Author Archives: Chris French

Mary Evans.

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As subscribers to The Skeptic will be aware, many of the images that we use in the magazine are supplied to us by the Mary Evans Picture Library in Blackheath. The library was founded in 1964 by Mary and her husband, Hilary. We recently announced the winners of an essay competition in Mary's honour.

It is with sadness that I inform you that Mary Evans died peacefully in her sleep on the morning of 29 June. She had been suffering from Alzheimer's for the last four years. Further details of Mary's life can be found here.

    Michael Thalbourne, 1955-2010

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    It is with great sadness that I write to tell you that Australian parapsychologist Michael Thalbourne has passed away. I am glad to have known Michael and to have worked with him. I will miss him greatly. He was a creative and original thinker, not to mention highly intelligent and prolific in his output. He made major contributions to parapsychology and anomalistic psychology and his ideas have certainly had a major influence on my own thinking on these topics.

    
Some of you will be aware of the fact that Michael was a long-term sufferer from bipolar disorder and you may recall that on a previous occasion I sent out an email via the paranormal email network announcing his death by suicide. On that occasion, it transpired that I, along with dozens of others, had been the victim of a hoax and Michael was in fact still very much alive. The hoaxer was Michael himself, in one of his manic phases. I was, therefore, somewhat suspicious when I received an email a few days ago ostensibly from Bryan Thalbourne, Michael's brother, informing me that Michael was in hospital in a coma having been found unconscious at his flat. Since then, I have been informed by Bryan of Michael's death. On this occasion, I have taken steps to try to ensure that the emails are genuine (e.g., by contacting third parties) and I now believe that, unfortunately, they are.

    
Yours in sadness,
    Chris.
     

      Skeptical Voter Campaign

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      The Skeptical Voter campaign is another campaign that we should all get behind. As it says on their website

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      Hello, and welcome to Skeptical Voter, a new website where we aim to discover and catalogue the political positions of Members of Parliament and candidates in next general election, specifically with regard with issues that ‘Skeptical’ people are interested in. These include the attitude of candidates to evidence-based policy, the role of the libel laws in science, and the teaching of creationism in schools.

      Skeptical Voters believe that evidence should be at the centre of all public policy making. This site intends to identify which parliamentary candidates embrace the use of evidence as a means to inform their decisions and which prefer to obfuscate, ignore or suppress the evidence for political convenience.

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      Visit the site to pledge your support.

      Cheers,
      Chris

        True vs. False Memories: Is There a Definitive Difference?

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        Hi All, Final reminder that we kick off the APRU Invited Speaker Series for 2009-10 this evening with a talk from Dr Cara Laney (see below). Full details of the programme for Term 1 are now available at http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/speakers/

        Date: 6/10/09 Speaker: Dr Cara Laney Title: True vs. False Memories: Is There a Definitive Difference?

        Abstract:

        If there were a way to reliably distinguish between true and false memory reports, eyewitness testimony could be made more trustworthy. Three studies will be discussed. In the first, participants were given false memories for a positive event to see whether these memories, like true memories, might have repercussions. The second study was designed to assess whether demand characteristics could explain the results of false memory studies. In the final study, some participants were given false memories for three different emotional childhood events. Other participants had pre-existing (presumably true) memories for the same three events. The emotionality of the true and false memories was then compared, to see whether emotional content might be a reliable signal of memory accuracy.

        Biography:

        Dr Cara Laney is a lecturer of forensic psychology at the University of Leicester. She completed her PhD at the University of California in 2006, working with Elizabeth Loftus. Her main area of research is human memory and the myriad ways it can go wrong. Besides giving participants false memories for a variety of consequential and emotional events, to show that even meaningful and emotional memories can be false memories, she has experimented with the memory altering powers of moral judgments and visual system tricks. She has published more than a dozen journal articles in the field of memory.

        AS ALWAYS, SEMINARS ARE HELD ON TUESDAYS AT 6:10 PM IN ROOM 256, RICHARD HOGGART BUILDING, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW.

        The talks are open to all.

        Attendance is free and there is no need to book in advance. For further information, contact Tamas Borbely (email: tamas.borbely@gmx.com). Please feel free to forward to other groups or individuals who may be interested in attending.