Science and reason, foibles and fallacies, and doomsdays - Second World Skeptics Congress in Heidelberg, Germany

Heidelberg Conference attracts 300 delegates from 23 countries

In the twenty-two years since its beginning, the modern skeptical movement has gone from an idea in the minds of philosopher Paul Kurtz and a handful of concerned colleagues to a widely recognized international network of organizations. Ninety-two skeptics organizations in thirty-three countries now examine paranormal claims, explore the boundaries between science and pseudoscience, and consider social, philosophical, and educational issues involving science and the public.

In the 1980s the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) - which started it all - began holding conferences about every eighteen months in cities and academic settings around the United States. In 1996, CSICOP celebrated its twentieth anniversary with the first World Skeptics Congress at the place of its founding, the State University of New York at Buffalo (SI, September/October, 1996).

The Second World Skeptics Congress, July 23-26, 1998, in the picturesque city of Heidelberg, Germany, was the most cosmopolitan ever. The sessions took place in a modern lecture hall at the ancient and historic University of Heidelberg (founded in 1386). The congress featured three and a half days of sessions, most in English, some in German, with more than 300 registrants from twenty-three countries.

It was sponsored by CSICOP and co-sponsored by the European Council of Skeptical Organizations and the German skeptical organization GWUP (Gesellschaft zur wissenshaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenshaften).

With the dawn of new millennium looming, the conference theme, "Armageddon and the Prophets of Doomsday" served as a convenient springboard to a wide range of topics in and out of science. Millennium prophecies, natural disasters, and environmental concerns were at the core, but there was ample time to consider antiscience and the postmodernists, alternative medicine, the problems of memory, the paranormal and skepticism in China. And there were some case studies - reports of investigations into such matters as dowsing, the Shroud of Turin, and "bio-energetic products." There was also a workshop for skeptics.

And - as is not always the case at these session-packed conferences - there was some time for socializing. The traditional conference banquet was replaced by an informal evening on a double-deck boat sailing up the river Neckar, culminating in illuminations of high-perched castles and a magnificent fireworks show, the sounds echoing off the canyon walls.

"As we approach the year 2000 we are surrounded by prophets of doom who predict that terrible disasters await us," said CSICOP Chairman Paul Kurtz in opening the congress. We have a natural yearning to know the future and a certain mixture of optimism and apprehension about it. The trick, he emphasized, is to apply the methods of scientific inquiry in examining all claims, including those about doomsdays and disasters, whether concerns arise from secular, religious or New Age origins.

If you think these science-minded skeptics would therefore automatically pour cold water over every expectation of disaster, you'd be wrong. The threat of catastrophic comet and asteroid impacts onto Earth was deemed real, global warming was taken seriously, sudden climate flip-flops were seen as a strong possibility, and the Year 2000 problem with the world's computers was far from dismissed. ("Will the worst happen?" asked science and technology writer Wendy Grossman, author of the recent book net.wars. "Who knows? The most informed technical minds believe that the chances are that at least some things will fail.")

There was lots of real science. Astronomer Alan Hale, co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp, the largest and most dramatic comet in decades, discussed the scientific significance and popular lore of comets and gave a personal account of his discovery.

He then lambasted the combination of scientific illiteracy, willful delusions, a radio talk-show's deceptions about an imaginary spaceship supposedly accompanying the comet, and a cult's bizarre yearnings for ascending to another level of existence that led to the Heaven's Gate mass suicides.

Hale says that well before Heavens Gate, he had told a colleague, "'We are probably going to have some suicides as a result of this comet.' The sad part is that I really was not surprised."

"Comets are lovely objects," he said, "but they don't have apocalyptic significance. We must use our minds, our reason."

Fellow New Mexico scientist David E. Thomas gave an entertaining talk about his debunking of the "Bible Code" (SI, November/December, 1997). Using the same "equidistant-letter sequence" methods that author Michael Drosnin used in computer-searching the text of the Hebrew Torah, Thomas showed how he could find similar "messages" in other literary works.

Drosnin had claimed that using his methods, the words "Nazi" and "Hitler" appear linked in the Torah but not in Tolstoy's novel War and Peace. Thomas found both in War and Peace. "I won't call Drosnin a liar," said Thomas, "but here is a claim he made that is demonstrably false."