The Comité Para, in full Comité belge pour l'Analyse Critique des parasciences (" Belgian Committee for the Critical Analysis of Parasciences"), is a

Francophone French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the ...

Belgian skeptical

non-profit organisation A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

. Founded in 1949, the Comité Para regards itself as the originator of the modern skeptical movement. The group's motto (by Robert Rendu) is ''Ne rien nier ''a priori'', ne rien affirmer sans preuve'' ("Do not deny anything

a priori ("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...

, do not assert anything without evidence"). "Comité Para" originally stood for Comité Belge pour l'Investigation Scientifique des Phénomènes Réputés Paranormaux ("Belgian Committee for

Scientific Investigation Scientific study is a kind of study that involves scientific theory, scientific models, experiments and physical situations. It may refer to: *Scientific method, a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, based on empirical or measurable ...

of Purported

Paranormal Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. No ...

Phenomena") until it adopted its present name on 19 June 2014.

History

Challenging paranormal phenomena began long before the foundation of the Comité Para. For example, in the 19th century the debate raged about

spiritism Spiritism (French: ''spiritisme''; Portuguese: ''espiritismo'') is a spiritualist, religious, and philosophical doctrine established in France in the 1850s by the French teacher, educational writer, and translator Hippolyte Léon Denizard Ri ...

and the existence of spirits. The illusionist

Harry Houdini Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician ...

(1874–1926) is seen by skeptics as a debunker of mediums, and therefore regarded as one of the founding fathers of the modern skeptical movement. Discussion to form a committee that would regularly perform experiments with scientific controls to assess extraordinary claims originated in January 1947, after a group of academics was challenged to prove the validity of radiesthesia (the results were negative). The organisation was eventually founded by seventeen members including astronomer Sylvain Arend on 15 January 1949, and officially registered as an

association without lucrative purpose Laws regulating nonprofit organizations, nonprofit corporations, non-governmental organizations, and voluntary associations vary in different jurisdictions. Australia In Australia, nonprofit organizations include trade unions, charitable entitie ...

on 4 June 1949. It emerged in part as a response to a pressing consumer protection problem in the aftermath of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

: a predatory industry of bogus

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...

s was selling false hope to the grieving relatives of people who had gone missing during the war. The Comité Para tried to combat clairvoyants,

astrologers Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Di ...

, dowsers etc. American philosopher

Paul Kurtz Paul Kurtz (December 21, 1925 – October 20, 2012) was an American scientific skeptic and secular humanist. He has been called "the father of secular humanism". He was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buff ...

was inspired by the Comité Para to found the

Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the US non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to "prom ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

in 1976 after the debate around the

Mars effect The Mars effect is a purported statistical correlation between athletic eminence and the position of the planet Mars relative to the horizon at time and place of birth. This controversial finding was first reported by the French psychologist and ...

(that allegedly proved astrological influences). This made that the organised modern skeptical movement became an international one, and also gave a new impulse to scientific skepticism in Belgium. The Comité was formally

bilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Eu ...

, but after a sleeping existence it was revived by almost exclusively French-speaking members, most of them

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either o ...

s. When in 1976 teacher Jean-Marie Gantois founded the working group Prometheus within the Dutch-speaking Society for Astronomy (VVS), that besides astrology and

ufology Ufology ( ) is the investigation of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may be of extraordinary origins (most frequently of extraterrestrial alien visitors). While there are instances of government, private, and ...

also began taking on other

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...

s during the 1980s, discussion rose whether Prometheus was still compatible with the aims of the VVS. One proposal was to integrate the entire working group into the Comité Para, of which several people already had a membership, but the Comité concluded that founding a separate Dutch-speaking would be a better solution. This gave rise to the Flemish SKEPP as a sister society of the Comité in 1990. Represented by Arlette Fougnies, the Comité Para became a founding member of the European Council of Skeptical Organisations (ECSO) in 1994.

Members

* Jean Champenois is a former

spirit medium Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spir ...

who became an

illusionist Magic, which encompasses the subgenres of illusion, stage magic, and close up magic, among others, is a performing art in which audiences are entertained by tricks, effects, or illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using natural means. It ...

and skeptic, in the line of

James Randi James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Rodrigues 2010p. ...

and also Gérard Majax. Currently he organises skeptic conferences in this domain. He uses his talents as a magician to imitate the techniques mediums utilise to convince their audience that they can contact the dead. * Jean Dommanget (1924–2014) was an astronomer and long-time president of the Comité, who took the lead in many astrology and dowsing experiments. * Jacques Van Rillaer is the author of ''

Les Illusions de la Psychanalyse ''Les Illusions de la Psychanalyse'' is a 1980 book about psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a ...

'' (1980) and co-author ''Le Livre Noir de la psychanalyse'' (2005), criticising the theories of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

as pseudoscientific.

Publications

* Comité Para (Ed.) (2005). ''La science face au défi du paranormal.'' Brussels: Relie-Art. * ''Nouvelles Sceptiques'' (until 2009 named ''Nouvelles Brèves''), fanzine destined for members.

References

External links

*
Comité Para

ECSO
*
SKEPP
{{DEFAULTSORT:Comite Para Scientific skepticism Skeptic organisations in Belgium

History

Members

See also

Publications

References

External links