CSICOP / CSI

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), founded in 1976 as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a US non-profit organisation promoting scientific scepticism regarding pseudoscience and paranormal claims. Based in Amherst, New York, it publishes Skeptical Inquirer magazine and is affiliated with the Center for Inquiry.

Founding and UAP Role

CSICOP was founded by philosopher Paul Kurtz together with figures including astronomer Carl Sagan, astrophysicist Bart Bok, and science-fiction author Isaac Asimov. From its inception, CSICOP was a major voice advocating naturalistic explanations for UFO sightings, often engaging publicly with prominent UAP researchers such as J. Allen Hynek, Stanton Friedman, and Jacques Vallée. Its founding fellows included Philip Klass, the most prolific debunker of UFO cases in the 1970s-1990s.

Significance

CSI/CSICOP shaped decades of mainstream US media framing of UFO claims as fringe or pseudoscientific. The organisation's critiques — particularly of abductee testimony and eyewitness reliability — are still routinely cited in counter-narratives to modern UAP disclosure. Despite recent shifts in congressional treatment of UAP, CSI maintains a sceptical editorial position and continues to publish evaluations of high-profile cases such as the Nimitz Tic-Tac and Grusch whistleblower testimony.