Display cases at the Center for Inquiry hold snake oil and other murky cure-alls, fortune-telling tools and a bug-eyed alien in repose, as it might have looked after its spaceship crash on a Roswell, N.M., farm in 1947. Intriguing mysteries to some, to the center they are something else: byproducts of a public too willing to turn a blind eye to science. For years the center and its determined hoax-busters have taken on crop circles and ghost sightings _ any and all things paranormal. But equally important as proving what isn't true, chairman Paul Kurtz says, is proving what is. That's why, as the center undertakes a major four-year expansion, there is a special focus on getting the public to get science. "The United States is the leading scientific and technological power on the planet, with amazing breakthroughs, yet the general public is basically illiterate about science," said Kurtz, 78, founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and the Council for Secular Humanism, both housed at the Center for Inquiry. The dangers go beyond a tendency to fall for urban legends and Internet chain letters.

More serious, Kurtz believes, is a willingness to embrace unproven alternative medical treatments and to reject advances like embryonic stem cell research, opposed by many on religious grounds. "We're concerned with cultivating an appreciation for the scientific outlook," said Kurtz, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University at Buffalo. "I think the United States may very well fall behind in this kind of scientific race." Kurtz, his 60 employees and a who's who of fellows that have included Carl Sagan, Betty Friedan and Andrei Sakharov, follow a motto of applying reason and science to all areas of human life.

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