Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) isn’t the first place you’d expect to find a skeptics conference. Deep in the heart of Chelsea, attendees of the eighth annual Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS, pronounced “nexus”) had to brave their way past infamously anti-GMO restaurant chain Chipotle; an organic, grass-fed burger joint; and an empty building boasting $5 psychic readings before arriving at the meeting.
But FIT and NECSS have made strangely great partners over the past four years, since the conference cosponsored by the New York City Skeptics and the New England Skeptical Society, home to the Novella clan of Skeptics Guide to the Universe (SGU) fame, outgrew its former digs. Between 400 and 500 people converge here every spring. Travelers from thirty states and ten different countries arrived for the weekend fittingly starting on Friday the thirteenth of May 2016.
Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology isn’t the first place you’d expect to find a skeptics conference.