Mack, you've described nicely in one post my surprise about many of the reactions here. This article is not about right and wrong but about the interaction between two cultures (naming one for short 'New age' is as good or as bad as naming the other 'skeptics'). I have read it as blaming both for what goes wrong in the interaction and for not listening closely to what the other culture wants to say. The main issue is what each one (and society) can lose by failing to listen with the intention to understand.

GUEST, Skeptic, and 02 Sep 04 - 10:28 AM have tried to illustrate her point: bashing and insult is a 'good' start to further mutual understanding. The readers' reaction in the Skeptical Inquirer (more than to any other article this year) has been very different I'm glad to say. Most letters said something like how right she is about saying that the skeptics' ability to communicate their worries is mostly bad.

The banner at the top of the page with the photo of the "Skeptical Enquirer" magazine cover tells me it is a "skeptic" movement website for debunking New Age beliefs, but not conventional religious beliefs. (02 Sep 04 - 02:39 PM )

02 Sep 04 - 02:39 PM, you're not informed (as has been posted already). Two recent issues have been on science and traditional religion (with widely varying opinions, for there is no party line). Claims of the paranormal (as long as they are testable) are fair game for them whether that is claims about Lourdes, religious predictions of the end of the world, sightings of the Madonna, right wing evangelists about evolution, or any claim from a non mainstream religion. Faith statements that are not testable are off limits for them, whether that is a big church or a small (pagan, for instance) movement. Exoprcism to has been a focus of critique.

The line is here: If, for instance the Catholic church says that in the transsubstantiation the wine becomes the blood of Jesus in a metaphorical sense that's none of their business to criticise or make fun of that belief. If a village priest would claim that the wine physically becomes blood than this would be a case for CSICOP.

Daylia,

your first post was what makes me yawn: claims and stories, like any salesman has them a dozen. Your link, however, in a later post, that was to my taste. From that link I could follow to other links about effectiveness and reviews about Reiki (and similar techniques). I see two main points after perusing the empirical literature:
(1) The main effect claimed is on pain with subjective dependent measures. That's what I can believe, for exactly under these conditions the placebo effect is largest. A very quick relief of subjective pain can be reached with a lot of methods in many conditions. If that works it is better than pain killers, for it has fewer side effects. It seems to work better with persons with a high suggestibility (which, alas, makes it less useful for me).
(2) Most of the studies listed are case reports. Controlled studies with random assignement and placebo groups are very few (and in the Reiki case, seem to come mostly from one single researcher; that always raises an alarm for me). A review article linked is summarised as follows:
13 studies showed a positive effect, 9 showed no effect over control interventions, and 1 showed a negative effect.

The authors identified a number of limitations in studies...including underpowered studies and inadequate randomization resulting in
non-homogeneous study groups. The authors concluded that further study of (several different, among them Reiki) interventions is merited.

That's what I feed from and I must say that at this moment I am not overwehelmed yet. Keep up using this type of arguments.

Wolfgang