Skeptics Pelt Art Bell With Rocks and Garbage

Editorial

By El Snatcher
Editor

Radio talk show host Art Bell has received the Skeptic's nastiest slight, the "Snuffed Candle" award. Bell, they say, has encouraged credulity, presented pseudoscience as genuine, and contributed to the public's lack of understanding of the methods of scientific inquiry. Twisting the knife, they go on to insinuate that he may be partially responsible for the Heaven's Gate suicides last year. But are the Skeptics really being fair?

While it's true that the phony baloney Hale-Bopp companion story broke on Bell's show, it only seems fair to point out that Bell was the first person to bring to light the fact that the companion story was a hoax. In fact, according to him, he spent close to 30 broadcast hours covering the hoax aspects of the story.

Is is really fair to blame the suicides of a bunch of wako nutcases on Bell? Is there any evidence that the Heaven's Gate cult members got the idea that a spaceship was following Hale-Bopp to Earth to take their souls to "the next level" by listening to Bell's show? Or is it more likely that these people were already one short of a sixpack, and hell-bent on their own self-destruction just like the members of other suicide cults, such as the Order of the Solar Temple? These suicide cults have been around for a long time. They do this kind of thing all the time.

The skeptics claim that Bell's show is "biased programming with the purposeful exclusion of any voice that might lend criticism to his distorted worldview." Yet, that can't possibly be a completely true statement considering that many noted skeptics, including CSICOP members Philip J. Klass, and Dr. Joe Nickell, have been interviewed at length on Bell's show.

It seems that the skeptics are only sticklers for facts when it is self serving.