The X-Files meets the skeptics - excerpt from Chris Carter speech - includes related articles

When Chris Carter, creator of the popular Fox TV drama The X-Files, spoke at the CSICOP Twentieth Anniversary Conference, the result wasn't quite what anyone expected.

Chris Carter, creator and executive producer of The X-Files, was the invited luncheon banquet speaker for the first day of the World Skeptics Congress and CSICOP Twentieth Anniversary Conference in Amherst, New York. The banquet, in the atrium of the State University of New York at Buffalo Center for the Arts, was packed. Tables were jammed together. Other people listened from second floor walkways or while standing against the walls. We present here essentially the transcript, only slightly edited for brevity, of that fascinating event, which consisted of informal introductory remarks by Carter followed by an extensive question-and-answer session. Not all of the audience's questions were recorded, but Carter summarized many of them before answering. Carter was introduced by reporter Eugene Emery of the Providence Journal-Bulletin, who, even though he had written several somewhat critical pieces about The X-Files, enthusiastically supported that Carter be invited to speak and served as his host. We begin with Emery's remarks.

- Kendrick Frazier, Editor

Hi! I'm Chris Carter, heretic. I agreed to speak to this group a long time ago, and I didn't realize that I was going to be eating lunch here. When they told me I was going to be "had for lunch," I got kind of worried.

I'm anticipating some very tough questions here today, but I feel that I should face my accusers and try to best explain why I do what I do and how I think I serve the purpose of what it is you do.

I'd like to read to you a letter that was sent to me just recently from a person who is a high school teacher. I think that this is what I anticipate will be the kind of questions and certainly the sentiment that I'll be addressing here today. It says: "Dear Mr. Carter:

(This is a man named Tucker Hiatt from the University High School in San Francisco.)

"In just a few days you will be speaking before the World Skeptics Congress. Your audience there in Amherst will not consist of your adoring fans. Rather you will be - politely and with good humor, I hope - criticized as a key purveyor of anti-skeptical, antiscientific, and generally irrational thinking among the television viewing public. They may argue that The X-Files is actually hurting people.

"I am sending you the attached copy of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World for two reasons: first, so that you may know your enemy and thereby be prepared for the skeptical onslaught at Amherst, and so you might even come to adopt these skeptics' point of view and therefore be willing to make the modest occasional and purely evolutionary change in The X-Files described in the paragraph below.

"I am a high school physics and philosophy teacher. I cannot easily afford to send twenty-six-dollar books to strangers. Nevertheless I'm persuaded that you have the power to do something wonderful for the television watching world.

"If you will peruse pages 373 through 477 of this book - The X-Files is discussed on page 374 - you will find Mr. Sagan bemoaning the current poverty of prime time television's depiction of science. 'Where in all these programs are the joys of science, the delight in discovering how the universe is put together, the exhilaration of knowing a deep thing well?' I'm afraid that The X-Files in particular is helping to make this the most entertained and least scientifically informed - no, the least rational - nation in the industrialized world.

"I believe that in this instance you are hurting people. Our children and my students, at least, deserve better. To that end I ask you to consider 'The Y-Files.' Just once every month why not run an X-Files episode that is shorter than the requisite forty-eight minutes? As the episode ends you could air a brief epilog called 'The Y-Files' that would finish the hour. 'The Y-Files' might involve any of the seven themes that Mr. Sagan identifies on page 377 of his book, in particular, the presentation of real scientific investigations into the preceding episode's paranormal hook. It could be both thrilling and enlightening. It needn't be expensive, either. (I don't know how he would know, by the way.) That week's X-Files set could be used. Dozens of scientists there at the World Skeptics Congress would love to set up quick and entertaining experiments for free.

"Mr. Carter, please give this book a read. Please also consider why 'The Y-Files' is a good idea. Generations of scientifically literate citizens, better able to exercise their healthy skepticism because of a few minutes of X-Files time, may be deeply indebted."

I have to say, I couldn't agree more. I believe one of the things television should do is educate, and I believe it doesn't do it enough. But I'm here to tell you that I am a dramatist, I create entertainment, and I am unapologetic for that. I think that what I do is actually a great service to science. I'm willing to defend what I do in that way. I believe it draws people to science.