Susan Marie Gerbic (born 8 August 1962) is an American skeptical activist and writer, best known as the founder of Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) and for her long-running investigative writing on television mediums, including Tyler Henry.
Early life
Gerbic was born and raised in Salinas, California, the youngest child of a youngest child. She discovered the organised skepticism community in 2000 while researching a topic for a college paper, attending a small gathering in San Jose where she met several figures active in the movement.[1]
Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia
In May 2010, Gerbic and Mark Edward proposed "Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia" as a presentation at a regional SkeptiCamp event, choosing the name to describe a form of activism that was "more underground, more grass-root, more mole-like." The concept for organising volunteer editors grew out of the work of Tim Farley, after Gerbic found existing Wikipedia projects dedicated to skepticism largely dormant or difficult for new editors to join.[2]
GSoW trains and coordinates volunteer editors to create and improve Wikipedia articles reflecting the scientific-skepticism perspective on paranormal, alternative-medicine, and pseudoscience topics, alongside general science content. By 2024, the project reported having written or substantially edited over 2,200 articles, collectively viewed more than 170 million times.[3] Gerbic also co-founded Monterey County Skeptics, and in 2018 founded and continues to manage About Time, a non-profit focused on scientific skepticism and activism more broadly.[4]
Investigations of mediums
Alongside her Wikipedia work, Gerbic has organised what she describes as sting operations against television and touring mediums, coordinating volunteers to create fake social media profiles for fictitious deceased people and then observing whether visited mediums appear to independently produce matching details during a reading, publishing the resulting evidence online.[4] Her most sustained subject has been Tyler Henry, whom she has profiled across a long-running series of articles for Skeptical Inquirer, arguing his on-camera readings are consistent with cold-reading and hot-reading technique rather than genuine mediumship.[5] She has described her broader focus, extending beyond Henry to other television psychics, under the term "Grief Vampires."[4]
Recognition
Gerbic is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and of the German skeptical organisation GWUP, and writes a regular column, "Guerrilla Skepticism," for Skeptical Inquirer.[3] She has received the "In the Trenches" award from the Skeptic's Toolbox workshop (2012), a James Randi Educational Foundation award (2017), the Center for Inquiry's Balles Award for Critical Thinking (2019), and the National Capital Area Skeptics' Philip J. Klass award (2022).[4]
See also
References
- ↑ "The Battle Over Wikipedia Misinformation: Interview with Guerilla Skeptic Guru Susan Gerbic."Center for Inquiry.30 January 2022.
- ↑ "GSoW - Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia."FreeWiki.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Join Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia—and Help Us Find More Science Experts."Skeptical Inquirer.22 August 2024.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Susan Gerbic."Center for Inquiry.
- ↑ "This Is the Last Time I Will Write About Tyler Henry. Probably."Skeptical Inquirer.8 December 2017.