The Man Who Solved the Bermuda Triangle ‘Mystery’
In a recent essay (SI, March/April 2015), I went back forty years to the events that were stirring the beginning of the modern skeptical movement. One wild claim of the time was the so-called mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, and one landmark event of skeptical investigation was the 1975 publication of Larry Kusche’s The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved. I wrote that it is “still today regarded (correctly in my view) as one of the classic debunking books of all time.” I hasten to add that Kusche prefers not to be called a debunker; he just wants to find out what’s true.
Kusche’s remarkable book was newly out there, along with others by Martin Gardner, James Randi, and UFO critic Philip J. Klass, serving as examples of how to do critical investigations of popular mysteries. When CSICOP was founded in 1976, Kusche, Gardner, Randi, Klass, and many others became founding CSICOP fellows.