Activist 'skeptics', why do you do it?

[supercrayman]

I was hoping the 'skeptics' on this forum would comment on this one. I see a many people writing articals on why this and that and this is rubbish, hogwash or flawed... However in this writing the seems to be a huge focus on UFO's, God/religion based stuff and ESP. Oh I forgot bigfoot also Why is the no focus on examining the papers on child development that are written, or engine conversion products on the market which make bigger claims than they can really deliver in terms of emissions? Why do self proclaimed 'skeptics' usually choose the UFO/God/ESP route to there skeptical activities of debating? Just curious.

[ProfWag]

[Arouet]

Welcome!

The skeptic movement is pretty diverese, I think people are interested in all sorts of topics. Some topics are more popular than others. I'm not sure what an engine conversion product is or why skeptics should be interested in them: are they a scam? As for child development: think that's a general interest for psychologists already and there are plenty of books out there on the topic, and plenty of papers ("child development" gets over 40,000 hits on pubmed).

Do you think there is a need for the skeptical movement to be more involved in those topics? What is the prime issue there and what role do you skeptics playing there?

[Arouet]

Not sure if you were suggesting this, PW< probably not: but just to clarify, obviously the skeptic movement is interested in more than just the paranormal!

([hijack]by the way: I can't figure out for the life of my why anyone -let alone skeptics - are so interested in the bigfoot issue. I mean, it'd be cool to discover some other primte, but are we that excited to discover any other new species of animal? [/hijack])

[Craig Browning]

[ProfWag]

[Arouet]