The Rational Mind is a Lonely Hunter
It has been a lonely business being an outspoken skeptic since the early days of the Great New Age/Alternative Medicine Mania, continuing today on New-Age Maui. In the early 1980s I and a few friends, most notably Honolulu Meals on Wheels Executive Director Alicia Leonhard and University of Hawaii Professor (Emeritus) Victor Stenger formed the Quackery Action Council (QAC), aka Hawaii Skeptics. We affiliated with the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) and the Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). We organized lectures, seminars, workshops, and demonstrations. We walked on hot coals to mock and expose Tony Robbins and his scams. (We cost him so many customers he threatened to sue us.) On the day of the “Harmonic Convergence,” organized to celebrate New Age silliness and fantasies, we had our Skeptical Convergence with magic demonstrations, rationalist speakers and challenges to superstitious notions. We had taste tests to debunk the claim