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HandWiki. Skeptical Movement. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/34659 (accessed on 21 September 2026).
HandWiki. Skeptical Movement. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/34659. Accessed September 21, 2026.
HandWiki. "Skeptical Movement" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/34659 (accessed September 21, 2026).
HandWiki. (2022, November 15). Skeptical Movement. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/34659
HandWiki. "Skeptical Movement." Encyclopedia. Web. 15 November, 2022.
Skeptical Movement
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The content is sourced from: https://handwiki.org/wiki/Philosophy:Skeptical_movement

The skeptical movement (British spelling: sceptical movement) is a modern social movement based on the idea of scientific skepticism (also called rational skepticism). The movement has the goal of investigating claims made on fringe topics and determining whether they are supported by empirical research and are reproducible, as part of a methodological norm pursuing "the extension of certified knowledge". The process followed is sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry. Roots of the movement date at least from the 19th century, when people started publicly raising questions regarding the unquestioned acceptance of claims about spiritism, of various widely-held superstitions, and of pseudoscience. Publications such as those of the Dutch Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij (1881) also targeted medical quackery. Using as a template the Belgian organization founded in 1949, Comité Para, Americans Paul Kurtz and Marcello Truzzi founded the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), in Amherst, New York, in 1976. Now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), this organization has inspired others to form similar groups worldwide.

social movement paranormal skepticism

References

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  10. Loxton, Daniel (2013). "Why Is There a Skeptical Movement?". p. 32. https://www.skeptic.com/downloads/Why-Is-There-a-Skeptical-Movement.pdf. "CSICOP—and with it the global network of likeminded organizations that CSICOP inspired, such as the JREF and the Skeptics Society—was created with the specific yet ambitious goal of filling a very large gap in scholarship. The skeptical movement sought to bring organized critical focus to the same ancient problem that isolated, outnumbered, independent voices had been struggling to address for centuries: a virtually endless number of unexamined, potentially harmful paranormal or pseudoscientific claims ignored or neglected by mainstream scientists and scholars. [...] '[...] We are in effect a surrogate in that area for institutional science.'" 
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