Register Today for CSICon and Celebrate CSI’s 50th Anniversary!
Get your tickets now for the biggest and best skeptics’ conference. We're bringing CSICon 2026 home to the Buffalo Convention Center & Hyatt Regency Hotel from June 11–14, 2026.
The Latest SI
Organizing Doubt: Before CSICOP Had a Name
Volume 50, No. 2March/April 2026
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of columns from Massimo Polidoro as he recounts stories from the history of the modern skeptical movement and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Before CSICOP had a name, a mission, or a public...
Nancy Guthrie Disappearance Highlights Psychic Failure
March 31, 2026As March 2026 comes to a close it has been two months since the abduction of Nancy Guthrie, the octogenarian mother of Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie, from her home in Tucson, Arizona. Guthrie...
Is It Time We Stop Publishing Acupuncture Research from China?
March 31, 2026Science is messy. The road from proposal to publication is littered with flawed studies, failed hypotheses, and profound disagreements. In a functioning research culture, this isn’t a defect but a...
Skeptical Inquirer Presents
What Science Says about Astrology | Carlos Orsi
Watch the recording nowThe Rise of Bad Science in the Twenty-First Century | David Robert Grimes
Watch the recording nowDinner with King Tut: The Wild World of Experimental Archaeology | Sam Kean
Watch the recording nowThe Challenge of Popularizing Science | Joe Schwarcz
Watch the recording nowStrategies for Persuasive Arguments | Barry Markovsky
Watch the recording nowThe Survival Curve: A 220-Year Story of Scientific Wonder | Bertha Vazquez
Watch the recording now100 Years an Enigma—The Biology of the Bizarre Giant Dinosaur Spinosaurus | David Hone
Watch the recording nowDo Aliens Speak Physics? | Daniel Whiteson
Watch the recording now
We are all skeptics
Skepticism is a part of everyday common sense we all use; it is also a key component of scientific thinking. It helps lead to fact-based judgments about what is real and what is not. It allows you to see for yourself which claims you’ve heard stand up to tests of evidence and which do not.
The Skeptical Inquirer Archive
A Brief History of Scientific Celebrity
Volume 39, No. 4July / August 2015
Science is personified by a handful of articulate, media-savvy scientists who stimulate new thinking, drive scientific controversies, enhance public understanding, mobilize social movements, and shape policy. To millions, these scientific celebrities are the public face of...





