Skepticism

It has now been demonstrated, as no surprise to skeptics, that Rom Houben was not communicating via facilitated communication, a discredited method by which facilitators have typed for autistic children. A proper test was conducted by Dr. Steven Laureys with the help of the Belgian Skeptics, and it was found that the communications were coming from the facilitator, not from Houben. A blogger who was a vociferous critic of James Randi and Arthur Caplan for pointing out that facilitated communication is a bogus technique and who had attempted to use Houben’s case to argue that Terri Schiavo also may have been conscious is not only unwilling to admit he was wrong, but is deleting comments that point to the results of this new test. I had posted a comment along the lines of “Dr. Laureys performed additional tests with Houben and the facilitator and found that, in fact, the communications were coming from the facilitator, not Houben” with a link to the Neurologica blog; this blogger called that “spam” (on the basis of my posting a similar comment on another blog, perhaps) and “highly misleading” (on the basis of nothing). As I’ve said all along, this doesn’t mean that Houben isn’t “locked in” and conscious, but facilitated communication provides no evidence that he is. (Previously, previously.) ...

Of late there has been a lot of debate about the nature, scope, and role of skepticism. Does skepticism imply atheism? Are “climate change skeptics” skeptics? Must skeptics defer to scientific consensus or experts? Should skepticism as a movement or skeptical organizations restrict themselves to paranormal claims, or avoid religious or political claims? I think “skepticism” can refer to multiple different things, and my answers to the above questions differ in some cases depending on how the term is being used. It can refer to philosophical skepticism, to scientific skepticism, to “skeptical inquiry,” to “doubt” broadly speaking, to the “skeptical movement,” to skeptical organizations, and to members of the class of people who identify themselves as skeptics. My quick answers to the above questions, then, are: Does skepticism imply atheism? No, regardless of which definition you choose. It is reasonable to argue that proper application of philosophical skepticism should lead to atheism, and to argue that scientific skepticism should include methodological naturalism, but I prefer to identify skepticism with a commitment to a methodology rather than its outputs. That still involves a set of beliefs–which are themselves subject to reflection, criticism, and evaluation–but it is both a more minimal set than the outputs of skepticism and involves commitment to values as well as what is scientifically testable. My main opposition to defining skepticism by its outputs is that that is a set of beliefs that can change over time with access to new and better information, and shouldn’t be held dogmatically. Are “climate change skeptics” skeptics? I would say that some are, and some aren’t–some are outright “deniers” who are allowing ideology to trump science and failing to dig into the evidence. Others are digging into the evidence and just coming to (in my opinion) erroneous conclusions, but that doesn’t preclude them from being skeptics so long as they’re still willing to engage and look at contrary evidence, as well as admit to mistakes and errors when they make them–like relying on organizations and individuals who are demonstrably not reliable. As you’ll see below, I agree we should to try to save the term “skeptic” from being equated with denial. Must skeptics defer to scientific consensus or experts? I think skeptical organizations and their leaders should defer to experts on topics outside of their own fields of expertise on pragmatic and ethical grounds, but individual skeptics need not necessarily do so. Should skepticism as a movement or skeptical organizations restrict themselves to paranormal claims, or avoid religious or political claims? I think skepticism as a movement, broadly speaking, is centered on organizations that promote scientific skepticism and focus on paranormal claims, but also promote science and critical thinking, including with some overlap with religious and public policy claims, where the scientific evidence is relevant. At its fringes, though, it also includes some atheist and rationalist groups that take a broader view of skeptical inquiry. I think those central groups (like CSI, JREF, and the Skeptics Society) should keep their focus, but not as narrowly as Daniel Loxton suggests in his “Where Do We Go From Here?" (PDF) essay. Here are a few of my comments, on these same topics, from other blogs. Comment on Michael De Dora, “Why Skeptics Should be Atheists," at the Gotham Skeptic blog: ...

SkeptiCamp founder Reed Esau has finally taken the plunge and started blogging at “an illustrative account”–check out his interesting post on “Taking Ownership in Skepticism." Historical Comments Anonymous (2009-12-09): Thanks for the mention, Jim. Some of the fallout that I hinted-at can be found at Why Skeptics Don’t Have to be Atheists with a response by De Dora on Thursday.

I’ve posted comments about the reasons to be skeptical about Rom Houben’s facilitated communication at a number of blogs, where the response of some seems to be that there is no point of such testing. The reasons for not testing have included (1) that the videos are a “straw man”; (2) that criticisms from a stage magician and a philosopher/bioethicist are not worthy of attention; and (3) the testimony from Dr. Laureys, the facilitator Mrs. Wouters, and Houben’s family is much stronger evidence than what we can see in the videos, and that Dr. Laureys says he already conducted a single-blind test which showed that the communication came from Houben, not the facilitator, and to reject that is irrational hyper-skepticism that assumes they are lying. The first argument makes no sense to me. The videos clearly show the facilitator rapidly typing away with Houben’s finger even while he’s looking away or has his eyes closed, which is by itself a very strong reason to be skeptical, especially in light of the past record of facilitated communication. The second argument is not only ad hominem, but further refuted by similar analysis by a neuroscientist. The last argument is a bit better, but wrongly assumes that the only alternative is that the doctor and family are lying. Facilitated communication isn’t a matter of conscious fraud, it’s a matter of self-deception of the facilitator (enhanced by the expectations and reactions of the family). Given the possibility of unconscious cuing of the facilitator by the doctor, as well as his own vested interest in a positive result, the test he described doing is still far from sufficient to overcome the evidence plainly displayed in the videos. Unfortunately, there is a very strong incentive to believe on the part of the doctor, the facilitator, and the family. To find that the communications are coming from the facilitator would be emotionally devastating, and detrimental to the doctor’s credibility. To test further is to risk a huge potential loss of what has apparently been gained, and I suspect it’s unlikely that we’ll see it happen. But look at it from Houben’s own perspective–further testing is absolutely in his own best interests. For if the facilitator is the one doing the communicating, not him, then he is being further exploited for the satisfaction of his doctor, facilitator, and family, not for his own benefit. He’s not being treated respectfully or as an end, rather than as a means. If he is, in fact, minimally conscious as the brain scans suggest, then speaking on his behalf without his genuine input is doing him even greater harm. If you reject the idea that an hour or so of Houben’s time should be used to do a conclusive, double-blind test to see whether the communications are coming from him or from the facilitator, is it because you want to believe, rather than to know? There is clear possible harm to Hoeben from not doing such a test. There is no harm to Hoeben from such a test, though there’s clearly the risk of painfully dissolving an illusion for the doctor, facilitator, and family. But Hoeben’s interests should be placed above that risk. (Previously on Houben, a post with many links and references.) UPDATE (February 15, 2010): Houben has been put to the test, and it turns out the communications were, in fact, coming from the facilitator. UPDATE (February 20, 2010): David Gorski at the Science-Based Medicine blog has a bit more from the Belgian Skeptics, who were involved in the test. ...

Numerous mass media outlets and blogs are reporting on the misdiagnosis of Rom Houben of being comatose for 23 years when he was really conscious, according to Belgian neurologist Steven Laureys, who has claimed for years to be able to treat patients allegedly in a persistent vegetative state with electric shocks and find that they were really in a minimally conscious state. Videos of Houben show him allegedly communicating via a keyboard which is pressed by a single finger on one hand–but his hand is being held by a facilitator, and he’s not even looking at the keyboard. Some still photos show the facilitator looking intently at the keyboard, while Houben’s eyes are closed. James Randi observes that this looks just like the self-deception of Facilitated Communication that was promoted as a way to communicate with severely autistic people, and Marshall Brain at How Stuff Works seconds that conclusion. I think it’s a bit too fast to conclude that Houben’s not conscious–brain scans could indeed have provided good evidence that he is. But what would be worse than having “locked-in syndrome”? Having somebody else purporting to speak for you with ideomotor-driven Facilitated Communication, while you were helpless to do anything about it. I’d like to see some double-blind tests of Houben, where he’s asked questions about events that occur when the facilitator isn’t present, as well as fMRI results during the process of facilitation (since there are brain activation differences between active and passive activities, which have been used to study such things as the perception of involuntariness during hypnosis–it shows features of both active and passive movement). I’d also like to see further opinion on Laureys methodology and diagnosis–it seems he has significant self-interest in promoting this case. UPDATE: Brandon Keim at Wired Science has finally asked the questions that those who have reported this in the mainstream media should have been asking. Here’s a 2001 review of the scientific literature on facilitated communication. UPDATE: The video on this story shows the facilitator typing for him while his eyes are closed and he appears to be asleep. UPDATE: A Times Online story claims that Houben’s facilitator, Linda Wouters, spent the last three years working with Houben to learn to feel tiny muscle movements in his finger, and that Dr. Laureys did tests to validate the technique: ...

Hackers got access to a trove of private emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit that is being trumpeted by those who disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming as proof of scandal. I’ve looked through the data a bit myself–you can find a searchable archive of the emails here. I suspect this collection of emails may end up being put to good research use as the Enron email corpus was. While I found a few embarrassing things, I found no evidence of outright data fabrication or fakery. The main email that has been cited as such evidence is an email from Phil Jones that says: I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate explains: The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.In other words, “hiding” in this case is using temperature measurement records instead of tree rings as a proxy for temperature records for a period of time where the tree rings are known not to be an accurate proxy, for whatever reason. It’s also claimed that these emails show a concerted effort to subvert the peer review process and stop publications by climate change skeptics, but most of those emails seem to center around an issue where the scandal was actually from the skeptics–the publication of a 2003 paper by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas in the journal Climate Research that was considered by 13 authors of papers cited to have misrepresented their work. Subsequently, half of the editorial staff of the journal resigned in protest at what they saw as a failure of peer review, and the managing director of the journal’s parent company issued an apology (see Wikipedia’s summary). The emails show that these scientists were upset by Climate Research’s publication of bad science and encouraged protest and those resignations. A few blog posts that seem to have good overviews of the issues: Skeptical Science, “What do the hacked CRU emails tell us?"Real Climate, “The CRU Hack” (followed by over 1,000 comments)Real Climate, “The CRU Hack: Context” (gives background on some of the issues, including the above Climate Research issue). Greenfyre’s, “Climate change Deniers hoax themselves… again."Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, “Smoking guns in the CRU stolen emails: A real tale of real ethics in science” (what the CRU emails show about treatment of an erroneous climate science paper) An interesting comparison to past scientific controversy is: Carbon Fixated, “Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment ’thinking’"And, to compare to the climate change skeptics: Bishop Hill, “Climate cuttings 33” (summary of the apparent worst issues)Essex County Conservative Examiner, “Hadley [sic] CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails”Climate Audit, “CRU Correspondence”Watt’s Up With That, “Mike’s Nature Trick”Watt’s Up With That, “CRU Emails ‘may’ be open to interpretation, but commented code by the programmer tells the real story”Watt’s Up With That, “Spencer on elitism in the IPCC climate machine”The last of these posts, from Univ. of Alabama climate scientist and skeptic Roy W. Spencer, notes that: If all of this sounds incompatible with the process of scientific investigation, it shouldn’t. One of the biggest misconceptions the public has about science is that research is a straightforward process of making measurements, and then seeing whether the data support hypothesis A or B. The truth is that the interpretation of data is seldom that simple. ...

Here’s all I’ve been able to find so far, independent of self-descriptions from within the movement (and excluding history and philosophy of Pyrrhonism, Academic Skepticism, the Carvaka, the Enlightenment, British Empiricism, and lots of work on the development of the enterprise of science): George Hansen, "CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview," The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research vol. 86, no. 1, January 1992, pp. 19-63. I've not seen a more detailed history of contemporary skepticism elsewhere. Stephanie A. Hall, "Folklore and the Rise of Moderation Among Organized Skeptics," New Directions in Folklore vol. 4, no. 1, March 2000. David J. Hess, Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture, 1993, The University of Wisconsin Press. I note that Paul Kurtz's The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (1992, Prometheus Books) puts contemporary skepticism in the lineage of several of the other forms of philosophical skepticism I mentioned above, identifying his form of skepticism as a descendant of pragmatism in the C.S. Peirce/John Dewey/Sidney Hook tradition (and not the Richard Rorty style of pragmatism). But I think that says more about Kurtz than about the skeptical movement, which also draws upon other epistemological traditions and probably doesn't really have a sophisticated epistemological framework to call its own. There's a lot of literature on parallel social movements of various sorts, including much about advocates of some of the subject matter that skeptics criticize, and some of that touches upon skeptics. For example: Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, "The Construction of the Paranormal: Nothing Unscientific is Happening," in Roy Wallis, editor, On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, 1979, University of Keele Press, pp. 237-270. Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction of Extraordinary Science, 1982, Taylor & Francis. Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, 2nd edition, 2006, Harvard University Press. Christopher P. Toumey, God's Own Scientists: Creationists in a Secular World, 1994, Rutgers University Press. The Toumey book doesn't really have anything about skeptics, but is an anthropological study of creationists in the United States which describes the connection between "creationism as a national movement" and "creationism as a local experience" that seems intriguingly similar to the skeptical movement, especially in light of the fact (as I mentioned in my previous post) that national skeptical organizations are independent of established institutions of science that provide the key literature of the movement and at least implicitly assume that the average layman can develop the ability to discern truth from falsehood, at least within a particular domain, from that literature. In some ways, the skeptical movement also resembles a sort of layman's version of the activist element in the field of science and technology studies, based on positivist views of science that are the "vulgar skepticism" dismissed in this article: Michael Lynch, "Expertise, Skepticism and Cynicism: Lessons from Science & Technology Studies," Spontaneous Generations vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, pp. 17-24. I think if contemporary skepticism wants to achieve academic respectability, it will need to develop a more sophisticated view of science that comes to terms with post-Popper philosophy of science and post-Merton sociology of science; my recommendation for skeptics who are interested in that subject is to read, as a start: Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions, 1995, Oxford University Press. There's an enormous relevant literature on those topics, an interesting broad overview is: R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie, and M.J.S. Hodge, Companion to the History of Modern Science, 1990, Routledge. I welcome any new revelations about sources of relevance that I've missed, particularly if there is other academic work specifically addressing the history, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology of the contemporary skeptical movement--three sources ain't much. UPDATE (September 27, 2014): Some additional works I recommend for skeptics: Harry Collins, Are We All Scientific Experts Now?, 2014, Polity Press.  A very brief and quick overview of science studies with respect to expertise. Massimo Pigliucci, Nonsense On Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk, 2010, University of Chicago Press. A good corrective to the overuse of Popper, easy read. Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, 2013, University of Chicago Press. Good collection of essays reopening the debate many thought closed by Larry Laudan on whether there can be philosophical criteria for distinguishing the boundary between science and pseudoscience. Reed (2009-11-04): Though not an academic work, I collected data on the skeptics groups on Meetup and reported the numbers in the appendix of my 2008 "Raising Our Game" piece. ...

Yesterday I listened to D.J. Grothe’s interview with Ben Radford on the Point of Inquiry podcast about the latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (November/December 2009) about “Skepticism 2.0,” the bottom-up grassroots expansion of the skeptical movement through Internet communications tools like blogs, podcasts, online videos and forums, and the real-world activities that have become possible through them, like meetups and SkeptiCamps. Near the end of the podcast, D.J. asked Ben what he thought would be the results of Skepticism 2.0 in five years time. He said (1) more skeptics and (2) more cooperative projects between the three major U.S. skeptical groups, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the James Randi Educational Foundation, and the Skeptics Society. That struck me as a rather disappointingly modest set of goals, as well as rather “old school” skepticism thinking, and insular. Surely we can come up with ideas for something more exciting, interesting, and useful than merely the self-perpetuation and growth of the skeptical movement and cooperation among the traditional top-down skeptical organizations over the next five years. A few thoughts that came to my mind: If skeptics want to promote public understanding of science and critical thinking, why not partnerships with other organizations that also have those purposes? The National Academies of Science, the National Center for Education, teacher’s groups and school groups at a local level? If skeptics want to promote the activity of science, why not look at ways to help motivate students to enter science as a career, and support them in doing so? I’ve previously suggested to Phil Plait that JREF might partly model itself after the Institute for Humane Studies, an organization which provides support for undergraduate and graduate students who favor classical liberal political ideals, in order to help them achieve success in careers of thought leadership, including academics, journalists, filmmakers, public policy wonks, and so on. In order for skepticism and critical thinking to have a significant impact, it’s not necessary that everyone become a skeptic, only that a sufficient number of people in the right places engage in and encourage critical thinking.If skeptics want to see more diversity in the skeptical movement, why not look at ways to reach out to other communities? The podcast did mention the SkepTrack at Dragon*Con, which is one of the most innovative ideas for outreach for skeptical ideas since the founding of CSICOP in 1976.If skeptics want to act as a form of consumer protection against fraud and deception, why not try to find ways to interact with regulators, investigators, politicians, and the media to get fraudulent products and services off the market? The UK complaints against chiropractors making false claims on their websites as a response to the British Chiropractic Association libel lawsuit against Simon Singh, or the Australian complaint against bogus claims by anti-vaccinationists (though see my comment on that blog post for some reservations) might suggest some ideas.It seems to me that the skeptical movement should be concerned about more than just increasing its own numbers and getting the existing national groups to work together. I think that Skepticism 2.0 has and will continue to force the existing groups to cooperate with each other and with the grassroots movement if they don’t want to become obsolete and irrelevant. And at this point growth is, at least for the near-term, a foregone conclusion. But in order to continue to grow and thrive, there should be some goals that have something to do with being useful and making the world a better place, by which the skeptical movement can measure its effectiveness and success. I’m sure readers of this blog have further suggestions. What else? Addendum: By the way, with regard to my first suggestion, here’s a question that may provide some motivation and food for thought: Why do the Parapsychological Association and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine have better and more formal ties to official institutions of science than any skeptical organization? The PA is a member of the AAAS, and NCCAM is an agency within the National Institutes of Health. The main difference between those organization and skeptical organizations is that they actually do and publish peer-reviewed scientific research. ...

In the comments of Massimo Pigliucci’s blog post about the scope of skepticism (which I’ve already discussed here), Skepdude pointed to a couple of blog posts he had written on similar topics some time ago, about what atheists have in common and skepticism and atheism. He argues that skeptics must be atheists and cannot be agnostics or theists, a position I disagree with. In an attempt to get to the bottom of our disagreement after a few exchanges in comments on his blog, I wrote the following set of questions which I first answered myself, so we can see how his answers differ. Do we have voluntary control over what we believe? In general, no. The credence we place in various propositions–our belief or rejection of them–is largely out of our voluntary control and dependent upon our perceptual experiences, memories, other beliefs, and established habits and methods of belief formation and revision. We can indirectly cause our beliefs to change by engaging in actions which change our habits–seeking out contrary information, learning new methods like forms of mathematics and logic, scientific methods, reading books, listening to others, etc. How does someone become a skeptic? People aren’t born as skeptics–they learn about skepticism and how it has been applied in various cases (only after learning a whole lot of other things that are necessary preconditions–like language and reasoning). If skepticism coheres with their other beliefs, established habits and methods of belief formation and revision, and/or they are persuaded by arguments in favor of it, either self-generated or from external sources, they accept it and, to some degree or another, apply it subsequently. When someone becomes a skeptic, what happens to all of the other beliefs they already have? They are initially retained, but may be revised and rejected as they are examined through the application of skeptical methods and other retained habits and methods of belief formation and revision. Levels of trust in some sources will likely be reduced, either within particular domains or in general, if they are discovered to be unreliable. It’s probably not possible to start from a clean slate, as Descartes tried to do in his Meditations. Is everything a skeptic believes something which is a conclusion reached by scientific methods? No. Much of what we believe, we believe on the basis of testimony from other people who we trust, including our knowledge of our own names and date and place of birth, parts of our childhood history, the history of our communities and culture, and knowledge of places we haven’t visited. We also have various beliefs that are not scientifically testable, such as that there is an external world that persists independently of our experience of it, that there are other minds having experiences, that certain experiences and outcomes are intrinsically or instrumentally valuable, that the future will continue to resemble the past in various predictable ways, etc. If you did believe that skeptics should only believe conclusions which are reached by scientific methods, that would be a belief that is not reached by scientific methods. ...

Massimo Pigliucci, a biologist and philosopher at the City University of New York and regular writer for the Skeptical Inquirer, has offered up his thoughts about the relationship between skepticism, atheism, and politics. He wants to argue that skepticism and skeptical inquiry are identical with scientific skepticism, and mostly distinct from philosophy, religion, and politics. He restricts the domain of skeptical inquiry to “the critical examination of evidential claims of the para- or super-normal,” and further restricts his notion of “evidential” to the empirical. (He subsequently refers to philosophical arguments and reasons as “non-evidence based approaches.” I disagree, though this may be strictly a terminological dispute–I often use the word “evidence” to apply to reasons and arguments, not just empirical observations or reports of empirical observations, and I think this is common usage.) He ends up drawing a Venn-style diagram which has an outer circle labeled with “critical thinking” and “rational analysis,” within which is a series of three overlapping circles labeled “atheism,” “skeptical inquiry,” and “political philosophy.” He argues that skeptical inquiry only overlaps with atheism where religions make empirical claims that are subject to scientific investigation, and likewise for political philosophy. I offered a few critical comments at his blog, noting that it is odd that “atheism” is the only label on his diagram which is the name of a specific position rather than a method or discipline, and suggesting that it be labeled something like “views on religion.” I also suggested that that circle extend beyond the scope of the “critical thinking” and “rational analysis” circle, though that’s presupposing his diagram is descriptive rather than normative. [Note added 1:31 p.m.: If his diagram is understood as a diagram of what is appropriate subject matter for critical thinking, rational analysis, and skeptical inquiry with respect to atheism and political philosophy, then those two circles should arguably not extend outside the border of critical thinking/rational analysis.] Similar considerations should apply to the “political philosophy” circle. People hold religious and political views for reasons other than those produced as a result of critical thinking and rational analysis. I also took issue with his identifying “skeptical inquiry” with scientific skepticism. Skeptics have always used philosophical tools as well as scientific ones, but I would find his diagram more accurate if the middle circle was labeled “scientific skepticism” or even “scientific inquiry." I also have some skepticism about this taxonomic enterprise in general, which is arguably both philosophical and political itself–Pigliucci is not using scientific methods to set up this framework, it’s philosophy, and there are political and pragmatic reasons for wanting us to accept it–to issue in a ruling that certain domains are off-limits for skepticism, namely the examination of religious and political claims that are not subject to empirical investigation. I think there are good pragmatic reasons for skeptical organizations to restrict themselves in such a way–the methods of skepticism can be used by anyone, regardless of their political or religious views, and organized skepticism has tried to appeal to a broad audience to focus critical attention on paranormal claims where scientific methodology can be brought to bear. But I’m skeptical of this as a general picture of the applicable domain of the methods of skepticism or skeptical inquiry. (I should note that I don’t think that atheism implies skepticism–thus the reason for extending a circle with that name outside the boundaries of critical thinking and rational analysis–nor that skepticism implies atheism. Skepticism is about the methods used, not the conclusions reached. An atheist might think that any consistent application of skepticism will lead to atheism, but that presumes both that atheism is true and that consistent application of skepticism is a guarantee of truth, which it is not.) I agree with commenter Maarten that the boundaries of these circles are fuzzy–just as the boundary between science and non-science doesn’t admit to a bright-line demarcation. People can conceptualize the boundaries differently, even granting Pigliucci’s conception of “empirically investigatable” as the domain of skeptical inquiry or scientific skepticism. The boundaries between scientific disciplines are themselves fuzzy and they use different methodologies, with huge differences between experimental and historical sciences, for example. Finally, I agree with commenter Scott (Scott Hurst), who observes that religious believers do make very specific claims “about the nature of the universe, how it works, and its history (including our own),” and specifically noting belief in the power of prayer. These things are empirically testable and do make at least some common (one could say “vulgar”) conceptions of God and religion refutable by science. The fact that a more sophisticated believer or theologian can construct a view that uses the same words yet withdraws from the realm of the empirical doesn’t mean that the vulgar conception hasn’t been refuted. This is perhaps more obvious with modern religions such as Mormonism and Scientology, where in the former case historical evidence and DNA evidence falsifies some key claims, and in the latter case where scientific evidence falsifies a great number of its claims. Hubbard’s cosmology, for example, includes the idea that Xenu dropped thetans into a volcano on Hawaii 75 million years ago, but Hawaii didn’t exist 75 million years ago. His book History of Man includes Piltdown Man in the human lineage, even though that fossil was discovered to be a hoax shortly after the book was published. And so forth. It’s fine for Pigliucci to define and use the terms the way he wants, but I don’t think he’s given strong reasons for the rest of us to accept the specifics of his formulation. UPDATE (October 24, 2009): Russell Blackford has written “Pigliucci on science and the scope of skeptical inquiry” at the Sentient Developments blog, which comes to similar conclusions with a somewhat more comprehensive argument. ...