Scientists at skeptics conference
unite to fight media misinformation

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Services Editor

This lack of respect for science occurs frequently in the media-particularly in television-where programs present the paranormal as genuine science, rather than entertainment.

In an attempt to fight the media's presentation of pseudoscience as scientific fact, some of the world's best-known scientists-including Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan and Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman-have formed the Council for Media Integrity.

The council was formed during the first World Skeptics Congress, which was held at UB June 20-23 and attracted more than 1,200 scientists and skeptics. The Congress, sponsored by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and the Center for Inquiry, was co-sponsored by the UB Departments of Anthropology, Biology, Media Studies, Philosophy, Physics and Psychology.

Theme of the Congress was Science in the Age of (Mis) Information. More than 70 scientists and skeptics, including entertainer Steve Allen, discussed the role of the mass media in forming public opinion, the growth of anti-scientific sentiment and recent developments in areas such as parapsychology, alternative medicine, UFOlogy, astrology and the creation/evolution debate.

"We are skeptics," says Kurtz, chairman of CSICOP and coordinator of the new group, "but we are positive, constructive skeptics. We have organized an interdisciplinary response to media coverage of beliefs in paranormal and psychic phenomena."

Its charge is to make the media, particularly television, more responsible in their presentation of paranormal and psychic phenomena, such as UFO sightings, prophecies, angels and alien abductions and autopsies, all of which have been the subjects of recent TV shows.

Members of the council say television is replete with programs that present the paranormal as genuine science. They note that this year, NBC broadcast "The Mysterious Origins of Man," a program narrated by Charlton Heston in which evolution is questioned and which proposes the idea that humans originated 100 million years ago and coexisted with dinosaurs.

Scientists protested loudly when the show was first broadcast in February; NBC ignored the protests and aired the show again in June.

"The media regard science as simply another point of view," says Sir John Maddox, editor emeritus of Nature, and a charter member of the Council for Media Integrity.

Kurtz notes that establishing the Council for Media Integrity is the first attempt to coordinate the response of scientists to outlandish claims presented in the media as scientific fact.

The idea is not to censor the media in any way, he explains, but to have television stations and producers label programs about the paranormal as entertainment or fiction, rather than as so-called docudramas, and to make clear that they are not news or science programs.