This is the first issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER since August 1977 not to have been edited by Kendrick Frazier. It is difficult to write those words. Ken was so essential to this magazine that it has been hard to imagine it without him. A project as big as the world’s premiere magazine for science and reason is, by necessity, a collaborative enterprise. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER has been made possible by a remarkably diverse and intelligent collection of writers and a dedicated and brilliant editorial staff. But the steady guiding force for over four decades has been Kendrick Frazier, one of the greatest science writers and magazine editors in the business—but, of course, it isn’t a business. The Center for Inquiry, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and SKEPTICAL INQUIRER magazine are all nonprofit entities made possible by people who care about secular humanism, science, reason, and critical thinking. Ken was one of those people—one of the most important of those people—doing what he did because he loved it.
It is perhaps a measure of the maturity of this movement that we have suffered so many losses of late. In just the past four years, we’ve lost magician, consummate skeptic, and a founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry James “The Amazing” Randi; biologist E.O. Wilson; psychologist and CSI executive board member Scott O. Lilienfeld; and now our editor Kendrick Frazier. Here at CFI, we’ve also lost Tom Flynn, longtime editor of our sister publication Free Inquir y, and Art Director Christopher Fix. But Ken’s unexpected death after a short illness this past November hit hard and left a big hole to be filled.