What is The Skeptic's Dictionary?

The Skeptic's Dictionary is a website and a book. Each features definitions, arguments, and essays on topics ranging from acupuncture to zombies, and provides a lively, commonsense trove of detailed information on things supernatural, paranormal, and pseudoscientific.

Dozens of topics in logic, perception, science, and philosophy are also covered to help explain the appeal and popularity of occult beliefs and to provide a guide for critical thinking.  » More about the SD & Reader comments on the SD

The Web site was created in 1994 - thanks to the Davis Community Network - and is still evolving. The book was published in 2003 by John Wiley & Sons, thanks in large part to literary agent Ted Weinstein and former Wiley editor Jeff Golick.

Acknowledgements

From Abracadabra to Zombies - 565 entries | View All

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What's New?

See the most recent entries, updates, and reader comments. » What's New?

Sample the Skeptic's Dictionary

telepathy

Literally, "distance feeling." The term is a shortened version of mental telepathy and refers to mind-reading or mind-to-mind communication through ESP.

The term was coined by psychical investigator Frederick W. H. Myers (1843-1901) in an 1882 article in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers was a classical scholar and one of the founders of modern psychology....>>more