Marcello Truzzi

Marcello Truzzi

Marcello Truzzi (September 6, 1935-February 2, 2003) was a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University, founding co-chairman of Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a founder of the Society for Scientific Exploration, and director for the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research. ^[1]

Truzzi was an investigator of various protosciences and pseudosciences and, as fellow CSICOP cofounder Paul Kurtz dubbed him, "the skeptic's skeptic." He is credited with originating the oft-used phrase "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof," which Carl Sagan then popularized as "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." ^[2] However, this is a rewording of the Principle of Laplace which says, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness." ^[3] This, in turn, may have been based on the statement "A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence" by David Hume^[4].

Biography

Zetetic Scholar journal founded by Marcello Truzzi

Truzzi was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. His family, a group of circus performers, moved to the United States in 1944. His father, Massimiliano Truzzi, was an outstanding juggler. Truzzi served in the United States Army between 1958 and 1960. He became a naturalized citizen in 1961.

Truzzi founded the skeptical journal Explorations and was invited to be a founding member of the skeptic organization CSICOP. Truzzi's journal became the official journal of CSICOP and was renamed The Zetetic, still under his editorship. About a year later, he left CSICOP after receiving a vote of no confidence from the group's Executive Council. Truzzi wanted to include pro-paranormal people in the organization and pro-paranormal research in the journal, but CSICOP felt that there were already enough organizations and journals dedicated to the paranormal. Kendrick Frazier became the editor of CSICOP's journal and the name was changed to Skeptical Inquirer.

After leaving CSICOP, Truzzi started another journal, the Zetetic Scholar. He popularized the term zeteticism as an alternative to skepticism, because the term skepticism, he thought, was being usurped by what he termed "pseudoskeptics". A zetetic is a "skeptical seeker." The term's origins lie in the word for the followers of the skeptic Pyrrho in ancient Greece and was used by flat-earthers in the 19th century. Truzzi's form of skepticism was pyrrhonism, as apposed to the Academic tradition founded by Plato, which is followed by most scientific skeptics ^[5].

Truzzi was skeptical of investigators and debunkers who determined the validity of a claim prior to investigation. He accused CSICOP of increasingly unscientific behavior, for which he coined the term pseudoskepticism. Truzzi stated,

"They tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion. Most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal; they are out to knock them. [...] When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then they move the goal posts. Then, if the experiment is reputable, they say it's a mere anomaly."

Truzzi held that CSICOP researchers sometimes also put unreasonable limits on the standards for proof regarding the study of anomalies and the paranormal. Martin Gardner writes: "In recent years he (Truzzi) has become a personal friend of Uri Geller; not that he believes Uri has psychic powers, as I understand it, but he admires Uri for having made a fortune by pretending he is not a magician." ^[6]

Truzzi co-authored a book on psychic detectives entitled The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime. It investigated many psychic detectives and concluded: "[W]e unearthed new evidence supporting both sides in the controversy. We hope to have shown that much of the debate has been extremely simplistic." ^[7] The book also stated that the evidence didn't meet the burden of proof demanded for such an extraordinary claim. ^[8]

Although he was very familiar with folie à deux, Truzzi was very confident a shared visual hallucination could not be skeptically examined by one of the participators. Thus he categorized it as an anomaly. In a 1982 interview Truzzi stated that controlled ESP (ganzfeld) experiments have "gotten the right results" maybe 60 percent of the time. ^[9] This question remains controversial. Truzzi remained an advisor to IRVA, the International Remote Viewing Association, from it's founding meeting until his death.^[10]

Truzzi died from cancer on February 2, 2003.

"In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact." Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis—saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact—he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof."

– Zetetic Scholar, #12-13, 1987 [3]

Books by Truzzi

• Arthur Lyons and Marcello Truzzi, The Blue Sense: Psychic Detectives and Crime, The Mysterious Press, 1991. ISBN 0-89296-426-X.

Obituaries

• Kurtz, Paul, "Skeptical gadfly Marcello Truzzi - 1935-2003", Skeptical Inquirer, News and Comment - Obituary. May-June, 2003.
• Coleman, Loren, "Marcello Truzzi, 67, Always Curious, Dies". 2003.
• Martin, Douglas, "Marcello Truzzi, 67; Sociologist Who Studied the Supernatural, Dies". New York Times, February 9, 2003, Section 1, page 44.
• Mathis, Jo Collins, "Expert on the Paranormal Dies: Longtime EMU Sociology Professor Marcello Truzzi Explored 'Things That Go Bump in the Night'". Ann Arbor News, Sunday, February 9, 2003.
• Oliver, Myrna, "Professor Studied the Far-Out From Witchcraft to Psychic Powers". Los Angeles Times, February 11, 2003, Home Edition, page B.11.
• "Marcello Truzzi, Sociologist was Student of Magic". Detroit News, February 12, 2003.

References

See also

• Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (2002).

External articles and references

Truzzi writings

• Truzzi, Marcello, "On Pseudo-Skepticism". The Anomalist, USA, 2005.
• Steveknightspost, "Emails from Marcello Truzzi".
• Truzzi, Marcello, "An End to the Uri Geller vs. Randi & CSICOP Litigations?". Psi Researcher No. 21. (originally in Parapsychological Association Newsletter)
• Truzzi, Marcello, "Reflection on the reception of unconventional claims of science". Frontier Perspectives, vol. 1 number 2, Fall/Winter 1990. (ed., copy located at: Marcello Truzzi on Zeteticism)
• Truzzi, Marcello, and Massimiliano Truzzi, "Notes toward a history of juggling". Bandwagon, Vol. 18 No. 2, March-April 1974.
• Truzzi, Marcello, "Massimiliano Truzzi's Act". Juggling Hall of Fame, July 1996.
• Truzzi, Marcello, "Project Alpha: Sabotage". Skeptical Inquirer, 8(2)187.

Other

• Hansen, George P., "Marcello Truzzi (1935 - 2003)". (ed., recognizes Marcello Truzzi's contributions to sociology, the history of juggling, magic, and the study of the paranormal.)
• Clark, Jerome, "Archive > Milestones Marcello Truzzi (1935-2003)". The Anomalist, USA, 2005.
• In memoriam From The Skeptics Dictionary, scroll down several.

• Psychic detectives

Donate to Wikimedia