Skeptical Inquirer

The Skeptical Inquirer is the magazine of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), begun as The Zetetic in Fall/Winter 1976 and renamed after its first year. It was edited by Kendrick Frazier from 1977 until his death in 2022 and is published by the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York.¹²³

The Zetetic

The first issue, Fall/Winter 1976, listed Marcello Truzzi of Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, as editor and Broady Richardson as managing editor. The editorial board was Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, Paul Kurtz, James Randi, Dennis Rawlins and Truzzi. Consulting editors included Persi Diaconis, Eric Dingwall, Christopher Evans, C. E. M. Hansel and Philip J. Klass. Subscriptions were handled by the committee's executive office at Box 29, Kensington Station, Buffalo; individual subscriptions cost 10 dollars, libraries 15 dollars and sustaining subscribers 100 dollars or more. The issue was printed by Artcraft-Burow of Buffalo and was published twice a year.¹

Its contents were articles by Roy Wallis on Dianetics, Gary Alan Fine on psychics, Ron Westrum on the 1975 statement "Objections to Astrology," Lee Nisbet with Kurtz on whether astronomers are qualified to criticize astrology, A. James Fix on biorhythms and John T. Omohundro on von Däniken, with a review symposium on David M. Jacobs's The UFO Controversy in America and Hyman's review of Charles Panati's The Geller Papers. The "Committee News Notes" recorded the invitation to Uri Geller of June 11, 1976, and the committee's joint sponsorship with the American Humanist Association of tests of the claims of Michel Gauquelin.¹ According to James Alcock, about a thousand subscribers signed up for the first issue. The title had been used by Truzzi for a newsletter, The Zetetic: A Newsletter of Academic Research into Occultisms, in 1975.²

Renaming and Editors

Truzzi edited the journal until August 1977 and left the committee, as CSICOP's history put it, in a dispute over whether it should be a scholarly journal that included proponents of the paranormal or a publication reaching the public.⁴ Kurtz and the committee hired as the new editor Kendrick Frazier, "formerly an editor of a popular science magazine," to change the magazine's content and format "to have greater public appeal." In June 1978 the address of the Skeptical Inquirer was P.O. Box 5, Amherst Branch, Buffalo, with subscriptions at 10 dollars a year, and that of Truzzi's new Zetetic Scholar was the Department of Sociology at Eastern Michigan.⁵

Frazier's editorial office was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1979 and 1988. The editorial board in Fall 1979 and Winter 1979-80 was Gardner, Hyman, Klass, Kurtz, Randi and Rawlins; in Fall 1988 it was Alcock, Gardner, Hyman, Klass, Kurtz and Randi. Consulting editors in 1988 included David Marks, James Oberg and Robert Sheaffer, and Barry Karr was public relations director.⁶ The Fall 1984 masthead stated that articles "represent the views and work of individual authors" and that their publication "does not necessarily constitute an endorsement by CSICOP or its members unless so stated."⁷ The masthead moved from Box 29, Kensington Station, to 1203 Kensington Avenue in 1979, and to Box 229, Central Park Station, with CSICOP's office at 3151 Bailey Avenue, in 1984.⁶

Subscription prices were 15 dollars in 1979 and 16.50 dollars in 1984.⁶ The magazine was quarterly in 1979 and 1984.⁶ It was bimonthly by July 1995.⁸ In 1996 Frazier gave its circulation as 35,000 subscribers in 72 countries.⁴ Gardner's column "Notes of a Fringe-Watcher" appeared in every issue from Summer 1983, and about 120 of its articles were collected in three anthologies from Prometheus Books, in 1981, 1986 and 1991.⁴ Frazier edited the magazine for more than four decades, and Daniel Loxton wrote in 2023 that he had done so for "over forty-five years."⁹ Alcock wrote that the position was held "until his death in 2022."² The committee's Fellows and Staff page lists Stephen Hupp as editor of the Skeptical Inquirer and executive director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.¹⁰ The site states that the magazine is published by the Center for Inquiry and carries the Center's employer identification number, 22-2306795.¹⁰

The Mars Effect Issue

The Winter 1979-80 issue, expanded for the purpose, carried four reports on the claimed Mars effect: Kurtz, Marvin Zelen and George Abell on the results of the American test, Rawlins on the same test, Michel and Francoise Gauquelin on "Star U.S. Sportsmen Display the Mars Effect," and the authors' response to the Gauquelins. The editor's note said the claimed effect "has received international attention in recent years" and that the editors felt it "best to place the data, analyses, and different interpretations before the interested reader." Rawlins was then a member of the editorial board.¹¹ Rawlins wrote in Fate in 1981 that "the last word Frazier allowed to appear" on the subject before his article was a letter from Lawrence Jerome in Fall 1980; Frazier wrote that the magazine printed Rawlins's "Remus Extremus" with responses from the Executive Council, Kurtz and Abell in Winter 1981-82.⁴¹²

Parapsychology and Remote Viewing

The magazine's articles on parapsychology and government programs, by author and date as listed on its site, were: Hyman, review of The Geller Papers (1976); Marks and Richard Kammann, "The Nonpsychic Powers of Uri Geller" (1977); Marks, "Remote Viewing Revisited" (Summer 1982); Gardner, "How Not to Test a Psychic: The Great SRI Die Mystery" (January 1983), "Koestler Money Down the Psi-Drain?" (Fall 1984) and "From SRI to Delphi: The Curious 'Mind Race'" (January 1985); Don Addis, "Psychic Arms Race? Give Me a Break!" (Summer 1984); Martin Ebon, "Psychic Studies: The Soviet Dilemma" (January 1986); Elliot H. Weinberg, "Some Remote-Viewing Recollections" (Summer 1986); Frazier, "Improving Human Performance: What About Parapsychology?" (Fall 1988); Kurtz, "Paranormal Pandemonium in the Soviet Union" (April 1990); and, in March/April 1996, Hyman, "Evaluation of the Military's Twenty-Year Program on Psychic Spying," and Michael D. Mumford, Andrew M. Rose and David Goslin, "CIA Concludes No Value to the Program."¹³

Weinberg's contribution in Summer 1986 was introduced with a note that he had been director of research of the Office of Naval Research from 1971 to 1979. He wrote that during that period he "was asked to review the field of paranormal research, particularly what was coming to be known as 'remote viewing,'" and that he visited the Stanford Research Institute to meet Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ.¹⁴ Frazier's 1988 summary of the National Research Council report on enhancing human performance stated that the Army Research Institute had asked the National Academy of Sciences in 1984 to form the committee and that Hyman chaired its parapsychology subcommittee, and that military officers invited to address the committee described remote-viewing experiments at SRI and "psychotronic weapons" and maintained that the Soviet Union was far ahead of the United States.¹⁵

Gardner's column "Notes of a Psi-Watcher" in Winter 1984-85, titled "From SRI to Delphi: The Curious 'Mind Race,'" reviewed The Mind Race by Targ and Keith Harary (Villard Books, 1984). Gardner wrote that Targ "has left the big Menlo Park think-tank to join Harary in founding a psi-research organization they call Delphi Associates," and that Puthoff, "once an ardent Scientologist, remains at SRI."¹⁶

The editor's note to the March/April 1996 issue said that the Central Intelligence Agency had contracted in 1995 for an outside evaluation of twenty years of "until-then classified government-funded programs in 'remote viewing,'" that Hyman was one of two experts asked to review the research, and that the issue would print "a major portion of the Conclusions section of the report commissioned by the CIA."¹⁷ Hyman wrote in that issue that the CIA had supported the program from the early 1970s and "abandoned this program in the late 1970s because it showed no promise," that the Defense Intelligence Agency had then continued it as Stargate until the spring of 1995, and that "a Senate committee decided to transfer the program from the DIA back to the CIA."¹⁷

The Summer 1994 issue carried a letter by Harary, "Confusion Over Delphi Silver-Futures Trials?," answering a "Psychic Vibrations" column by Sheaffer in the Winter 1994 issue.¹⁸

Organizations and Funding

The magazine's copyright notices from 1976 to 1984 name the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal as holder, and the 1979 and 1980 mastheads describe it as the committee's official journal, "CSICOP, Inc."⁶ Frazier wrote that the committee was "financed entirely through subscriptions and donations."⁴ CSICOP announced in November 1996 a ten-year Fund for the Future campaign to add 20 million dollars to the endowments of the Center for Inquiry, a combined goal for CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism, saying that "publishing revenues alone cannot fund the bold outreach today's challenges demand."¹⁹ The Center for Inquiry Inc. reported contributions of 5,628,081 dollars and total revenue of 6,992,396 dollars for 2024.²⁰