Editorial Board
Michael Marshall – Editor-in-Chief
Michael Marshall is project director of the Good Thinking Society, and is a full-time skeptical activist and investigator. He is the co-founder and current president of the Merseyside Skeptics Society, and co-organiser of the QED conference.
He was co-organiser of the 10:23 Campaign of homeopathic overdoses, has tested paranormal claims as part of the Million Dollar Challenge, and attended the UK’s first Flat Earth conference.
He writes and lectures on the impact of PR in the news, and interviews proponents of pseudoscience on the Be Reasonable podcast.His skeptical activism features regularly in the national and international press, and he has written for The Guardian, The Times, The New Scientist, and The New Statesman. In August 2020, he took over as Editor of The Skeptic.
Alice Howarth – Deputy Editor
Dr Alice Howarth is a research academic working in pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Liverpool where she studies the pharmacokinetics of nanomedicines. She is vice president of the Merseyside Skeptics Society and in 2019 joined the board of organisers of the QED conference.
Alice has written for The Guardian, Breast Cancer Now and blogs at DrAlice.blog. She is co-host of the skeptical podcast Skeptics with a K where she talks about cancer, medical pseudoscience, women’s wellness products and other topics. Alice lectures on cancer and women’s wellness for skeptical groups across the world. In August 2020 Alice took on the role of deputy editor for The Skeptic.
Merseyside Skeptics Society – Production
The Merseyside Skeptics Society was founded in 2009 for the promotion of scientific skepticism and critical thinking and has hosted lectures on such topics each month for most of its lifespan.
The Merseyside Skeptics Society has been instrumental in the organisation of skeptical activism including the 10:23 campaign. Its organisers helped create the QED conference and the group produces three podcasts: Skeptics with a K, Be Reasonable and InKredulous. The society took over publishing The Skeptic in August 2020.
The board of directors includes Phil Armstrong, Bob Brady, Mike Hall, and Rachel Waller.
Webmaster
David Glass is a senior software engineer, and is co-organiser of Skeptics in the Pub Newcastle and Skeptics in the Pub Online.
Advisory Editors
Deborah Hyde – Advisor and former Editor-in-Chief
Deborah Hyde was Editor-in-Chief of The Skeptic from 2012 to 2019. She coordinates and production-manages in the film and TV industries, having specialised in makeup and creature effects, and set construction. One of her fondest professional memories is getting caught in the middle of a power-cut in an abandoned hospital, surrounded by half-finished zombies.
Deborah has been interested in the supernatural ever since she can remember which she attributes to having spent too much time with mad aunties. Belief turned to analysis when she started to read more deeply, and she has been making good progress as a godless heathen ever since. She writes, speaks, and appears on media to discuss the belief in the malign supernatural (somebody else can do the angels and the fairy-godmothers), usually employing insights and context from history and psychology.
Chris French – Advisor and former Editor-in-Chief
Professor Chris French coedited the magazine between 2001 and 2011 with, in chronological order, Kate Holden, Julia Nunn, Victoria Hamilton and Lindsay Kallis. He also heads the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is a Professor of Psychology. Although he has published over a hundred scientific papers and chapters covering a wide range of topics within psychology, for the last decade or so his major focus of research has been the psychology of paranormal beliefs and ostensibly paranormal experiences.
He often appears on TV and radio programmes offering a sceptical perspective on paranormal and related claims and has recently started writing a regular column for the Guardian’s online science pages. He lives in Greenwich with his wife, two of his three wonderful daughters, his sister-in-law, his nephew, two cats, a dog and a guinea pig.
Wendy M. Grossman – Founding Editor and former Editor-in-Chief
Wendy M Grossman is a writer the and special advisor to The Skeptic. She founded the magazine in 1987.
Wendy is a professional writer specialising covering computers and tech: she has written for Scientific American, the Daily Telegraph, New Scientist, Wired, and Wired News among many. She was a columnist for Internet Today until it closed in April 1997.
She edited an anthology of interviews with leading computer industry figures taken from the pages of leading British computer magazine Personal Computer World called Remembering the Future, which was released in January 1997 by Springer Verlag
Contributing Picture Library
The Mary Evans Picture Library is based in Tranquil Vale, London and has a huge range of historical pictures for editorial and creative use. Mary (d. 2010) and Hilary Evans (d. 2011) curated an amazing archive, and generously allowed The Skeptic the right to reproduce images to illustrate the history of the supernatural: these appear in the magazine as The Hilary Evans Paranormal Picture Library. For the last five years, text accompanying the images has been produced by Deborah Hyde.