Massimo Polidoro (born 10 March 1969) is an Italian psychologist, writer, journalist, television personality, and co-founder and executive director of the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences (CICAP).
Early life As a child in the 1970s, Polidoro was fascinated by magic and the claims surrounding psychic phenomena. He read many books on these arguments that left him with numerous unanswered questions until he came upon Viaggio nel mondo del paranormale (Journey into the world of the paranormal) by Piero Angela. In the book, Angela treated these topics from a scientific angle instead of assuming they were true phenomena. He learned in his teens about the work of James Randi, and CSICOP investigating parapsychology from a critical, skeptical point of view. Polidoro studied Randi and his publications. Randi, like Houdini, was a magician and investigator of mysteries who employed a scientific approach to his investigations. Polidoro corresponded with Randi and Angela by mail, where they planned a skeptical organization in Italy based on CSICOP's work in the United States. He was invited to meet both Angela and Randi and again later to a meeting in Rome as Angela's guest in 1988. After Randi and Angela spent three days with Polidoro in Rome, it was agreed that he would become an apprentice to Randi, learning how to investigate mysteries. With a grant from Angela, Polidoro left for the United States and became Randi's only full-time apprentice in the art of paranormal investigation and psychic testing. After several years during which he helped Randi in his investigations, research, writings and lectures, Polidoro returned to Italy in 1990, where he co-founded CICAP with Piero Angela, and Lorenzo Montali. He studied psychology, and graduated from the University of Padua with a master thesis on the psychology of eyewitness testimony of anomalous phenomena.
CICAP and CSI
Polidoro is the executive director of CICAP, and was the editor of its journal, Scienza & Paranormale, from its debut in 1993 to 2006. In 1996 he became the European representative for the James Randi Educational Foundation. In 2001, he became a member of the European Council of Skeptical Organisations (ECSO), and was nominated as a research fellow of CSICOP, the Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). When Martin Gardner left his regular column "Notes from a Fringe Watcher" in The Skeptical Inquirer, the magazine of CSICOP, Polidoro was asked to take over, and the column was retitled "Notes on a Strange World". Polidoro continues to investigate and test alleged psychics, astrologers, clairvoyants, dowsers, mediums, prophets, psychic detectives, psychic healers, psychic photographers, telepaths and many others. He has conducted historical investigations on famous cases and personalities of the past, including Eusapia Palladino, Margery and his childhood hero Houdini. Some of this work is collected in his books, two of which, Final Séance and Secrets of the Psychics, have been published by Prometheus Books. In 2004, Polidoro's passion for magic led him to start the magazine Magia, devoted to the study of the history, science and psychology of conjuring. In 2005 he became the first Italian to hold a course on "Scientific Method, Pseudoscience and Anomalistic psychology", as a member of the psychology faculty of the University of Milan Bicocca. In 2017, Polidoro organized CICAP Fest, a festival of science and curiosity held annually in Padua and co-organized with the city and the University of Padua. CICAP Fest is a series of events: talks and meetings with authors, scientists and intellectuals; workshops and spaces to engage the public with stimulating and fun activities. The third edition of the festival, CICAP Fest Extra held in 2020, was entirely an online event, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2018, Polidoro teaches a postgraduate course on science communication at the University of Padua.
In print
As a journalist, Polidoro is a contributor to the monthly Italian magazine Focus. He is the author of over 50 books in Italian, some of which have been translated into other languages. These cover a variety of subjects related to mysteries, the paranormal, historical enigmas, the history of Spiritualism, a dictionary of Parapsychology, the RMS Titanic, a biography of Houdini, famous unsolved crimes of the past, and legends related to the mysterious deaths of celebrities. In 2006 he published his first novel, Il profeta del Reich (The Prophet of the Reich), a thriller loosely inspired by the life of magician Erik Jan Hanussen. In mid-2007, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, one of the larger daily general-interest newspapers in circulation in Italy, reprinted six of Polidoro's books in a series that was sold at newsstands, along with the many local issues of the newspaper. Final Séance (2001) deals with the strange friendship between Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, chronicling their friendly early exchanges through to their later quarrels over their opposing views of Spiritualism. Secrets of the Psychics (2003) is a collection of investigations carried out by Polidoro on psychic phenomena, including tests of psychics, poltergeists, miracles and other strange phenomena. Both books are published by Prometheus Books, and have been translated into several languages. The publication of Polidoro's fiftieth book, Leonardo. Il romanzo di un genio ribelle (Leonardo: The Story of a Rebel Genius), coincides with the 500th anniversary (in 2019) of Leonardo da Vinci's death. Along with the book, Polidoro celebrated da Vinci's legacy with a new YouTube video series. He also undertook a touring theatrical performance mixing narrative, science, and art to highlight the man who was Leonardo, exploring how da Vinci came to be regarded as history's best-known polymath despite personal difficulties, societal resistance, and the limits of his own humanity.
The James Randi Biography Project
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