Massimo Polidoro
| Massimo Polidoro | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | March 10, 1969 |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Occupation | Psychologist Writer Journalist |
| Known for | co-founder and executive director of CICAP |
| Website | http://www.massimopolidoro.com/ |
Massimo Polidoro (born March 10, 1969) is an Italian psychologist, writer, journalist, television personality, co-founder and executive director of the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudoscience (CICAP).
As a child in the 1970s, Polidoro was fascinated by magic and the claims surrounding psychic phenomena. He learned in his teens about the work of James Randi, and CSICOP through a TV series and a book by Piero Angela 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 letter where they planned a skeptical organization in Italy based on CSICOP’s work in the United States. He was invited meet both Angela and Randi and again later to a meeting in Rome as Angela's guest in 1988.
After spending three days with Polidoro in Rome, both Angela and Randi agreed that Polidoro had the talent and passion to become an apprentice of Randi. During dinner at Angela’s house, they asked Polidoro if he was interested in learning how to investigate mysteries as Randi’s apprentice; a proposal which Polidoro gladly accepted. 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 founded CICAP. He studied psychology, and graduated from the University of Padua with a master thesis on the psychology of eyewitness testimony of anomalous phenomena.
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".
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