After a cold winter and cool spring, Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of summer are suddenly upon us here in southern New England. I have just a few items to share.

My latest column for Skeptical Inquirer, “Under Attack from the Armies of Autism Pseudoscience,” reports on the recent bullying tactics used against University of Pennsylvania historian of medicine, Amy S. F. Lutz, who is the mother of a young man with profound autism. Lutz’s sin was writing an opinion piece in the New York Times criticizing the attention given to unfounded communication techniques, such as facilitated communication and spelling to communicate, and the relative lack of attention to the legitimate needs of people like her son.

Next week, I will be traveling to California State University, Fresno, to speak at LiliCon 2026, the annual conference of the Lilienfeld Alliance, a group of college professors who teach skepticism and critical thinking. I will give the opening address on Tuesday, May 26, entitled “How to Change Beliefs by Not Changing Them,” but the full schedule of events across the three days of the conference features many great speakers, including Stephen Hupp, editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, David Dunning of Dunning-Kruger Effect fame, and Elizabeth Loftus, arguably the world’s foremost memory expert. It should be great.

Finally, during the weekend of June 11-14, I will be speaking at the second “Con” of the season,

CSICon 2026 in Buffalo, New York. This is a very special conference because it will be a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, publisher of Skeptical Inquirer magazine and your correspondent’s “Behavior & Belief” column. Among the speakers on the roster are Bill Nye, the Science Guy, Mary Roach, best-selling author of Stiff and other popular science books, pandemic hero, Dr. Peter Hotez, environmentalist Michael Mann, and mentalist, Banachek. By coincidence, my talk, “Welcome to the Burned-Over District!” is again the first of the regular conference schedule. I will be talking about the history of western New York State and the many unusual systems of belief that have cropped up there. I’m looking forward to this “Con,” too.

That’s it for now. I will leave you with a peaceful picture I took at the Stonington Fishers Dock last night. We all need a little peacefulness.

SV