Michelle E. Ainsworthholds an MA
in history, and enjoys investigating
intellectual history in particular.
She is currently researching the cul-
tural history of stage magic in the
United States. She is a member of
the New York Society for Ethical Cul-
ture. She blogs at humanistchick
.blogspot.com.
Ástor Alexanderis a figurative illus-
trator and painter. He specializes in
portraits and he’s a big fan of the
American illustrators of the 60s. His
work can be seen at behance.net
/astoralexander
Dr. Robert Bartholomewis a med-
ical sociologist and Honorary Senior
Lecturer in the Department of Psy-
chological Medicine at the Univer-
sity of Auckland in New Zealand.
He is the author of American Intol-
erance: Our Dark History of Demo-
nizing Immigrants (Prometheus
2018) and the forthcoming book,
Havana Syndrome(Springer Scien-
tific, 2020) with UCLA Neurologist
Robert W. Baloh, unmasking the
pseudoscience surrounding claims
that American diplomats in Cuba
were attacked by a sonic weapon.
Robert has a special interest in
mass hysteria and social panics.
Izhar Cohenwas born in Raanana,
Israel. He studied at the Bezalel
academy of art in Jerusalem, the
École Nationale Supérieure des Arts
Décoratifs in Paris, and the Central
Saint Martins College of Art and De-
sign in London. His work has been
published in The Sunday Times, The
Times, The Financial Times, The New
York Times, The Guardian, Reader’s
Digest, Pro-spects, The Washington
Post, and the Wall Street Journal. He
regularly illustrated Michael Sher-
mer’s column Skepticin Scientific
American. Throughout the years he
taught in academia in Israel and
Paris, exhibited one man shows, il-
lustrated books and pursued his
personal creative work. He and his
family currently reside in Tel Aviv. His
work can be found at https://izhar
cohen.com/.
Dr. Chris Edwardsis a frequent con-
tributor to SKEPTICand the author,
most recently, of the two-volume
work To Explain it All: Everything You
Wanted to Know about the Popularity
of World History Today(Rowman &
Littlefield Education, 2020).
Dr. Jefferson M. Fish, Ph.D. is Pro-
fessor Emeritus of Psychology at
St. John's University, New York City,
where he served as department
chair and also as director of the
Ph.D. Program in clinical psychology.
He is the author or editor of twelve
books dealing with, therapy, culture,
race, and drug policy, and of more
than a hundred journal articles, book
chapters, and other works on those
topics. Within clinical psychology, he
has written widely on psychotherapy
as a social influence process, on so-
cial and cultural factors in therapy,
and on brief therapy—including brief
behavioral, cognitive, strategic, sys-
temic, and solution focused thera-
pies, and on the use of hypnosis in
brief therapy. He is married to the an-
thropologist Dolores Newton, who
studies the Krikati and related tribes
of Brazilian Indians. Dr. Fish, who
spent two years as a Visiting Pro-
fessor in Brazil, and who lived for a
month with the Krikati, speaks Eng-
lish, Portuguese, French, Spanish,
and German. He has served on the
editorial boards of eight journals in
the United States, Brazil, and India,
and has been a consulting editor or
invited reviewer for eight others.
________________________________
Dr. David Kyle Johnsonis a profes-
sor of philosophy at King’s College
(PA), who also produces lecture se-
ries for The Great Courses (such
as Sci-Phi: Science Fiction as Philos-
ophy (2018), The Big Questions of
Philosophy (2016), and Exploring
Metaphysics(2014)).He has over
20 articles in books and journals
(most of which are available for free
on academia.edu), maintains two
blogs for Psychology Today(Plato on
Popand A Logical Take), and also
publishes prolifically on the intersec-
tion of popular culture and philoso-
phy. His latest book is Black Mirror
and Philosophy: Dark Reflections.
________________________________
Dr. Victor Johnstonearned a BSc.
degree in Psychology from Queens
University, Belfast, and a Ph.D. in
Psychopharmacology from the Uni-
versity of Edinburgh, Scotland. His
doctoral research was on the mo-
lecular pharmacology of hallucino-
gens. He earned a postdoctoral
fellowship at Yale University and be-
came a senior investigator oversee-
ing the Yale chimpanzee telemetry
brain-computer-brain research proj-
ect in Holloman Air Force base, NM.
This research led to a second post-
doctoral fellowship at Stanford
University where he developed a
computer program, FacePrints,
that evolved facial images using
an interactive genetic algorithm.
FacePrints was awarded a patent by
the US patent office, and he was
recognized as both Software Author
of the Year and Inventor of the Year
by the N.M. Entrepreneurs Associa-
tion. Dr. Johnston’s critically ac-
claimed book, Why We Feel: The
Science of Human Emotions, is a
synthesis of his research career. It
addresses the general questions of
why and how our feelings evolved,
and outlines the role they play in
our lives.
________________________________
Dr. Christina D. Jordancurrently
serves as co-Principal Investigator
for the NIH funded All-of-Us Research
program and Director of Operations
for Biobank at the University of Mis-
sissippi Medical Center (UMMC). She
is a member of the Cancer Control,
Epidemiology, and Disparities Re-
search program at UMMC, and is an
early career investigator. Dr. Jordan
was a Post-doctoral Researcher for
the Jackson Heart Study program
and has participated as a member of
the American Heart Association’s
EpiCouncil and the American Associ-
ation for Cancer Research. She has
authored or co-authored studies on
varying social determinants of health
in African Americans.
________________________________
Peter Kassan,over the course of his
long career in software, has been a
programmer, a software technical
writer, a manager of technical writers
and programmers, and an executive
at a software products company.
He’s the author or co-author of sev-
eral software patents. He’s been a
skeptical observer of the pursuit of
artificial intelligence and other mat-
ters for some time. He’s a regular
contributor to SKEPTIC. He can bereached at [email protected].
________________________________
Jonathan Kayis Canadian Editor of
Quillette.He is the author of Among
the Truthers: A Journey Through
America’s Growing Conspiracist Un-
derground.Follow him on Twitter at
@jonkay.
________________________________
Anna Malteseis an artist who spent
most of her adult life as an animator
for the Simpsonsbefore she struck
out on her own as a freelance illus-
trator and digital painter. When she’s
not drawing or painting, she can be
found coaching archery in Pasadena
or immersing herself in a book on
history and science.
________________________________
Dr. Lee McIntyreis a Research Fel-
low at the Center for Philosophy and
History of Science at Boston Univer-
sity. He is the author of Post-Truth
(MIT Press, 2018) and The Scientific
Attitude: Defending Science from De-
nial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience(MIT
Press, 2019).
________________________________
Dr. Mark W. Moffettis a high school
dropout who did his doctorate under
Harvard ecologist Edward O. Wilson.
He has a medal from the Explorers
Club for research in over a hundred
countries on the structure of rain-
forests and the social behavior of
army ants. Over the last several
years he has investigated the forces
that hold societies together, across
species and in humans right up to
the present day. His book The
Human Swarm: How Our Societies
Arise, Thrive and Fall has been
lauded by psychologists, anthropolo-
gists, and biologists and was just
named one of the best books of
2019 by Kirkus Reviews.
________________________________
Dr. Kathy Schultheisearned her
Ph.D. in English literature at the
University of Southern California.
Her dissertation was titled “Born
for Combat: The Education of Gore
Vidal.” At present, she teaches Eng-
lish at Oak Park High School in Oak
Park, California. Her current focus
of study is on the poet Shelley. She
has been studying his manuscripts
for the last two summers at the
Bodleian Library at Oxford in prepa-
ration for a book on his last year of
life in Pisa with Byron. She can be
reached at [email protected].
________________________________
Dr. Michael Stefanekis currently As-
sociate Director, Cancer Control,
Epidemiology and Disparities Re-
search program with the University
of Mississippi Cancer Center and
Research Institute in Jackson, Mis-
sissippi. He received his Ph.D. in
Psychology at Virginia Tech and
completed his predoctoral intern-
ship at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He
has been a faculty member with the
Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine and the University of
Maryland School of Medicine. Dr.
Stefanek has also served as a
Branch Chief with the National Can-
cer Institute and Vice President of
Behavioral Science and Director of
the Behavioral Research program
with the American Cancer Society.
He has authored or coauthored over
90 articles in peer-reviewed jour-
nals, 14 book chapters and one
book. He has served on institu-
tional, national and international
grant review committees, and has
received research funding from the
National Institutes of Health, theAmerican Cancer Society, and the
Association for Psychological Sci-
ences. He is a Fellow with the Soci-
ety of Behavioral Medicine and
member of a number of cancer-re-
lated national organizations.REGULAR
CONTRIBUTORS
________________________________
Tim Callahanis religion editor of
SKEPTIC. His books include Secret
Origins Of the Bible,and Bible
Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment?He
coauthored the award winning UFOs,
Chemtrails, and Aliens.He has also
researched the environmental move-
ment, and his article “Environmental-
ists Cause Malaria! (and other myths
of the ‘Wise Use’ movement)” ap-
peared in The Humanist.
________________________________
Dr. Harriet Hall, MD,the SkepDoc, is
a retired family physician and Air
Force Colonel who writes about alter-
native medicine, pseudoscience,
quackery, and critical thinking. She is
a contributing editor to both SKEPTIC
and Skeptical Inquirer,an advisor to
the Quackwatch website, and an edi-
tor of Sciencebasedmedicine .org,
where she writes an article every
Tuesday. She is author of Women
Aren’t Supposed to Fly: The Memoirs
of a Female Flight Surgeon. Her web-
site is http://www.skepdoc.info.
________________________________
Pat Linseis an award winning illus-
trator who specialized in film industry
art before becoming one of the
founders of the Skeptics Society,
SKEPTIC, and the creator of JUNIOR
SKEPTICmagazine. As SKEPTIC’s art di-
rector she has created many illustra-
tions for both SKEPTICand JUNIOR
SKEPTIC. She is co-editor of the Ency-
clopedia of Pseudoscience.
________________________________
Daniel Loxtonwas a professional
shepherd for nine years before he
became editor of JUNIORSKEPTIC. He il-
lustrates and authors most of the
current JUNIORSKEPTICmaterial. He
wrote and illustrated the best selling
award-winning Evolution: How All Liv-
ing Things Came to Be, and the
award winning children’s three book
Tales of Prehistoric Life Series.
________________________________
Dr. Michael Shermeris the Publisher
of SKEPTICmagazine, a regular con-
tributor to Time.com, and Presiden-
tial Fellow at Chapman University.
His latest book is Heavens on Earth:
The Scientific Search for the After-
life, Immortality, and Utopia.As a
public intellectual he regularly con-
tributes Opinion Editorials, book re-
views, and essays to The Wall Street
Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Sci-
ence, Nature,and other publications.
He appeared on such shows as The
Colber t Repor t, 20/20, Dateline,
Charlie Rose, and Larr y King Live
(but, proudly, never Jerry Springer!).
He was a monthly columnist for Sci-
entific American. His two TED talks,
seen by millions, were voted in the
top 100 of the more than 1000 TED
talks. He holds a Ph.D. from Clare-
mont Graduate University in the his-
tory of science.
_______________________________
Dr. Carol Tavrisis a social psycholo-
gist and coauthor, with Elliot Aron-
son, of Mistakes were made (but not
by ME).CONTRIBUTORS
64 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 25 number 1 2020