Robert Todd Carroll

Carroll started teaching philosophy part time at Lassen Community College. Then he taught philosophy of religion at American River College for two years. Thereafter he taught full time at Sacramento City College, where from 1977 through 2007 he taught introductory philosophy; logic and critical reasoning; law, justice, and punishment; and critical thinking about the paranormal. For several years he served as chairman of the philosophy department.[11]

Drawing on his classwork,[5] Carroll wrote Becoming a Critical Thinker: A Guide for a New Millennium, an introductory textbook for logic and critical thinking. Pearson Educational published the first edition in 2000. A second edition was published in 2005.[3]

In 2003 John Wiley & Son published a paperback edition of The Skeptic's Dictionary, derived from Carroll's website of the same name. The book provides essays on subjects Carroll considered supernatural, occult, paranormal, or pseudoscientific.[12] It generally assumed that something is false until proven true.[13] In the last chapter, Carroll offered ways to improve critical thinking and skepticism.[14] The book is also available in Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian.[15]

In 2011 Carroll published online a children's version of The Skeptic's Dictionary. In 2013, it came out as a book under the title Mysteries and Science: Exploring Aliens, Ghosts, Monsters, the End of the World and Other Weird Things. Carroll also wrote Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!, which was published as an e-book in 2011 by the James Randi Educational Foundation. A paperback version is available from Lulu.[3] In 2013 Carroll also self-published The Critical Thinker's Dictionary, which features short articles about cognitive biases and logical fallacies.[16]

Carroll said he had been investigating controversial beliefs since he was seven years old when he had doubts about Santa Claus.[1] Carroll started writing skeptical content in 1992, when both his best friend and his father-in-law died within the same week. He later said, "It was like the deaths of these two people had forced me to start looking at everything and not take anything for granted."[17]

After Carroll and his wife attended free training in 1994 in which they learned about the Internet and HTML code,[18] Carroll started the Skeptic's Dictionary website (skepdic.com) with ten articles written for his students and expanded it from there.[5] Although the website was a one-man project, volunteers later assisted in editing it and translated it into more than a dozen languages.[19] The Skeptic's Dictionary, Carroll said, was inspired by Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary in both its name[20] and its biased stance.

On March 27, 2012, Carroll began a regular segment on the podcast Skepticality entitled Unnatural Virtue in which he commented on topics in critical thinking and skepticism.[21][22] The segment ran for thirty-one episodes, until April 29, 2014.

Carroll spoke at several skeptic conferences. In 2003 he spoke at the first Amaz!ng Meeting and at a conference of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal on frauds and hoaxes. In 2004 he spoke to the Irish Skeptics in Dublin.[3] In 2007 he conducted a critical-thinking workshop at the 5th Amazing Meeting. In 2011 he led a discussion on "Five Myths About Skeptics" at the second annual SkeptiCalCon event, held in Berkeley, CA.[23]

He was also interviewed by groups promoting scientific skepticism, such as the New England Skeptical Society[24] and Media Man Australia.[25] In January 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.[11]

In an interview with Point of Inquiry's Karen Stollznow, Carroll said he did not earn much money from his skeptical work: "If we talk about the money we make from skepticism we might set a record for the shortest interview ever." But everybody should be a skeptic, he said, because it is a healthy way of approaching life. He said that skeptics' meetups and conferences, as well as the positive feedback he received on his work, were his main motivations.[26]

After Carroll published a piece online labelling Richard Milton's writings on alternative science "Internet Bunk," Milton responded by accusing Carroll of being a "pseudo-skeptic" and said that Carroll had fabricated quotations and misrepresented his arguments.[27] Carroll replied to these accusations in an addendum to his piece.[28]

Carroll wrote two Skeptic's Dictionary entries that criticize Rupert Sheldrake's ideas. The first criticized Sheldrake's N'kisi Project, a set of experiments meant to test the possibility of a telepathic link between N'kisi (a grey parrot) and its owner, Aimee Morgana.[29] Carroll charged that when calculating the statistical significance of the parrot's responses, Sheldrake had omitted 60% of the data.[30][31] Carroll also criticized Jane Goodall for her involvement in the Project.[32] The second entry challenged Sheldrake's morphic resonance idea, in which Sheldrake proposed that, in addition to genetic influences, a "morphogenetic field" for each species evolves similarly to how the species' genes might evolve, that these fields organize the nervous system's activity and can act as a collective memory for the whole species, and that these fields get passed down into the species.[31][33][34]

Sheldrake replied to Carroll's criticism by defending his own arguments and accusing Carroll of committing several logical fallacies, including using false dilemmas and misrepresenting Sheldrake's position. He also criticized The Skeptic's Dictionary, writing that it would not survive had it been subject to independent peer reviews.[31]