This event is free and open to the public. A light buffet ($3) will be available and there will be an opportunity to socialize.
Loren Pankratz, Ph.D., is a consultation psychologist at the Portland Veterans Administration and professor of psychiatry and medical psychology at Oregon Health Sciences University. He has a special interest in deception in the medical setting and has written widely on topics such as drug seeking, malingering, false symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and Munchausen syndrome. He has written about quackery, phony faith healers, firewalkers, and psychics. He has published possibly some of the most provocative titles in medical literature: “The ten least wanted patients,” “Firewalking and the persistence of charlatans,” “The assessment and treatment of geezers,” and “Abdominal self-surgery.” He is a magician and has published magic tricks and mentalism effects in magazines for magicians. He has an unusual personal library on deception, magic and the occult, and considers himself an armchair historian of hoaxes. He is a CSICOP Fellow and is on the Scientific and Professional Advisory Board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.