SGU Episode 18
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| SGU Episode 18 |
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| 2nd November 2005 |
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| (brief caption for the episode icon) |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
P: Perry DeAngelis |
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Introduction
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. This is your host, Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society. Today is November 2nd, 2005. With me this are week Bob Novella...
B: Good evening, everyone.
S: Perry DeAngelis...
P: Righto
S: And Evan Bernstein.
E: Hi, everyone.
News Items
Ghost Article (0:38)
S: Ah, there's no guest this week. So you just have the four of us. We're just going to start with some follow-up from our last week. We were talking about ghost stories, this being right around the Halloween time, and newspaper articles. Of note, the New Haven Reigster on the Sunday before Halloween published an article[link needed] about the New England Skeptical Society, called "Skeptical Society Wants Residents To Breathe Easy." In other words you don't need to be afraid of ghosts, and they interviewed both Evan Bernstein and myself for the article. It was a good article. Did you read it, Evan?
E: I did in fact, yes.
S: It was skeptical. There was no... Usually they follow the formula of like talking to some gullible people and telling quote-unquote "both sides", and then at the end concluding "well who knows if it's all real or not", but this guy really was just writing sort of an expos&eaigu; of how stupid people who really believe in ghosts are.
P: Hmm. Good for him.
E: It was refreshing.
S: It was.
E: Because we've been part of those articles before, in which they have tried to present both sides of the argument. They take a couple of sentences that you or I or someone else has said and mix it in with what a bunch of true believers really think.
P: Right.
E: But this one was different, and it was refreshing.
P: Token skeptic syndrome.
S: Right.
E: Right.
S: The journalist was Jim Shelton, by the way, the New Haven Register. A good guy. And it was—when I get interviewed for these pieces, it's an annual Halloween fluff piece or whatever. I always try to find time to chat with the reporter or the journalist about how to cover skeptical topics, just to feel them out and see where they're coming from. Because they always pretend like they're on your side when they are interviewing you. I think that just the style; how to get people to talk by pretending like...
P: That's a general journalistic approach.
S: Yeah. So, you can't really draw any conclusions from the fact that they're being friendly with you, and they seem to be amenable to your side of things. They're really just trying to draw you out. But I can tell from talking to Jim that he understood, you know, why... like with this issue, like many issues, the scientific side of the story—that's where the story really is. What the true believers are claiming should not be given sort of equal status to science and reason, basically.
P: That basically puts him above 99% of the television producers out there.
S: Absolutely.
E: Well, at least
P: Bumbling baboons.
E: At least. It was nice. Well like I said, it was refreshing to see that. It just doesn't happen that often that way.
S: Right, right.
E: And I was very glad. I've gotten some feedback from some people, acquaintences mostly through work, who read the article and commente