Default Belief: Wise or Gullible? (2024)

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SKEPTICAL INQUIREE

Benjamin Radford is a research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and author or coauthor of fourteen books, including America the Fearful: Media and the Marketing of National Panics. BENJAMIN RADFORD

Q: Why do people automatically believe the first thing that they hear? Are they stupid or gullible?

—T. Anderson

This article is from...

Skeptical Inquirer

May/June 2024

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Other Articles in this Issue

FROM THE EDITOR

Paranormal Investigation, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future Earlier this year, my wife, Farrah, and I

NEWS AND COMMENT

The FCC Outlaws AI-Voiced Robocalls The weekend ahead of the January 23, 2024, Fake Rescue Requests via Social Media during the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake On January 1, 2024, at 4:10 p.m. local CSI Fellow Michael Mann Awarded $1 Million in Defamation Case Michael E. Mann. Image credit: Joshua Yospyn In Miracle of the Weeping Mary in Mexico Explained In a news category breezily labeled “Weird but News Bites: From Neuralink to Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Neuralink Implant. On January 29, Elon Musk, cofounder

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Amardeo Sarma Named CSI Representative in Europe The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) has named Critical Thinking Conference in Argentina: An Antidote against Current Scams A series of f ree presentations on critical

SPECIAL REPORT

New Contenders for the Investigations Group’s $500,000 Paranormal Challenge in 2023 In the world of sports, having zero successes Advocacy for Alleged Witches in Africa: 2023 Update Ifounded Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) to defend

SPECIAL REPORT

Witchcraft-Based Violence and Persecution in Malawi Though many in the West often think of

WHITE PAPER

White Paper from the Congressional Freethought Caucus—Speaker Johnson: Christian Nationalism in the Speaker’s Office? MEMBERS OF THE CONGRESSIONAL FREETHOUGHT CAUCUS: JARED HUFFMAN (CA-02), JAMIE RASKIN (MD-08), DAN KILDEE (MI-05), MARK POCAN (WI-02), STEVE COHEN (TN-09), PRAMILA JAYAPAL (WA-07), HANK JOHNSON (GA-04), ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON (WASHINGTON, DC), SEAN CASTEN (IL-06), SUSAN WILD (PA-07), RASHIDA TLAIB (MI-13), ZOE LOFGREN (CA-19), DON BEYER (VA- 08), JIMMY GOMEZ (CA-34), JULIA BROWNLEY (CA-26), KEVIN MULLIN (CA-15), JAN SCHAKOWSKY (IL-09), GREG CASAR (TX-35), ROBERT GARCIA (CA-42), AND MAXWELL FROST (FL-10)

COLUMNS

The Horrific ‘Black Dahlia’ Murder: Killer’s Identity Revealed at Last Joe Nickell, PhD, has been several kinds of investigator (private, literary, paranormal, etc.). In addition, he has also been a homicide consultant (to police and individuals). He is still active after half a century (and some fifty books)—now specializing in significant unsolved mysteries of various kinds. Believe It or Die! Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of the paranormal, lecturer, and cofounder and head of CICAP, the Italian skeptics group. His website is at www.massimopolidoro.com . Pseudoscience and Local Scientific Epistemology Massimo Pigliucci is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His academic work is in evolutionary biology, philosophy of science, the nature of pseudoscience, and practical philosophy. His books include Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk and Philosophy of Pseudoscience (coedited with Maarten Boudry). More by him at http://newstoicism.org/ . New Research Suggests Almost Everybody Is Superstitious Stuart Vyse is a psychologist and author of Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition, which won the William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. He is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Practical AI for Skeptics Mick West is a writer, investigator, and debunker who enjoys looking into the evidence behind conspiracy theories and strange phenomena and then explaining what is actually going on. He runs the Metabunk forum and is the author of the book Escaping the Rabbit Hole. Astrology: Beast of No Burden Craig A. Foster is a CSI fellow and director of research and evaluation at Northshore School District in Bothell, Washington. SECRETS REVEALED DID YOU SPOT THE HIDDEN IMAGE ON THE COVER?

FEATURED ARTICLES

Looking for the Bright Side of the AI Apocalypse Reason for hope? A digital deluge of deepfakes and other AI-generated deceptions may compel a cognitive upgrade for humanity. Analyzing Conspiracies through Folklore, Epidemiology, and Artificial Intelligence Dangerous rumors, conspiracy theories, and misinformation—from Blood Libel myths to anti-vaccination legends to QAnon—have plagued humanity for millennia and exploded in the internet age. But new tools are emerging that can help identify and mitigate the problem. Alternative Therapies for Menstrual Pain Image Credit: Kaspars Grinvalds -Adobe Stock Editor’s note: True Haunting, or Not? In 1971, years before both the bestselling novel

REVIEW

Weird sh*t Explained From Ghoulies and Ghosties, And long-leggedy Beasties, And Disney’s Wish: A Centur y of Wishing on Stars Last October marked Disney ’s hundredth year. As

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Politics in SI? At first blush, the January/February 2024 issue seemed Bigfoot I just finished reading Ben Radford’s article “Is Editor Stephen Hupp responds: Thanks for sticking with this magazine since the Socrates’s Choice In “Grimcutty Reveals Dark Thread Tying Together Cases The Sound of Silence Re: “Investigating the Silent Chamber of Insanity” (