Back to business: The article appears in the latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, the official publication of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which sounds like the most depressing group in the world. Basically, you only get to be part of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry if you don't believe in anything. When these people were kids and Peter Pan begged them to clap so that Tinkerbell would live, they sat on their hands. They would have let Tink die.
Their publication, the Skeptical Inquirer, is essentially the anti-matter version of the National Enquirer. National Enquirer runs a headline about the Bat Boy; Skeptical Enquirer runs a headline saying "Can't be!"
So what was the secret life of J. Allen Hynek? Aside from being one of the world's foremost experts on UFOs, the world knew him as an accomplished astronomer and longtime director of the astronomy department at Northwestern University. But that's not all...
He was also interested in... The occult! The paranormal!! Parallel dimensions!!!
This is the big scoop in the article, and the writer uses Hynek's interest in strange pseudoscience as some sort of evidence of intellectual fraud. How can anyone take Hynek's call for a serious, scientific study of UFOs seriously, the writer asks, if the guy was secretly reading about psychic phenomenon?
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Wouldn't it be cool if you could just know when someone else was thinking about ESP? |
And then there's this: CERN scientists eye parallel universe breakthrough. Yeah, that would be the same CERN that just discovered the Higgs boson.
Take that, Skeptical Inquirer!
Here's the thing, though: the article was great! It was very well-researched and tightly written and very enjoyable to read. I don't agree with all the author's points, but I respect the way he made his case. I wrote to him to compliment him, and I hope to hear back. I think he would be a good guy to be talking with as I move ahead with the Hynek book.
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