Can You Be a Better Skeptic than a 6th-Grader? Testing Claims of the Paranormal

Bring your inner sixth grader to a meeting of the Bay Area Skeptics! Good teachers have used claims of the paranormal to teach scientific reasoning to elementary and middle school students. Join Bay Area Skeptics as Dr. Eugenie Scott guides you in formulating experiments to test paranormal claims. Audience participation required! (No actual sixth graders will be harmed in this demonstration.)

Dr. Eugenie C. Scott is executive director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit that works to defend the teaching of evolution and climate science in public schools. In 2009, Scientific American named her "one of 10 outstanding leaders involved in research, business, or policy pursuits that have advanced science and technology."

Dr. Scott is the author of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and co-editor (with Glenn Branch) of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools. She has been honored with the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the National Science Board Public Service Award, and the AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility. She has served as president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, and has been awarded eight honorary degrees. Dr. Scott received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia where her dissertation focused on dental evolution in pre-Columbian coastal Peru.