Counting Scientology 7: Best estimates
With Scientology trapped in the logic of its own absurd claims, the best assessments of its true numbers come from a handful of well-informed former members.
Scientology’s critics have been picking the movement’s numbers apart for decades now.
Back in 1996, researcher Chris Owen simply divided the movement’s claimed membership by the hours of auditing — or therapy — it claimed to have delivered.
The figures for 1992 were 7 million members to 1,502,274 hours of auditing. On those numbers, he pointed out, Scientology had delivered an average of only 13 minutes of therapy to its 7 million members that year.
“That’s only two seconds a day,” he noted. “It’s going to take a long time to clear the planet at this rate…”.
Hartley Patterson is another veteran Scientology-watcher who has put a great deal of time into debunking the movement’s membership claims.
Like Owen, he uses Scientology’s own published numbers against the movement. Here, for example:
That the CoS is confused about its own statistics is shown by this quote:
“That more people are auditing than ever in history is perhaps best shown by the 1.3 million hours of auditing delivered this past year in Scientology organizations all over the world.”
— From ‘The Auditor: Special International Edition’ 1995
By 1995, remember, they were claiming 8 million members: so that’s, what — less than 10 minutes of auditing per member that year; a little over 1.5 seconds per day.
Patterson, like Owen, is simply drawing out the absurd logic of Scientology’s own numbers.
It’s become something of a hobby in the forums.
Public events
Former members have taken a similar approach to tackling the movement’s claims of growth.
Two former Scientologists in particular have been tracking the numbers for some time now: Mike Rinder and Jeff Hawkins.
In a series of articles at his blog, Rinder has pointed to the numbers attending major Scientology events as another clear indicator of the movement’s problems.
In Los Angeles, for example, Scientology has moved from staging public events in the 6,300-capacity Shrine Auditorium, to using the smaller Kodak Theatre (now known as the Dolby), which seats 3,400.
And this year, Rinder noted, one major event had been switched to local Scientology centres, which suggests they cannot even fill the smaller venue.
If the movement’s claims of perpetual, spectacular expansion are true, he asks, then why aren’t they scaling up, instead of down?
Former Scientology executive, Jeff Hawkins has advanced similar arguments in recent years.
He pointed out that Scientology claimed 9,523 Scientologists lived in the Tampa Bay area of Florida near one of their most important training centres.
Why then were they still holding local events in the Ruth Eckerd Hall, which has a capacity of only 2,180?
He also asked: where are the thousands of groups that Scientology insists it has around the world?
Scientology had claimed “8,071 Scientology Churches, Missions and groups” in one of its magazines, he noted back in 2009.
So he checked.
He went through their printed publications, their online directory, and all he could come up with was 140 orgs, 342 missions (revised upwards to 343 by 2014).
Using these methods, Hawkins dismantled Scientology’s claims to have millions of members, summarising his findings in a stunning data visualization.
As we saw in our last instalment, his estimate back then was there were around 40,000 members worldwide. “That’s on the high side,” he added.
Click on the link below to see the full dataviz.
But that, as Hawkins pointed out to me, was his best estimate back in 2010.
“Based on the attrition since that time, and data from those who have left since then, I’d say 20,000 was more accurate now,” he said.
Rinder has reached the same conclusion, citing 20,000 active members, in a January 2016 post.
He arrived at this estimate — and he made it clear that it was just an estimate — on the basis of published figures for completions on a course he says all Scientologists are expected to do.
Counting e-meters
Last time out, we looked at IAS membership to get a rough idea of how many Scientologists there are left.
There are other indicators inside the movement however that can also get us a little closer to the real numbers.
Marc Headley, who escaped from Scientology in 2005 after years working with the movement’s abusive leader David Miscavige, tells an interesting anecdote in his 2009 book about his time inside.
In Blown For Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology, he relates how Miscavige ordered the production of a new brand of electropsychometer — or E-Meter — the device used in Scientology’s peculiar brand of therapy.
E-meters are required for the therapy, known as auditing, that Scientologists practise.
“We only ever made 30,000 Mark VIIs so we knew there were at least that many people that would need the new E-Meter,” he wrote.
Thirty thousand then: but Headley offers another wrinkle later in the book (p366).
As part of counseling policies put in place by L. Ron Hubbard, every single counselor in Scientology is required to have two E-meters on hand at any time so that if one breaks, a spare can be used. As of 2009 approximately 30,000 E-Meters had been produced for all of Scientology internationally.
Journalist Tony Ortega, picked up on this point — and several others covered here — back in 2011, when he was still editor of Village Voice. He wrote:
I told Headley that his story implied that Miscavige himself knew there were only about 15,000 Scientologists around the world with the money or desire to pay for the machines.
“The actual number is more like 10,000,” he told me.
Back in 2011, having examined the difference sources, Tony Ortega was inclined to go for the estimate of 40,000 members.
In any case, he wrote, it was time the media stopped parroting Scientology’s claims of millions of members unexamined and unchallenged. (Associated Press had just regurgitated a Scientology claim of 10 million members).
But then a few years later Ortega came across another source, a former insider who had left the movement even more recently — and he had fresh numbers.
In a February 2016 article at his website The Underground Bunker, where he offers daily coverage of the movement, Ortega interviewed Paul Burkhart, a recent defector from Scientology’s international management.
Burkhart told him how Scientology had spent years pushing the sales of The Basics, a set of books touted as a required purchase for all members.
They had started selling in 2006/07, working from a database of 180,000, he said.
After years of hard sell, right up to 2013, he said, they had only managed to sell 8,000 sets — and only 5,000 Scientologists had completed the associated course.
On the basis of that — and factoring in the numbers of staff members, he estimated world membership to be between 10,000 and 20,000.
Summing up
So where does that leave us?
Here’s a round-up of the numbers put forward by former members over the past 10 years for world Scientology numbers.
These are people in a position to make educated estimates: who had access to the movement’s internal data.
- Jeff Hawkins, who left in 2005: 20,000 members;
- Marc Headley who left in 2005: 10,000 members;
- Mike Rinder, who left in 2007: 20,000 members;
- Paul Burkhart, who left in 2013: 10,000–20,000 members.
While Hawkins, Headley and Rinder all left more than 10 years ago, they are still remarkably well connected — and not just to the growing ex-member community.
They are also in touch with people still inside the movement who, for a variety of reasons, have chosen not to make a public break with it.
So, as well as the figures available from Scientology’s own publications, they have access to inside information that post-dates their own departure from the movement.
However you choose to look at it, whichever measure you choose, it’s safe to say there are fewer than 50,000 activite Scientologists worldwide — certainly not the millions they still claim.
Why Scientology has to keep hyping the numbers is something we’ll look at in the final instalment.
