[2] CSICon's current format stems from 2011, but similar conferences by CSI (until 2006 known as CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) go back as far as 1983, when the first was held at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY).

[3] The second international CSICOP conference, themed "Paranormal Beliefs: Scientific Facts and Fictions", was held at Stanford University in 1984.

[4] Around 2005, the CSICOP conferences that were on average held every year and a half, usually at a major American university in conjunction with the relevant faculties such as physics, psychology and philosophy, went into a seven-year hiatus.

According to Kendrick Frazier, the organization struggled with its leadership, focus and future perspective, prompting amongst other things the 2006 renaming from CSICOP to CSI, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

In the meantime, the annual skeptical conference in Las Vegas, The Amaz!ng Meeting run by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), started to fill the gap and grew larger every year.

[6] This combined congress was an experiment, as some people like Ray Hyman and Daniel Loxton feared or argued the goals and focus of skepticism and humanism differed too much from each other to be discussed at a single conference.

On the other hand, Ronald A. Lindsay and Eddie Tabash defended the decision of a joint conference, and Susan Gerbic wrote afterwards she was "completely impressed" by how well the two camps overlapped (citing the creation–evolution controversy as the most important common ground), and "have to work together".

[14][15] There are active efforts to bring more students to CSICon, such as by Oregonians for Science and Reason (O4SR) which in 2016 [16] and 2017 [17] gave three scholarships that included conference fees, travel, hotel and food costs.

[16] Susan Gerbic, Mark Edward, Kenny Biddle, John Anglin, Ron Lee and Stuart Vyse visited the Coral Academy of Science to talk to students shortly before and during the conference.

From 2016 onward, following the end of The Amaz!ng Skeptic conferences where they first took place, CSI started having its own Sunday Morning Papers Session: fifteen-minutes presentations pertaining to a wide range of topics that are typically not otherwise discussed.

They are self-described as "an opportunity for anyone with specific expertise to lend their skills to the [skeptical] movement", provided the proposals pass vetting, which requires them to be well researched.