page_title: Amardeo Sarma
section_title: Skeptical movement
hierarchical_section_title: Amardeo Sarma / Biography / Skeptical movement
caption_attribution_description: English: Amardeo Sarma lecturing about climate change denialism and the future world energy and environmental problems during the European Skeptics Congress 2015.
context_page_description: Amardeo Sarma is a qualified engineer for electrical and telecommunications engineering, chair of the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften and former chair of the European Council of Skeptical Organisations. Professionally, he works for NEC Laboratories Europe.
context_section_description: From his early childhood on, Sarma was very interested in science and scientific controversies, and read books by Erich von Däniken and Charles Berlitz about the Bermuda Triangle. However, he then came across books that took up the issue more seriously and scientifically, especially when he read The Bermuda Triangle Mystery – Solved (1975) by Larry Kusche. This got him thinking: "How come this information was not available to me before? At that point I decided that something's got to be done to provide more critical, skeptical and science-based information to the public, so that people don't get fooled the way I was." In 1982, he read an article by Douglas Hofstadter in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German version of Scientific American, on the huge difference in quality between the National Enquirer and the Skeptical Inquirer. It was through subscribing to the latter magazine that he found his way to the skeptical movement. In 1987, he was a founding member of the GWUP. He decided to found the GWUP after finding out that the research project "Influence of Earth radiation, geomagnetism and cosmic effects on human health", which he considered to be extremely unscientific, was being funded by the German government. Sarma began as the managing director of the GWUP, and since 2008 he has been its chair. In 1994, he was also co-initiator of the European skeptical umbrella ECSO, serving as its chair between 2000 and 2013, and as its treasurer thereafter.
  In 2018, Sarma provided some perspective on the state of the skeptical movement by addressing "the essence of contemporary skepticism and [highlighting] the vital nonpartisan and science-based role of skeptics in preventing deception and harm."
caption: Sarma lectures about climate change denial.
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