History of Scientific Skepticism through Pictures

Friend of the blog, Robert Sheaffer has been gracious enough to begin the tiring process of scanning old photos taken back when the world was only in Black and White  (At least this is what I thought when I was a kid)  and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons.  Robert has been a active member of the scientific skepticism world since the beginning and he has the photos to prove it.  Those of us trying to preserve our history really appreciate that.

When James Randi and Ray Hyman met up at a Alice Cooper concert, they discussed forming a club to combat Uri Geller.  They didn't realize then that we would be interested in knowing the history of that time.  They wanted to get things done, not record the moment.  So now 30+ years later we have to find all these old documents and photos and get them in places where we can show our history.  And I can't think of a better place than Wikipedia. 

For your viewing pleasure, enjoy these never before seen images...

James W. Moseley

CSICOP

Paul Kurtz

Banachek 

James Randi

Ray Hyman

Daryl Bem 

Philip Klass

Robert uploaded a lot more, we just don't have the Wikipedia pages written yet to put the photos on.  We stll have a lot of work to do.  Please consider helping out with the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project.   We train and mentor.  Contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com or friend me on Facebook or Twitter as Susan Gerbic

Happy Halloween - The Bell Witch Page

Fresh off the plane, Ben Radford wrote to me about his visit to the Bell Witch house in Adams, Tenn.   Apparently he had visited the house while attending CSIcon in Nashville, and wondered what the Wikipedia page looked like.  He was surprised that the page did not have skeptical content, though he and Brian Dunning had written articles about the place. 

I told him I would look into it, and vowed to only devote one hour to the page rewrite. After about 3 hours I had a good working rewrite of the page.  Fascinating story and as editor Brad McDowell pointed out, a great example of Hyman's Maxim, don't try to research something until you know there is a there, there.   As you will see from the page, the ghost writers base their writings on a book that was written 70+ years after the event.  Even that book was based on a (never seen) book that was from a 30 year old man's childhood memories of the events.  So not very reliable. 

Anyway, as usual it is always fun to see how many views these pages get, so before you check this URL, make a guess how many people in October 2012 have visited the Bell Witch page.   And to prove that this is a Halloween story, you will see a major drop in visits from September. 

The Bell Witch before

The Bell Witch after

Let them in on the Joke!

Just returned from the awesome Skeptic's Toolbox in Eugene, OR.  This skeptic conference is very different from most, in that the attendees are not allowed to just sit and listen to lectures.  They are assigned a "academic" paper to read in groups, research the topic with their fellow attendees (generally a group of 5-8 people) and then on the last day of the conference (Sunday) present their findings. 

On one of the days before breaking for dinner we tried to show a video that I had just uploaded 15 minutes prior.  The video is only one minute long and has Jim Underdown, Ray Hyman and Scott Nopp discussing Jim wrestling a bear.  That is all the group was told.  We didn't get the computer hooked up right and ended up trying to show it with a microphone held to the computer.  Lets just say that the audio was  bad and most people missed out on the joke.

The next morning I was thinking through the previous days events and suddenly realized that there is a world of people out there that can not get the joke, when it is presented as a video only. 

I'm going to ask you to watch this video without sound or captions.  So turn them off now.  (the video is only a minute long)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4RKBMOnOHM

See what I'm saying?  This video makes no sense except that Jim is fairly animated, and Scott and Ray think something is funny. 

Now what can be done to allow others into the joke?

That's right, captions.  New to the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project is Brad McDowell from Iowa.  Brad wanted to help out with the project but wasn't sure where to start.  I don't give assignments, as I want people to work on things they enjoy.  So after a bit of discussion, Brad decided he wanted to caption videos into English. 

And so he has.

Watch the video again, this time with the subtitles only on.  Make sure not to have audio on.

Now you can get it, by watching the faces and reading the text you can get the joke.  Okay, it isn't the best piece of comedy that exists on YouTube, but it does show off their personalities and how even the great skeptic Jim Underdown got scammed by the owner of this bear. 

Now watch the video one more time (I promise this is the last time).  Turn on captions and audio. 

The purpose of this blog isn't to tell you the story of Jim wrestling a bear (though it is a fun story) but to appeal to people to please get involved in the Wikipedia project.  Once these videos are captioned, not only does it allow someone who can't hear to be able to enjoy, but it makes it a lot easier for other people to caption into all kinds of languages.  Once that is done the video can be cited on Wikipedia in that language. 

I'm always desperate for editors, photographers and video people. I need content created, found, uploaded and so on in order to "prove" citations that we want to make.  I've asked you to look through your photos and videos, get them uploaded and correctly tagged so we can find them.  They aren't doing anyone any good sitting on your hard drive (besides, if something happens to that hard drive/memory card/DVD then a small piece of our history is gone, thanks a lot!)  It does not have to be high quality and professionally edited, just get the darn thing uploaded!






I've discovered that captioning videos is actually fun.  I'm watching videos in detail that I would normally have just glanced at.  It is really not that difficult to do once you get through a couple videos.

From what I understand, in order for the video to be captioned we have to have the owner of the video upload the captions.  We could "host" the video on a place like Amara (this is the company we are using to caption) but I'm not comfortable allowing this to happen, at least until I know more. 

I have over 200 videos (most concern skepticism in some way) waiting to be captioned.  I have other friends that would be willing to upload captions when they are ready (Kitty Mervine springs to mind).  And I'm sure lots of video owners would be willing to do so if asked.  BTW please share your passwords and permissions (with a close friend and/or family member) so that everyone else is not held hostage with the inability to move forward if needed. 

So if you have some history laying around someplace that you think should be brought to our attention, or want to help out and need training and what to caption first, please contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com.

ONE MORE THING




About uploading images to the Internet.  Please consider uploading to WikiMedia Commons.  I believe Kitty Mervine was the photographer in the case of the below photograph.  This is my son, Stirling and we were on a JREF cruise "Chasing el Chupacabra" in Mexico.  Kitty had purchased this dried out skate and was telling everyone it was a chupacabra.  The picture was uploaded years ago to WikiMedia and just a week or so ago, Kitty got a message from one of her friends "Hey, isn't that Stirling?"  Sure enough Cracked Magazine used this image for an article on the chupacabra.  When the image is clicked on, you are taken to WikiMedia where the JREF is mentioned. (there are over 1,400 comments, so someone is reading this article) Pretty cool!

Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia - World

The English guerrilla skepticism project has been amazingly successful in the last year.  With only a handful of active editors, we have created many new pages, re-written many more, and acted as police just about everywhere.  TAM 2012 has become a turning point for this project.  As I've been saying since March, we need to be global.  Wikipedia is the most important tool for skepticism that exists today, we can not keep ignoring that the vast majority of the world does not speak English.  Let's get over that, with current Internet tools we can easily communicate, organize and get this done.

The World project begins today.  We have already created a Portuguese, Spanish and French group that will work on WP in those languages.  All discussions (accept from English only editors like me) will happen in that group's language.  I want to encourage people who do not speak English to feel comfortable editing in their language to participate.

In the World discussion group we will discuss all the who/what/how of editing.  I have a bunch of volunteers (and still need more) with all levels of editing experience.  We will learn from each other, looking over edits and correcting grammar and so on.  I'm sure your reading/writing skills will really improve.

The World project will mainly follow the structure of the English project.  Improve pages of our skeptical spokespeople, add photographs, promote science and skepticism, remove vandalism, promote science/skeptic groups and tons more.

What this is not, a group promoting vandalism, or ganging up on other editors.  You have to still follow the rules of Wikipedia, we are going to turn around the reputation WP has amongst our community.   We aren't writing this for our own group, this is for the world.

How this is going to happen.  As I said if you talked to me at TAM, we are going to begin with some simple edits as a group.  First we are going to insert one JREF picture into James Randi's WP in all languages that the page exists in.  I have no idea what all those languages are.  So that is one of the first steps, 27 are listed. This is the area on the far left of the page.  This is the picture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JREF_TAM9_Beard_Photo.jpg and I already have the caption translated in many languages and hopefully will get this done tonight.

Months ago I tried to get people interested in editing the word Evolution in all languages, but it is an intimidating subject, very technical and too advanced to start with. 

So we are going to start with Jerry Andrus.  I have almost finished his page in English and we are not going to translate it, but write a new one in every language possible.  We are going to do this mainly by translating existing videos.  There are many Andrus videos already existing in other languages, we just need to know what they are.  We will all be using the same captioning software recommended by Tim Farley.  We need a ton of volunteers to subtitle in English as well.

Keep in mind that you do not have to only work on Jerry's page, you have free reign to edit everything, I highly encourage you to do so.  That kind of thing will happen naturally, once you learn how to add a picture to one page, you will go and add to others.  I'm using the Andrus page as a training tool, also it will make sure we all are together with a rich history of modern skepticism under our belts.  Once Andrus  is done we can link to Randi's, JREF, CFI, optical illusions, Uri, cold-reading, Ray Hyman and on and on.  So we do need to know what exists and what we need to create.

Please contact me if you would like to become involved in this project.  susangerbic@yahoo.com  You will also need to friend me on Facebook. (I apologize in advance if you refuse to use Facebook, you can use an alias and call it Bookface, but all communication about the projects are going to happen there in closed groups)

Thank you in advance, looking forward to getting to know you all and making real changes to critical thinking happen world-wide.

Susan

Video of Ray Hyman discussing Jerry Andrus and Wikipedia with me at TAM 2012

Video of Wendy Hughes explaining the We Got Your Wiki Back! project

Instructions on how to get started editing.

Blog on the speakers at the 6th World Skeptic Congress.

Video Interviews and Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia

I hear from people all the time they love this project, but they are looking for a non-editing way to help out. 

So, this blog is for you.

Editors of Wikipedia can not add in content that does not exist.  Most of us do not have the ability to create articles and publish them in noteworthy places, we badly need more content.  Editors can quote from podcast interviews (better if the podcast is noteworthy, but not necessary) but then again very few of us have the ability to create a podcast.

Blogs generally are a good way to stay informed and create community.  But Wikipedia editors are not supposed to cite blogs.

What most of us do have, is the ability to create video interviews of noteworthy people (not forgetting those who will soon become noteworthy).

I'm finding the use of video interviews increasingly valuable for the We Got Your Wiki Back! project.  You can't write a whole Wikipedia page based on YouTube video interviews, but it can work to supplement an article, shore up vagueness, and bring lots of personality back to a Wikipedia page that may otherwise seem dry.

The YouTube video just needs to be dated and location is also a good idea.  Any extra information you can add on the video is also helpful.

I am currently re-writing the Wikipedia pages for several of the founders of the skeptical movement.  As well as creating from scratch the Skeptic Toolbox page.  I've been having trouble finding citations about the formation of the Toolbox as well as the motivation for creating it.  So I sat down with the creator Ray Hyman on Father's day and on video asked him about the history and motivation.  Uploaded it to YouTube, quoted him and cited the video.  DONE!

While I was at it I managed to get 4 more videos about his history in science and skepticism.  His comments not only shore up citation holes on his page, but they work to confirm other citations on other people's pages.  When he mentions that the first workshop was with Jim Alcock and Steve Shaw (now Banachek) that strengthens citations on Alcock and Shaw's pages.  We have to constantly remember that back in the 70's and 80's people didn't carry around video cameras in their pockets, and no one realized how important those first meetings would be, the media surely wasn't paying attention.  We need to document our history moving forward, as well as recapture what we can of our past.

Some other examples of using videos for citations on Wikipedia.

I've met James Randi many times, and with my good friend Kitty Mervine we tag-team taping just about every story he tells.  You never know if it will be a magic trick or a personal story, or something about the history of skepticism, but it is always something worth capturing.

When I began editing in 2010 I went through my videos for some reason and came across this one.  Randi discusses Claiborne Pell.   (I was on a rocking cruise ship and missed the beginning of the story) and I had to ask Facebook friends who Randi was talking about because I had never heard the name before.  Here is the Pell page before I added a Paranormal belief section.  And now here is the page with the Randi interview. 

Another great example of using videos to support a page.  When the Reason Rally happened at the beginning of the year the WP page was heavily edited by religious editors trying to diminish the rally.  They quoted all the news sources they could find, which were noteworthy sources but they were all religious.

I didn't attend the rally, but a woman whom knew of this project but had never thought she would ever have a need for help, wrote to me.  The page was a mess, skeptics had not yet come out with any media supporting the rally.  As you can see from this link, the page had become very religious friendly.  According to all the newspaper articles, there were hundreds of Christians handing out flyers and free water to the bad Atheists.  The Atheists were holding really evil signs and saying bad things about religion.

One example was this one "Other atheist activists held more controversial signs such as “So many Christians, so few lions,” in reference to the Diocletianic Persecution, in which several Christians were tortured." That's right "one example", there were thousands of people there and one person holding a sign should be mentioned?  Funny that they said only "several Christians were tortured", I guess they didn't have the room to name each one individually?  Seriously, the bias of that editor was obvious.  

The page went under many changes with two people sitting on the page.  They were arguing and reverting edits like crazy.   See the talk page for more info on how crazy it was. 

It took me some time to finally take this page seriously and go in and change it to what it looks like now.  Finally skeptics started posting videos of the speakers, and people like Brian Engler uploaded images.  Once the videos were up, I searched for the ones with the best quality, and edited out the quotes that I thought represented the speaker best.  Then cited the video.  We never want to remove all criticism, but just get down to the facts.  


The video you get does not have to be fancy, don't wait until you have the perfect setting, turn on the camera and do the best with what you got.  When you upload it, tag it with everything you can think of, and again don't fuss on it too much, its more important that it is uploaded quickly than playing with it for months until you forget about it (or worse delete it)

As in the case of the Reason Rally, we do not always have time to wait for the "official" videos to come out.  Citations must be freely available to anyone who wants to follow the link and see whatever it is you saw when you wrote the citation. (note: this does not mean that you must have a URL, the reference has to be one that without a lot of effort they can also obtain)

So pull out your smart phone,  or video camera and get these interviews recorded.  I could also use some help finding these interviews that should be on these pages.  Please contact me with whatever you got stored on your YouTube feed that might be relevant. 

I was just asked yesterday to recommend a good book talking about the modern skeptical movement's history.  Other than a few mentions in journals, there isn't one that I know of.  We are still waiting on the biographies (or auto-biographies) for our founders.  In the meantime, some of us over on Wikipedia are doing our best to get the citations, pictures and videos all in one place.  Future historians will thank us!

As usual, if you would like to help out with this project contact me at susangerbic@yahoo.com

6th World Skeptics Congress

Exciting times in Berlin May 2012.  The 6th World Skeptics Congress will be hosting a wide array of speakers.  Some of them I'm already very familiar with, others I have no idea who they are.  So off to Wikipedia to discover who these people are that are representing the skeptical community. 

Regular readers already know where this is going... The We Got Your Wiki Back! project aims to support all the skeptical spokespeople's Wikipedia pages.  Because we know that people outside of our community are going to access these pages shame on us if we don't have their backs.  If we don't care about our spokespeople then why should anyone else?

So I'm going to access the pages of these speakers to see what the rest of the world is seeing when they do the same.  An added challenge, remember this is a world congress.  What do the pages look like in their native language? 

One more side note - If you haven't already read my blog Forget English: What the Rest of the World Sees you might want to check it out.  I talk about this same World Congress's message to combat Creationism and Medical Quackery.  Talk directly to the people needing the message (in their own language) by making sure Wikipedia pages related to Evolution/Creationism and medical quackery are all in good order, YOU might not use Wikipedia as a resource, but this isn't about preaching to the choir, its about getting the correct information in a place they will read... Wikipedia.

The Speakers...

Gerd Antes  -  No Wikipedia page exists in English or Deutsch

Anila Asghar -  No Wikipedia page exists

Johan Braeckman - Page exists but as a stub (more like a stub of a stub)

Chris French - Wikipedia page exists but needs work.

Luigi Garlaschelli - No Wikipedia page but mentioned here.

Dittmar Graf - No Wikipedia page - but mentioned on this page.


Harriet Hall - Great page

Sven Ove Hansson - Very nice page (needs a picture)

Holm Hummler - No Wikipedia page

Ray Hyman - Nice page

Walter Kramer - No Wikipedia page

Benedikt Matenaer - No Wikipedia page

Chris Mooney - Needs expanding but still a nice page

Simon Perry - No Wikipedia page

Massimo Polidoro - Good page in English - Page in Italian (but with a horrible picture)

James Randi - Awesome page with 40K hits in Feb 2012.  There is a page in Deutsch as well with 1,800 hits in Feb 2012.  French page got 700+ hits. 

Gita Sahgal - Very informative page

Eugenie Scott - Very nice page

Simon Singh - Awesome page! (received 6,600 hits in Feb 2012)

Samatha Stein - No Wikipedia page

Kylie Sturgess - Darn good page

Rebecca Watson - Already addressed the issues with this page here.

Jurgen Windeler - No Wikipedia page but mentioned here.

Tomasz Witzowski - No Wikipedia page

Its either hit or miss with these pages.  If no page exists then it is possible that person has not met the notability requirements for Wikipedia.  It is also possible that they do meet the requirements but no page has been created.

So what can we do to help?  

The pages that need help like Braeckman's page need someone to re-write the page.  The speakers from non-English speaking countries should also have pages in that language.  Everyone needs to have a nice picture taken of them (at the podium with the Skeptics World Congress logo) in the shot.  If we don't use the picture now (giving publicity to the Congress BTW) then we might use the picture later. 

Portraits on Wikipedia

Part of the "We got your Wiki Back" project.

A large part of what makes a Wiki page engaging is the use of pictures on the page.  By profession I am a portrait photographer (I specialize in people who don't want their pictures taken, usually the very young and the old and cranky).  Portraits on Wikipedia fits right into that skill set. 

Lets just go to the category American Skeptics for a quick look at how we are doing with photographing our spokes people.  Remember you can access this page by just going to a skeptic's page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and under Categories you should see this link.  If you don't see the link then it probably needs to be added and you can see my other blog on how to add that.  At the moment we only have 93 people listed on this page, something tells me we are a bit behind. See this blog about how to add a category.

Looking over this list I'm really surprised how many I've "tagged" with my pictures.  Some are the main image, others are somewhere else in the page like Hal Bidlack "relaxing" on the stage at TAM8 while some nameless "psychic" tries to discover who is missing a kidney.  (there is no accident that she is missing from this picture as well as her name in this blog) Same picture and reference is on Derek Colanduno's page. 

Brian Dunning, Harriett Hall and several others have pictures from the IIG 10th anniversary party up where they received awards for their contributions.  When I do this kind of post I'm able to link back to the IIG page for a bit more publicity.  They are also mentioned on the IIG page.  We are small fish in the ocean that is Wikipedia, we need to use our resources (each other) to become mainstream and linking to each other is a way to do that.

George Hrab has a great picture of him wearing a balloon hat.  Mark Edward took my camera away from me when we were at the Drinking Skeptically party at TAM7 and snapped it.  Tim Farley is the person who wrote this page and asked if I might have any images of Hrab, I searched my library and found this one.  In fact I think this was one of the first I've posted.  Again a plug for the JREF with this picture reference.

I've talked about Yau-Man Chan's picture in another blog, but want to mention it again.  This man is famous for his ping-pong skills and his two Survivor shows.  Only in our little world is he known as a skeptic. But now someone who might be looking him up for other reasons is going to come across this adorable picture with the JREF Pigasus.  Another hit for the JREF.  And someday when SkeptiCalCon gets enough notoriety this will link to their page with free publicity.

Here's an interesting image that I uploaded for Power Balance Bracelet, it was taken during the test done by Dominique Dawes and IIG.   I hyperlinked to the IIG under the picture and also in the article itself. I know people are clicking on the hyperlink because I am watching the IIG's "stats" page and can see where the hits come from.  You might notice on Dawes page that there is also a reference to the IIG and Power Balance that I left there some months ago.

Ray Hyman, Barry Beyerstein, James Alcock and Wallace Sampson all get linked together through this picture and it gets a quick mention of the Skeptic's Toolbox as well.  (The toolbox is in very bad need of a page, I just haven't managed to get to it yet). Most of these men are in bad need of a new picture for their site, so don't wait for me.  Barry's daughter is going to upload some images for me someday soon and I'll post them when she does. 

Several are missing pictures, Dr. Dean Edell and Elizabeth Loftus are just a couple.  Then again I'm sure Roger Ebert is wishing he didn't have a picture up, check this out?  Is there an award for worst Wiki portrait? 

The Robert Lancaster picture has a funny story behind it.  When I'm going out with my camera I usually have a picture goal I'm hoping to get.  At TAM6 I had heard that RSL was going to be attending, and I'm a big fan of his www.stopsylvia.com site.  My photo goal for TAM6 was to get a picture of me shaking his hand.  My friend Paulina Mejia took this image, you can't see me because when Tim Farley wrote Robert's page he asked me if I had a picture, I cropped out my mug and this is what we were left with.  The photo was taken pre-stroke.

Here's a great example of guerrilla skepticism on Harold Camping's page.  I managed to put up a picture of the IIG at the rapture party on May 21, 2011. (click on the image to read the signs) And a great quote from American Atheists while I was at it.  Use your resources.

Michael Stackpole's portrait is linked to the Dragon Con page more publicity for a skeptical event, good job.

Here is one that needs a new portrait, Greg Epstein 

And now a list of people who are missing their profile picture.
Claude Allegre, Farrell Till, George Abell, Isidor Sauers,  Robert Sheaffer, Stanislaw Burzynski, Andrew Weil, Stephen Barrett, Bart Bok, Chris French, Drauzio Varella. Eddie Tabash, James Oberg, Jerome Clark, Kendrick Frazier, Linda Howe, Michael Goudeau, Sanal Edamaruku, Sherwin Nuland, Phillp Klass, Dean Radin, Robert Priddy, Victor Stenger, Curtis Peebles, Donna Kossy,  Gerald Glaskin, Terence Hines.

James Moseley Not sure about this guy, I found him on the Rational Skepticism Project Page, I'm sure someone will let me know. 

Really sad pages here, I had to take a look at them again as I linked them to Wikipedia, and we really have our work cut out for us.  This list is long, but the list of people missing are even longer.  Please, if you know of people to add to this list let me know here and then others can see and help out.

How to post a picture on a site.  It isn't as easy as you might think, you don't just upload it from somewhere on the Internet.

First you have to open an account on WikiCommons.  Then you go to the "upload" page.  Follow the instructions and hopefully you will be left with a .jpg file that can be stored for someone writing a page, or for you to upload that very minute.

It will ask you for categories, I'm not sure how to find these categories, so I just start typing in the word skeptic and it usually gives me several choices.  I "add" all that pertain to the person.

How to actually edit a picture onto a Wikipedia site.  Place your courser on the WP page you want the picture to appear.

Select the 5th image from the left side of this image.  (The rectangle photo)

A box will appear.  In the "Insert File" you are going to place the file name of the image that was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

In the lower box is where you write your caption.

When done the edit may look like this below.  You can see that the | is in-between each area.  You do not have to have the picture size in your edit.

If you want your image to appear on the left or center side of the WP page, you can add the word, "left" or "center" to this edit.  Make sure you have a | before and after the word.

[[Image:Four Founding IIG.jpg|thumb|250px|Four founding members of the IIG, James Underdown, Brian Hart, Milton Timmons & Sherri Andrews, celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the IIG, August 21, 2010]]

The 250px is where you change the size of the picture.  Play around with different numbers in here and keep hitting "preview" on the page you are inserting the picture in.  Look at what the result is and see if you should raise or lower that number.   This writing is the name of your uploaded picture. Four Founding IIG.jpg Do not change anything, otherwise your image will not load. 

This writing Four founding members of the IIG, James Underdown, Brian Hart, Milton Timmons & Sherri Andrews, celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the IIG, August 21, 2010 is what you want to appear under the image.  You can [[ hyperlink ]] to other Wiki pages even in this area.  Which is what I have done on several pictures I referenced above.  See Ya-Man's picture with Pigasus.

I have quite a few pictures just sitting in the Common's area waiting for a page to be made.  This TAM9 I'm photographing everybody separately for their future Wiki picture, you never know who will need it next.  

Get Shooting!

p.s. Here is my Wiki Commons page with all the pictures I've uploaded.