First Lady's interest in astrology became known, Seckel relayed his advice in an interview with Dan Rather: "Just say no to astrology, Nancy." In 1986, Southern California Skeptics submitted a brief signed by 72 Nobel laureates in a landmark Louisiana case that declared public school teachers did not nave to discuss scientific creation-ism whenever they talked about evolution. Murray Gell-Mann, a physicist and 1969 Nobel Prize winner, organized fellow laureates. It was one of the highlights of his experiences with the Skeptics, he said. Watchdog role All international skeptics groups provide a sort of watchdog function, said magician James "the Amazing" Randi, who is a technical advisor of the Southern California Skeptics. Randi explained why he participates in a telephone interview from his Florida home, where he is writing his sixth book which will be on Nostradamus.

"If a person is struck by a car and knocked to the roadway you get that person out of the traffic. If that person then wants to run back into traffic that's his right of course, but what you can do is summon some legitimate help for them and at least get them out of traffic. "That may be the least of your functions, but it is a minimal thing for anyone to do. I think Skeptics look at it that way. They're not telling anybody they're right.

They're saying they have an alternate point of view of which you.