Real Skeptic is the end result of years of small experiments and projects created by Collin Maessen. The first site published was Mijn Online Plekje (Dutch for My Small Online Corner) on the 17th of February 2003. Over the years it evolved through several incarnations for different projects and eventually the content shifted towards the current subjects about skepticism.

Curating content

Thanks to all these different projects the content for several sites are curated in the archives of Real Skeptic. One site that was curated on Real Skeptic is the green lifestyle blog Virere. The contents of this blog was integrated in Mijn Online Plekje on the 3rd of February 2011.

Several years after the official start of Real Skeptic the content for the website SkepticTV was also integrated and curated on Real Septic. This happened on 27th of November 2013 which marks the official end of the online show SkepticTV.

The content for the original site Mijn Online Plekje is also still present in the Real Skeptic database. Though very little of that is still publicly available.

The founding of Real Skeptic

The groundwork for the founding of Real Skeptic started when Collin Maessen began producing videos on climate science, and other subjects, on YouTube. The website Mijn Online Plekje started serving as a companion site archiving the scripts used for these videos. As time progressed scientific skepticism articles were written that were independent of the content released on YouTube.

The shift in content and goals of the original website was the reason for founding Real Skeptic and it was officially established on the 23rd of August 2011. Since the official start of Real Skeptic a wide array of articles about skepticism were written for this website. With a heavy emphasis on the accuracy of the articles published and the usage of high quality sources. As skepticism doesn’t start with the viewpoints and claims of others, and being skeptical about those does not make you a skeptic. Being a skeptic starts with examining your own viewpoints, the positions you hold, and the claims you make.