Sure, they take on the classics, like debunking “spontaneous human combustion,” but many of their other pages have real-world impact. “I ran a JCPenney portrait studio for 34 years.”Ĭollectively, the group, which has swelled to 144 members, has researched, written or revised almost 900 Wikipedia pages. “I was a baby photographer,” she explained. This usually consists of editing and monitoring Wikipedia pages - a cat-herding task she says she’s uniquely qualified for. She spends most of her days wrangling her far-flung group of Guerrilla Skeptics into common cause, defending empirical truth online.
Gerbic lives in Salinas, Calif., and while she is retired from the routine world of work, she has taken on a new job, as self-appointed guardian of Enlightenment Reason. “American spellings everyone!” she commanded her half-dozen international colleagues through the Skype crackle. It all started with maintaining their Facebook sock puppets - those fake online profiles. On a group computer call last winter, Susan Gerbic was going through her checklist of tips for her team’s latest sting operation - this one focused on infiltrating the audience of a psychic. When you’re setting up fake Facebook pages, it’s the little details that can mess things up.
