Skeptic, organizes the Caltech Lecture Series, and as of 2017, it had over 50,000 members. Shermer is listed as one of the scientific advisors for the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Published works Shermer’s early writing covered cycling, followed by math and science education for children which included several collaborations with Arthur Benjamin. From April 2001 to January 2019, he wrote the monthly Skeptic column for Scientific American. He has also contributed to Time magazine. He is the author of a series of books that attempt to explain the ubiquity of irrational or poorly substantiated beliefs, including UFOs, Bigfoot, and paranormal claims. Writing in Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (1997), Shermer refers to "patternicity", his term for pareidolia and apophenia or the willing suspension of disbelief. He writes in the Introduction:So we are left with the legacy of two types of thinking errors: Type 1 Error: believing a falsehood and Type 2 Error: rejecting a truth. ... Believers in UFOs, alien abductions, ESP, and psychic phenomena have committed a Type 1 Error in thinking: they are believing a falsehood. ... It's not that these folks are ignorant or uninformed; they are intelligent but misinformed. Their thinking has gone wrong.In How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (2000), Shermer explored the psychology behind the belief in God. In February 2002, he characterized the position that "God had no part in the process [of the evolution of mankind]" as the "standard scientific theory". This statement was criticized in January 2006 by the scientist Eugenie Scott, who commented that science makes no claim about God one way or the other. Shermer's book In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History (2002) was based on his dissertation. In his book The Borderlands of Science, (2001) Shermer rated several noted scientists for gullibility toward "pseudo" or "borderland" ideas, using a rating version, developed by psychologist Frank Sulloway, of the Big Five model of personality. Shermer rated Wallace extremely high (99th percentile) on agreeableness/accommodation and argued that this was the key trait in distinguishing Wallace from scientists who give less credence to fringe ideas. In May 2002, Shermer and Alex Grobman published their book Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?, which examined