As a Vancouver BC resident of many years, I was exposed to Beyerstein as the most visible, vocal local skeptic, who would pop up periodically in the news to denounce this or that paranormal phenomenon, belief, believer or investigator.

Frankly, I got to find him more and more tiresome the more times I had him foisted upon me via TV, radio, or newspapers!

I wondered where he’d been lately, as it seemed like a long (pleasant) while since I’d last heard him pontificate on his “fundamentalist materialist” beliefs.

Although, I’m not mean enough to wish death on anyone, and oppose the death penalty, I confess I personally am glad his voluble pseudo-skeptical voice is now silent! I call him a pseudo-skeptic, because as far as I could tell, he was anything but an open-minded skeptic.

Like most activist skeptics, his mind was made up. He had a carefully constructed world view that said paranormal phenomena is impossible. And that it was his duty (or psychological need) to spread his firm belief/ideology, and worse, persecute those who disagreed.

CSICOP/CSI, the pseudo-skeptics organization he was a proud and valued member of, has had a sordid history of persecuting brave scientists who studied subjects like ESP with an open mind, instead of with a debunker’s zeal. Particularly when study data validated claims of ESP, the CSICOP persecution machine would ramp up, and attempt to have scientists removed from University positions, demoted, fired, and denounced as “pseudo-scientists”!As Robert Anton Wilson suggests in his excellent account of the CSICOP debunker crowd, “The New Inquisition”, skeptical activists have a lot in common with the Catholic church’s Inquisition, in persecuting those who hold views deemed “heretical”! The difference being, destroying “heretics’” careers replaced burning at the stake.

Some have suggested Beyerstein was more open and fair minded a “skeptic” than some.

I see no evidence of open mindedness. The fact CSICOP/CSI embraced him as a valued member at the top of their pecking order/heap, a “hero” to the cause, speaks volumes. Because open minded skeptics soon find they are completely unwelcome at CSI, and are either driven out or leave as Marcello Truzzi, an early member, did. Truzzi then formed an organization to investigate paranormal phenomena with an OPEN mind not the closed mind of the debunking idealogue.

Truzzi, perhaps naively, at first thought CSICOP’s mission would be to impartially investigate paranormal claims with an open mind. He soon realized his CSICOP colleagues were doctrinaire fanatics, and impartiality was definitely not on CSICIOP’s agenda.

I don’t have sufficient data on this, but I’ve noticed at least a couple of the most loud and zealous debunkers didn’t live very long. Beyerstein dead at 60. Carl Sagan dead at 62. Is “skepticism” hazardous to the health?! I see the less-than-amazing Randi doesn’t fit, as he’s still going strong at 80. Are hexers are at work, “proving” to debunkers the paranormal power of black magic, by successfully hexing them (just joking!)?

Actually, instead of a silent Beyerstein, I’d have preferred to see him finally come around and accept data of some of the dozens of paranormal studies by qualified scientists conducted under University auspices over decades, many of which show statistical validity for paranormal phenomena like ESP. But unfortunately, as paranormal research scientist Rupert Sheldrake (a favourite target of CSI) says, dedicated debunkers insist on being “immune to data”.

Scientists like Beyerstein, who are immune to scientific data concerning all things paranormal,are thus approaching the subject(s) in a very UNscientic or pseudo-scientific fashion. May the real pseudo-scientist please stand up! Hello Barry Beyerstein. Goodbye.

Vancouver will suffer from this loss, there’s simply no media go-to-guy around here good enough to fill his shoes. Well, except perhaps his brother Dale. Hopefully they’ll ask Dale for soundbytes now, though they always went to Barry first since he was an SFU prof, wheres Dale toils away at the local community collage. (I had the pleasure of sitting in on Dale’s Philosophy 101 class for three weeks in the early 90s before dropping out – if all my classes had been as good as his I probably wouldn’t have dropped out, either).

I was extremely sad to hear this unexpected news — Barry was a very sweet man in person, with the sort of gentle, warm-hearted, harm-reduction-oriented critical approach that skepticism should always feature at its best.

He was also a huge influence on me personally: a lecture he gave at a small sci-fi convention, way back when I was in Junior High School, was my very first introduction to skepticism. It was a small room, and a dozen or so paranormal nerds like me had the chance to bombard him with questions.

One I remember in particular was, “What about firewalking?” He said, “Well, it’s all a matter of how heat conducts. Imagine a muffin in an oven: the muffin and the oven and the muffin pan are all the same temperature, but you can safely touch the muffin if you’re quick…”

That moment was like a spotlight going on: “What, you mean some of these mysteries can be solved???” It set me on the path that eventually gave me my career and life’s work.

I had the chance to tell Barry that, a few years back, which I’m doubly grateful for now.

Such a shame. I admired him very much.

I was quite saddened to learn of Barry’s untimely death.

He, for about four years, was on the Board of Advisors of our Austin-based Institute of Neuroscience and Consciousness Studies (INACS), of which I’m a past president and presently a board member.

I was on the ‘phone with Barry just a couple of weeks ago, discussing a research project we’re getting started on. Saying he had some ideas about it he’d like to pass on, we’d planned to discuss them next month in Eugene, at the CFI Skeptics Workshop. Now I’ll never know what he had in mind.

I just feel awful…Barry will be sorely missed.

EMB

Barry was brilliant, and an amazing & patient teacher [I met him at the Skeptics' Toolbox at UO] and one of the warmest humans I have ever known.