“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese.” Marley’s ghost visiting Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843), illustration by John Leech. (Public Domain Review)

The Crisis of Professional Skepticism

Leading skeptics fail the test of “extraordinary evidence”

’Tis safer to be that which we destroy,

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

— Lady Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 2

A brilliant 20th century sociologist Marcello Truzzi (1935–2003) called himself a “constructive skeptic” of…