Michael Shermer - Early Life, Education and Career

Early Life, Education and Career

Shermer grew up in Southern California. His parents divorced when he was four and later remarried, his mother to a man with three children, who became Shermer's stepsiblings, and his father to a woman with whom he had two daughters, Shermer's half-sisters. His father would later die of a heart attack in 1986, and his mother of brain cancer in 2000.

Although Shermer went to Sunday school, he says that neither his biological nor stepparents or siblings were religious nor non-religious, as they did not hold much discussion on the topic, and did not attend church nor pray together. In 1971, at the beginning of his senior year in high school, Shermer announced he was a born again Christian, which came about through the influence of his best friend, George. For the next seven years he would evangelize door-to-door as part of his profoundly held beliefs.

He graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in 1972. He began his undergraduate studies at Pepperdine University, initially majoring in Christian theology, later switching to psychology. He completed his bachelor's degree in psychology/biology at Pepperdine in 1976.

Shermer's graduate studies in experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton, led to many after-class discussions with professors Bayard Brattstrom and Meg White. These, along with his studies in ethology and cultural anthropology, led to him to question his religious beliefs, and by mid-way through his graduate training, he removed the Christian ichthys that he had been wearing around his neck. Shermer completed his master's degree from California State University in experimental psychology in 1978.

Shermer began competitive bicycling in 1979, and spent a decade in the sport. During the course of his cycling, Shermer worked with cycling technologists in developing better products for the sport. During his association with Bell Helmets, a bicycle-race sponsor, Shermer advised them on design issues regarding their development of expanded-polystyrene for use in cycling helmets, which would absorb impact far better 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, that no serious cyclists or amateur would use them. This suggestion led to their first model, the V1 Pro, which looked like a black leather hairnet, but functioned on the inside like a motorcycle helmet. In 1982, Shermer worked with Dr. 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.

During the decade in which he raced long distances, he helped to found the 3,000-mile nonstop transcontinental bicycle Race Across America (along with Lon Haldeman and John Marino), in which he competed five times (1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1989), was assistant race director six years, and executive race director seven years. An acute medical condition is named for him: "Shermer Neck" is pain in and extreme weakness of the neck muscles found among long-distance bicyclists. Shermer suffered the condition during 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 Ph.D. After years of practicing acupuncture, chiropractic, massage therapy, negative ions, rolfing, pyramid power, fundamentalist Christianity, and "a host of weird things" (with the exception of drugs) to improve his life and training, Shermer stopped rationalizing the failure of these practices. Shermer would later produce several documentaries on cycling.

Shermer earned his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University in history of science in 1991 (with his dissertation titled "Heretic-Scientist: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Evolution of Man: A Study on the Nature of Historical Change"). Shermer later based a full-length, 2002 book on his dissertation: In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History.

Before starting the Skeptics Society, Shermer was a professor of the history of science at Occidental College, California. Since 2007, Shermer has been an Adjunct Professor at Claremont Graduate University. Since 2011, Shermer has been also an Adjunct Professor at Chapman University.