Skeptical Inquirer

• 1. Introduction

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  Skeptical Inquirer began its life under a different name entirely: The Zetetic, a word drawn from Greek meaning "skeptical seeker" or "inquiring skeptic." That name captured something real about the magazine's founding ambition. But it also captured a tension that would split the publication apart before it found its footing. What happens when two camps of skeptics disagree not just on method but on the very purpose of doubt? And how does a magazine survive that rupture to become what writer Daniel Loxton called, in 2013, the birth of modern skepticism for the English-speaking world? Those are the questions at the heart of Skeptical Inquirer's story.

• 2. The Zetetic Schism

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  Marcello Truzzi was the original editor of what would become Skeptical Inquirer, and he had a vision that put him at odds with almost everyone around him. He wanted science and pseudoscience to coexist "happily together" in the pages of the magazine. The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, known as CSICOP, had a different view entirely. They were, as observers noted, more "firmly opposed to nonsense, more willing to go on the offensive and to attack supernatural claims."

  Founder Paul Kurtz believed the stakes were clear. When paranormal claims reached wide public attention, he argued, the skeptical position had to reach people just as widely. Truzzi and Kurtz could not reconcile those competing visions. Truzzi resigned and launched a separate publication called The Zetetic Scholar. CSICOP kept the magazine, renamed it Skeptical Inquirer, and hired Kendrick Frazier as its new editor. The first issue under that name appeared in Fall/Winter 1976.

• 3. Building a Field

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  The January/February 2023 issue published an article by Craig Foster that went back to Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 1, no. 1 and measured it against the magazine as it stands today. What Foster found was striking. The editorials written by Truzzi and Kurtz in that debut issue were, in his words, "so consistent with contemporary skepticism" that the magazine could reprint them today without dates and readers would not find them peculiar. The only sentiment that felt out of place was the early imagining of the journal as an exchange between skeptics and believers in the paranormal. The magazine had moved beyond that framing long ago.

  By 2013, Daniel Loxton made the case in a formal essay that Skeptical Inquirer represented something unprecedented. CSICOP had organized skeptical scholarship collectively into a distinct field of study. It established best practices, brought in specialist experts, created physical institutions, launched periodicals, and employed professional writers and researchers. No earlier publication had done all of those things together. That institutional infrastructure is what Loxton pointed to when he argued the magazine marked the birth of modern skepticism in English.

• 4. Scope and Voice

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  Writing for Scientific American in 1982, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter described the magazine's purpose as combating nonsense through articles written in plain English. He specified that readers needed no special knowledge or expertise, only "curiosity about truth." That accessibility was a deliberate editorial choice, not an afterthought.

  The topics the magazine addressed ranged from fringe science and pseudoscience to astrology, ufology, homeopathy, and New Age belief. Later issues expanded to cover politics, general science, and cyberterrorism. The subtitle printed on every issue, "The Magazine for Science and Reason," announced what the editors considered non-negotiable. In 1995, the magazine changed its physical format from a digest size to a standard magazine size, moved from quarterly to bimonthly publication, and began selling on newsstands rather than only by subscription.

• 5. Readers and Reach

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  Hofstadter asked a pointed question in his Scientific American piece: why would Skeptical Inquirer succeed when its readership was, by definition, already skeptical of the paranormal? His answer came from the Letters to the Editor section at the back of the magazine. High school teachers were among the most frequent writers of appreciation, but letters also arrived from members of the clergy, radio talk-show hosts, and people across many professions. The magazine was reaching people who used it, passed it along to friends and students, and credited it with changing how they thought.

  Science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson named Skeptical Inquirer as his favorite magazine, describing it as a guide to what people are currently "misthinking" about. In his 2017 book, Bill Nye recommended the magazine to his readers as a publication that promotes the "aggressive form of critical thinking needed to immunize us to fakery." Perry DeAngelis and Steven Novella offer one concrete example of that influence: in 1996, noticing that Skeptical Inquirer listed no Connecticut skeptic group, they founded the New England Skeptical Society, which eventually gave rise to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast.

• 6. Criticism and Art

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  After Skeptical Inquirer published a special issue titled "A Skeptic's Guide to Racism," writer Kavin Senapathy pointed out that the entire issue had been authored by white men. Her critique was that the issue showed a "woefully shallow grasp of how racism works." The criticism raised questions about whose expertise the magazine recognized and whose voices it consistently amplified.

  Artists Ellen Levy and Patricia Olynyk found a different kind of meaning in the magazine's four decades of publication. In February 2016, an exhibition inspired by that history opened at the Baruch College Mishkin Gallery under the title Some Provocations from Skeptical Inquirers. Reviewer William Corwin wrote in The Brooklyn Rail that the artwork captured "this built-in confrontation between fact and fiction (which) was the basis of the Skeptical Inquirer itself and its playful willingness to consider the most unlikely phenomena." In June 2023, Stephen Hupp, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, became the magazine's editor, following interim editor Stuart Vyse and the passing of longtime editor Kendrick Frazier.