Footnotes to Yesterday's Posts

Here is how Dennis Rawlins presents Martin Gardner's role in the sTARBABY scandal, along with other upper eschalon members of CSICOP.


 -  In the letter Randi agreed I was right in arguing that the Gauquelin test had been ill-designed and should not have been done. Now that the whole thing had backfired, Kurtz -- out of his depth when he attempted a scientific experiment -- was clearly responsible. Randi also criticized Abell for snooping into my background. If this was the way CSICOP business was going to be conducted, then CSICOPs were no better than the parapsychologists who covered up their mistakes. Randi asked why my expenses to the Washington meeting were not being paid  and concluded by admitting that he was "mad," saying he seldom wrote such a letter except to parapsychologists. He assured Kurtz that no one besides him, Martin Gardner and me would see it. 
    I called Randi on the 21st and urged him to phone Kurtz to get his immediate reaction to the letter. For obvious reasons I didn't want to give Kurtz a lot of time to concoct fresh excuses. 
    After he had talked with Kurtz Randi called me back on the 23rd saying only that KZA had still not confirmed my calculations. Randi's call, which indicated trouble was brewing, seems to have inspired Abell. Two days later, using the method explained to him on October 5, he got the same answers as I had. He phoned me the news that evening (October 25) and urged that I do an expectation-curve for the American sample. I suggested he do the math. As a matter of fact l'd already done it myself and had mailed copies of the results to Gardner and Randi two days earlier. 
    On October 23 I had sent some background documents concerning sTARBABY to Randi and Gardner. Gardner wrote back six days later, chuckling about what an incredibly hilarious foul-up the whole thing had turned out to be. To a further packet of documents he repeated his feeling of deep amusement but he wasn't interested in doing anything about it. 


 -  Kurtz wanted to know if I intended to attack sTARBABY at the press conference. When I refused to make any promises, Kurtz grew more furious. We couldn't have a "schism," he said. 
    Council met the next day at Councilor Phil Klass' apartment. I noticed that Randi was his usual friendly self when Kurtz wasn't around but when he was within earshot Randi made different noises. He repeatedly cracked loudly, "Drink the Kool-Aid, Dennis." (This was shortly after the Jonestown Kool-Aid mass suicide.) During the afternoon meeting, when we established a rule for expelling Councilors, Randi bellowed that it is called the "Rawlins rule." 
    Randi meant, of course, that expulsion could come for public dissent. No other Councilor present (Gardner was not) said a word to suggest any other inference. I might add that two months later Randi foolishly boasted about how he "had to work to keep Dennis in line" in Washington, having convinced himself, apparently, that his threats had kept me quiet.

-  Randi continued to say nothing except at one point he suggested that I not answer even the direct questions of a reporter at the upcoming press conference. 
    Kurtz wouldn't admit that sTARBABY was a loss. He fell back on the alleged support of the absent Abell and Zelen. so I reminded him of our November 19 phone conversation in which he had tried privately to blame the whole mess on them I then produced and read Councilor Gardner's letter calling the Control Test a hilarious mess At this point Kurtz sprang from his seat and roared, "Well, you're wrong!" He grabbed the letter, glanced at it in disbelief and announced that Gardner didn't know what he was talking about. 

-  During this period Randi would occasionally phone up for a friendly "just-happened-to-be-thinking-of-you" chat. l suspected he was trying to draw out of me statements of anger or of dissatisfaction. Despite his private rages Randi wished to make no public waves. When I asked him why, he repeated the tired old alibi that the occultist kooks would whoop it up if Kurtz fell. But he claimed that he had dressed down Kurtz (privately) in Washington in December. He stated without qualification that Gardner Hyman and he all supported my scientific position on the sTARBABY mess. (I knew, however, that he was telling all inquiring Fellows that a little old nonstatistician like himself just couldn't understand the problem.)


-  I also made an offer which, in view of all that had happened, was about as forgiving as one could possibly be: I said that Council would have no more trouble with sTARBABY if Skeptical Inquirer would publish the dissents of those Councilors who knew the truth about it -- the same suggestion made to Frazier a month earlier in regard to publishing the statistician-Councilor's referee report. They were not interested . 
    I heard nothing further. Even my November 6 note to Martin Gardner, asking him if he planned to be at the meeting, went unanswered. 
    As might be expected, at the December 15, 1979, meeting Kurtz (who never really believed I wasn't coming) carefully held a closed-door minipress conference that was kept a secret even from some attending Councilors until they were in the room and the doors were closing. 
    Equally surprising to some Councilors was the decision, made that same day, to hold an "election." [16]  No prior announcement had been made -- which violates every established code of parliamentary procedure. 

footnote 16] Gardner told me on November 23, 1980, that there had been no election, just a boot (the official minutes, dated Januari 8, do not even mention the matter), adding a week later that since Kurtz owns the CSICOP mailing list, parliamentary rules are "crap."

- Along the same line, I received a January 5, 1980, letter from Abell, four solid pages of "gush" (Abell's word). I felt I was in danger of spiritual diabetes from the syrup that had been poured over me all through 1979. (The funniest inundation had come from, of all people, Gardner, at Randi's behest.) The truth is, my admiring "friends," who "reluctantly" (Randi's adverb) voted my ejection at the December 15 meeting, had a long argument at this very meeting trying to identify the boob responsible for getting me onto the Council in the firstplace!

All of this was public knowledge from the publication of Rawlin's sTARBABY expose in October of 1981.  Yet Martin Gardner enjoyed a status in the culture of American science which was at odds with his behavior in confronting a major scandal in the "Skepticism" industry that had made him famous.  Given his frequently attacking scientists such as J. B. Rhine on implications of incompetence and dishonesty, he got away with massive hypocrisy as well s participating, passively, in the cover-up of a scandal in a group he was part of.  And, as can be seen in the above excerpts, he was far from the only one.

The media, when it writes about parapsychology lazily consults such "experts" as James Randi and the writings of Martin Gardner and other "Skeptics" because they know that anything else will invite attacks by the "Skeptics".  The role that laziness and cowardice has in maintaining the taboo of looking at the serious research into this is a pressing issue.  It is that the oil and other extraction industries use exactly the same tactics as the "Skepticism" industry that makes this even more important than a mere interest in honesty and telling the truth.  The industrial attack on legitimate research was pioneered by the "Skeptics".

The "Skepticism" industry really is an industry, providing many of the big names in the effort an income and fame.  In some cases, such as the extremely sleazy James Randi, it has made him the recipient of a small fortune and a reputation entirely unsupported by his record.  I will be writing on that record in the future.

One of the things my most recent look into the record of Martin Gardner has led me to conclude is that his competence in statistical analysis was probably a lot less than he was able to pass off in written form.  It could account for some of his reluctance to face opponents and even supporters in a public venue.  If he had been challenged by those he was attacking, without recourse to reference materials, I really suspect he would have been shown, publicly,  to be something of a fraud as well. No one can be competent in more than a small area of mathematics, the more complex that mathematics, the more involved it is with applications, the harder it is to obtain and maintain credibility in it.   While Gardner was hardly incompetent in mathematics, I doubt his knowledge of statistics was up to the task of attacking the work of scientists who, clearly, were far more competent in statistics.  I wonder what a close inspection by truly competent and informed reviewers of his written record would show in that regard.