The Skeptics Society

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The Skeptics Society is "a scientific and educational organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, professors and teachers, and anyone curious about controversial ideas, extraordinary claims, revolutionary ideas, and the promotion of science" (but apparently not those curious about apostrophes) founded by Michael Shermer. Its main resource is Skeptic Magazine. Two of the most important subjects are Intelligent Design and Creationism.

During 2017 the magazine published by the society has taken a turn for the less credible, publishing an elaborate defense of Milo Yiannopoulos' endorsement of pedophilia,[citation needed] celebrating a suspect hoax paper that got rejected from prominent journals as discrediting gender studies,[citation needed] and justifying the sexual assault against minors coverups by Jerry Sandusky because a psychologist was invited as an expert witness about the harm of child abuse.[1]

Additionally, among its masthead, it has hereditarianism proponent and "race realist" Frank MieleWikipedia as a senior editor.[2] Miele worked as a contributor to the infamous Mankind Quarterly when he was an undergraduate and worked as an assistant and consultant for Richard Lynn.

For some reason, the Skeptic magazine has been hoaxed for three years by letting John Glynn, who fabricated credentials in psychology, to write articles[3] dealing with various topics such as the relationship between violent video games and gun crimes. Glynn has also written for various publications ranging from Quillette to Psych Central to Areo to Huffington Post to Spectator. Shermer noticed only when Glynn asked Shermer to lend money to help deal with his troubles with Xavier Medical School.

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  1. Trial by Therapy: The Jerry Sandusky Case Revisited. Skeptic.com.

    Had Sandusky testified, he could have explained the aspects of his behavior that some parents and even some children found “creepy.” He had spent much of his youth living on the second floor of a recreation center managed by his father, himself a charitable man who cared about helping underprivileged children. Jerry had wanted to emulate him in every way. In Art Sandusky’s facility, communal showers and prankish romping after exercise had been routine. The roughhousing had been play, but it had also offered a heartening, asexual token of solidarity between athletically inclined men and boys. Even Jerry’s most unsettling practice, squeezing the knees of a boy passenger in a car, was inherited from his father. It meant something like “Don’t forget that you can rely on my support.” As Jerry’s son Jon, now Director of Player Personnel for the Cleveland Browns, has commented,

    Many factors contributed to the Sandusky debacle: a prurient misconstruction of well-meant deeds; excessive zeal by officials, police, social workers, and therapists; scandal mongering by the media that preempted the judicial process; the greed of abuse claimants and their lawyers; and a political vendetta against Penn State’s President Spanier by then Governor Tom Corbett. But the main ingredient in the witches’ brew, the one that rendered it most toxic, was something else: bogus psychological theory.

  2. Skeptic masthead.
  3. Shermer, M. (2019). "The Fabulist and the Publisher: A Journalistic and Academic Fraud Exposed". Skeptic Retrieved October 22, 2019.