Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The author of over a dozen books, Shermer is known for engaging in debates on pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism.
Shermer was the co-producer and co-host of Exploring the Unknown, a 13-hour Fox Family television series broadcast in 1999. From April 2001 to January 2019, he contributed a monthly Skeptic column to Scientific American magazine.
Shermer was raised in a non-religious household, before converting to Christian fundamentalism as a teenager. He stopped believing in God during graduate school, influenced by a traumatic accident that left his then-girlfriend paralyzed. He identifies as an agnostic and an atheist,Shermer, Michael (2002). Why People Believe Weird Things. Henry Holt. p. 136Stossel, John. Stossel. December 16, 2010 Fox Business Channel.Shermer, Michael (June 2005). "Why I Am An Atheist". michaelshermer.com but prefers "skeptic". He also advocates for humanism.Shermer, Michael (January 2011). "The Science of Right and Wrong". michaelshermer.com Shermer became an Internet-ordained clergyman in the Universal Life Church and has performed weddings. Alt URL
Early life and education Michael Brant Shermer was born on September 8, 1954, in Los Angeles, California. He is partly of Greek and German ancestry.Shermer, Michael (April 2, 2019). "Nicholas A. Christakis – Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society (Science Salon # 60)". Skeptic/YouTube. 10:40 mark. Retrieved April 2, 2019. Shermer was raised in Southern California, primarily in the La Cañada Flintridge area.Shermer, Michael. The Believing Brain. 2011. Times Books. Chapter 4Shermer, 2002, p. 127 His parents divorced when he was four and later remarried. He has a step-sister, two step-brothers, and two half-sisters.Shermer, The Believing Brain, Chapter 6
Shermer attended Sunday school but said he was otherwise raised in a nonreligious household. He began his senior year of high school in 1971, when the evangelical movement in the United States was growing in popularity. At the behest of a friend, Shermer embraced Christianity. He attended the Presbyterian Church in Glendale, California and observed a sermon delivered by a "dynamic and histrionic preacher" who encouraged him to come forward to be saved. For seven years, Shermer evangelized door-to-door. He also attended an informal Christian fellowship at "The Barn" in La Crescenta, California, where he described enjoying the social aspects of religion, especially the theological debates.
In 1972, he graduated from Crescenta Valley High School and enrolled at Pepperdine University, intending to pursue Christian theology. Shermer changed majors to psychology once he learned that a doctorate in theology required proficiency in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. He completed his BA in psychology at Pepperdine in 1976.
Shermer went on to study experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton. Discussions with his professors,Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, 2002, p. 128 along with studies in the natural and social sciences, led him to question his religious beliefs. Fueled by what he perceived to be the intolerance generated by the absolute morality taught in his religious studies; the hypocrisy in what many believers preached and what they practiced; and a growing awareness of other religious beliefs that were determined by the temporal, geographic, and cultural circumstances in which their adherents were born, he abandoned his religious views halfway through graduate school.
Shermer attributed the paralysis of his college girlfriend as a key point when he lost faith. After she was in an automobile accident that broke her back and rendered her paralyzed from the waist down, Shermer relayed, "If anyone deserved to be healed it was her, and nothing happened, so I just thought there was probably no God at all."
He earned an MA degree in psychology from California State University, Fullerton in 1978.
Career Cycling After earning his MA in experimental psychology in 1978, Shermer worked as a writer for a bicycle magazine in Irvine, California. He took up bicycle racing after his first assignment, a Cycles Peugeot press conference.Fleming, Ed (March 2, 2014). "UltraCycling Hall of Fame Founding Member: John Marino" , ultracycling.com. Retrieved July 5, 2017. He completed a century ride (100 miles) and started to ride hundreds of miles a week.
Shermer began competitive cycling in 1979 and rode professionally for ten years, primarily in long distance ultramarathon road racing. He is a founding member of the Ultra Cycling Hall of Fame.
Shermer worked with cycling technologists in developing better products for the sport. During his association with Bell Helmets, a bicycle-race sponsor, he advised them on design issues regarding expanded-polystyrene for use in cycling helmets, which would absorb greater impact than the old leather "hairnet" helmets used by bicyclists for decades. Shermer advised them that if their helmets looked too much like motorcycle helmets, in which polystyrene was already being used, and not like the old hairnet helmets, no serious cyclists or amateur would use them. This suggestion led to their model, the V1 Pro, which looked like a black leather hairnet, but functioned on the inside like a motorcycle helmet. In 1982, he worked with Wayman Spence, whose small supply company, Spenco Medical, adapted the gel technology Spence developed for bedridden patients with pressure sores into cycling gloves and saddles to alleviate the carpal tunnel syndrome and saddle sores suffered by cyclists.Shermer, Michael (2007). The Mind of The Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics. Holt Paperbacks. pp. 59–61
While a long distance racer, he helped to found the 3,000-mile nonstop transcontinental bicycle Race Across America (RAAM), along with Lon Haldeman and John Marino, in which he competed five times (1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, and 1989), was an assistant race director for six years, and the executive race director for seven years."Michael Shermer: Curriculum Vitae". michaelshermer.com. Retrieved June 18, 2012. An acute medical condition is named for him: "Shermer's Neck" is pain in and extreme weakness of the neck muscles found among long-distance bicyclists. Shermer suffered the condition about 2,000 miles into the 1983 Race Across America. Shermer's embrace of scientific skepticism crystallized during his time as a cyclist, explaining, "I became a skeptic on Saturday, August 6, 1983, on the long climbing road to Loveland Pass, Colorado", after months of training under the guidance of a "nutritionist" with an unaccredited PhD. After years of practicing acupuncture, chiropractic, massage therapy, negative ions, rolfing, pyramid power, and fundamentalist Christianity to improve his life and training, Shermer stopped rationalizing the failure of these practices.Shermer (2002), pp. 13–15.
Shermer participated in the Furnace Creek 508 in October 2011, a qualifying race for RAAM, finishing second in the four man team category.
Shermer has written on the subject of pervasive doping in competitive cycling and a game theoretic view of the dynamics driving the problem in several sports. He covered EPO doping and described it as widespread and well known within the sport, which was later shown to be instrumental in the doping scandal surrounding Lance Armstrong in 2010., 1h20 onward
Teaching While cycling, Shermer taught Psychology 101 during the evenings at Glendale Community College, a two-year college. Wanting to teach at a four-year university, he decided to earn his PhD. He lost interest in psychology and switched to studying the history of science, earning his PhD at Claremont Graduate University in 1991. His dissertation was titled Heretic-Scientist: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Evolution of Man: A Study on the Nature of Historical Change.
Shermer then became an adjunct professor of the history of science at Occidental College, California. In 2007, Shermer became a senior research fellow at Claremont Graduate University. In 2011, he worked as an adjunct professor at Chapman University,Ellington, Kim; Bennett, Bo (May 7, 2014). "The Humanist Hour #97: Science and Skepticism with Michael Shermer", TheHumanist.com. Retrieved July 5, 2017."Michael Shermer" profile at RateMyProfessors.com. Retrieved May 3, 2015. and was later made a Presidential Fellow."Presidential Fellows", Chapman University website. Retrieved July 10, 2015. At Chapman, he taught a yearly critical thinking course called Skepticism 101.
Skeptics Society In 1991, Shermer and Pat Linse co-founded the Skeptics Society in Los Angeles with the assistance of Kim Ziel Shermer. The Skeptics Society is a non-profit organization that promotes scientific skepticism and seeks to debunk pseudoscience and irrational beliefs. It started off as a garage hobby but eventually grew into a full-time occupation. The Skeptics Society publishes the magazine 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).
In June 2026, Shermer was listed as an appointee to the UAP Science Advisory Council; which was created by request of the White House and will collaborate with federal agencies such as Federal Bureau of Investigation and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office among others. Shermer was quoted in Skeptic magazine saying "I am honored to serve alongside such an accomplished group of scientists and scholars in helping ensure that questions surrounding UAP are approached with the highest standards of scientific inquiry." Other notable members of UAP Science Advisory Council include two proponents of Ufology: Garry Nolan and Avi Loeb.
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.Shermer, Michael (November 25, 2014). "The Reason Every One of Us Should Be Thankful". Time.
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.Scott, Eugenie. (2006). "Intelligent Design and the Creationism/Evolution Controversy" (00:42:42~00:43:53). University of Michigan. YouTube. July 12, 2013.