Reflecting on Ken Frazier, skeptic

A few thoughts on life, uncertainty, death, and happiness

Ken in his office, 2018, Wikimedia.

Ken Frazier has passed away a few days ago. His death affected me more than I would have anticipated. We were not close friends, largely because we have lived our lives thousands of kilometers apart and had only a few opportunities to spend time together at conferences. But I have known of Ken for most of my life, and met him personally the first time in 1999. It has been an occasional, but long relationship.

Ken was the longtime editor of Skeptical Inquirer, the premier magazine devoted to fighting pseudoscience and defending reason and science. Indeed, Ken has been the editor since the magazine changed its name from the rather unwieldy “Zetetic,” back in 1978. He has written essays in every issue for 35 years.

He has also published a number of books, most recently Science Under Siege: Defending Science, Exposing Pseudoscience. He won the American Humanist Association’s Humanist Pioneer Award for his “effective worldwide advancement of rational skepticism,” and was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science because of his “distinguished contributions to the public understanding of science through writing for and editing popular science magazines that emphasize science news and scientific reasoning and methods.”

But you can read about Ken’s accomplishments on his Wikipedia page. You can also check out his memorial page, with testimonies from many friends and colleagues. He was a steady light for the skeptical movement, as well as one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever met, and will be sorely missed.

What I wish to spend a few minutes doing, instead, is to reflect on what this episode tells me about life, death, meaning, and being happy. These thoughts have been prompted by having known Ken for such a long time and by a letter to the readers of SI that he wrote after having suddenly been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia on October 10th. It’s a precious example of how a wise and good person tackles such dire circumstances.

In the letter, Ken explains that he and his wife of 58 years, Ruth, went on a grand tour of some of the most stunning national parks in the United States last August. They drove 3,700 miles and visited Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Parks. This immediately resonated with me, as my wife and I had done a very similar thing shortly after the covid pandemic peak, hiking in seven parks in order to do what Ken and Ruth also did: take a break from daily life and renew our connection with nature.

Bryce National Park, photo by the Author.

While at Glaciers Ken realized that something was wrong: he had to rest multiple times while ascending a ridge. Though he was 80, he was in great physical shape, so this was not good. He wrote that by the time they got home he was exhausted and decided to check in with his doctor. The working hypothesis was that he was suffering from a flare-up of chronic myeloid leukemia, which he had managed without trouble since 2009.

But that was not the case. The tests revealed the sudden presence of the aggressive form of the disease. To make things more dramatic, Ken had a mutation in a gene known as TP53, and that mutation makes its carriers completely vulnerable to leukemia. Ken must have known that he had just received a death sentence, and that his life would be over soon. He wrote:

“We cannot know how and when one’s life will end, although my situation has now taken on greater clarity. … Thank you all for being such great contributors, readers, and supporters. It has been a pleasure.”

Prompted by Barry Karr, the executive director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry—which publishes Skeptical Inquirer—I and a number of other longtime collaborators of the magazine wrote notes of support and good wishes to Ken. I wanted mine to be more personal than an email, so I penned it by hand and posted it on Monday, 7 November. A couple of hours later I received a message from Barry telling me that Ken had passed away.

In his reflections to SI readers, Ken had written that he had lived a fortunate life and that his heart was full of gratitude. He was grateful for his wife Ruth, his son Chris, his daughter Michele, and his seven grandchildren. He was grateful to have had two dream jobs in his life, first as editor of Science News, then of Skeptical inquirer. And he was grateful to have just finished his latest book, Shadows of Science, to be published by Prometheus in August ’23. “What more could one ask?,” he concluded.

And yet Ken had also suffered setbacks, like any other human being. I’m sure the greatest was the death of his daughter, Michele, in 2012. She succumbed to cervical cancer, but she didn’t go without making a meaningful gesture. A little over two months before she passed away she managed to complete a 700-mile expedition down the Ganges River, done standup paddleboarding. The goal was to raise awareness of cervical cancer and how it is preventable and curable. Like father, like daughter, as they say.

Michele Lenore Frazier in 2010, Wikimedia.

Losing one’s child, I am guessing, is a devastating blow from which it is hard to recover. And yet Ken still thought of his life as very fortunate. And he was right. Through a combination of luck and good judgment on his part he managed to be successful at the only two things that really matter: his relationships with other people and his efforts to be of use to humankind.

I doubt Ken was into Stoic philosophy, but he was a Stoic in the best sense of the word. Appreciative of the good stuff the universe throws our way; resilient about the setbacks; serene in his knowledge that he was doing his best, which is the only thing that is truly up to us. He was happy in the Greco-Roman sense of eudaimonic, living a life worth living.

I know he doesn’t exist any longer, as I don’t believe in any sort of survival after death. And neither did Ken. So this essay is really for my own benefit, to come to terms with the passing of someone I considered a friend and an inspiration. Someone I hope will continue to be an inspiration to many others, not just as a skeptic, but as a human being. Thank you, Ken, for being who you were. It has been a pleasure indeed.