April 2 - UFOs: Then, Now, and Next

Presented by Robert Sheaffer

Saturday, April 2, 1:30PM 

Live event on YouTube (https://youtu.be/EqiF-ApmO7c)

Robert Sheaffer, one of the leading skeptical investigators of UFOs, will discuss the history of the phenomenon (including an update about a famous case, now solved), recent news, and possible future directions.  He'll recall his mentor, colleague, and friend, Philip J. Klass (1919-2005), generally considered the top skeptical UFO investigator of his time.  Klass was a founding member of CSICOP (now called CSI, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), was one of the original conveners of NCAS in 1987, and was an important long-time mentor to the organization.  Also, what was it like to be a skeptic in the Washington, DC area in the 1970s?  Sheaffer can speak from personal experience.

Robert Sheaffer is a writer with a lifelong interest in astronomy and the question of life on other worlds.  The author of UFO Sightings (1998), his latest book is Bad UFOs (2016), which is also the name of his blog that casts a skeptical eye on claims about UFOs.  He was a founding member (with Philip J. Klass and James Oberg) of the UFO Subcommittee of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and was a longtime fellow of that organization.  Mr. Sheaffer is also a founding director and past Chairman of the Bay Area Skeptics, a local skeptics' group in the San Francisco Bay area.  He has appeared on many radio and TV programs, and his writings and reviews have appeared in such diverse publications as OMNI, Scientific American, Spaceflight, Astronomy, The Humanist, Free Inquiry, Reason, and others.  His "Psychic Vibrations" column in Skeptical Inquirer kept readers informed of weird developments in the "science" of UFOs, psychic research, cryptozoology, etc from 1977 to 2017.  Mr. Sheaffer lives near San Diego, California, having most recently worked as a data communications engineer in Silicon Valley. 

(Photo by Susan Gerbic.) 

For more information, call the NCAS Skeptic Line at 240-670-NCAS (6227).
ncas@ncas.org

Shadow of a Doubt - March 2022

• March 12 Lecture -  Save the Children: QAnon, the Blood Libel, and Witch-Hunts, Presented by Eve Siebrt, 1:30pm, NCASVideo YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/OB7gNxZnSuw
• Save the Date -- Klass Award Dinner on April 27
• March PhACT Lecture - Medical sociologist Robert Bartholomew will discuss his book, Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria, with Rob Palmer
• April NCAS Lecture -  In addition to Susan Gerbic's talk on Saturday, April 30 at 1:30 PM at Arlington Central Library, there will be another event, live on the NCASVideo YouTube channel
• Belgian Skeptics Win Court Case: Follow-up
• Confessions of Coincidence By Scott Snell
• Amazon Smile
• Shadow Light
• Time to Renew

Full Shadow here

Shadow of a Doubt - March 2022

March 2022

NCAS Public Lecture Series

Save the Children:
QAnon, the Blood Libel, and Witch-hunts

  YouTube Live Event with Q and A 

Presented by Eve Siebert, PhD
Adjunct Professor, Stockton University

Saturday, March 12, 1:30pm US/Eastern (UTC-05:00)

NCASVideo YouTube Channel:

https://youtu.be/OB7gNxZnSuw

For more information, call the NCAS Skeptic Line at 240-670-NCAS (6227).
ncas@ncas.org

Many QAnon proponents believe in a vast conspiracy by Democrats, celebrities, the Deep State, pizza parlors, and butterfly sanctuaries to kidnap, molest, traffic, mutilate, and murder children and to drain them of their sweet, sweet blood. Such accusations are not new, however. They have, for instance, affinities with the Satanic Panic accusations that roiled many countries in the 1980s and 90s.

But the story is much older than the late twentieth century. It ultimately derives from two parallel and mutually reinforcing strands of defamatory claims aimed at religious minorities. One is the Blood Libel, the belief that Jews annually choose a Christian child to be murdered for any number of contradictory reasons. The first Blood Libel accusation was made in the middle of the twelfth century, and it has never really gone away.

The other strand of accusations is older. It was initially used against Christians during the Roman Empire, but it was later recycled by the Church and deployed against the wrong kind of Christians, particularly heretical sects. Later the same accusations became central to the great witch-hunts of the late medieval and early modern periods. As with the Blood Libel, these accusations have remained with us in various forms, constantly resuscitated like a B-movie Dracula whenever some group needs to be dehumanized as an existential threat to Christianity, nationalism, or Christian nationalism.

Eve Siebert has a Ph.D. in medieval English literature from Saint Louis University. She has contributed to the Skeptical Humanities blog, Skeptic magazine’s Insight blog, the Skepticality podcast, and the Virtual Skeptics webcast. She is an adjunct professor at Stockton University.

There will be an online question-and-answer segment after the presentation.

https://www.ncas.org/2022/03/march-12-save-children-qanon-blood.html

How to Watch and Participate in this Online Event:

1) Use a supported browser... https://www.youtube.com/supported_browsers

2) Use the link https://youtu.be/OB7gNxZnSuw .  If typing the link, use capital "O".

3) The live stream begins shortly before 1:30pm US/Eastern (UTC-05:00) on Saturday, March 12, 2022.

4) To post questions, you must be signed in to a Google account.

5) Post your questions in the chat window to the right of the video player when the live stream is active.

6) Click into where it says "Say something..." and begin typing (up to 200 characters). Then click the send icon .

Along with your question, please post what city or town you're in.

Exclusive Opportunity for NCAS Members!

Following the talk and the question-and-answer segment, the YouTube presentation will end, and an online "reception" with our speaker and NCAS members will begin on Zoom.  Check your email inbox during the last few minutes of the Q and A. All NCAS members will receive information for joining the Zoom meeting with our speaker.  The "Zoom Client for Meetings" can be downloaded for free at https://zoom.us/download.  To join, just enter the Zoom Meeting ID number and Passcode provided in the email...no Zoom account is needed.

Save the Date -- Klass Award Dinner on April 27
NCAS is pleased to present its 2022 Philip J. Klass Award for outstanding contributions in critical thinking and scientific understanding to skeptical activist Susan Gerbic on Wednesday, April 27 at Busboys and Poets Takoma in Washington.  Then on Saturday, April 30, she'll present "Grief Vampires: Wikipedia and More" at Arlington Central Library.  Additional details to follow in the April Shadow of a Doubt.

March PhACT Lecture

Our skeptical neighbors to the north, the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT), will host their next online event on Saturday, March 19 at 2 PM ET.  Medical sociologist Robert Bartholomew will discuss his book, Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria, with Rob Palmer ("The Well-Known Skeptic").  Event details at http://www.phact.org/meetings.php.

April NCAS Lectures
In addition to Susan Gerbic's talk on Saturday, April 30 at 1:30 PM at Arlington Central Library, there will be another event, live on the NCASVideo YouTube channel; details TBD.

Belgian Skeptics Win Court Case: Follow-up

You may recall that over the past year, the Belgium skeptics group SKEPP sought crowdfunding for two SKEPP authors who "criticized the content of the pseudo-scientific master classes as well as the marketing tricks [Carl] Van de Velde [similar to Tony Robbins] uses to attract participants."  The authors won the defamation lawsuit brought by Van de Velde, who then took the case to the Court of Appeals.

(See https://www.ncas.org/2020/12/shadow-of-doubt-december-2020.html, "Belgian Skeptics Seek Crowdfunding after Multimillionaire Takes Lawsuit to Appeals Court.")

One of the defendants recently wrote about the original case and appeal here:

https://skepp.be/en/psychology-coaching/betrayal-and-justice

Confessions of Coincidence
By Scott Snell

Is this one worth even mentioning?  YOU be the judge!

On the morning of February 19, I set out on a day trip to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, near Chincoteague, on Virginia's Atlantic coast.  The occasion was to witness the launch of a cargo vessel to the International Space Station (ISS).   My friends and I were rewarded with spectacular clear skies and a suitably spectacular launch of the Antares rocket.  Its cargo vessel was named after Piers Sellers (1955-2016), a British-American meteorologist, Director of the Earth Science Division at NASA/GSFC, and NASA astronaut who completed three space shuttle flights for construction of the ISS.

On the way home, my friends suggested we stop in Edgewater to show me their sailboat.  It was nighttime when I pulled into a parking lot near a restaurant.  I glanced at it briefly while my friends were looking it up online, deciding whether to get dinner there.  After a minute or so, we braved the windy chill to visit the boat, then returned.  I looked again at the restaurant sign:

 

 

I said something like, "Hey, we saw the launch of the S.S. Piers Sellers today, and now we're outside a restaurant named The Pier."

None of us, least of all myself, were impressed by this, a "sort of" coincidence.  After all, the restaurant wasn't named "Piers."  The name match was only "sorta close."  And how remarkable is encountering something with "Pier" or "Piers" in the name when driving on a route from a space launch site that is, as is often the case, on a coast?  The given name "Piers" is not very common in the US, but it is in the UK.  The fact that the center of our attention for the day was a spacecraft named "Piers" narrowed the coincidence into an almost-respectable category.

I'll rate this as a Coincidence of the First Kind (in honor of J. Allen Hynek's categorization of UFO encounters).  Just sort of a passable coincidence, worth a smile, not a grin.

However, Piers Sellers is worth remembering.  Here's the Wikipedia article about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Sellers

AmazonSmile: Thanks to our members who are supporting NCAS!
When shopping at smile.amazon.com, you'll find the same low prices, vast selection, and convenient shopping experience as Amazon.com, with the added bonus that a portion of the purchase price (0.5%) goes to NCAS! It's simple and automatic, and it doesn't cost you anything!

AmazonSmile's disbursements to NCAS in the fourth quarter of 2021 came to $44.68, meaning that nearly $9000 of purchases were designated in support of NCAS.  (As an example of how NCAS can put that money to good use, it's more than enough to cover three hours of a Montgomery County lecture room rental.)

Thanks again to our members who have chosen to support NCAS!

For more information:

https://smile.amazon.com/about
https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-launches-amazonsmile-simple-automatic-way-customers

Shadow Light
Some members and contacts of NCAS receive a postal notification of this and every new monthly Shadow of a Doubt.  The Shadow Light postcard announces the monthly lecture and highlights of the electronic Shadow of a Doubt, which is available online at ncas.org/p/shadow.html.  NCAS thereby reduces Shadow production and postage costs.  To further reduce costs, members and contacts can opt out of postal notification altogether, while continuing to receive Shadow of a Doubt via e-mail.  To opt out, send us an e-mail at ncas@ncas.org.

Time to Renew?
Be sure to check your renewal date above your postal address on the Shadow Light postcard. Send any queries to ncas@ncas.org.  Use the online membership form to renew.
https://www.ncas.org/p/shadow.html

March 12 - Save the Children: QAnon, the Blood Libel, and Witch-hunts

Presented by Eve Siebert, Ph.D.

Saturday, March 12, 2022, 1:30 pm

Link to live stream:
https://youtu.be/OB7gNxZnSuw

Many QAnon proponents believe in a vast conspiracy by Democrats, celebrities, the Deep State, pizza parlors, and butterfly sanctuaries to kidnap, molest, traffic, mutilate, and murder children and to drain them of their sweet, sweet blood. Such accusations are not new, however. They have, for instance, affinities with the Satanic Panic accusations that roiled many countries in the 1980s and 90s.

But the story is much older than the late twentieth century. It ultimately derives from two parallel and mutually reinforcing strands of defamatory claims aimed at religious minorities. One is the Blood Libel, the belief that Jews annually choose a Christian child to be murdered for any number of contradictory reasons. The first Blood Libel accusation was made in the middle of the twelfth century, and it has never really gone away.

The other strand of accusations is older. It was initially used against Christians during the Roman Empire, but it was later recycled by the Church and deployed against the wrong kind of Christians, particularly heretical sects. Later the same accusations became central to the great witch-hunts of the late medieval and early modern periods. As with the Blood Libel, these accusations have remained with us in various forms, constantly resuscitated like a B-movie Dracula whenever some group needs to be dehumanized as an existential threat to Christianity, nationalism, or Christian nationalism.

Eve Siebert has a Ph.D. in medieval English literature from Saint Louis University. She has contributed to the Skeptical Humanities blog, Skeptic magazine’s Insight blog, the Skepticality podcast, and the Virtual Skeptics webcast. She is an adjunct professor at Stockton University.

Questions from the audience will be entered into Live Chat and then relayed to the speaker.