THE VARIETIES OF DEBUNKERITIS: A PARTIAL LIST

Compiled by Jerome Clark, December 1992.

Reprinted with permission on ParaNet Information Services

DEBUNKERITIS: The inability of some leading self-described
"skeptics" to bring rational discourse to the debate on UFOs and
other anomalous claims.

McCarthy's disease: An irresistible compulsion to intimate that
ufologists may be harming America by doing things that America's
enemies also seek to accomplish, such as make the extraordinarily
irresponsible claim that "our government cannot be trusted" and
that it sometimes "lies" and "falsifies," just as the Soviet
Union has charged. Further symptoms call for the sufferer to
express his outrage "as a patriotic citizen" and to speak of Nazi
Party meetings in discussions of meetings of ufologists, as if to
imply the two were somehow comparable. The sufferer may also
threaten to sue when someone reveals that sufferer has expressed
such sentiments; see bully's disease below.

Snooper's disease: A helpless inability to resist (1)
investigating the personal lives of those with whom the sufferer
disagrees; or (2) encouraging others to do so; or (3) bringing
personal matters otherwise deemed irrelevant into debates on
issues related to UFOs or like phenomena.

Apocalyptist's disease: The strange view that popular interest
in anomalies and the paranormal threatens not only science, which
most would regard as hugely powerful entity in any modern society
which depends on sophisticated technology for its economic
survival, but also the continued existence of civilization and
democracy. Further symptom: the belief that those who hold unconventional views comprise such a clear and present danger
that hundreds of thousands of dollars must be raised as rapidly
as possible to construct a Taj Mahal of debunkeritis near
Buffalo, New York.

Party-Line disease: Utter failure to understand that "scientific
investigation of claims of the paranormal" - or anything else -
requires vigorous internal debate, criticism, and policing, not
just the bashing of persons who perversely hold views one does
not like; nor does it require emotional and desperate defenses of
allies even in the face of brazen, occasionally even criminal,
misconduct. Within the UFO-debunking subcult, for example,
sufferers compete to see who can express more absolute agreement
than the next with the dictates of the subcult's leader, even (or
particularly) when he is exhibiting symptoms of McCarthy's
disease, snooper's disease, or other afflictions. A related
symptom: Sometimes, when the dictate in question is so
outrageous that it cannot be specifically defended, either the
sufferer's allies will stonewall rather than dissent or they will
attack, typically without mentioning the dictate at issue, the
individual who has complained about it; see, for example,
Skeptical Inquirer, Summer 1987, p. 334.

Crackpot's disease: Inability to write without significant,
sometimes total, recourse to bold or enhanced type and italics,
underlined, or capitalized words, or - frequently - combinations
thereof in the same phrase or sentence.

Bully's disease: Tendency to threaten those with whom one
disagrees with legal suits when all else fails to silence them.
One prominent debunkeritis sufferer hurls or hints at such
threats so often that the total may be impossible to calculate.

Demonologist's disease: The conviction that those who criticize
an organization with which you are associated are "evil." This
last word is not a paraphrase. It is an exact quote from a
pronouncement of a leading debunkeritis sufferer.

Stroker's disease: The pathetic need to belong to an
organization whose purpose is to continually assure its members,
associates, and subscribers of how rational they are.

END

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