Friday, April 10, 2009, 11:30 AM

Hyatt Regency Bethesda

 

[Toni Van Pelt, Director of Center for Inquiry-DC’s Office of Public Policy]

 

It is now my pleasure to introduce to you Scott Snell.  He’s employed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.  He is a flight software engineer for several Earth-science and astronomy spacecraft, most notably the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and the upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.  His previous missions include the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, a schoolbus-sized spacecraft which he helped safely de-orbit into the South Pacific Ocean at mission’s end.

 

Don’t you think that deserves a round of applause?  [applause]  I think that’s fabulous!

 

Previously he operated the International Ultraviolet Explorer spacecraft at Goddard, a spacecraft described by physicist Freeman Dyson as the one of the most productive science instruments ever created.

 

Mr. Snell obtained his bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Maryland.  He was a charter member of the National Capital Area Skeptics, he has served on its board of directors since 1998, and he is the current president.  I now give you Scott Snell.

 

[applause]

[Scott Snell]

Thanks, Toni.  And thanks to CFI-DC for this opportunity for the National Capital Area Skeptics to honor Paul Kurtz.

 

The National Capital Area Skeptics, also known as NCAS, is an independent non-profit educational and scientific membership organization formed in 1987 in the Washington, DC area that promotes critical thinking and scientific understanding.

 

This is the National Capital Area Skeptics’ first joint event with CFI-DC, hopefully the first of many in the years ahead.  We share a common cause of advocacy for science and reason.  A number of NCAS members, including myself, are also Friends of the Center, and we certainly wish you well in your sorely-needed work with the US Congress, the Administration, and others.

 

Professor Kurtz, ladies and gentlemen.  On behalf of the National Capital Area Skeptics, welcome to the Washington DC area, we hope you’ll enjoy your stay here.  Please find copies of the award dedication at your tables.  I think there might be some on open chairs at the sides and I think we have some things at the back as well.

 

Today we present an award given in memory of Philip J. Klass.  In addition to his work as a leading aerospace journalist and editor for the magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology, he was the world’s foremost skeptical investigator of reports of Unidentified Flying Objects, arguably the 20th Century’s most tenacious mythology, along with the related claims of alien abductions and government cover-up of UFO information.

 

Philip Klass was also an original convener of the National Capital Area Skeptics, a valued mentor to us, whose wisdom and clear thinking helped guide our organization in its formative years, now over two decades ago.  He helped lay the foundation of the NCAS mission and organization, which remains today essentially as it was in the beginning.  In gratitude for his role in founding NCAS, and for his contributions to critical thinking and scientific understanding, we’ve dedicated this award to him.

 

This morning we honor Paul Kurtz, a man without whom the scientific skeptical movement we know today would look very different, if indeed it would exist at all.  I think we can safely say this: the very strange world of the paranormal that we knew in the early and mid-1970s, before Professor Kurtz formed what is now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, no longer exists unchallenged in public libraries, bookstores, magazines, in newspapers, on television or the Web.

 

I can personally attest to that strange world of the 1970s, having been a young boy at that time, eager to learn more about the Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, psychic powers, Bigfoot, and ancient astronauts, as well as more genuinely scientific topics.  I unwittingly trusted the authors of the only books I could find on those subjects.  After all, the binding said, “non fiction,” so I assumed that experts had checked the facts!  [laughter]  At that time, Skeptical Inquirer magazine didn’t exist, and skeptical works published by Prometheus Books weren’t on the shelves of my library or bookstore.

 

A friend of mine says, “Well, at least we had Mad magazine back then!”  [laughter]  Unfortunately that was usually the best we could find.  Certainly Mad did skewer psychics and other BS, but was more cynical than critical, and obviously not a source for serious information.

 

Eventually, thanks to the tireless efforts of Professor Kurtz and others within the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, skeptical works did make their way into the marketplace of ideas.  It’s a competitive marketplace with the mystery mongers, where perhaps it pays to have a team of skeptics instead of talented skeptical individuals working alone.

 

Although that marketplace is, we hope, forever changed, our work to help educate the public will never end.  Just last week, I was describing my NASA work to my dental hygienist.  In June we’re launching an unmanned mission to the Moon, called Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.  She asked me, “Are you a Scientologist?”  [laughter]  I thought she meant “scientist,” so I said, “Well, there’s a difference between a scientist and a Scientologist.”  She replied, “Oh I know, it’s just that Scientologists are very scientific.”  [laughter]  That ties in pretty well with what Susan Jacoby said [in her keynote address] this morning about Scientologists putting the word “science” in their name and misleading the public.

 

But the world has changed, in spite of this, for the better in this regard since the early 1970s, thanks in large part to Paul Kurtz and the skeptical and freethinker organizations he’s founded and chaired, including the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, the Center for Inquiry Transnational, and Prometheus Books.  Since the 1970s these organizations have provided the media and the public with results of scientific, evidence-based research on the paranormal and other extraordinary claims.

 

Because of this, the child of today has a better chance of finding responsible scientific coverage of these topics than I did as a child back in the 1970s.  And for that, I think all of us, certainly I personally, thank Paul Kurtz and the other talented skeptics in this room.  [applause]

 

Perhaps no contribution to critical thinking and scientific understanding could be more outstanding than to help teach succeeding generations.

 

Much is owed to Paul Kurtz as well for the formation of independent local skeptics groups like NCAS.  Under his leadership, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry published a call for forming such groups, and provided them with invaluable guidance and material support to connect with other skeptics in their community and organize.  And for that, NCAS thanks you as well.  [applause]

 

Professor Kurtz, in remembrance of Philip J. Klass, our mentor, and your friend and colleague, NCAS honors you for your outstanding contributions to critical thinking and scientific understanding with the 2009 Philip J. Klass Award. [removes shroud; applause]

 

[Paul Kurtz speaks.]