An organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, and the intellectually curious that sponsors a lecture series at California Institute of Technology and publishes the quarterly magazine The Skeptic. Its purpose is to promote science and critical thinking and to disseminate information on pseudoscience, pseudohistory, the paranormal, magic, superstition, fringe claims and groups, revolutionary science protoscience, and the history of science and pseudoscience. The editor of the magazine is Michael Shermer, and the society’s members include Jared Diamond Stephen Jay Gould, and John Gribbin.
The Skeptics Society and The Skeptic magazine investigate a wide variety of theories and conjectures, looking in particular at how well they stand up under scientific scrutiny. Subjects include, for example, evolution and creation science; cult and religion; Holocaust revisionism and extreme Afrocentrism; conspiracy theories; near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences; cryonics, life after death, and the quest for immortality.