TAM8 – Final Thoughts

Saturday was a treat for me personally because I got to do a half-hour interview with James Randi himself.  His organization puts on The Amazing Meeting, and I’ve seen him so many times but getting to sit down and talk to him face to face was delightful.  It’s astonishing to meet someone so in the moment and even more so when you consider his moments span eight decades.  Along with my MonsterTalk co-hosts, we talked with Randi about a famous poltergeist case he’d investigated back in the 1980’s.  It was fascinating and I was excited to discover that not only did he remember the case, but that he’d included it in his upcoming book, A Magician in the Laboratory.

The night before I’d gone to dinner with members of The Skeptics Society and had a wonderful and eclectic conversation.  So much of TAM is just that, the opportunity to talk with very bright people about ideas that are important.  Even though the World Cup was going on, talk tended towards big ideas and big plans.

Saturday also saw some very funny people talking about very serious ideas on stage.  David Javerbaum of The Daily Show and comedian Paul Provenza got many laughs as they talked about their experiences.  And in between them a panel with my co-hosts Ben Radford and Karen Stollznow along with Joe Nickell and James Randi discussed how to do a scientific paranormal investigation.

I love paranormal investigations because they’re entertaining and hone one’s critical thinking skills.  But much of skeptical activism is geared towards improving the public’s awareness of critical health and educational ideas.  A panel on quack medicine, which is astonishingly pervasive despite the lack of supporting evidence for those modalities, reminded attendees that sometimes magical thinking and misguided cause/effect interpretations can lead to death.

And then there was James McGaha.  I was so torn by his appearance because he’s a bit of a hero of mine for his work on investigating many UFO cases.  At the same time, despite more than 95% of climate scientists agreeing that Global Warming is real and caused by humans (AGW), McGaha doesn’t buy that hypothesis.  While Sunday mornings at TAM are traditionally a time for people to recover from the party the night before while listening to papers being presented by a select few attendees, I was pacing around excitedly waiting for the 9 am panel, Global Climate Change and the Responsibility of the Skeptics Movement.

I wasn’t sure what we’d get here.  The panel was moderated by Massimo Pigliucci and consisted of Michael Shermer, Donald Prothero, James McGaha and Daniel Loxton.  It was a fascinating discussion about when it is appropriate for a layman to accept the scientific consensus.  McGaha’s inability to accept the AGW premise seemed at odds with many of the things he said about the importance of science and the scientific method.  At one point he referred to experts in climate as “so called climate scientists.”  In the same way experts on ancient human ruins might be referred to as “so called archeologists.”  It was odd.

The best part of that important panel, I thought, was that Massimo kept everyone focused on the topic which wasn’t whether AGW is real (it is) but on how skeptics should handle issues which they themselves aren’t qualified to know the answer to through direct knowledge.  Perhaps Daniel Loxton made the best point, namely that if you think you’ve got a better answer or theory then write it up and submit it to a peer reviewed journal of climate science.  The arena of public opinion isn’t where science happens, peer reviewed journals are.

Finally TAM8 ended with a demonstration of what a JREF Million Dollar Challenge looks like.  It wasn’t an actual test, just a demonstration.  The JREF announced that mentalist Banachek will be taking over the MDC challenges, and this demonstration was performed by MDC claimant Anita Ikonen who claimed to be able to see if someone was missing a kidney, among other things.  Anita sat behind some volunteers and stared at them and doodled for six minutes for each of them.  After quite a long time she failed to pick which of the five was missing a kidney.  There was a 20% chance she’d just guess it – but not that day.

After the test was over someone said to me, “Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if her power was real?”  And I said, “Sure – why then we’d be able to get the results of x-rays, only it would take 60 times longer and we couldn’t see them!”  But seriously, I guess it would be cool if people could look at you and see if you were missing organs.  But you wouldn’t need any powers to look at me and tell I was missing sleep.

Sheer exuberance kept me awake and soon after the MDC demo a group of us Atlanta Skeptics headed over to the airport and boarded our planes and came home.  Now a torrent of Facebook photos are recounting my experiences for me, and friends I made at TAM are keeping in touch.  I can’t thank the JREF enough for putting this event together.  It is such a powerful thing.  I’m honored that I got to participate, and I’m so glad that so many of the Atlanta Skeptics were there so I didn’t get quite so homesick.

Thanks, y’all!