James Randi: fails to explain away Arigo, the surgeon with the rusty knife

Why? Because a skeptic walks into a room with a psychic and says, "Read my mind-- can't do it? Okay, you're full of shit." Even when overall telepathy studies overwhelmingly favor the existence of telepathy over all other possible explanations, the skeptic says, "Well, they did not do it every time and some studies failed miserably," completely discounting the majority of studies, the methods of analysis and experimentation in each study and the nature of PSI, in general, which nobody claims to be 100%, anyway. It is not like putting cells in a petri dish and getting a predictable result.

it is a waste of effort to investigate every crazy claim that anyone comes out with. if the claim is similar to stuff that has been debunked before, then it is totally rational to not immediately go "OH REALLY, WOW SHOW ME". THis is your "lumping in" thing. there's nothing wrong with it.

the onus is on a claimant to shore up intially unlikely claims with persuasive evidence.

in this case, and others no doubt, you think that persuasive evidence is in. i don't. especially when such claims are so easily explained in other ways.

And don't forget, this Randi is the same guy who resorted to comparing Arigo to other frauds to discredit him when Arigo could be proven fraudulent no other way. He reduced the man to a one-trick pony (knife eye guy) and linked him with exposed frauds who flung animal parts on the ground. The reason Arigo was so much more of an interest was exactly BECAUSE he was not like these other frauds and was not a one-trick pony flinging animal parts on the ground. But, that doesn't matter to Randi.

This is why you get offended by "this Randi" because, like him, you are a hardcore avowed skeptic. You would have me offer you proof for ages and if you even bothered to look at the evidence and the proof began to add up, you would resort to some tactic like this "this Randi" copout.

And though i don't know you, i do know that nutters keep popping up with hobby horses to waste my time. and i'm just not interested. post a picture of a kitten.

"When we pick up a book on science and the paranormal, the first thing we generally want to know is whether the author is arguing for the reality of anomalies or against them. When it comes to a true scientific controversy, many of the best treatments are neccessarily the ones where you don't quite know which side is being argued because the facts are being presented as far as practical for you to evaluate. That's a difficult posture to take in a book on scientific anomalies because the term itself is somewhat of an oxymoron to many people.

If it is an anomaly, how can it be scientific? Isn't science supposed to be about things we can measure and "prove?" Parapsychology relentlessly tests our attitude and philosophy toward how science works by presenting us with what are potentially very significant anomalies to the way we understand nature.

"Psi Wars" is a particularly good treatment of the general topic of the paranomal and its investigation by science. It begins by showing clearly why putative psi phenomena are so threatening to our understanding, by virtue of their sheer bizarreness. It then reviews the evidence for certain phenomena, such as telepathy, and shows it to be, (as parapsychologists have long contended, often against ridicule and accusations), remarkably strong.

A unique aspect of this book is that while reviewing the strength of the evidence for psi phenomena is an unusually balanced way, it also presents well-reasoned articles explaining why skepticism is still the most useful approach for scientists to take toward certain kinds of anomalies. Standard statistical methods can show intrinsic weaknesses when used to analyze highly unusual results. Scientific protocols have some unavoidable difficulties dealing with results that are so unreliably replicated in a laboratory.

This book stands out as an excellent case study of methdological issues of particularly difficult scientific investigations and a good way to examine tricky issues of philosophy of science. Could it be that the phenomena are real and our understanding of nature has some disturbing holes in it, or could it be that our methods of understanding nature have limits yet to be fully recognized?

Psi Wars stands out for me as an unusually serious and responsible treatment of anomalous science in a field all to easy to dismiss or pass off as a joke."

"As for Turoff, he was one of those I looked into on my TV series for Granada, in the UK. He's a promoter of Sai Baba, says he operates through the spirits of the Brazilian fraud Arigo, and a very dead German doctor he calls, "Kahn". I leave you to your own conclusions. "

I believe the piece I was looking at before is in his book "Flim-Flam," in which he also mentions him only briefly and compares him with other proven frauds.

Alex in SF, James Randi fellated Arigo back in the '70's. The point is what he DOES say about him, which is false. He calls him a fraud flat-out when he was anything BUT proven to be a fraud. That's not science to say, "Well, he claimed this. What do you think? He's a fraud."

The long ones, I know.

Hijacked Hearse.

The very few professionals who actually have studied the subject we are discussing in controlled settings and through broad analysis of multiple results data in a scientific and skeptical manner are exactly what the skeptics on this thread are not interested in looking at. I wonder, what other data have the skeptics on this thread even BOTHERED to look at? My guess is zero.

Except that those same "professionals" have been proven in other instances to be gullible dorkuses who let their subjects run amok and allow their "controls" to be tampered with.

-- Tep (icaneatglas...), November 4th, 2004. (ktepi) (later)

Wow.

Quite a rational and tolerant response. Simply checking: by these ILX standards I wouldn't just be forced onto this bus, but driving it, I hope ?

So are the sceptics wrong? Not necessarily, and one of the strengths of this book lies in showing why scepticism is such a useful approach. For example, the strength of evidence is typically assessed using standard statistical methods, but as some authors make clear, these can begin to creak under the strain of unconventional results. Then there is the problem of replicability: paranormal effects have proved hard to reproduce reliably in different laboratories. Some think this reflects their inherent weakness, but certainly some now widely attested "orthodox" effects, such as the efficacy of clot-buster drugs, initially proved dismally unreplicable. Sceptics, however, insist it proves they are non-existent.

Rational, objective, and doesn't prove one iota of what you're trying to say.

Jackass, read that again. The book is not one-sided.

Rational, objective, and doesn't prove one iota of what you're trying to say.

Jackass, read that again. The book is not one-sided.

Like the other reviewer said:

"A unique aspect of this book is that while reviewing the strength of the evidence for psi phenomena is an unusually balanced way, it also presents well-reasoned articles explaining why skepticism is still the most useful approach for scientists to take toward certain kinds of anomalies. Standard statistical methods can show intrinsic weaknesses when used to analyze highly unusual results. Scientific protocols have some unavoidable difficulties dealing with results that are so unreliably replicated in a laboratory. "

Bullshit. You're using the Randi approach. These same professionals? Eh? You don't even know what you're talking about.

What you MEAN to say is "other professionals that I have heard about in passing and assume to exist in a large quantity, have been proven to be gullible dorkuses and therefore I have decided to predetermine this is the category in which I shal place all others that strike me as similar."

What, in gratitude for removing tumors?!!!

It's just part of his routine testing.

This other book, Psi Wars, is completely different.

FELLATIO is part of his routine testing? Errrrrrr, any cites for that?

(Now has really disturbing porno running in head oh noes)

There are pictures over at Randi.org. It all started with certain tribes in which the younger males believed swallowing the manjuice of the elder males would make them stronger. James Randi set out to prove that this was not true and hasn't stopped since. His repeated claim, "If sperm has the ability to pass on any traits from its originator, then why am I not getting stronger and more psychic everyday?"

In June 1999, a Mr Rico Kolodzey of Germany wrote to James Randi and challenged for the reputed $1 million prize. Mr Kolodzey is one of several thousand people who believe and claim that they can live on water alone, absorbing 'prana' or life energy from space around them.

Now this claim is, to say the least, extraordinary. It is perhaps even more extraordinary that an individual should offer to prove this claim by submitting himself to a controlled test.

The claim is one that most people would treat with great skepticism, and might well run a mile from. But James Randi is not most people -- he is the person who has publicly claimed that he has $1 million on offer to all comers who challenge him and are willing to submit to rigorous testing, as Mr Kolodzey has offered to do.

It should not be very difficult to arrange a test of Mr Kolodzey's claim. All that is needed is to lock him in a police cell, under CCTV observation, with only water to drink. If he experiences significant measurable weight loss, or asks for food, then his claim is false. If, on the other hand, he does somehow survive on water alone, then Randi is wrong, conventional science is wrong, and Mr Kolodzey has won $1 million.

It ought therefore to have been a very simple matter for Randi to offer to lock Mr Kolodzey up for a week or two. But that is not what Randi did. Instead he ignored Mr Kolodzey entirely. When Mr Kolodzey wrote again to Randi asking about his challenge, he received the following email from Randi (later confirmed with a hard copy):-

Date: 6/18/99 12:03 PM

Mr. Kolodzey:

Don't treat us like children. We only respond to responsible claims.

Are you actually claiming that you have not consumed any food products except water, since the end of 1998? If this is what you are saying, did you think for one moment that we would believe it?

If this is actually your claim, you're a liar and a fraud. We are not interested in pursuing this further, nor will we exchange correspondence with you on the matter.

Signed, James Randi.
(A hard-copy of this letter will be sent by post to you, today.)

James Randi Educational Foundation
201 S.E. 12th Street (Davie Blvd.)
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316-1815

So, now we know exactly how much confidence can be placed in James Randi's "challenge" and exactly how Randi behaves when confronted by a real challenger, willing to submit to rigorous scientific testing of his claims.

Randi runs away.

"It is an attempt to attain informed, balanced dialogue about the many controversies in the field, in this case concerning parapsychology. The editors struggled with how to deal with the parapsychology papers, which arise outside mainstream science. The decision was made to allow the parapsychologists to express the "standard view" of parapsychology. This would expose readers equally to parapsychologists' and skeptics' views of the field, letting them judge the merits of each side."

So, even if the editors of have, for fairness' sake, put articles by parapsychologists in the book, the fact that they're there doesn't automatically make them objective. Studies by non-parapsycholgists, ie. people who don't have a vested interest in the subject, usually reach different conclusions. Believe or not, credible scientists have made quite an effort to study claims regarding ESP and other such phenomena, and have come up with nothing. So it's not a case of sceptics dismissing these claims straight away without putting any thought to them.

It would be easier to write these people off as harmless kooks if it wasn't for the fact that several people have died trying to follow their lead.

From that link: "In 1983, most of the leadership of the cult in California resigned when Wiley Brooks, its 47-year-old leader, who claimed not to have eaten for 19 years, was caught sneaking into a hotel and ordering a chicken pie."