This year we’ve been celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). Lee Nisbet, who died November 22, 2025, played an instrumental role in the organization’s formation and continued development.
Writing to help celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary, Nisbet wrote: “The founding of CSICOP was a fortuitous accident of time, place, and personality. The founding of a CSICOP-like organization was a highly probable creative reaction of science-literate people to an immensely influential means of communication reflecting public ambivalence toward institutionalized science” (Nisbet 2001, 50).
Alongside Paul Kurtz and Marcello Truzzi, Nisbet helped organize the 1976 meeting that marked the beginning of organized skepticism. As a founding member of CSICOP, he assumed a leadership role. A CSI fellow, he contributed to both Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry magazines, and he served as a professor of philosophy for over forty years at Medaille College in Buffalo, New York.
Barry Karr, the executive director of CSICOP who succeeded Nisbet, shared the following:
Lee Nisbet was one of the unsung heroes of the early days of CSICOP. Right there at the beginning, Lee was the first Executive Director of CSICOP and was responsible for putting together the early programs of the organization. Lee was the person who ran the first CSICOP public conference back in 1983 (I was there, working the conference while a student at the University of Buffalo), and he ran all of them for the next several years. It was so very helpful to have had the opportunity to work under him and learn from him during those early meetings. When I took over the conference organizing in the mid-1990s I was using letters written by Lee as my templates and the procedures that Lee created as my model. Lee was a longtime member of the CSICOP Executive Council and member of the CSICOP Board of Directors. He always contributed thoughtful advice on the direction of the organization and financials. Lee, we wouldn’t be where we are today without you!
Reference
Nisbet, Lee. 2001. The origins and Evolution of CSICOP: Science is too important to be left to scientists. Skeptical Inquirer 25(6): 50–52.
