About Skeptical Science Inc.

Jump down to: Board of Directors - Funding - Supported Projects

History

Skeptical Science was founded by John Cook in 2007 with the goal of debunking climate change misinformation using peer-reviewed science.  John’s uniquely inviting and collaborative nature quickly helped Skeptical Science to attract a global team of like-minded volunteers.  Over subsequent years, we surprised ourselves by our ability to expand the limits of what's possible with such a ragtag gang of plucky mavericks. During our first decade, Skeptical Science’s activities spanned a range including nitty-gritty one-on-one discussions in article comment threads, peer-reviewed publications, and major coordinated public communications efforts such as “97 Hours of Consensus.”

After well over a decade of operation, it became clear that climate denial is not going quietly into the night and that Skeptical Science is a necessary long-standing feature of the climate communication landscape. Meanwhile, our informal nature imposed some limits on Skeptical Science’s ability to realize its full potential. Achieving our mission on a larger scale as well as sustainably funding and managing our various projects demanded a change in approach. Formalizing the organization as a legal entity was the next logical step in accomplishing our mission, and incorporation as a US 501(c)3 charitable educational non-profit made the most sense.

Skeptical Science Inc. formally incorporated in November, 2020. On March 17, 2021 our application to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service for 501(c)(3) status was approved.

Board of Directors

John Cook - Co-founder & President

John Cook is a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne. He obtained his PhD at the University of Western Australia, studying the cognitive psychology of climate science denial. His research focus is understanding and countering misinformation about climate change. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website which won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge and 2016 Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education. John authored the book Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change, that combines climate science, critical thinking, and cartoons to explain and counter climate misinformation. He also co-authored the college textbooks Climate Change: Examining the Facts and Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis and the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. In 2013, he published a paper finding 97% scientific consensus on human-caused global warming, a finding that has been highlighted by President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

Doug Bostrom - Co-founder & Treasurer

Doug Bostrom joined Skeptical Science in 2010, with his interest in the climate “debate” initially centered not so much on climate change but more on the fundamentally absurd nature of many objections to what science tells us we may expect of Earth’s climate behavior as we modify the atmosphere. As a person whose career has resulted in competence best described as  “a mile wide, an inch deep,”  Bostrom’s nature is to find organizational gaps needing filling and then occupy them until more competent help becomes available. In the case of Skeptical Science and as the organization grew, ample requirements for IT support emerged, as well as numerous opportunities to pitch in with writing and editing Skeptical Science content. With background and experience in roughly analogous public radio broadcasting operations management, Bostrom has been able to be of some assistance with Skeptical Science’s transition to a more formal enterprise.

Bärbel Winkler - Co-founder  & Secretary

Bärbel Winkler lives and works in Germany. She has always had a lot of interest in environmental issues and has been active as a volunteer at the local zoo and a conservation group for many years. Over time and while learning more and more about it, Bärbel became increasingly aware and concerned about climate change and what it will mean for generations to come. As a means to turn her concerns regarding climate change into something productive, Bärbel joined the Skeptical Science team in 2010 and started translating selected content into German, one of now well-over 20 languages available. Since 2013 she has been coordinating the volunteer translation efforts of website content as well as several handbooks related to debunking misinformation and identifying conspiracy theories. In addition, she regularly writes blog-posts for Skeptical Science and organizes whatever projects and tasks need organizing in the background.

Ken Rice - Board Member

Ken Rice is Professor of Computational Astrophysics in the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh.  Ken was born in South Africa, studied at what is now the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and spent some time working for the South African Antarctic Programme, over-wintering in Antarctica in 1994.  He has since worked at the University of Delaware, University of St Andrews, and the University of California, Riverside, before moving to Edinburgh in 2006.  His main research interests are in studying the earliest stages of star and planet formation and in the detection and characterisation of planets around other stars, but his overall interests are broad and includes an interest in the public understanding of science. After getting frustrated with some of the public discourse about climate science, Ken started blogging in 2013 and soon joined the Skeptical Science team.  Ken still blogs intermittedly at ...and Then There's Physics and also tweets as @theresphysics.  Even though there is now a much greater acceptance of the scientific evidence for climate change, Ken still thinks that there is an important role for an organisation like Skeptical Science that provides accessible assessments of the basics of climate science, and provides useful techniques for dealing with misinformation in general. 

Funding

Operational expenses to maintain the website and the funds to support our projects are currently (May 2023) still covered by a combination of internal funding provided by team members - namely Doug Bostrom and Bärbel Winkler - as well as some regular small-scale reader contributions.

Supported Projects

Skeptical Science Inc. helps to fund and manage the following projects:

Ongoing - Skeptical Science website

Skeptical Science is an all-volunteer organization but our work is not without financial costs. Contributions supporting our publication mechanisms from our readers and users are a critical part of improving the general public's critical thinking skills about science and in particular climate science. Your contribution is a solid investment in making possible a better future thanks to improving our ability to think productively, leading to better decisions at all levels of our climate change challenge. Please visit our support page to contribute.

Ongoing - Continued development and translations of the Cranky Uncle game

The Cranky Uncle game adopts an active inoculation approach, where a Cranky Uncle cartoon character mentors players to learn the techniques of science denial. Cranky Uncle is a free game available on smartphones for iPhone and Android as well as web browsers. Even though the translations of the Cranky Uncle game are done by teams of volunteers, each language incurs costs for programming activities to get a language set up in the game. If you'd like to support Cranky Uncle "teaching" his science denial techniques in other languages, please use the dedicated form provided by Little Green Light (LGL) to contribute.

As needed - Translations of the FLICC poster

The FLICC-Poster is the result of a successful collaboration between Skeptical Science and our German partner website Klimafakten.  It was first published in May 2020 and has been quite popular in English, German, Dutch and Portuguese since then. The creation of additional translations of the poster requires funding for professional design and layout work. You can contribute to that effort via this form provided by Little Green Light (LGL).