ECNs dead.

Almost the final comment he made, announcing the closing:

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The sceptics were right.

Ordinary skepticism is very, very often right. Pseudoskepticism is often right, but misses possibilities. It's cheap. Real skeptics will normally either investigate carefully, or leave the topic alone.

CSICOP was founded in part by genuine skeptics, you can see it in the original name, Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Some of the early skeptics founding that complained about the takeover of the organization by debunkers. The name change could reflect that: Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). Notice that "scientific" is lost.

From the Wikipedia article:

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Marcello Truzzi, one of CSICOP's co-founders, left the organization after only a short time, arguing that many of those involved "tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion. Most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal; they are out to knock them. [...] When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then they move the goal posts."[28] Truzzi coined the term pseudoskeptic to describe critics in whom he detected such an attitude.[29]

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An early controversy concerned the so-called Mars effect: French statistician Michel Gauquelin's claim that champion athletes are more likely to be born when the planet Mars is in certain positions in the sky. In late 1975, prior to the formal launch of CSICOP, astronomer Dennis Rawlins, along with Paul Kurtz, George Abel and Marvin Zelen (all subsequent members of CSICOP) began investigating the claim. Rawlins, a founding member of CSICOP at its launch in May 1976, resigned in early 1980 claiming that other CSICOP researchers had used incorrect statistics, faulty science, and outright falsification in an attempt to debunk Gauquelin's claims. In an article for the pro-paranormal magazine Fate, he wrote: "I am still skeptical of the occult beliefs CSICOP was created to debunk. But I have changed my mind about the integrity of some of those who make a career of opposing occultism."

When we are certain we are right, we will be less critical of evidence showing we are right than of evidence in the other direction. We may become radically careless. This is the problem with pseudoskepticism, it forgets to be skeptical of self. Rawlins quite correctly did not equate unethical debunking with the Mars Effect being real. Pseudoskepticism clouds the issue by generating irrelevant noise.

What I would see in much pseudoskepticism is a dislike of mystery, which is, to me, related to basic survival mechanisms;' however, scientific inquiry must set aside these survival mechanisms or, at least, not imagine that they are some sort of scientific method. If one considers a claim preposterous and does not care to investigate it, fine. But becoming a crusader against it ... this could be evidence of *belief*, not skepticism.

Pseudoskepticism is always in defense of "current understanding," without specifying who understands. It relies on vague concepts like, "the majority of scientists believe ...." when science is never a vote. Votes can decide the allocation of group resources, but are never scientific evidence of anything other than the opinions of the electorate.

Quote from Shane D.

I am grieving after all.

I'm sorry about your loss.