From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates@virtuallystrange.net>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 15:42:17 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 15:42:17 -0500
Subject: sTARBABY by Dennis Rawlins




Source: C.U.R.A. - The International Astrology Research Center

http://cura.free.fr/xv/14starbb.html


sTARBABY by Dennis Rawlins

Note P.G.: This important article, published 20 years ago in
FATE Magazine (No. 34, October 1981), is reproduced by kind
permission of the editor.

Ever since it came into being the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) has proudly
proclaimed itself the scourge of the "new nonsense": astrology,
ESP, UFOs and other phenomena of which it does not approve. Its
pronouncements on these and other subjects have received
widespread attention and uncritical acceptance in the news
media.

Critics such as Fate, professional parapsychologists and
moderate skeptics like former CSICOP cochairman Prof. Marcello
Truzzi, sociologist at Eastern Michigan University, have
questioned the Committee's commitment to objective, scientific
investigation of paranormal claims and have accused some CSICOP
spokesmen of misrepresenting issues and evidence. But such
dissenting views were little noticed by media writers eager to
headline sensational -- although frequently unsupported --
debunking claims.

The story that follows, written by a man who is himself
skeptical of the paranormal, confirms what critics of CSICOP
have long suspected: that the organization is committed to
perpetuating a position, not to determining the truth.

(The Editors of FATE Magazine).

I used to believe it was simply a figment of the National
Enquirer's weekly imagination that the Science Establishment
would cover up evidence for the occult. But that was in the era
B.C. -- Before the Committee. I refer to the "Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal" (CSICOP),
of which I am a cofounder and on whose ruling Executive Council
(generally called the Council) I served for some years.

I am still skeptical of the occult beliefs CSICOP was created to
debunk. But I have changed my mind about the integrity of some
of those who make a career of opposing occultism. I now believe
that if a flying saucer landed in the backyard of a leading
anti-UFO spokesman, he might hide the incident from the public
(for the public's own good, of course). He might swiftly
convince himself that the landing was a hoax, a delusion or an
"unfortunate" interpretation of mundane phenomena that could be
explained away with "further research."

The irony of all this particularly distresses me since both in
print and before a national television audience I have stated
that the conspiratorial mentality of believers in occultism
presents a real political danger in a voting democracy. Now I
find that the very group I helped found has partially Justified
this mentality.

*  *  *

CSICOP originated with the statement "Objections to Astrology,"
published in the September-October 1975 issue of The Humanist.
"Objections" was signed by 186 scientists, including 18 Nobel
prizewinners, who were justly upset at the growing newspaper
exploitation of a public that wasn't being informed that
astronomy and astrology aren't the same thing. "Objections" and
its child CSICOP were both the creation of The Humanist's then-
editor Paul Kurtz [1]  and received widespread national
publicity.

Unfortunately the statement was published (both in The Humanist
and by Kurtz's own private publishing house Prometheus Books) in
conjunction with a largely valuable article which included a
misconceived attack (by Lawrence Jerome) upon the claims of the
prominent French neoastrologers Michel and Francoise Gauquelin.
Almost none of the signers read Jerome's analysis before
publication.

Concerned that such an attack could cause trouble for the
rationalist movement, I contacted Kurtz for the first time by
phone on November 3, 1975. He admitted privately that I was just
one of a number of scientists who had called him about this
article immediately after The Humanist published it. But the
"Objections" statement was rushed into print intact, along with
the uncorrected article, by Prometheus.

The embarrassment was compounded when Michel Gauquelin proved to
be a more skilled statistician than his critic -- and intimated
possible legal action. Kurtz, under some pressure from within
the AHA for his antiparanormal effort, realized he had a
problem. Publicly he admitted no error but privately was frantic
to attack Gauquelin in print. Uncle Remus might say, Br'er
Kurtz, he could just hardly wait to sock that TARBABY a second
time to force him to release the stuck first fist.

During that first phone conversation Kurtz urged me to write an
article refuting Gauquelin -- in about two weeks -- to beat a
deadline for the January-February 1976 issue of The Humanist.
This is not, it need hardly be said, the way of well-researched
scholarship.

All that fall of 1975 Kurtz was mailing Jerome, me and UCLA
astronomer Prof. George Abell reams of articles relating to
Gauquelin, including the lengthy March 1975 report and alibis of
the Belgian Comite Para which some years earlier, to its
surprise, had confirmed the approximate successrate Gauquelin
had predicted in his strongest alleged neoastrological
correlation, now generally called the "Mars Effect": Gauquelin's
results showed that 22 percent of European sports champions are
born with Mars rising (Sector 1) or transiting (Sector 4), to
express it roughly. Since Gauquelin divides the sky into 12
sectors, the purely chance probability of Mars' being in a
prespecified pair of sectors is about 2/12 or 17 percent, well
below the observed rate of 22 percent. For the 2088 sports
champions in Gauquelin's sample, such a difference is
statistically very significant (because of the largeness of the
sample); the odds are millions-to-one against its having
occurred by chance.

I did what I could with the material at hand. Even while
continuing to analyze this strange problem, I sent Kurtz a paper
which he relayed to others interested in the case, among them
Jerome, Abell and Marvin Zelen (then director of the Statistical
Laboratory of the State University of New York at Buffalo, but
soon to move on to Harvard University). The paper, while
suggesting that there might be a natural explanation for the
Mars Effect, explicitly noted that if the European sampling was
unreliable no amount of analysis (based on this sample) could be
certain to detect that.

Thus, since a fresh sample and analysis of it would be an
enormous labor, my paper recommended that any new test offered
Gauquelin be both (a) extremely clear-cut in its predicted
result and (b) free from the complexities and subtle bias-
problems of sampling and of the astronomical/demographical
influences that affected the expected ("chance") level (to which
experimental observed data, once collected, would be compared).
I suggested a possible experiment that would satisfy these
conditions: Could Gauquelin use the position of Mars in
competing athletes' horoscopes to beat the posted odds on
sporting events?

At this time we all wondered, like other scientists on first
acquaintance with the Mars Effect, if there was a possible
"natural" (nonoccult) explanation. As seen from Earth, Mars
appears near the sun more often than not. And birth rates are
higher at dawn, when the sun enters Sector 1, so one would
expect all births (not just sports champions') to be slightly
more frequent when Mars is in Sector 1. For convenience I will
call this astronomical/demographical intrusion (or "influence")
the "Mars/dawn" factor. We will return to this since the
Keystone CSICOPs' inability to compute this factor (until years
after it was too late) was to prove their undoing.

My manuscript (which gently corrected the "Objections"-
affiliated false attack on Gauquelin) was not published in
January-February Humanist on the grounds that it had arrived too
late for the deadline -- although it had been written in less
than two weeks. Instead Kurtz published two other papers in that
Humanist issue: one by Abell, on astrology in general and
Gauquelin in particular, which based its discussion of the
gravitational effects of Mars on us upon a common popular-
science misconception, causing an error by a factor of a few
million. The other, by Zelen, was "A Challenge" to Gauquelin.

The Challenge was a classic control experiment: isolate the
sports ability variable by comparing the Mars horoscopic
positions of the champions Gauquelin had already collected vs.
the Mars horoscopic positions of all other persons (nonsports
champions), the "control" group, born about the same time and
place as the champions. If the control group exhibits the same
hit-rate (a "hit": being born when Mars resides in celestial
Sector 1 or 4) as the champions, 22 percent, then clearly sports
ability has nothing to do with the Mars Effect, which is thus
revealed as merely a by-product of purely natural influences.
This is what the top CSICOPs expected to happen.

If the nonchampions' hit-rate turns out to be what Gauquelin had
said is correct for ordinary people, namely 17 percent, then the
control experiment has come out in Gauquelin's favor, since
sports ability is isolated as the link to the five-percent
difference.

The Challenge concluded (emphasis added): "We now have an
objective way for unambiguous corroboration or disconfirmation.
... [Thus we may] settle this question" -- statements leaving no
doubt at all that if Gauquelin met this test he would achieve
confirmation of his claims.

I was appalled at the potential disaster that awaited if Zelen's
presumptions (that the European sample was unbiased and that the
cause of the Mars Effect was a natural influence) were wrong. As
I checked further into Gauquelin's output, I became convinced
there were serious problems in these presumptions. Kurtz said I
should speak with Abell whom I did not know personally. When I
reached him by phone on December 6,1 said I was worried about
the Challenge.

Abell snapped, "Oh-what's-wrong-with-it?" as if uttering one
word. I explained politely that the Challenge depended entirely
upon the validity of the European sampling. Abell said he was
sure that Gauquelin was honest and the Mars Effect was just a
natural influence in the data. I agreed that it had looked that
way at first to me too but that recent, still-proceeding
attempts to verify the Mars/dawn factor's actual effect left me
in skeptical suspension of judgment and thus in fear of possible
trouble. Why gamble the outcome of a crucial experiment upon
such an uncertain factor?

But to Abell that just wasn't worth bothering about. He was more
interested in who I was. Had he ever heard of me'? Had we met at
conferences?

I mentioned a few papers l'd published in top journals. In
addition I pointed out a couple of errors in his upcoming paper
(such as the gravitational effect of Mars previously referred
to) and I urged that these be corrected before the issue went to
press. He said they didn't matter; he'd rather leave them as
they were.

Since Abell and Kurtz wanted to check Gauquelin's calculations,
I offered to help since I had recently prepared an efficient
computer program that would calculate all planets' positions to
one arcminute accuracy, a program that could be adapted to the
Gauquelin project. Abell said fine, just send it along. He spoke
as if he were doing me a favor.

Declining his generosity, l repeated my offer to do the work if
it would help. He replied that it probably would be "easy" to
compile such a program; after all, the astrological outfits now
had computer horoscopes. So I suggested he try those routes. In
case he wished to construct his own program, l imparted a few
elegant mathematical shortcuts to assist him. l mention this
because anyone who understood the necessary science would have
quickly realized that I was an experienced specialist in this
area.

Nonetheless Abell subsequently told Kurtz and other CSICOPs that
I was an "amateur" and he continued to say so until October
1978. This was a major factor in CSICOP's decision to ignore me,
the only planetary-motion specialist ever involved in the
Gauquelin project (which was, of course, a planetary-motion
problem). At this point of no return, Kurtz depended upon
Abell's astronomical advice in his decisions on the Gauquelin
investigation. It was to take them two years (and help) to
perform the calculations Abell had called "easy."

*  *  *

I continued to examine the details of Gauquelin's claims and on
January 23,1976, completed a mathematical analysis showing
clearly that the "natural" Mars/dawn factor (a) couldn't come
anywhere near explaining the Mars Effect and (b) had been
already included by Gauquelin in his reports' expected-frequency
values. Although Gauquelin's method was different from mine, our
results were so similar that it was clear he had done this part
of his experiments correctly.

The Mars/dawn factor was the only possible "natural" influence
(although Zelen and Abell didn't seem to realize it) that could
have lifted the nonchampions' hit-rate from 17 to 22 percent.

I communicated this to Kurtz immediately and forcefully. Getting
no response, I phoned Zelen on March 8 and made an utterly
fruitless appeal. By this time the Challenge had been published.
And more support for it was in press, to appear (over my
strenuous objections) in March-April 1976 Humanist (page 53).

The forces of antioccultism met in Buffalo, N.Y., on April 30
and May 1, 1976, to found CSICOP. I gave one of the Founders'
Day speeches. It contained enough good press copy and one-liners
to get me selected for the nine-man ruling Council of CSICOP.

Founders' Day was above all a media event. Reporters were wooed
and catered to. I certainly had no objection to that, having had
largely pleasant encounters with the media. But I was naive
about the one overriding reality: a Committee that lives by the
media will inevitably be ruled by its publicists, not by its
scholars.

Once CSICOP was under way, I found myself not only on the ruling
Council but also on the editorial board. Although most of the
Fellows sought, like me, to battle pseudoscientific bunk, they
disagreed about the means. Except for the agreement to start a
magazine (Zetetic, later Skeptical Inquirer) there was little
cohesion on public policy, a vacuum that was filled (if not in
fact caused) by tacit cohesion on Private Priority Number One
for active CSICOP Fellows: maximum personal press coverage. [2]

Neither I nor most other Councilors were to be reinvolved in the
Gauquelin affair for some time, since Kurtz was handling it in
The Humanist, which he still edited.

I referred to Gauquelin's results in a paper for Humanist
publication sent to Kurtz on June 5, 1976, a paper soon
thereafter sent to Marcello Truzzi and eventually published in
Skeptical Inquirer (Fall-Winter 1977). It attacked Gauquelin's
Mars Effect on various grounds, pointedly excluding the Mars/
dawn factor on which Kurtz, Zelen and Abell (hereafter to be
called KZA) were gambling CSICOP's reputation.

The September-October 1976 issue of Humanist published a paper
by Abell and son, with commentary (formally coauthorship) by the
Gauquelins. I did not see it until much later. Kurtz was no
longer sending galleys or confiding to me the details of his
increasing obsession with his neoastrological sTARBABY.

The paper had a number of important features. For one thing,
Abell affirmed Zelen's "unambiguous corroboration or
disconfirmation" statement. As Abell put it, it "appears to be a
definitive test." He went on, "The [control] test will be
refereed by a disinterested and competent committee of
scientists, and we hope that the results will be available in
about six months." In fact, the test was never neutrally
refereed -- and the time estimate was equally ironic.

Reading Abell's article, I was struck, first, with the
realization that every calculation was simple arithmetic. His
computer analysis relied on an almanac provided by the U.S.
Naval Observatory which listed Mars' celestial longitudes at a
fixed interval. Instead of using spherical trigonometry to
convert Mars' positions to equatorial coordinates (as the
Gauquelin experiment required), Abell stuck with the ecliptical
coordinates of the USNO program.

Since Abell had indicated in December 1975 that he intended to
verify computationally Gauquelin's original calculations, I was
amazed to read now, nearly a year later, that "we have not
duplicated or checked the Gauquelins' original calculations" (my
emphasis). How the devil could this be, when Abell had in hand
(and was using in his simple-arithmetic analysis) a Mars almanac
and all the birth data for the 2000-plus sports champions of
Gauquelin's famous original Mars Effect study?

Incredibly, it appeared that over all the intervening months,
Abell, the CSICOP Gauquelin-test subcommittee's sole astronomer,
had not performed the elementary calculations of the astrologer
he was taking on! Abell drove Kurtz crazy with stalls, mostly
variations on not "having time" to do the work. Yet he found
time to do all 2000-plus calculations -- the wrong way -- for
the paper we've just been analyzing!

*  *  *

When 1977 opened, it had been v s the better part of a year
since I had had any contact with the Gauquelin matter. But
Skeptical Inquirer (then Zetetic) editor Truzzi asked me to
referee an antiastrology paper. l found to my astonishment that
the paper was promoting The Humanist and Comite Para theory
(which heretofore had not disgraced Skeptical Inquirer and
CSICOP directly) that Gauquelin's results could be explained
away by the Mars/dawn demographical influences.

Incredulous that my 1975-76 warnings were still being ignored, l
sent out on March 29, 1977, a full mathematical explanation of
the Mars/ dawn problem -- to no avail. The unkillable Mars/dawn
misconception appeared intact on page 50 of Spring-Summer 1977
Skeptical Inquirer.

But Truzzi did not ignore the memo's implications. He phoned to
ask if I would object to his sending the memo to Gauquelin to
show him that not everyone on CSICOP disagreed with him. l told
Truzzi to go ahead.

That summer Kurtz phone me in an agitated state. Gauquelin had
shown him the memo (apparently in early July). Then in August
Gauquelin attempted to quote the memo in an upcoming Humanist
paper. Feeling that this would be mistaken as support from me
for Gauquelin, l wrote Kurtz to ask that he publish a very short
paper (dated September 17, 1977), pointing out that (a) the
Mars/dawn effect ( KZA's only "out," their sole semiplausible
hope of justifying the Control Test) could not explain away
Gauquelin's results; (b) there was in fact no "natural"
explanation of the Mars Effect; (c) I believed that the sampling
of sports champions was amiss; and (d) I didn't believe
Gauquelin's claims merited serious investigation yet.

Angry that I had let the Mars/dawn memo get into Gauquelin's
hands in the first place, Kurtz urged that I ask Gauquelin not
to make public use of it. He then used the memo's privacy
(pretending this was my idea!) as a basis for deleting
Gauquelin's comments on the memo -- and scratching my proposed
September 17 paper altogether! [3]

I did not yet understand Kurtz's anxiety over heading off my
public dissent. He neglected to inform me that in press at this
very time was the upcoming KZA report on the Control Test
(nonchampions) results. This report flew right in the face of
the truth revealed in the very memo l'd agreed to keep private
only because I believed KZA would pay attention to it.

The KZA Control Test report appeared in November-December 1977
Humanist. It marked the beginning of the end of CSICOP's
credibility -- because it was at this point that the handling of
the Gauquelin problem was transformed from mere bungling to
deliberate cover-up.

Before publication the KZA Control Test report was shown to the
only other member of the Gauquelin subcommittee, Prof. Elizabeth
Scott of the statistics department of the University of
California at Berkeley, who was so upset ("I feel that the
[paper's] discussion may be misleading") that she telephoned
each one of the KZA trio (as I had done two years earlier). They
ignored her.

Back in December 1975 Abell had expressed an interest in
checking Gauquelin's celestial-sector positions but had not done
this even for his September-October 1976 Humanist article. Now
the new report (November-December 1977 Humanist, page 29) stated
(emphasis added): "The committee ... has not ... yet [!] checked
all [any?] of the [Gauquelin's celestial] computations. Prof.
Owen Gingerich (astronomer at Harvard) is in the process of
reviewing the calculations concerning the position of Mars ..."
In addition: "The committee has agreed to make an independent
test of the alleged Mars Effect by a study of sports champions
born in the United States. This test is now under way."

As the data started to come in, KZA realized they were in deep
trouble on the Control Test (based on European data entirely
computed by Gauquelin) and so were forced to propose the fresh-
sample American test in a July 1977 meeting with Gauquelin. By
autumn the birth-record data were coming in for the American
test. Now it was not a matter of just using Gauquelin's
celestial calculations; CSICOP must compute positions not
previously done -- and no report could be issued until this was
accomplished.

Kurtz started receiving the American birth data as early as
September. Stung by his private knowledge that he'd lost the
Control Test (as he confessed aloud at least once), he was
frantic to get on with the diversion of retesting (using the
American sample) as quickly as possible.

By October 20 Kurtz, who was getting nothing from Abell and
Gingerich, phoned and asked me, betraying not the faintest sense
of irony, if I could do the work. He was so relieved at my
consent that he instantly added me to the subcommittee on
Gauquelin (presumably to replace Elizabeth Scott, now a
nonperson). A CSICOP check for $100 accompanied the first
installment of 72 athletes' birth data.

Kurtz told me that this time he wanted an advance look at the
results, to see what was going to happen. He stressed that his
sneak peek was to be strictly confidential. In all innocence I
probably broke security first thing by phoning Abell in Los
Angeles on October 22 to ask where in San Diego I could gain
access to a computer. (I'd only just moved to California.)

Abell protested that he was doing the work with Gingerich, and
what the devil was Kurtz in such a rush for anyway? Although I
agreed that Kurtz was pushing, I remarked he'd waited two years
and one might forgive some impatience. Abell tried to talk me
out of getting involved but I stressed that this was entirely
Kurtz's idea, not mine. He and Gingerich were free to compute
these or any other data but Kurtz was hot to get a look at the
way things were going to come out.

Abell gave me the name of John Schopp of the astronomy
department of San Diego State University (SDSU) who'd helped
Abell with a textbook he'd written. So on October 27, two days
after the birth data arrived, I drove out to SDSU and met John
and his colleague Fred Talbert. Fred got me hooked up that
evening. I fed the problem into the computer, ran off the 72
positions and mailed a printout to Kurtz on the way home.

It's revealing that a lone "amateur" could perform at one
sitting a project that the combined CSICOP forces of UCLA,
Harvard and SUNYAB didn't get anywhere with for years, despite
their access to a highly accurate U.S. Naval Observatory
planetary-position program.

In succeeding weeks Kurtz mailed me further birth data as well
as unsolicited cash. At one point (after 120 names) I told him
by phone (he preferred hearing the accumulated score instantly,
without waiting the few days the mail took) that the key-sector
score was now at 22 percent. He groaned. l emphasized that the
sample size was too small for the result to be statistically
meaningful. He drew no comfort from this remark. l asked if he
were sure that this was a clean sample. He was, so I assured him
that the score was bound to revert to roughly 17 percent as the
sample got larger -- unless astrological claims were true, which
I certainly didn't believe.

Nonetheless he continued speaking in a pained voice, as someone
cursed with a demon that would not go away.

Meanwhile KZA's November-December 1977 Humanist Control Test
report appeared. No one then on CSICOP's Council (other than
Kurtz) had seen it before publication. [4]  Yet it committed
CSICOP to a cover-up course which ultimately sucked the whole
Council into sTARBABY's goo, as one's willingness to go along
with the cover-up (to protect The Cause) became a test of
loyalty.

In the report KZA tried to obscure the clear success Gauquelin
had scored. The Control Test had entailed analyzing 16,756
nonchampions born near (in time and space) 303 champions (a
subsample of the original 2088 champions). KZA had believed that
they too would score at 22 percent in key sectors ( I and 4)
thus establishing that the champions' 22 percent hitrate was
"natural."

Instead the nonchampions scored at exactly the chance -level (17
percent) that Gauquelin and I had predicted from our Mars/dawn-
corrected expectation-curve analysis.

Faced with this disaster KZA pulled a bait-and-switch. (Thus the
report will be hereafter called the BS report.) Suddenly
converting their nonchampions test into a champions test, they
attacked the subsample of 303 champions! The subsample had of
course been chosen simply as a means en route to testing the
point KZA had proposed the Control Test Challenge for in the
first place, namely, was chance level 17 percent or 22 percent?

Since the 303 had scored at 22 percent (like the full 2088) the
only ploy left was to protest that this 22 percent (of the 303)
was not strongly statistically significant (not as strong as for
2088). Now, anyone familiar with statistics knows that no sample
of 303 cases can produce strongly significant results if one is
trying to measure 22 percent versus 17 percent rates. But you
don't have to know statistics to realize that the attack on the
303-champion subsample's nonstrength could have been done before
the 16,756 nonchampions were collected and calculated -- at
enormous cost in time and labor to Gauquelin (all 303 champion
birth data had been calculated and published years ago).

To sum up: the whole purpose of the Control Test -- of
collecting nearly 17,000 nonchampions (the control group) -- had
been to test whether Gauquelin's champions' 22-percent hitrate
was just a "natural" (nonastrological) function of the time and
place of birth. Had the nonchampions control group shown at the
22-percent rate also, the "natural" hypothesis would have been
confirmed and Gauquelin's neoastrology would have been
disconfirmed.

However, the opposite occurred. The nonchampions' rate turned
out to be 17 percent, establishing the champions' 22-percent
rate as a real, highly significant above-chance result.

I first read the Control Test report in March 1978 after seeing
a letter in the March-April issue of Humanist from Lawrence
Jerome who "congratulated" CSICOP for confirming his erroneous
1975 analysis!

Incredibly Jerome was claiming Confirmation by the Zelen-Abell
test, =A1f his (and their) belief that astronomical/ demographical
biases explained Gauquelin's 22-percent rate. "The [Control]
test proved no such thing," I wrote Kurtz. "To the contrary,
[Zelen and Abell] confirmed Gauquelin's expectation values ...
showing that there was indeed about a 17-percent probability for
being in sectors I and 4 for nonchampions.... If I believed the
European sample was clean (which I don't), I would count the
[Control] test as a major proof in support of Gauquelin."

Years later I learned that Abell (as well as Kurtz) had known
the awful truth all along. In 1980 1 obtained a copy of the
smokiest Smoking Gun in this case, a letter written by Abell to
Kurtz on April 29, 1977, privately telling him what l've
explained here in preceding paragraphs -- the same thing l'd
often explained to KZA.

The Smoking Letter answers the same key question that hung over
the Watergate conspirators: When did they know? The answer is
astonishing: over half a year before the cover-up Control Test
report was published.

The letter admits that "in a sense" Gauquelin's calculation of a
17-percent chance-level had been "vindicated." Abell says the
very test CSICOP had urged Gauquelin to carry out had shown his
findings to be "significant." He also says that the 22 percent
applied to both the 303 subsample champions and the full 2088.

The Smoking Letter to Kurtz reveals that KZA knew they were in
trouble. But as Abell learned pronto, Kurtz wasn't about to
publish any letter that admitted Gauquelin had won the Control
Test. He was going to pretend that nothing had gone wrong.

Abell cosigned the BS report. Despite later claims that he
didn't know what he was signing, Abell has never broken publicly
with this report's united front.

Early in April I wrote KZA again, exhibiting in tabular form
further difficulties with their report. KZA had suggested that
the subsample of 303 champions showed geographical variations.
This move had broken the subsample into subsubsamples! (The
smaller a group, the weaker its ability to prove anything
statistically.)

My April 6 letter's tables simply showed that none of the
deviations (of, say, Paris' hit-rate vs. Belgium's) were
statistically significant. [5]

Again, Br'er Kurtz, he lay low: still no written reply.

In mid-April Kurtz visited California and we saw quite a bit of
each other. He couldn't stop talking about the Gauquelin
business. In the middle of conversations on other matters he
would grow silent and go back to discussing some possible "out."

During this visit and subsequent phone conversations Kurtz tried
out various schemes for getting off the hook. My favorite was
the notion that Gauquelin fudged the nonchampions to force the
score down to 17 percent. [6]

Hilarious. First, if fraud or bias was involved, it would be
lots easier to work it on the smaller original champions sample.
Second, it was ridiculous to suspect fraud simply because the
nonchampions came out at the very level chance would predict!

This is "scientific investigation" which CSICOP claims as its
middle name?

*  *  *

Incredibly, despite all, I remained largely unsuspicious --
indeed I was downright enthusiastic -- about CSICOP as a whole.

Late that spring of 1978 I was back East visiting my family.
Simultaneously Kurtz was in a tizzy because the last American
data in the Gauquelin test had come in and he was as frantically
impatient as ever to get them computed -- even waking my family
one night and then, after finding I wasn't in, hanging up so
abruptly that I found a note by the telephone the next morning
asking me who this "Curts" was.

Since I was about to fly to Europe (and my files were back in
San Diego) I suggested Kurtz get Abell, Gingerich or Jerome to
try to do the work. But Kurtz kept pleading.

So I postponed my European trip.

I bothered the Loyola College computer people for a computer
number and time. Next I hired trusted friend Mary Kidd to
determine time zones (for the whole American test to date).
Since she was sympathetic to astrology (and was not told that
Gauquelin was involved), this would eliminate possible bias on
my part. Needless to say, this is the sort of precaution that
should have been applied (much more rigorously) at the sampling
stage.

Mary interrupted her affairs to rush the zone-determinations
work and get it back to me. I went right to the computer and
stayed up all night typing in the program and the data. The next
morning, June 8, all 325 athletes' sector-positions were
computed, tabulated and dropped in the mail to Kurtz.

No sooner was this task finished and the American test
supposedly completed than Kurtz phoned me up and said oops, we
accidentally missed a lot of names -- they'll be sent right away
to the states' birth-record offices and we'll get the birth data
back late this summer .

So the whole push-and-shove aggravation of all those helpful
people had been as needless as the original Control Test
Challenge.

I returned to San Diego some weeks later. The last 82 names came
in at summer's end.

I ran off the final data at SDSU. The cumulative score was not
22 percent or 17 percent but only 13'/2 percent -- strongly
anti-Gauquelin. On September 18 I sent Kurtz a table of the
totals for all 407 American athletes along with a brief report
on the results which included gentle corrections of the various
past errors published by CSICOP Fellows throughout this affair.

Since I had performed all the science of the American experiment
that had reversed the earlier (Control Test) Gauquelin victory
over CSICOP (lifting a three-year curse from Kurtz's shoulders),
I innocently thought that Kurtz could hardly refuse again to
publish my dissent. In a covering note I made it clear that this
time I would insist. The moment Kurtz read this, l was a dead
CSICOP in his royal eyes.

When the report arrived on September 20, Kurtz phoned to gush
about how much he liked it, adding, however, that Zelen and
Abell might not agree. Then he casually asked if I could send
along the readout of individual positions too. He spoke of the
upcoming Council meeting and press conference (to be held in
Washington, D.C., on December 6, 1978) and assured me my travel
fare would be paid.

The very next day, without even waiting for the data to arrive,
Kurtz wrote Abell to suggest that KZA confer and prepare the
test report for publication (excluding me). He did this, l
remind the reader, less than 24 hours after assuring me he was
eager to publish my September 18 report.

Kurtz's letter also called on Zelen and Abell -- the very men
whose long immobility on the Gauquelin project had led to my
being asked to do the computation -- to verify the work! Kurtz
enclosed for Abell the readouts of the first 325 celestial-
sector positions without saying anything to me about it, since I
had emphasized that providing answers is the worst way to get
independent checks of them.

It is obvious from his September 21 letter that Kurtz's promise,
made the day before, to publish my report was being rethought.

Sure enough, once the calculations for the last 82 athletes had
reached him, Kurtz phoned me and made two things clear:

(1) He wasn't so sure that The Humanist was the right place
after all for my report. He mentioned Skeptical Inquirer. (Later
he welched even there.)

(2) He didn't think he could pay my way to the meeting in
Washington.

With Kurtz's letter Abell received my answers for 325 of the
American athletes. Ten days later Abell still had not reproduced
them. With Kurtz frantically pushing for verification Abell was
feeling the pressure. On October 5 he called to rage at me for
over an hour. I call it the Jaws phone call.

Abell started it by complaining that KZA hadn't-had-the-time to
compute the 407 data, adding that I had. He asked me to describe
my method to him allegedly because he was supposed to check my
work. Since he now had all the answers from Kurtz, there was no
longer any good scientific reason not to. So I did -- especially
after finding that Abell still had a misconceived idea of how to
perform the sector calculations.

Abell asked me to send a copy of my computer-program so that he
could verify it. l responded that obviously it would be simpler
just to check a few of the answers he now possessed via hand-
calculation out of the American Ephemeris & Nautical Almanac.

Nevertheless Abell persisted, eventually justifying himself by
saying he wanted to check out all the ordmag 1000 lines of the
program to insure its accuracy! At any rate, l refused to give
the program to anyone talking such transparent nonsense.

Abell couldn't believe that my calculations were correct because
the score had come out at 13 1/2 percent instead of 22 percent.
He wondered if I had tampered with the sample. I replied the
sample came from Kurtz.

By choice I had had nothing to do with gathering the sample.
Obviously neither had Abell. Nonetheless Kurtz insisted that
Abell coauthor the lengthy published Skeptical Inquirer report.
Unfortunately "coauthorship" in a Kurtz publication need not
require that you cowrite "your" paper -- or even read it before
publication. Your name gets tacked on to add prestige -- and you
get to read all about it when it's published!

Abell asked countless questions about my academic training.
Obviously unaware that my papers on planetary motion had been
published in eminent astronomical journals here and abroad, he
demanded, "How do I know you're not just a bullshitter?"

On October 6, the day after the Jaws call, Abell phoned San
Diego State University to verify his suspicion that someone
besides the "amateur" had actually done the Gauquelin experiment
computations. He visited SDSU on the 11th, questioning at least
two more scholars, who told him I had seemed quite competent
when I delivered a recent lecture to an astronomy department
symposium.

Between September 20 and late October I spoke fairly regularly
with Kurtz regarding the Gauquelin problem and the upcoming
December 6 Washington press conference. His private intentions
surfaced as soon as his use for my work was finished.

Soon enough it became apparent that not only was Abell being
invited to the press conference, he was to be the CSICOP
spokesman on astrology in Washington -- this despite Kurtz's
open admission in our conversations over the previous months
that there had been a screw-up in the UCLA and Harvard experts'
calculations. But now suddenly he began disremembering he'd ever
said that!

I had now to face the fact that Kurtz was trying to suppress my
dissenting report and (by not paying my travel fare) keep me
from the December Council meeting, while inviting to Washington
as a prominent CSICOP authority the very person whose appointed
task I had myself performed.

I phoned Kurtz on October 23 in one final attempt to impress
upon him the fact that he was locking CSICOP into an
investigation that would curse the Committee to its dying day.
It was the only time I ever raised my voice in any CSICOP
dealings.

I hammered at Kurtz that the Control Test project he had led us
into had been irretrievably lost and it was discreditable to
pretend otherwise. Even if Gauquelin had faked the control
(nonchampions) sample (which I don't believe for a moment he
did), such a point cannot be raised post hoc -- because CSICOP
should have had the foresight to keep the sample-taking from
getting into Gauquelin's interested hands in the first place,
especially since prior to the challenge I had warned KZA not to
trust Gauquelin's sampling. What use is it to run tests if the
side whose hypothesis loses can just scream "fake" as it
pleases?

Kurtz seemed uncharacteristically subdued. Finally, when I
pointed out that he was backing down on his promise to publish
my report in The Humanist, he said he couldn't publish it there
now for the simple reason that a day or so earlier he'd been
fired as Humanist editor after 11 years at the post.

Concurrently a subplot was developing. On October 15 Councilor
James Randi phoned and I mentioned some of my problems with KZA.
On the 18th, when Randi phoned again, l remarked how odd it was
that I had no written record (despite requests for such made
over many months). Would Randi speak with Kurtz and get some
firm answers? The next day Randi wrote a trial letter to Kurtz
and sent me a checking copy before mailing it.

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 [7]
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.

When Kurtz phoned me on October 31, 1 (as a member of the CSICOP
subcommittee on Gauquelin) asked for copies of Committee records
and his correspondence with the various appropriate parties on
the Gauquelin experimentation, thus putting to the test my
hypothesis that he was deliberately avoiding the written word.
Kurtz refused to send anything and said the dealings had been
almost entirely by phone. (Later I saw copies of important
correspondence and learned this was not true.)

On November 2 I wrote KZA asking:

(1) What was being looked for in the Control Test?

(2) Did KZA and Humanist readers know this from the start?

(3) Wasn't the test designed to show that the control group
(nonchampions) would or wouldn't score at 22 percent like the
champions? And if the control group had scored at 22 percent,
wouldn't you have publicly concluded that Gauquelin lost the
challenge?

(4) If you carry through your current plan to declare the
Control Test "invalid," what if Gauquelin then challenges you to
repeat it yourself? (Gauquelin would have won regardless; Abell
later figured this out . )

(5) If a "valid" repetition isn't possible, are we not back at
square one, where we were at the time of warnings not to get
into this mire?

(6) If the Control Test is repeated, what do we look for?

(7) What will be your and CSICOP's position if the test again
comes out in Gauquelin's favor (as I know it will)?

(8) Did you (or colleague) make any pretest estimates of
approximate magnitude of astronomical/demographic [Mars/dawn]
effects -- before issuing a challenge, the outcome of which
depended entirely upon this question? Were you acquainted with
any of Gauquelin's detailed quantitative discussions of these
matters?

(9) The Bait-and-Switch (BS): "Why collect 16,756 new
nonchampions -- and then attack [in the BS report] a [sub]sample
of 303 old champion data because it is too small when it is in
fact typical of the whole (22 percent success, just like the
full sample of 2088, which is certainly not too small) and is
about twice as large as you requested in your original challenge
(Humanist, January-February 1976, page 33)? ... I have no
written reply ... to this or any other point raised since the
beginning of our involvement with the Gauquelin question ... I
will ask the CSICOP editorial board to have the nonchampions
[Control] test refereed by neutral judges before the Committee
becomes any further entangled in this endless thicket, via
publication in the hitherto-spared Skeptical Inquirer."

I had strongly protested the high-handedness of the choice of
Abell as speaker at the annual meeting because of his
involvement with sTARBABY. I emphasized that CSICOP had plenty
of astronomers associated with it (Carl Sagan, Bart Bok, Edwin
Krupp and others), all of them nearer Washington than Abell who
lived all the way across the country, in the Los Angeles area.

Frustrated at being presented with a fait accompli regarding the
permanent attachment of the sTARBABY albatross to CSICOP, I
indicated that, since this had been done without consultation
with me-(the sole astronomer on the Council), I was being forced
to register a dissent (which had repeatedly been denied me in
the pages of Kurtz's magazine) perhaps at the same press
conference at which the damage to CSICOP was to occur, in order
to ameliorate that damage. Such a prospect chilled the Council.

Kurtz's initial move was a threat that Zelen and Abell would be
on hand personally to settle my hash at the private December 5
Council meeting. I asked if that were a promise.

On November 19 Kurtz called in the worst shape l'd ever found
him. The prospect of a discordant CSICOP voice's being heard at
his orchestrated press conference had badly frazzled his nerves.
During the conversation he invoked, rather emotionally, our past
mutual efforts -- for example in removing editor Truzzi.

I believe he felt genuinely bewildered and betrayed. To him
reportage of contrary results was basically a political, not a
scientific, matter. There was no chance of communicating on
this. To me Kurtz was a censor. To him I was a traitor. Both of
us felt a lack of gratitude.

He got to the point: he didn't want any trouble in Washington.
In a strong, emotion-strained whisper he virtually hissed, "I'll
do anything to avoid trouble."

I said fine, just get me some written answers to my questions on
the Control Test and don't invite Abell to speak at the meeting.
Kurtz said he had "no time" (sound familiar?) for written
replies; then, contradicting his own account of October (when
he'd said to me, hey, let's invite George), he added that Abell
had been invited way back in August

Kurtz had earlier maintained his long secrecy about Abell's
speech invitation because he thought I would want to speak
instead (and would otherwise be so miffed I mightn't finish the
U S data if I learned of Kurtz's intentions) So now he offered
to let me speak too I told him that he obviously didn't
understand the problem

Yet one must realize that in his own mind Kurtz had every reason
to believe he'd found his solution Another chapter in our
ongoing anthropology lesson: the clash of two alien cultures,
public relations vs. scholarship

Kurtz tried another let's-make-a-deal ploy, bursting out. "But I
agree with you" He went on to blame the whole sTARBABY mess on
Zelen and Abell! They had led him into the pit! But he would do
nothing beyond private assent

After we had finished! I phoned Randi to report Kurtz was trying
to buy silence on the Gauquelin mess. By the next day (November
20) a Council deal had been concocted (and offered) that would
have me chair the astrology section of the press conference. Of
course this would entail my introducing Abell. My reply was the
old adage that a man who can't be bribed can't be trusted

At this Kurtz exploded in raging fear that his holy press
conference would be ruined. He immediately phoned the Councilors
and expressed concern that I might attack the Gauquelin project
from the floor during the conference; some way had to be found
to get me kicked off the Council. (This sudden search for a
pretext to eject me -- the first suggestion of the need for my
demise -- should be kept in mind because Council is now at great
pains to dredge up any other sort of "offense" on my part as the
good reason for booting me To borrow from the business world,
let us recall the immortal words of J. P. Morgan: "For every
action there are two reasons: a good reason and the real
reason.")

*  *  *

Randi and I drove to Washington together on December 4. Late
that afternoon while Michael Hutchinson and I were in Randi's
suite, Kurtz called to speak with me.

He immediately accused me of lying and conspiring against him
(this only a few days after trying to organize a secret movement
to have me thrown off the Council for the crime of dissent). [8]
I asked him to cite a single falsehood l'd ever told him. Unable
to name one, he asked me to say what I thought his deceits were.
I offered to provide a partial catalog if he were really
interested -- but would do it at the Council meeting the next
day.

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.

How these things grow! In 1975 and 1976 it was just a dumb,
arrogant mistake by only three CSICOP Fellows. In 1977 it was
their BS report, deliberate deception-cover-up. The next year,
1978, brought Kurtz's attempts first to bribe me and then
(secretly) to eject me. Now there were Randi's threats.

As we were milling around, one Councilor asked where Abell was.
Indeed, where was Abell? This, after all, was the awaited moment
of the showdown Kurtz had threatened -- to blow away the amateur
(Zelen also didn't show.) CSICOP's leader announced that Abell
had a cold and was confined to his room. I wondered if it was a
paranormal flu bug that might wane just in time to permit Abell
to give his press-conference speech next day. (It did.)

The evening session studiously avoided the prescheduled
Gauquelin discussion. Finally I raised the issue. Klass
helpfully jumped in to say that it was too late in the evening.
Kurtz perversely objected that Abell and Zelen weren't there
Randi said not a word -- but Skeptical Inquirer editor Ken
Frazier said l'd waited patiently and Ray Hyman suggested we
discuss the matter.

I started right out by saying that this was an issue that would
determine whether the Committee was worthy of existence. The
provisional hope to jettison sTARBABY was now impossible. The
language of the original Control Test Challenge and subsequent
testaments to its "definitive" nature had left no way around the
fact that we had lost and Gauquelin had won.

Klass, ever ready with useful remarks, interrupted to say that
all this sounded like "just a lot of griping."

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

Continuing with his helpful suggestions, Klass urged that I
state the problem in writing! (I was the only party who had )

During all this Kurtz never took into account the depth of my
reluctance to harm CSICOP, a movement I had cofounded with him
So to Kurtz's surprise and temporary relief I said nothing at
the press conference and did not even raise my hand to ask a
question Naively, I still had hopes for CSICOP -- shortly to be
dashed forever

=46rom the press conference we went to lunch I was asked to sit
with Abell and Kurtz Disturbed that I was yet again getting into
a nonwritten exchange, I quickly went over to Ken Frazier and
Bob Sheaffer and told them that things were probably going to be
said to which there ought to be an outside witness Would either
come and sit in on it? Not a chance -- both flatly refused It
was then I knew CSICOP would probably never get well

Abell and I were introduced. He remembered to mention his cold
and at first sniffed convincingly (especially for someone with
no red around his nose) but neglected to do so later. [9]

Now, 10 minutes after the completion of his press conference
with no embarrassment, Kurtz's plan to suppress my dissenting
September 18 report came out of the closet As the three of us
sat down to lunch, Kurtz and Abell said they and Zelen would
write the published report and in it thank me for doing the
calculations. Whereas earlier Kurtz had tried to disavow blame
for sTARBABY, this time it was Abell who was unloading
responsibility for it When I expressed abhorrence of the BS
report, Abell replied that he was in Europe and didn't read it
before cosigning it Kurtz shot back, "Oh, yes, you did!" [10]

A few minutes later Christopher Evans (since deceased) came by
and took the empty fourth chair at our table Within seconds of
his joining us Abell had told him of his BBC television series
and all three were talking of such matters. Right then it dawned
on me I had come to promote open-ended scientific research --
but the real purpose here was media wheeling and dealing And
that is why we were meeting at the temple of CSICOP's faith, the
National Press Club

The subsequent afternoon proceedings dealt primarily with
international organizing and publicity schemes But no one seemed
interested in defining what all the hoopla was for. Which was
reasonable enough -- because that was what it was for.

*  *  *

On January 17, 1979, I wrote a memorandum on the dirty dealing
I'd witnessed. I sent it and another memo ("On Fighting
Pseudoscience with Pseudoscience") to most of CSICOP's Fellows.
I inquired of Bart Bok if he could find a competent astronomer
to take over my duties.

The first Fellow to phone Randi about the memoranda asked him
about various charges they contained Randi admitted
uncomfortably that they were true as far as he knew -- but then
he quickly changed the subject

More often, however, the Councilors -- the same ones who had
chided me for ad hominems -- declared, "Dennis is just a wild
man " Someone who acts on principle probably does appear to
CSICOPs to be a creature from the antipodes.

Since we're speaking of "wild": Klass and Randi reacted to my
January memos by claiming they couldn't understand the
indictment!

Klass added another fantastic touch to Council's reaction,
contending that it was fruitless to try to "turn back the clock
like Uri Geller." Funny, I used to know a Phil Klass who
circulated long lists of conflicting statements made by Allen
Hynek, going back many years, asking if these are the same Allen
Hyneks. And this was the same Phil Klass who now wasn't
interested in the past?

Many of CSICOP's Fellows fell for the unity pitch or copped a
none-of-my-business plea A letter from one Fellow amused me in
light of Council pretenses that it didn't understand the charges
His letter, dated January 26 1979, makes plain how clear my
January memos were The writer understood that the experimental
results supported Gauquelin, that Kurtz, Abell and Zelen had
screwed up the test and that CSICOP's leaders, primarily Kurtz,
had tried to cover up the mess, thereby creating a
"Buffalogate." This writer said he had long harbored doubts
about the way CSICOP was being run.

A later letter written by the same Fellow contains a prescient
sentence: "I regard your charges as very serious. ... Something
must be done before we read about all of this in FATE "

I received a long letter from J. Derral Mulholland, one of the
world's leading celestial mechanics experts He permitted me to
distribute the letter to CSICOP's Fellows

The letter said Mulholland had been unaware that CSICOP had an
elite Council that apparently was answerable to nobody Council
members evidently were using CSICOP's name to advance their
personal ends. Some persons associated with the organization
were making pronouncements on subjects outside their area of
competence. If CSICOP were to remain scientifically credible, it
had better use scientific methods such as controlled tests with
predefined criteria for success and failure, and nonprotaganists
should judge the results. Alibis, image problems and economic
concerns were irrelevant to the real issues.

I proposed Mulholland as a Fellow, someone who might replace my
astronomical input. This proposal was never even acknowledged.

*  *  *

By April 1979 Council, which had held its breath for months
breathed again, this time a deep sigh of relief: no resignations
and no news stories. Kurtz phoned on April 9, hoping to placate
me. I said to put the answers to my questions on sTARBABY in
writing. That was that.

The next day Frazier offered this alibi for nonpublication of my
September 18 report: he wished someone would write an article
that straightened out the "mess" once and for all, but there
seemed no way to resolve the matter, even though Frazier
confessed to a "gut feeling" that I might be right in some of my
criticisms .

He claimed that my writings on the controversy were unclear and
overheated. But in fact CSICOP's own eventual referee reports
found my September 18 report (which for now Frazier refused for
lack of clarity) to be clearer than KZA's report on the same
material Also my original unanswered questions to KZA were all
exceedingly polite -- before the censorial outrages starting in
autumn 1978.

I replied on April 19:

... incredible -- even aside from the various matters you (along
with the rest of the Council) continue to shut your eyes to. In
particular, you [all] still attempt to pretend that you don't
understand the [sTARBABY] problem and don't know how to go about
doing so. This is a ploy fully worthy of the kooks. As you well
know, I have urged the refereeing of the matter for months. The
only reply has been: silence.

What sort of Committee claims (in its very title) to be in the
business of testing occult claims, yet can't even find a way to
evaluate its own first and biggest test? What use is its
testing, if the Committee cannot be counted upon to report the
results honestly?

As for the no-compromise pose:

(l) Most of the Councilors (including Kurtz and Abell) either
know or strongly suspect the truth. The problem isn't what's the
truth but how to deal with it, p.r.-wise.

(2) Even without any scientific background one can just observe:

(a) Which side has made a complete. Open. written record -- vs.
a year of refusal to commit answers in writing, while
frantically juggling stories privately?

(b) Which has tried to silence the other by expulsion?

(c) Which has called for refereeing-arbitration? Which has
steadfastly ignored the suggestion?

In any controversy within the Committee, it is always possible
that the mistaken party will (instead of owning up) put up a
smokescreen of alibis and pseudocomplexities (just like the
occultists do, every time they lose). In that case is the
attitude of the Council to be that, well, the whole matter is
too complicated to adjudicate?!

At this time Kurtz attempted to persuade Gauquelin to agree to
the suppression of even my mild September 18 report. He also
tried to dissuade Gauquelin from visiting me during the latter's
April trip to San Diego.

He never told me any of this. Instead he pretended (as he had
the previous year) that he might be willing to publish my report
if KZA got to sum it all up afterward. And this is roughly how
it was done eventually.

However, my challenge to call in outside refereeing (as Abell
had promised in September-October 1976 Humanist) to determine
the truth did not tempt the Committee.

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.)

Next Randi (and soon afterwards Bob Sheaffer) tried to get me
involved in new projects, i.e., diversions. As part of this
effort Randi asked my advice on the Helmut Schmidt
parapsychology experiment which some CSICOPs had been
investigating. I simply urged that it be approached with all the
caution KZA had thrown to the winds in 1975 and 1976. He assured
me how cautious he was in the testing for his well-publicized $
10,000 prize for proof of psychic abilities (for which he acts
as policeman, judge and jury -- and thus never has supported my
idea of neutral judgment of CSICOP tests. "I always have an
out," he said.

*  *  *

Things had quieted down by late spring 1979. All the while I was
mercifully occupied at sane, non-CSICOP projects.

Then on June 24 Randi phoned mentioning he'd just talked with
Truzzi. Randi seemed suddenly anxious to settle the sTARBABY
problem. Two days later he wrote a letter to the Council stamped
CONFIDENTIAL on both pages. It said he hoped he and the other
Councilors could find a way out of a long-standing problem.
Randi observed that CSICOP was always under the watchful eye of
irrationalists who chortled at every apparent failing, as
witness the response to Truzzi's resignation. [11]  At the
Washington meeting he had feared the Gauquelin affair would be
brought up in front of reporters. That would have been
unfortunate because CSICOP cannot afford to wash its dirty linen
in public.

But then Randi hit upon a solution. Why should CSICOP worry
about the Gauquelin matter? If (Randi's emphasis) the thing was
a mistake, Councilors should decide once and for all that it was
never a CSICOP project and be done with it.

Randi's letter touched on another subject of interest to both
sides of the paranormal controversy, relative to my proposal (in
an early issue of Skeptical Inquirer) that the American
Association for the Advancement of Science reevaluate its
decision to let the Parapsychological Association be affiliated
with it if the PA could not produce a repeatable experiment. A
petition I had circulated among the Fellows had drawn support
from some of CSICOP's leading lights.

His letter said that when physicist John Archibald Wheeler
denounced the parapsychologists (as he had done the previous
January) and urged that they be kicked out of the AAAS,
Councilors "cheered." But they "forgot" [12]  that I had
suggested the same thing and been rebuffed. [13]

Curiously, the following November Randi cosigned a letter to the
PA stating, "We have no intention of requesting the 'expulsion'
of the Parapsychological Association from the AAAS and would be
opposed to such a move" (Spring 1980 Skeptical Inquirer). I will
leave it to the higher theologians on the Council to reconcile
this statement with the foregoing CONFIDENTIAL document's
statement, "We cheered."

I might have been more impressed with the CONFIDENTIAL letter
had it not been for another piece of mail that arrived the same
day. It was a letter from Jerome Clark of FATE asking me to
relate the sTARBABY episode for publication.

The mystery of Randi's strangely sudden desire to open up
sTARBABY evaporated. Before answering FATE I called Randi (on
July 6) and asked whether perchance Truzzi had mentioned FATE
during their communication just before Randi phoned me on June
24.1 got a well-we-talked-about-a-lot-of-things response and
hmm-well-maybe-we-did

I mentioned the coincidence of his let's-get-moving CONFIDENTIAL
letter arriving the very day I heard from FATE after six months
of CSICOP inaction. It was about a 200-to-one shot. He suggested
"synchronicity." (And CSICOP is supposed to be antiparanormal.)

Randi also admitted (having learned elsewhere that I already
knew) the Kurtz-NisbetKlass-Randi plan to try to silence my
dissent at the December 6 National Suppress Club meeting.

We hung up on slightly better terms than l'd expected although I
remained quite disgusted that only the threat of FATE exposure
had produced even token motion toward nonsuppression.

I had asked Randi the big question, the question all CSICOPs
will be asking themselves for years to come: Why? Why get
involved in a conspiracy that was as stupid as it was low? Why
do something that would mark him and CSICOP for the rest of
their lives? The reply was ever the same: We can't let the
mystics rejoice. A lifetime price -- just to prevent a little
transient cuckoo chirping.

On August 11 Randi again wrote the Council to discuss CSICOP's
response to the FATE interview with Truzzi, saying the latter
had been dumped because he wanted the journal (then called The
Zetetic) to be a scholarly rather than a popular publication.
[14]

I told the Council l'd be open with FATE. Part of my reasoning
was that, although I didn't wish to hurt rationalism, I felt
that realpolitik cynics were taking advantage of that very
reluctance and their increasing power was endangering
rationalism's reputation. These were the wrong people to be
carrying the cause's banner.

As the FATE-story realization set in, Council reacted like the
White House when it learned that John Dean had sat down with the
prosecution. The awareness of how much I knew and what would
happen if I told all -- this was the stuff of nightmares. Thus a
new game plan was needed: Be nice to the wild man. Soothe.
Flatter. Laugh at his jokes. Project as honest and self-critical
an image as possible -- at least until the problem subsides
again.

By August 24 Frazier had received from Kurtz a 45-page package
of four papers; the shortest of them was my original September
18 report on my Gauquelin results. Kurtz evidently hoped to bury
the embarrassing parts (mild as they were) of my report in the
sheer volume of print.

Since I had repeatedly requested refereeing, the board decided
it would have to go through the motions.

Refereeing in professional journals is the backbone of the
legitimate scientific community. In serious journals the process
requires months of careful examination, often back-and-forth
communication among author, editor and referees.

But if this were done now, some blunt, explicit revisions l'd
already promised (last April 5) might have time to find their
way into my previously-gentle September 18 report. So,
professing fear that Gauquelin might "skoop" (sic) CSICOP,
Frazier suddenly sent the 45-page, four-paper package to various
CSICOPs (not neutral referees as promised in September-October
1976 Humanist) -- with the demand that the results be back
within 10 days! Maybe it was just another of our paranormal
coincidences that I was away from home while this was going on.

All of this activity took place without my knowledge -- although
I was the author of one of the papers, the calculator of the
entire study, a Councilor and associate editor of the magazine.
Thus two referees, as yet unaware of the problems with the
Control Test (defended in KZA's paper in the Gauquelin package),
were insulated from my pointing these out to them. And my own
paper was being rushed into print not only without my approval
of its form but in actual defiance of my written statement that
I would have to revise it in the direction of bluntness.

When I returned to San Diego late on October I, 1979, 1 learned
that Frazier had left a message on September 24 saying that his
deadline was October 1. Still no mention of the secret rush-
refereeing, which I learned of only upon telephone questioning
the next day. I asked for copies.

When the material arrived on the sixth the consensus of CSICOP's
own referees was in my favor (versus Professors Kurtz, Zelen and
Abell) in all major departments: (a) clarity, (b) technical
competence, (c) honesty and (d) defensibility of conclusions. No
scientific criticisms were leveled against my report, while the
two statisticians among the referees criticized the KZA paper on
various grounds.

Only one of these two referees had been forewarned (not just by
me) about the problems with the 1977 BS report, the central
nonsense of which KZA were again ladling out. Appalled, he
counseled neutral refereeing by appropriate experts before
rushing into publication

Here are some excerpts from the referee report (on KZA
contributions to the Gauquelin package) by the sole Councilor
trained in statistics:

I would be irresponsible if I did not point out serious defects
in the documents in their present form .... ambiguities should
be avoided -- especially if they can be interpreted as evasions
or ways to wriggle out of a prior commitment ... quibbling over
whether to include [a very few] females in the sample ... looks
like post hoc playing around to push the data in their [KZA's]
favor. At what point did they [KZA] decide NOT to include
females -- after they knew the results or before? The same can
be said over the splitting of the data to try to show that the
major effect is carried by the Paris [-born athletes]. Again
this is post hoc. Besides the splitting of the small sample into
even smaller subsamples, of course, lowers the power [of the
study's significance] considerably .... What is important is
that the entire sample, taken as a whole, shows the [Mars]
effect .... Such post hoc rummaging [for possible hitherto-
unnoted trends in the data] has to be kept in perspective. It
can supply ideas and hypotheses for a new study but it has no
basis for drawing conclusions [for this study].

I suspect that as a LEGAL debate G won this first round [Control
Test. Afterwards, it appears other factors] than a true Mars
effect ... might account for the correlation. But, as originally
stated, G has won.... I hope that they [KZA] can see that a
neutral reader ... can interpret their criticisms as post hoc
attempts to wriggle out of an uncomfortable situation.

*  *  *

The first weekend after my October 2 call to Frazier, Kurtz
phoned, dripping charm. I urged that if the package was to be
published, the statistician-Councilor's referee report ought to
be published instead of KZA's.

I revised my September 18, 1978, report in the promised
direction of bluntness and submitted it to Frazier on October
8,1979, telling him that if there were any alterations not
cleared with me, l wanted a note printed with the paper stating
that deletions had occurred over the author's protest and that
the missing portions could be obtained directly from me.

On the morning of October 12 Frazier was happily protecting
Skeptical Inquirer's innocent readership by blue-penciling out
all my report's revelations of KZA's fumbling (leaving intact,
of course, all its negative scientific revelations about
Gauquelin's claims, including the nonreplication [13 1/2 percent
versus the 22 percent in the French data] in the American sample
[15] ). Suddenly he came upon my request for a printed note
regarding the existence of unauthorized deletions. He lunged for
the phone and got through to me with the opening salutation,
delivered in a loud growl, tense with rage, "I am pissed off at
you." He said my note was "blackmail."

Frazier went on in this vein for some time before easing off to
mere exasperation. I reminded him that I had said a year ago
that CSICOP would publish non-neutrally-refereed BS sham over my
dead body (which is just the way it happened) in a magazine of
which I was a responsible associate editor. If Frazier insisted
on printing -- at great length -- what five of his six associate
editors privately deemed questionable science and/or intentional
pretense, l would insist just as adamantly on protesting such in
my brief paper. As the person who had actually performed the
experiment, l felt that this was perfectly reasonable.

Frazier, editor of a magazine born to tear down dumb beliefs,
said such criticism would create dissension and "confuse" the
readers. We finally left it that he would send an edited version
and see if we could agree.

Instead, as the final deadline approached, Frazier just sat on
it. l finally phoned on October 20 and left a message -- no
reply. I telephoned again two days later and was curtly informed
that the report would be published his way or not at all. He
said that Kurtz opposed publishing my report at all.

I received Frazier's edited version the next day. l phoned him
small (undisputed) changes on October 27 and 28 and on November
4, quietly but pointedly reminding him on each occasion that I
protested his substantial deletions and his bowdlerization of my
very mention of these deletions (into a version designed to
indicate to the reader that no deletions had occurred).

On November 6, two days after a last request to Frazier to
reconsider, I circulated a memo to all my fellow associate
editors:

Alone among the Councilors, l still have no compensation for
travel expenses to the last Council meeting (c $230). I have
booked a flight to this one -- the cost will be nearly $400 just
for the plane, and I have to stay 7 days (at my own expense)
just to keep the rate down to that. This must be paid in a
(very) few days -- and I won't do that unless all 630 dollars
are here beforehand.

My upcoming Skeptical Inquirer article ( l 979 winter) on the
Gauquelin matter has been neatly censored here and there, so I
have asked to add a statement saying so and suggesting that
readers who wish to consult the original version may do so by
contacting me. This sentence has itself been bowdlerized (so
that it reads as if no tampering occurred). It seems to me that
to distort the meaning of a contributor's statement over his
explicit protest, especially when he is an "Associate Editor" --
whatever that means -- is a serious matter. Therefore, I will
here ask the other members of the Skeptical Inquirer Editorial
Board whether they concur in this action ... none of this should
be published until the KZ&A [Control Test] is competently,
independently refereed. Another point I have vainly stressed to
Ken [Frazier]: there has been some faint hope of dissociating
CSICOP from this disaster. The forthcoming package seals the
matter forever: opening and closing arguments (and
pseudoscientific obfuscations of the clear outcome) coauthored
by CSICOP's Chairman and a CSICOP Fellow who is [senior] editor
of the forthcoming Scribner's book [Science and the Paranormal]
attacking everybody else's pseudoscience (full of CSICOP
contributors).

I must also say that these same two gentlemen have each
attempted privately to blame the other authors for the
adventure. They had an amusing argument on this point in my
presence 1978/12/6. Yet they now [in their upcoming articles]
have the brass to pretend to Skeptical Inquirer's readership
that there is nothing amiss. This is deliberate sham. And I
think most (if not all) of you know so or strongly suspect it.

When he read this Frazier blew his stack again and on November 9
wrote a memo declaring he had deleted only "one sentence from a
late-added footnote" (emphasis in original). False -- there were
in fact a dozen deletions.

Frazier's letter conveniently confused his right to edit (which
I never had questioned) with his right to alter the meaning of a
brief note telling the reader where to obtain the unedited
version .

*  *  *

On November 15 Randi phoned trying to find out whether I meant
my November 6 promise not to come to next month's Council
meeting in New York City unless both 1978 and 1979 fares were
paid. (After badgering from Frazier, Kurtz in early November had
sent the 1979 fare only, citing a ridiculous excuse for not
sending the 1978 fare.) I replied to Randi that if he cared (his
ostensible reason for calling) he should tell Kurtz to wire the
still-unpaid 1978 fare.

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.

By another of our paranormal coincidences, only one person was
"not renominated" and I was replaced by Abell. It was then
decided to put off the Abell announcement for some weeks so that
there would seem to be no connection.

A comedy high is the December 21 letter I received more than 10
days after the meeting from Randi, the appointed bearer of the
tidings that I had been unanimously dumped or, as he so
delicately put it, "not reelected." Randi hoped we could
continue to be good friends. Also, since I was still on the
editorial board, he urged me to write regularly for Skeptical
Inquirer.

I thought it was curious that one who was such a horror that he
merited unanimous expulsion should at the same time be asked to
stay on as associate editor and publish lots in the CSICOP
journal.

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 first place!

My reaction to ejection was not quite what Council expected. On
December 31 I wired Frazier a request that a note be printed at
the end of my upcoming Gauquelin-package article stating that
"following editorial disagreement over these articles" I had
been "unanimously ejected," which was undeniably true.

Frazier refused this (in a January 9 letter) as "inappropriate
and inaccurate in its implication of cause and effect."

Back on December 18 Frazier had written me to say that Skeptical
Inquirer Assistant Editor Doris Doyle had emphasized it was too
late to make any further changes in the Gauquelin package. Yet,
nearly a month later, on January 12, Doyle told me that even
then there was time for alterations. Consistency was hard to
come by.

So on January 14 I sent Frazier another Mailgram:

Since the mechanicals are still with Doris (who says you refused
my ["following editorial disagreement"] statement), please
replace "Further commentary ... from the author" with:
"Deletions from this paper are available from the author at his
address. This December CSICOP Council unanimously decided soon
to replace me on the Council with George Abell." If you kill one
sentence, consider the other separately. (If some particular
words or phrases bother you, have Doris phone me today regarding
my OK of possible changes.) I repeat my request for written
reasons for your censoring my attempts to make these simple
statements to Skeptical Inquirer readers.

At this point, I am not interested in promises regarding future
letters column space, since what can one make of Council's word,
after its recent clandestine "election" and customary secrecy
regarding Abell's upcoming elevation? -- Dennis Rawlins,
Associate Editor?

Frazier replied the next day by decreeing that he would allow no
more changes. Any announcement of my nonreelection to the
Council would have to be carried in Skeptical Inquirer's news
column because, he said, it was "irrelevant" in a research
report. On February 16 I took Frazier up on his offer and
prepared this statement for the news column.

I am resigning from the Skeptical Inquirer Editorial Board
(effective on SI publication of this notice) in reaction to the
Board's handling of empirical testing (when the results do not
come out as expected) as well as (among other matters) the
CSICOP Council's surprise December "election" in New York (not
even known to some attending Councilors until a fraction of a
day before it occurred) -- at which private event it was
unanimously decided that I should be "not renominated" (in
absentia) and that (after a cosmetic interval) George Abell was
to be elevated to Councilor. What this sleight of ballot switch
portends for the future scientific level and integrity of the
ruling body of CSICOP can be most quickly understood from a
careful reading of our [Abell's and my] respective contributions
(especially the pre edited versions) in the 1979-80 Winter SI.

The Council wants to make it perfectly clear that Abell's
(public) support for -- as against my long-contained (now
surfacing) criticism of -- CSICOP's conduct during its four-year
involvement in testing Gauquelin's neoastrology, has NOTHING to
do with Council's December move. SI readers who wish to believe
in this paranormal miracle of acausal synchronicity are urged
not to contact me at the below address.

Meanwhile I privately urged that the other Councilors think of
rationalism's reputation ahead of their own immediate interests
and resign.

On April 10 Frazier reneged: "The resignation letter you asked
to be published is not appropriate for publication. Such
internal matters are best dealt with by private circulation.
[17]  I feel strongly about that."

Although my letter of resignation stated that it became
effective only when published, Frazier tossed me off the
editorial board anyway -- without giving me notice or cause.
Abell was my replacement.

One other dissent has been kept from Skeptical Inquirer readers.
The identity of the mystery guest in dissent-space? George
Abell! In 1980 Abell hired UCLA grad student Albert Lee to
compute the expectation curve for the Gauquelin experiment.
According to a May 3, 1980, letter Abell wrote to Gauquelin,
Lee's results agreed with Gauquelin's and mine. Thus Abell
learned (some years too late) that 17 percent, not 22 percent,
is the chance figure after all. Poof goes the Control Test
(based upon the hope that Gauquelin's 22-percent Mars Effect
results were merely chance level in disguise).

As the truth becomes undeniable, what will CSICOP do? Perhaps as
the Smoking Letter (as well as the prospect of total exposure in
FATE) is considered, CSICOP may be heard to protest that it was
most anxious to get the truth to the public but delayed somewhat
in the interests of cautious science -- thereby explaining, of
course, things like 10-day refereeing and rushing a Challenge to
press to beat a publishing deadline.


EPILOGUE

I can sum up by noting that:

CSICOP's idea of internal scandal-preventing is not to eject the
culprits but to eject those who expose them. A Watergate analogy
would be to throw Sam Ervin out of Congress and keep Nixon as
President on his promise not-to-do-it-again.

The foregoing account was drafted between March 26 and May 15,
1980. The great bulk of it, however, was not typed until
December 1980 through January 1981 due in part to the press of
researches in nonparanormal-related areas of scholarship. I was
reminded of CSICOP in October 1980 by three incidents that
occurred together and not coincidentally:

(1) I was dropped as a CSICOP Fellow without being informed,
much less being told why in writing.

(2) I was attacked (along with Gauquelin) in the most insulting
fashion in the letters section of Fall 1980 Skeptical Inquirer
by the same Fellow whose mistakes in "Objections to Astrology"
began sTARBABY.

(3) The last October event explained Item One -- my ejection
from the full Committee. Council announced its annual meeting
and press conference for December 12, 1980, at UCLA. The
gathering was described as a closed "press seminar," only for
Fellows and invitees.

I telegraphed Kurtz on December I to suggest that the
neoastrology test be openly debated at the meeting. I received
no reply.

Therefore I simply appeared at the meeting, correctly judging
that Kurtz wouldn't risk creating a scene by having me ejected
bodily before his beloved press corps. I was privately assured
that the Gauquelin matter would be discussed at 5:00 P.M. As
insurance that it be held, I stood up during the question-and-
answer period and mentioned in passing that there would be a
5:00 P.M. hearing concerning sTARBABY and the reasons for my
ejection from CSICOP. No Councilor contradicted me.

At 5:00 Kurtz stood up and, instead of announcing the promised
discussion, adjourned the press conference.

Twice bit, thrice shy. In anticipation I had with me four pages
of XeroXed expos=8E material. After a few minutes' abortive
attempts to have Randi and others honor their promise, I simply
distributed the material to everyone in the room, including the
two or three press persons who had been sufficiently interested
in CSICOP to show up.

Phil Klass, looking unwell, rushed over to growl through
clenched jaw, "You're sick!" He said that after all this time I
should drop it, in effect using the cover-up's long success as a
justification for its perpetuation.

The Council then retired to a private meeting. Over Kurtz's
protest I just walked into the meeting. Kurtz then tried to
preannounce a five-minute limit to a Gauquelin discussion. I
never got five minutes of straight narrative. It was a free-for-
all orgy of fantasy, with Councilors interrupting so often that
they interrupted each other's interruptions.

The Council agreed there was not the slightest connection
between my unique expulsion and my equally unique insistence on
honest reporting of sTARBABY. It was just that I had behaved
rudely.

I pointed out that before Kurtz tried suppressing me, beginning
in September 1978, I was patient and gentle, a trusting chump.

My request that offenses justifying expulsion be specified
brought on the Morganisms. Kurtz could come up with only two
pre-September 1978 claims:

(1) A letter I had written on February 6, 1978, to the
University of Toronto regarding an astrology conference to be
held there the next month. Supposedly I had put pressure on the
university to cancel the meeting. I refuted this phony charge by
reading from a Xerox copy of the letter, which made it clear I
was objecting only to the grossly unbalanced composition of the
proposed panel (which certainly would have disgraced the
university); in fact I had encouraged the invitation of a broad
selection of experts on both sides, hoping for a meaningful
confrontation. Kurtz then referred to an alleged phone call I
made to the university president. The only catch is that I never
phoned the president of the University of Toronto.

(2) Then Kurtz seriously attempted to define my other
excommunicable offense as my proposal that the American
Association for the Advancement of Science reevaluate the
Parapsychological Association's affiliation with it! The other
Councilors in attendance were too astonished to comment. (Kurtz
and Frazier had themselves published this proposal in my article
in Fall-Winter 1977 Skeptical Inquirer.)

Obviously it was a hoked-up scenario. When I asked, a Councilor
admitted that kicking me off the Council had not even been
discussed until just a week before the December 1978 press
conference, where Council feared I would expose sTARBABY.
Indeed, only 10 minutes previously Council had attempted again
to suppress my public dissent at the press conference we had
just left.

There were other moments of humor. Phil Klass claimed he didn't
understand the neoastrology dispute, reviving the alibi first
heard early in 1979.1 asked then why Frazier had chosen Klass as
one of CSICOP's instant referees and why Klass had in fact
written one of the five private referee reports. Incredibly,
Klass denied having done so! I instantly produced and circulated
a Xerox copy of this nonexistent report. As it began passing
around the table, Klass said that he had recommended against
publishing the package. Those who were reading his report, dated
September 10, 1979, learned the very opposite. I knew the
refereeing had been pro forma but I wasn't prepared for such
obliging confirmation .

The bottom line is:

Every one of the Councilors who say they know something about
the sTARBABY knows that it was a disaster. Yet Skeptical
Inquirer readers are given to believe nothing went wrong.

The last word Frazier allowed to appear was a letter from
Lawrence Jerome (Fall 1980, page 85) in which CSICOP offered
congratulations to itself for its Gauquelin project.

*  *  *

Notes

[1]  CSICOP began as an offshoot of the American Humanist
assosiation. In 1978, after a year of not telling AHA anything
of the ongoing legal proceedings, CSICOP seperately
incorporated.

[2]  Bob Sheaffer, Kendrick Frazier, and Martin Gardner never
showed a passion for the limelight.

[3]  I had not begun keeping count of the number of Gauquelin-
related papers of mine Kurtz had rejected. In retrospect it is
obvious that his reason was that all of them dissented from the
KZA party line on Gauquelin. The only paper of mine Kurtz had
published was also the only one that did not discuss Gauquelin;
it was on ESP (July-August 1976 Humanist); thus in Kurtz's
Humanist this astronomer was allowed to discuss matters
psychological -- but not astronomical!

[4]  I don't even know how many Councilors saw it after
publication until questions were raised about its honesty. For
example, athough I was on the Humanist mailing list, no copy
came to my address.

[5]  The following May I was startled to see an identical attack
by Eric Tarkington in Phenomena. When I phoned Kurtz in shock at
the embarrassment of having correct analysis published in that
proastrology journal while CSICOP was publishing crap, his reply
was, "Nobody reads [Phenomena]."

[6]  KZA publicly: "Nowhere did we wish to suggest that
Gauquelin 'cheated' and we regret any such implication"
(Skeptical Inquirer, Summer 1980, page 67)

[7]  An interesting bit of history, since Kurtz still says my
nonreimbursement wasn't brought to his attention until a full
year later. And Council pretends to believe this.

[8]  That Councilors Kurtz, Randi, Philip Klass, and Lee Nisbet
conspired to keep dissent (read "schism") from sullying the
press conference was eventually admitted from the inside in a
July 6, 1979, conversation. (See also June 26 document prepared
by Randi and marked "Confidential," discussed below.)

[9]  On December 12, 1980, Abell gave a completely different
reason for not showing up at the scheduled showdown. He said he
wasn't invited!

[10]  Abell's December 12, 1980, version: he doesn't remember
now whether he read it. In 1979 Abell cosigned yet another KZA
paper which repeated the same old BS argument. Then he conseded
(privately in 1980) I'd been right all along on the math --
 leaving Kurtz and Zelen holding the sTARBABY bag. Everyday
entertainment at CSICOP!

[11]  See Jerome Clark and J. Gordon Melton's "The Crusade
Against the Paranormal," September and October 1979 FATE, for
Marcello Truzzi's account of these events.

[12]  Not true. Randi phoned me on Januari 9, 1979, the moment
he read press coverage of Wheelers proposal, trying to reignite
my interest. Sheaffer wrote me along the same lines a few days
later. Yet when Frazier published Wheller's statement (Spring
1979 Skeptical Inquirer) he did not mention that he had
published my similar proposal a few issues back!

[13]  By the Council, yes; but backed by Fellows B.F. Skinner,
W.V. Quine, Isaac Asimov, and L. Sprague de Camp; Carl Sagan and
Ken Frazier supported the request that AAAS clarify the
affiliation.

[14]  In reality Truzzi had been replaced at CSICOP's August 9,
1977, annual meeting by a prearranged conspiracy to which Randi
and I were both parties. Privately we all (except Ray Hyman, who
was not in on it) spoke freely of the fact that the real reason
was our disapproval of Marcello's softness on the mystics and
slowness to print tough skepticism. But this reality did not
look open-minded, so naturally another reason was given to the
public. (When I circulated a letter giving some of the real
reasons, Council was horrified.)

[15]  But the potential significance of the 13 1/2-percent
result, which disconfirmed the Mars Effect's 22 percent (at a
10,000-to-one level), was lost due to KZA's 1977 precedent and
subsequent obsession with post hoc sample splitting in their own
favor.

[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."

[17]  I guess that's why Frazier prevented my stating in
Skeptical Inquirer that deleted material was available from my
private address!


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All rights reserved =A9 1981-2001 Dennis Rawlins