Dr. Zark on Skeptiko

I was interviewed yesterday by Alex Tsakiris for Skeptiko [Link to interview here]. While there's a transcript available, I recommend listening to the audio due to voice recognition errors.

What I admire about Alex is his true skepticism – following evidence rather than consensus to reach conclusions. While I don't share all his beliefs, I respect that he prioritizes data over popular opinion. This matters deeply, as evidence shapes our understanding of truth and reality.

As you’ll hear in the interview, he makes it clear that we have divergent views on Trump. And you'll notice he applies his skepticism evenly – questioning his own side's claims just as rigorously as he questions mine. This makes it possible for a meaningful exchange of information despite conflicting views.

Too often these days, interviews are an excuse to blurt out as many opposing talking points as possible, without making any attempt to use those talking points to better understand an issue. Alex, through his Skeptiko podcasts, doesn’t do that. Even when he interviews guests he disagrees with, he lets them state their position. He’ll push back, but will also let them answer his questions.

In the fifteen years I've known Alex, he's challenged scientists who dismiss non-consensus research – particularly in parapsychology, but also in areas like climate change and vaccines. His work exposed a fundamental flaw in "science": its tendency to embrace only data that fits the accepted worldview. For instance, evidence that might suggest something like the existence of God gets discarded, regardless of its strength.

His investigation of scientific blindness started with parapsychology, but what he found applies to anything touched by science: there is such powerful confirmation bias embedded in the culture of establisment science that is hard to see if you are a member of the group, and hard to critique if you aren’t.

During the interview, Alex asked about my research's potential impact – a question I'd like to address more fully here.

My research has had two main impacts: First, I've learned it has quietly influenced fraud defense systems. Second, it has highlighted the inherent vulnerabilities in electronic voting – from voter rolls to tabulation to check-in. These systems prove more difficult to audit and oversee than their paper counterparts.

The complexity of explaining the New York algorithms – which took me three years to distill – illustrates the problem: electronic systems are ideal for covert manipulation precisely because their intricacies discourage scrutiny and make findings difficult to communicate.

The key insight from my research isn't just that electronic election systems are opaque – it's that they enable fraud at unprecedented scales. While paper systems aren't fraud-proof, their physical constraints limit damage: someone might forge a hundred voter registrations by hand, but not 100,000. A computer can do this in seconds. Paper-based elections wouldn't eliminate fraud, but they would constrain its scale while improving transparency.

Transparency is key here, because it leads to revealing truth. In a world polluted by exhaust from cars, oil spills, toxic sewage, and many other things, the worst pollution of all comes in the form of lies. Lies that shape our perception of reality. Anything that serves to clean up that kind of pollution is a good thing, including transparency in elections.

PS: The connection between parapsychology and God isn't coincidental. True parapsychology research – not the sensationalized media version – studies phenomena beyond natural explanation: consciousness after death, spontaneous healing, the nature of time itself, etc. In other words, it investigates evidence of the supernatural, which inherently points toward divine reality.