Thanks for your Important Work Opposing Irrational Skepticsm

[James DeMeo]

Dear Mr. Wu, and all.

Thanks for undertaking this effort.

I am a practicing natural scientist since the 1970s, having produced the first mainstream university verification studies on the controversial life-energy research of the late Dr. Wilhelm Reich. While I am professionally best-known for my "Saharasia" research -- the largest global geographical and cross-cultural study on the origins of human violence and warfare ever undertaken (http://www.saharasia.org) -- I've also become known for my experimental work confirming Reich's controversial findings, in detailed and controlled experiments. I've received both acclaim and assault for my findings, to include an extended organized hate-mail campaign sent around to my university chair and dean, in thankfully failed efforts to get me fired, and even to my family, while I also had to field death-threats and threats to burglarize my home... all happening at the same time when "Skeptical Inquirer" was writing hate-filled and lying articles, for which no rebuttals were allowed.

Eventually, after a decade of teaching in the universities, during which time such incredibly malicious tactics were occurring nearly non-stop, I found myself spending more time defending against such irrational attack than doing my work, and decided to go into the private sector. A defacto blacklisting against my person had happened in any case. I managed to survive and thrive via my own private institute. I know of others who did not fare so well... maybe you know the same abusive treatment was organized by the CSICOP-Mafia against the statistician Michel Gauquelin, whose work on the "Mars Effect" in astrology confirmed a clear planetary influence... very controversial, and maybe it was correct, or not-correct, but certainly he deserved an honorable treatment -- but a climate of ridicule and character assassination was set into motion against him by the "professional skeptics" and their friends in the news media. After losing his university post and then later a basic teacher's post, being unemployed, broke, and publicly assaulted from all quarters, he committed suicide. Reich was treated even worse, thrown into prison on cooked-up charges, his books being burned by official court-order! I could make a long list of similar things, and have a short on-line article reviewing such things (see below). The "skeptic" people have no shame, no honor, and certainly no scientific authority or integrity, nor ethics. I find it stunning that so many "big name" scientists lend their names to it. A big public shaming of them, and the journalists who support them, is long past due. My generation failed miserably to rise to this challenge, to honor freedom of speech, and of scientific inquiry, to do the right thing. Perhaps your generation will be more fortunate, and successful.

In any case, since the time of my own problems, a lot more confirming work has been accomplished on the life-energy work started by Reich, but so little of it is known, it may as well be classified "top secret".

Reich's name and work continues to be slandered by the CSICOP-type "professional skeptics", even while internet is littered with all kinds of unscientific claims by trinket-hawkers using his name and terms such as "orgone". This makes it doubly-difficult to be taken seriously in the public eye. But perhaps this is to be expected when an internationally-known scientist such as Reich is smeared, arrested, imprisoned (where he dies), and his books and research journals banned by a US court, with existing copies burned in New York incinerators. Virtually everyone who has made authentic scientific review of Reich's work in the decades following his death has been similarly assaulted, and by the same group of "skeptics". It is a tale with far greater implications for US Constitutional freedoms than the Scopes "Monkey Trial", and of course European speech-freedoms are under assault as well. But the assault upon Reich marked the time when "skepticism" started organizing with greater ambition, and making alliances with Big Medicine and Big Government. The effect upon progress in the sciences has been disastrous, as old theories which should have died a natural death a long time ago (ie, Big Bang "creationism" cosmology, AE's relativity theory, "infectious HIV" theory, CO2-driven theory of climate, the "slow virus" theory of disease, the supremacy of "biochemistry" in biological functioning, etc.) have been protected by an Iron Curtain of censorship, unsupported big claim-making, book-burning, and mainstream media assault upon anyone who dares make open criticism of the new Sacred Cows of Scientism. The problem is far larger than merely the "skepticism" against parapsychology.

Some of the same people who figured in the assaults upon Reich, such as Martin Gardner, later became founding figures in CSCIOP.

Regarding Reich's discovery, specifically on the orgone energy accumulator, this is a world-class discovery which does indeed gather up a previously-unknown cosmic force inside itself, something which 19th Century physics affirmed in the ether-drift concept, and which 21st Century science affirms in the concept of "dark matter", though this term itself indicates a confusion. Whatever, the orgone accumulator can boost the growth of seedlings over controls, increase human immune system response, heal burns, and under some conditions, disintegrate tumors. The studies which prove these statements are published and available, authored by PhDs and MDs from top institutions around the world, and show the effects upon plants, laboratory mice and humans. It is no scam or fraud. The authentic fraud is that undertaken by the professional "skeptics" of the 1950s and today, most of whom are Stalinist fanatics filled with hatred against anything new and alive, suggestive of a force in nature which they cannot fathom, much as the Grand Inquisitors of the Christian church, or the Mullahs of modern Islam, become furious when merely observing a beautiful woman, without the veil, or to see two teenagers in love. Reich wrote poignantly about those issues as well.

I have some resources to share:

Our in-house research journal "Pulse of the Planet", along with several of my books on the subject of orgone life-energy, are found here (left side) as are many of Reich's original publications:
http://www.naturalenergyworks.net

An article I wrote rebutting Martin Gardner's smear article against Reich and myself in "Skeptical Inquirer":
http://www.orgonelab.org/gardner.htm

My article on "Suppression of Dissent and Innovative Ideas in Science and Medicine" in the universities, presented to the AAAS and elsewhere (to little or no affect):
http://www.orgonelab.org/suppression.htm

A Conference on New Research in Orgonomy (the science of life-energy functions in nature) taking place this summer 2009:
http://www.orgonomyconference.htm

A YouTube summary I prepared on Reich:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPV-JExUPns

Review the most recent OBRL Quarterly Newsletters:
http://www.orgonelab.org/OBRLNewsletter.htm

Feel free to post my email or this information separately as you see fit.

Also, do you know the exceptional work exposing the anti-scientific foundations of CSICOP undertaken by Hansen? Or the article by Wilder tracking the Stalinist roots of CSICOP?

One big open question is, do the "skeptics" get funding from the pharmacy companies, to whom they appear beholden? Who are their funders? Now, that is an important project someone could undertake, which might reveal volumes.

Your work exposing the fake skeptics is very important. Those of us doing scientific work on anomalies can generally survive on our own merits even within the scientific institutions. But it becomes nearly impossible when one has to constantly leap over irrationally-imposed obstacles and barriers, and to defend against chronic smears and personal attacks, by people like the CSICOP Inquisitors, who do no work in life except to make life difficult for anyone with whom they disagree.

I won't have time to become a discussant on your group lists, but will keep abreast via your mailing list and website. Anyone with specific interests in this topic, of the life-energy, can access the resource information above for quite an eye-opening, and clearing of the mental cob-webs.

Thanks again,

James DeMeo, Ph.D.
Orgone Biophysical Research Lab
Greensprings Center
Ashland, Oregon, USA
e-mail: demeo(at)mind.net
http://www.orgonelab.org
http://www.saharasia.org

[Scepcop]

Hi James,
Thanks for such a lengthy and informative letter. I've never heard of Wilhelm Reich or this orgone energy. I wonder why it's not more well known. His life and victimization sound like Nikola Tesla.

I went ahead and watched your intro video on Reich. It was interesting but sad. If the energy he discovered is real, then wouldn't it be demonstratable and quantifiable? If so, how could science reject it? What was the exact problem?

I didn't know Michel Gauquelin committed suicide. Why would he do that? Scientists and intellectuals don't usually do such foolish things.

You are right about skeptics. They are definitely dishonest and NOT truth seekers. They seek to suppress and censor and ridicule whatever is against orthodoxy. There is no question about that. That's why I call them "defenders of the establishment" since they only target selectively their skepticism at anything against orthodoxy, and never at orthodoxy or establishment itself. At least the professional skeptics don't.

Anyway, I will send out your informative letter to my mailing list at some point.

Thanks for sharing.

Vinstonas