Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com), the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the co-host and producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series, Exploring the Unknown.
Dr. Shermer is the author of Why Darwin Matters: Evolution and the Case Against Intelligent Design, as well as the recently published Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown, about how the mind works and how thinking goes wrong. His book The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Share Care, and Follow the Golden Rule, is on the evolutionary origins of morality and how to be good without God. He wrote a biography, In Darwin’s Shadow, about the life and science of the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. He also wrote The Borderlands of Science, about the fuzzy land between science and pseudoscience, and Denying History, on Holocaust denial and other forms of pseudohistory. His book How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, presents his theory on the origins of religion and why people believe in God. He is also the author of Why People Believe Weird Things on pseudoscience, superstitions, and other confusions of our time.
According to the late Stephen Jay Gould (from his Foreword to Why People Believe Weird Things): “Michael Shermer, as head of one of America’s leading skeptic organizations, and as a powerful activist and essayist in the service of this operational form of reason, is an important figure in American public life.”
Dr. Shermer received his B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and his Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate University. He was a college professor for 20 years (1979-1998), teaching psychology, evolution, and the history of science at Occidental College, California State University Los Angeles, and Glendale College. Since his creation of the Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, and the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, he has appeared on such shows as 20/20, Dateline, Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, Tom Snyder, Donahue, Oprah, Lezza, Unsolved Mysteries, and other shows as a skeptic of weird and extraordinary claims, as well as interviews in countless documentaries aired on PBS, A&E, Discovery, The History Channel, The Science Channel, and The Learning Channel.
Associations:
American Council on Science and Health, Board of Scientific and Policy Advisors
History of Science Society
Psi Chi (Psychology Honors Society)
National Center for Science Education
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Humanist Association
Planetary Society
Awards and Honors:
Fellow, 2001, Linnean Society of London
Alumni of the Year, 2001, California State University, Fullerton
Isaac Asimov Award, 2001, New York Area Skeptics
Robert Ingersoll Award, Rationalists of East Tennessee
Carl Sagan Award, 2000, American Humanist Association, “For those whose efforts include educating the public about science and its methods.”
Best Books of 2000, How We Believe, Washington Post Book World
Biography, Contemporary Authors, 1999, Published by the Gale Group
Visiting Scholar for 1998, Pasadena City College
Distinguished Speaker, Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, Claremont McKenna College, 1998
Honored Speaker, Urania, Berlin, Germany, October 12, 1998
Alumni of the Year, 1997, Department of Psychology, California State University, Fullerton
Top 100 Books of 1997, Why People Believe Weird Things, Los Angeles Times Book Review