Skeptic Victories

Keneke

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Keneke
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Jan 16, 2003
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After reading Candace's excellent post in "Which forms of woo-wooism most infuriate you?" I wanted to start a thread in which you guys could expound on any and all skeptical victories you may have personally had.

It sure would make me feel a lot better. All I hear is about how woo-woos dupe the public and that we, that battle-hardened and downtrodden skeptic, are constantly berated and ridiculed by True Believers. C'mon, ya'll, give me some happy endings!
 
Well, I have 2 quips.

My wife used to believe that Sylvia Browne has superpowers. She cited that Sylvia worked with the FBI, CIA and law enforcement agencies. Her source... Montel. Anyway, I showed her the JREF website and the current challenge that Sylvia is avoiding. Now my wife is a skeptic.

I have a friend at work that was getting reflexology "treatments" for her general health. I showed her an episode of P&T's "◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊" show and she decided that she would not waste anymore of her time and money with reflexology.

Many people are reasonable, they just haven't been educated on the scams and schemes out there. However, I do have plenty of co-workers and friends that absolutely believe Randi is a charlatan and that people really do have superpowers.
 
Well one I recounted here before is the conversion of a nice woman named Debbie. Me and another skeptic were trying to inject some reason into the board on Seance, the site of medium Suzane Northrop. Debbie was one of the few people that actually listened to what we said about John Edward. She read our descriptions of the cold reading tricks, and watching his show saw him doing exactly what we said he did.

Had to read a Sylvia Browne book to discuss with her, but in the end she threw out all of her "psychic" books.

Another victory was we convinced another woman, brought up in a very strict fundamentalist baptist community, that creationism is wrong. Last time I talked with her she was not quite ready to accept evolution, but was on her way. She was looking up books on Darwin (though she could only find Darwin's Black Box). For christmas I sent her a copy of Life on Earth, a 14 part series on evolution that I loved as a kid.

Other victories.... getting published in Skeptic Magazine twice, much to the frustration of Schwartz. Published on Skeptic Report, an observation sent to Shermer getting quoted by Randi.

Happiest ending/biggest accomplishment I can't share here, a little bit personal. ;)
 
Well, I was hesitating to post the news at the moment (late July), but here it goes:

A few weeks ago, a lady went to "Angeles Protectores" (Protector Angels) to complain about a hard pain in her stomach and to whine about her life at home and at work. She needed help. The guy from Angeles Protectores told her she was put under a curse by another woman, and that she had "until this afternoon" to bring $3,000 (around 300 US dollars) so she could be cured. "If I tell you who she is right now, she could find out and make matters worse", this guy told her.

Our woman went to "clincs" in several cities around the state, and the story was repeated.

Problem was, this woman wasn't feeling bad at all, and her life was far from astray. Indeed, she was a reporter from El Imparcial, a widely distributed newspaper, and the news went out for all in the region to see. The next day, "stores" from the Angeles Protectores were closed around the state.

Full story (and afternews), in Spanish, at the following links:

http://www.elimparcial.com/EdicionI...jemplares.asp?numnota=290378&fecha=21/07/2003

http://www.elimparcial.com/EdicionI...jemplares.asp?numnota=290431&fecha=21/07/2003

http://www.elimparcial.com/EdicionI...jemplares.asp?numnota=290837&fecha=23/07/2003

http://www.elimparcial.com/EdicionI...jemplares.asp?numnota=290850&fecha=23/07/2003
 
Six months ago I made a new friend.

This man is a regular church goer and firm believer in Christianity.

After a couple months of doing regular friend stuff... this new friend learned from a common friend that I didn't believe in God. He was shocked and immediately had many questions.

Since then we've had several conversations on the topic and I was flattered a couple Sundays ago when he confessed (albeit drunk - but isn't that when these kinda things always come out ;) ) that he was troubled and that he blamed me.

I was getting the normal "life is f*cked up," drunken rant when he eventually got to the point. He said that while sitting in church that day, he found himself questioning the stories and ideas presented. Some of them began to sound just silly. He looked around at the other patrons who seemed to be soaking up every word... and felt different than them.

It was the first time he'd ever questioned his religion... and it seemed to frighten him a little - he told me he was afraid of what God would think of him questioning his religion. But there was pride and confidence shining through his fear. He knows something new. Something that might never be abandoned or retracted - a critical mind towards a faith-based institution. Like Eddie Vedder said "trading magic for fact, no trade-backs."

We haven't talked about it since but I know we will. He'd been so utterly stubborn for so long... I'm amazed that he has changed. I'm very curious to see where it goes from here.
 
I've explained some magic tricks to some people who thought they were miraculous.

I've also talked to some people anamolous mental phenomena (ESP, PSI, PK, etc.) and got them to examine their beliefs critically.
 
I have one tiny one that I am cognizant of. An on-line friend of mine kept sending out spam of urban legends and such. She sent me one about Janet Reno's supposed comments about religious fundamentalists. I debunked it, and sent reply.

She sent my debunking along to everyone she'd sent the initial mailing to and promised to be more skeptical in the future. She has.
 
US, I always try to do that, when I get Urban Legend-type spam.

I do a Reply All, debunk, include links to relevant pages on Snopes.com and such, and send it off. Sometimes it's appreciated, sometimes not. But at least I feel that I have done my bit to correct the misinformation.

But so far, the "Skeptic Victory" that has meant the most to me concerns my girlfriend.

We had only been dating a short time, when one evening we were going for a ride. As we waited at a red light, she suddenly says "Hey, there's that man I like so much!"

I look where he is pointing, and find myself staring at a billboard with a picture of... John Edward.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

It turned out that she believed in John Edward, James van Praagh, and Sylvia Browne.

When I tolds her, in as gentle a way as I could, that I thought that all three were evil scam artists, taking advantage of people's grief.

In that conversation, and many over the months afterward, I explained cold reading, hot reading, and the whole nine yards.

We even watched "Crossing Over" and van Praagh's show together a few times. She would say "How could he know that?!?!" and I would give her my opinion.

She watched the shows with a different eye after that.

Months later, she told me that she had come to the conclusion that they could be faking it, and that in fact they probably were.

She still has faith that there is "life after death", and that is fine. But I'm very happy that she stopped buying into JE and his ilk, hook line and sinker.
 
My brother suffers from a recurring back problem and, on one occasion, visited a chiropractor who had been recommended by an acquaintance. Having read many worrying articles about chiropractic, I lifted an eyebrow when bro. told me that he had obtained considerable relief and intended to return when necessary. (So far as I can tell, recognised physiotherapy techniques had been included with the normal nonsense.)

Inevitably, some time later, Bro. put his back out again and hobbled off to the chiropractor who explained that, as his previous treatment had obviously not been effective in the long term, he would like to administer a course of reflexology instead. (At, you guessed it, £40 per half hour). Bro. had never heard of reflexology and agreed to give it a try.

30 minutes later, still in great pain and being required to make his next appointment, a bemused Bro. asked, "Are you just going to rub my feet again ?". "Oh yes, it's a marvellous treatment. It's becoming widely accepted." Replied the guru.

"In that case you can f*ck off," quoth Bro. "I'm not paying you and I'm not coming back."

Result !!

Regards,

AC.
 
If it helps, I'll mention that I get several emails a week thanking me for my pages about the Moon hoax and Planet X. Many were believers until they found my site. I just hope they don't simply believe me, but actually become more skeptical in general.
 
The Bad Astronomer said:
If it helps, I'll mention that I get several emails a week thanking me for my pages about the Moon hoax and Planet X. Many were believers until they found my site. I just hope they don't simply believe me, but actually become more skeptical in general.
Click to expand...

I've had similar friendly e-mails from folks who visited my moonlanding hoax debunking site after running across either the FOX "unspecial" or one of the many hoax sites. The majority simply thank me for my webpage and many have just one more question that is nagging them. Maybe 1/4 of them are from hoax true believers, often their e-mails are very aggressive and derogitory. However, I had one case that was marginally derogitory, so I sent one of my usual friendly replies to this character. We ended up with about 8 or 10 rounds of e-mails and in the end, while he hadn't been fully convinced that we did go to the moon, his initial arrogance in favor of the hoax had been broken and he was at least willing to believe that maybe we did go, though he still had a few doubts. I was rather satisfied with my success at at least getting him to actually think about things instead of blindly following the hoax claims.

Jim.
 
I debunk about 5 or 6 urban legends every year at work, and have convinced one of my cousins to check snopes before sending out spam virus warnings, etc.

I'm most proud of the fact that my two oldest children have become sceptics in their teens/early adulthood. One of them is SoBitter that posts on this forum, and I'm very proud of her and her "little" 19 year old brother. They are undoubtedly my biggest victories. :)
 
I am getting the woo woo kick out of me, is that a victory ?

The road to skeptical thought is a hard and bumpy one. I keep getting mislead and lost on a side road.
 
My mom has worked for a natural gas company for over 20 years. If you know natural gas people then you probably know that a lot of them are big into dowsing. It's taken a long time, but her faith in dowsing has finally been shaken by the simple fact that even the dowsers she knows will not perform simple experiements, backed up by my occasional conversation about the latest to lose the JREF challenge.

I think she still wants to believe there is something to it, but she doesn't take it as gospel truth anymore.
 
Thanks to me finally reaching the skeptical point of view I can gladly say I'm not longer credulous.

To me, that's a really large victory, because it affects me more than anything else (obviously).
 
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