Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Paul Kurtz, a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo and a prominent secular humanist publisher, proposed forming a dedicated scientific body to investigate paranormal claims at a 1976 meeting of the American Humanist Association, arguing that claims of astrology, psychic powers and other fringe phenomena were spreading through popular media largely unchallenged by working scientists who considered the subject beneath serious attention.

The new Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal was formally launched at a conference on 30 April and 1 May 1976, structured as a standing committee that would commission and publish critical investigations rather than a general membership society, with Kurtz as chair from its founding. Its inaugural roster of fellows drew heavily on figures already known for public skepticism, including the astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan, the professional magician James Randi, whose expertise in the techniques of deception made him valuable for evaluating claimed psychic feats, and the psychologist Ray Hyman, who would later co-author the government evaluation that helped end the CIA's remote viewing program. The Committee launched its flagship publication, then titled The Zetetic and soon renamed Skeptical Inquirer, to carry its investigations to a wider public audience, establishing from the outset a dual identity as both a working research body and a media focused advocacy organization.

Over its history CSICOP and its successor organization have investigated a wide range of claims examined elsewhere in this Atlas, including remote viewing research at SRI International and the Stargate program, the statistical claims of laboratories such as PEAR at Princeton, astrology and dowsing, publishing its findings through Skeptical Inquirer and, through fellows including Ray Hyman and James Alcock, by direct participation in government and academic review panels. The organization was not without its own internal controversies: critics both outside and occasionally within the skeptical movement have argued that some CSICOP investigations, particularly early ones, approached claims with conclusions already reached rather than neutral inquiry, a tension the organization has continued to negotiate as it balances advocacy against paranormal belief with claims to disinterested scientific evaluation.

In November 2006 the organization shortened its name from the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a change intended to read as less cumbersome, to drop the word paranormal from an organization whose scope had broadened to include fringe medicine and other pseudoscience, and to signal the more measured phrase skeptical inquiry rather than a narrower promise to debunk. The Committee continues to operate today under the Center for Inquiry, publishing Skeptical Inquirer roughly six times a year and running public outreach programs on scientific reasoning.