Skeptics

Life used to run a series of cartoons called "The Skeptics Society" which showed earnest-looking savants solemnly testing and rejecting such saws as "A watched pot never boils" and " 'Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good." Last week, after four years of research, a Columbia University pedagog announced that he could disprove nearly all of such adages, superstitions and unfounded beliefs. He is Dr. Otis William Caldwell, 63, director of the Institute of School Experimentation at Teachers College, and he has checked up on superstition with many a questionnaire, many a column of figures. He calculates that 98 people out of 100 are superstitious; women more than men; country folk more than city; actors, sailors, prize fighters and petty politicians more than other groups. Dr. Caldwell urges that women's clubs throughout the land join in to help rid children of superstition. Anti-superstition courses have already been tried in 29 high schools in 15 States, and as much as 494% improvement has been found after explosion of such unfounded beliefs as that the groundhog foretells weather, that winters are growing warmer, that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, that brunettes are more trustworthy than blondes.

No courses yet exist to explode the notions held by children that a lie does not count if you cross your fingers, or that if your nose itches you will have company, 'or kiss a fool. But Teachers College provides such grave analyses as this, concerning the theory that a snake's tail does not die until sundown: "This may seem true to an individual who is not a keen observer, and his observation may even support his belief. Many of the lower animals do not die instantly as a result of severe injuries. A snake's tail may remain alive for several hours after it has been severed from the rest of the body. The idea that the severed part or tail dies after the sun goes down may be due to the fact that observation usually ceases at dusk and the part is found dead the next morning."

P: In Baltimore last week Harry Allen Overstreet, head of the Philosophy Department at the College of the City of New York, iconoclastically told a Child Study Association meeting that Casabianca, the 13-year-old boy who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled, was a "moron without sense enough to respond to a new situation."

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