Marcello Truzzi
In Memoriam
With
great regret and sadness we announce the passing of Marcello Truzzi, Ph.D.
Marcello was a good friend to the International Remote Viewing Association
itself and to several of its officers and directors. Not only did
he participate as an active member of the group that founded IRVA in March
1999 in Alamagordo, New Mexico, but he continued to provide input and guidance
as an official advisor to the organization throughout the remainder of
his life, even making an important presentation on skepticism and remote
viewing at the Year 2000 Remote Viewing Conference held in Mesquite, Nevada.
One of Marcello's articles, "On Pseudo-Skepticism," was printed in Aperture,
Volume 1, No. 2 (Spring 2002).
Marcello was a "skeptic's skeptic,"
adhering to the best skeptical principles, and displaying an intellectual
honesty second to none on either side of the parapsychology debate.
One of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), he later broke with and denounced that
organization, accusing his former colleagues of intellectual dishonesty
in their ideologically-based attacks on parapsychologists and parapsychology
research. He created the term "scoffers" to distinguish between cclosed-minded
debunkers and true skeptics, who investigate claims with an open-minded
and tolerant attitude. Though seldom acknowledged, it was Marcello
Truzzi who originally coined the term "extraordinary claims require extraordinary
proof," though he never intended the principle thus represented to be used
as a club, as it often is.
Born into a circus family, Marcello
had a broad command of sleight-of-hand and magical tricks that proved useful
in ferreting out the frauds that often burrow their way into the ranks
of psychics and practitioners of intuitive arts. And he had an encyclopedic
knowledge not only of skeptic arguments, and of the history and practice
of parapsychology, but of the philosophy of science, as well.
Marcello Truzzi was a warm, friendly,
and engaging personality who harbored a keen, incisive mind and a commitment
to the truth. He was a great resource to IRVA and the world, and
will be sorely missed.
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This tribute, by Paul H.
Smith, originally appeared without attribution in Aperture: The Official
Newsletter of the International Remote Viewing Association, Volume
1, Number 3&4, 2002, p. 27.
Major Paul H. Smith (U.S.
Army, ret.) was an intelligence officer and remote viewer in the
Army's Star Gate program. He is vice president of the International
Remote Viewing Association. |