Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[SkeptInq@aol.com]

 Skeptical Inquirer Electronic Digest, Feb. 9, 2000

 Visit the CSICOP and Skeptical Inquirer Magazine website at
http://www.csicop.org. Receiving over 200,000 hits per year, the CSICOP site
was rated one of the top ten science sites by HOMEPC magazine.

 In this week's SI DIGEST:

 --Celebrate Charles Darwin's B-Day at the Center for Inquiry-West, Los
Angeles, CA
 --Upcoming Events at the Center for Inquiry-International, Amherst, NY
 --NY TIMES: Maybe We Are Alone in the Universe, After All
 --NY TIMES: Folk Cures on Trial
 --NY TIMES: Steven Weinberg: Physicist Ponders God, Truth and 'a Final
Theory'

 CELEBRATE CHARLES DARWIN'S B-DAY AT THE CENTER FOR INQUIRY WEST

 CHARLES DARWIN'S BIRTHDAY PARTY!

 Special Guest Speaker:

 Dr. Eugenie Scott
 Executive Director
 National Center for Science Education

 8PM
 Feb. 12th, 2000

 5519 Grosvenor Blvd.
 Los Angeles, CA. 90066

 E-mail: Jim Underdown at CFIWestJU@aol.com
 Telephone: (310) 306-2847
 Visit the Center on the Web at http://www.cfiwest.org  .

 From an announcement on www.cfiwest.org:

 Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science
Education, will speak at a reception at the Center for Inquiry-West
celebrating the birthday of Charles Darwin at 8 PM on February 12th, 2000.
Dr. Scott’s talk will compare some of the hysteria which Darwin met in the
last century with the recent attacks on the Theory of Evolution this past
year. Dr. Scott has been outspoken in her criticism of presidential
candidates who have stated that Creationism and Evolution should be taught
side by side. As part of its function to promote science and scientific
thinking, the National Center for Science Education reminds people that the
word theory in Theory of Evolution does not mean the same thing as theory in
everyday use. In science, a theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of
the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested
hypotheses" (Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science, National
Academy of Sciences). The Theory of Evolution is as well accepted in science
as the Heliocentric Theory (the Earth revolves around the sun), the Cell
Theory (all living things are composed of cells), and the Theory of
Gravitation.  The Center for Inquiry-West is throwing this birthday party for
Charles Darwin to underscore the importance of one of science’s most
important and comprehensive ideas. Public statements and outward support of
science and reason are becoming more and more vital as belief in the
supernatural grows.  Please join us at the Center for Inquiry-West at 8:00
p.m. on February 12th, 2000 for this presentation and reception to follow.
Admission is free. Drinks and snacks will be available for sale at the party
immediately afterward.

 UPCOMING EVENTS AT THE CENTER FOR INQUIRY--INTERNATIONAL

 The Center for Inquiry--International
 1015 Sweet Home Rd.
 Amherst, NY 14226

 To order tickets, call 716-636-1425.

 --Dr. Eugenie Scott
 Executive Director, National Center for Science Education

 8PM
 Saturday, Feb. 26
 Tickets are $5
 (See description above)

 --Dr. Robert Park
 Professor of Physics
 University of Maryland, College Park
 Director of the American Physical Society, Washington D.C.

 8PM
 Monday, March 27
 $5 admission

 Parks, author of the forthcoming book "Voodoo Science," speaks on the
explosion of junk science in courtrooms, the media, and American life.

 --Dave Thomas
 Consulting Editor, Skeptical Inquirer

 8PM
 Saturday, April 15
 $5 admission

 The Albuquerque-based physicist has published on many skeptical topics.
Most recently in the Nov/Dec. 1997 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Thomas showed
that mathematical techniques used to dredge "secret messages" from scripture
in The Bible Code can elicit similar messages from any random text.  Dave
will share an overview of his latest skeptical inquiries.

 NY TIMES: MAYBE WE ARE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE, AFTER ALL

 Maybe We Are Alone in the Universe, After All
 Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2000
 New York Times

 For the full text of the article, go to:

 http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/020800sci-space-life.html

 By William J. Broad

 [In the last few decades, a growing number of astronomers have promulgated
the view that alien civilizations are likely to be scattered among the stars
like grains of sand, isolated from one another by the emptiness of
interstellar space. Just for Earth's own galaxy, the Milky Way, experts have
estimated that there might be up to one million advanced societies. This
extraterrestrial credo has fueled not only countless books, movies and
television shows -- not to mention hosts of Klingons, Wookies and Romulans --
but a long scientific hunt that uses huge dish antennas to scan the sky for
faint radio signals from intelligent aliens. Now, two prominent scientists
say the conventional wisdom is wrong. The alien search, they add, is likely
to fail....]

 NY TIMES: FOLK CURES ON TRIAL

 Folk Cures on Trial:  Alternative Care Gains a Foothold
 Monday, Jan. 31, 2000
 New York Times

 For the full article, go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/013100hth-alternative-m
edicine.html

 By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

 [...And while alternative therapies remain hugely controversial in the staid
world of science -- "quackupuncture," is how one vocal critic, Dr. Victor
Herbert of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, summed up the University of
Maryland's work -- large, multimillion-dollar clinical trials are getting
under way this year at some of the nation's most prestigious university
hospitals. "The scientific games have begun," declared Dr. David Eisenberg,
director of the Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education at
Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center in Boston.  Or, as Dr. Barrie
Cassileth, chief of integrative medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center in Manhattan, said: "The research is just coming into its maturity.
It's bar mitzvah time."
 The boom is being driven by the National Institutes of Health, which, under
pressure from Congress, has sharply increased its budget for studies of
alternative medicine. Eight years ago, much to the chagrin of the institutes
leadership, Congress required the institutes to establish an Office of
Alternative Medicine, a tiny operation with a budget to match, just $2
million.  "It was," said Dr. Daniel Moerman, a medical anthropologist at the
University of Michigan, "like setting up an office of deviltry within the
Catholic Church."  But after a rocky beginning, the office is gaining
acceptance at the institutes and is setting the tone for scientists around
the country. Last year, Congress upgraded the office, making it the National
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which means it now has
grant-making authority. Its yearly budget has grown to $68 million. In
October, a new director came on board, Dr. Stephen E. Straus, a virologist
and longtime N.I.H. insider whom Dr. Harold Varmus, the former director of
the institutes and once one of the program's biggest detractors, describes as
"a really distinguished scientist."  At the same time, hospitals and medical
schools are bowing to economic reality: alternative medicine is big business.
According to the Nutrition Business Journal, an industry trade publication,
Americans spent $27.2 billion in 1998 on providers of alternative health
care, including those in chiropractic, traditional Chinese medicine,
homeopathy, naturopathy and massage therapy. Sales of herbs are also growing,
to $4.4 billion last year, from nearly $2.5 billion in 1995, the journal
said.  And a survey of more than 2,000 adults, conducted by Dr. Eisenberg and
published in November 1998 in The Journal of the American Medical
Association, estimated that 46 percent of the American population had visited
a practitioner of alternative health care in 1997, up from 36 percent in
1990. Patients like Mr. Katcoff, who had never before tried alternative
therapies, are increasingly doing so.  "Consumers are saying, I want some
type of care and I will pay for it out of pocket if I need to," said Dr.
Brian Berman, the principal investigator in the Maryland acupuncture
study....]

 NY TIMES: STEVEN WEINBERG

 SCIENTIST AT WORK / Steven Weinberg
 Physicist Ponders God, Truth and 'a Final Theory'

 Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2000
 New York Times

 For the full article, go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/012500sci-scientist-weinberg.h
tml

 By  James Glanz

 [AUSTIN, Tex. -- Dr. Steven Weinberg is perhaps the world's most
authoritative proponent of the idea that physics is hurtling toward a "final
theory," a complete explanation of nature's particles and forces that will
endure as the bedrock of all science forevermore. He is also a powerful
writer whose prose can illuminate -- and sting. His withering essay on the
dangers of utopian thought was prominently featured in this month's Atlantic
Monthly. The third volume of his "Quantum Theory of Fields," a weighty work
on matter and energy at its most fundamental levels, is soon to be released
by Cambridge University Press. And he recently received the Lewis Thomas
Prize, awarded to the researcher who best embodies "the scientist as poet."
 All of this combines two of his major passions: theoretical physics, which
won him a Nobel Prize in 1979, and his often polemical writings on culture,
religion, philosophy and, in particular, the history and politics of science.
 At 66, he shows little sign of cutting back....]

 _________________________

 SI Electronic Digest is the biweekly e-mail news update of the Committee for
the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP.)

 Visit http://www.csicop.org/.

 Rated one of the Top Ten Science sites on the Web by HOMEPC magazine.

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skeptics of the twentieth century, religious traditionalism and paranormal
belief, the second coming of jesus, and the pseudoscience of oxygen therapy.

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