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Course Detail: TOSW - Telling Our Stories with Wikipedia: From Psychic Stings to Challenging Pseudoscience

Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world, but how accurate are the articles? In a groundbreaking effort to increase information accuracy, a crowd-sourced project - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) - has written over 2000 Wikipedia articles concerning science, pseudoscience, and the people of science. With over 100 editors from all over the world, located in a private Facebook group called The Secret Cabal, they work in many languages and are always looking for more people to train! The founder of GSoW will describe various forms of scientific activism such as challenging pseudoscience on Wikipedia and expos�s of well-known psychics.

Affectionately called the Wikipediatrician, Susan Gerbic is the founder of Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW). A Center for Inquiry (CFI) Ambassador, Gerbic is a fellow of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and winner of the CFI's Balles Award for Critical Thinking as well as the James Randi Foundation Award. Gerbic founded and manages About Time, a non-profit organization focusing on scientific skepticism and activism. While her particular focus has been "Grief Vampires" (psychics), her activism encompasses all areas of skepticism. In 2019 the New York Times featured Gerbic's and GSoW's involvement in two psychic stings (Operation Bumblebee & Operation Onion Ring). An introduction will be provided by Stephen Hupp, SIUE psychology professor and editor of Skeptical Inquirer: The Magazine for Science and Reason.