Via Facebook, Patrick Casanova directs my attention to this brief but excellent article by The Daily Grail's Greg Taylor, in which he summarizes the many factual errors in Martin Gardner's well-known article about Leonora Piper.
It's clear that Gardner knew little about the case and, either through ignorance or design, misreported many key details. Yet he continues to be cited as an expert whose debunking of Piper is definitive.
Sometimes I think a major part of skepticism's appeal is that it enables the skeptic to take the opinions of so-called experts like Gardner at face value, without having to do any original research or original thinking, which would entail the risk of possibly having to differ with these same experts.
In other words, I think in many cases skepticism appeals to people who are reluctant to think for themselves, and who ground their self-image in the borrowed authority of relatively high-status figures like Gardner, Carl Sagan, and James Randi. By simply latching on to the stated opinions of these people and parroting them, the skeptic can cultivate the illusion that he is one of them, or at least is in their orbit.
For a long time I wondered why so many skeptics would uncritically accept dubious theories like anthropogenic global warming. Eventually I came to realize that they accept these theories, even when the evidence is equivocal at best, because the theories are promulgated by experts — and that the real motivation behind much of skepticism is to be accepted as one of the "in" crowd. If one cannot be an expert oneself, the next best thing is to be a cheerleader for the experts and gain some measure of credibility, authority, and status via osmosis.
This may account for the peculiar fan-boy quality that many skeptics exhibit toward figures like Randi, Sagan, and Gardner. As Greg Taylor notes, a contingent of these skeptics patrols the pages of Wikipedia to edit out any information that might cast their idols in a less than favorable light. They also descend on any pro-paranormal book listed on Amazon.com to inundate it with one-star reviews, repeating the standard skeptical talking points, even when it's obvious they have never looked at the book in question. And they gather at conventions, like Randi's "Amaz!ng Meetings," apparently for the sole purpose of congratulating each other on how smart they are.
It also accounts, I think, for the blustery condescension and snarkiness that characterize too much skeptical output. Often it seems that the principal objective of the skeptic is to establish that he is cleverer than his adversaries, and his principal tactic is to assume an air of bored, wryly amused detachment, as if to say, "People as smart and knowledgeable as I can scarcely be bothered with all this nonsense." It's a pose, and not an especially convincing one.
To me, the whole thing smells a little too much of high school. You know how in high school, there's the "in" crowd, and then there are the insecure poseurs who aren't cool enough for that crowd but who desperately attempt to score points as hangers-on?
True skepticism requires the opposite approach — a willingness to think for oneself and to disregard the experts if their expertise is found lacking. There are some skeptics who fit this description. Milbourne Christopher and Marcello Truzzi (both deceased) are two examples. There are others, naturally.
But they do appear to be in the minority.