Rob Nanninga
| Rob Nanninga | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Roelof Hendrik Nanninga 6 August 1955 Groningen |
| Died | 30 May 2014 (aged 58) Groningen |
| Occupation | Writer, editor |
| Language | Dutch |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Genre | non-fiction |
| Subject | Scientific skepticism |
| Notable works | Parariteiten (1988) |
| Years active | 1987–2014 |
| Partner | Jolanda Hennekam |
Roelof Hendrik "Rob" Nanninga (6 August 1955 – 30 May 2014) was a Dutch skeptic, writer, board member of Stichting Skepsis and editor of its magazine Skepter. He became known for his critical writings about sects, alternative healers and therapists, paranormal claims and pseudoscientific trainings and courses.
Nanninga completed his Ubbo Emmius teacher education in the summer of 1980 as a high school teacher in Dutch and English. After only a month in military service he was discharged. Nanninga was a teacher for only a short time, being unable to keep order in class; his East Groningen pupils wanted no part of his Skinnerian ideas about rewarding and not punishing. He concluded educating rebellious teenagers was not for him.
In 1976, Nanninga got involved in a skeptics discussion group in Groningen via a school project of the college. He told them he knew how Uri Geller bent spoons. In the same year, the American skeptical organisation Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) was founded; its magazine Skeptical Inquirer also attracted several subscribers in the Netherlands. Around 1979 Nanninga's interest in sects grew, and he visited several of them with his working group "Opkomende religies" ("Emerging religions"). It was in this club that he met his girlfriend Jolanda Hennekam.
In the early 1980s, Nanninga performed an experiment with a Transcendental Meditation follower, who claimed to be able to make a floating jump of over a metre, starting from a meditation position and without pushing off the ground. Nanninga requested him to jump from a plywood plate that was lying on marbles onto a mattress half a metre away. The test subject, who beforehand claimed that the meditation gave him a "flying feeling", was confronted with the hard truth that one cannot push oneself off of a rolling plate.
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