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

(you really think this is Calum? If so, then sort of props, as it's his most intellectually rigorous thread yet, albeit one where he can't actually conprehend anything other than a single, narrow-minded and almost-certainly-wrong approach)

(actually I don't know if I will because you're an insufferable buffoon and I don't want to talk to you)

The funny thing is nobody here has even looked at PSI research, let alone an actual research paper or experimental data on the topic and carefully analyzed it. And certainly nobody here has carefully analyzed all the experimental data as a whole.

There are a handful of books on the subject and the only one here mentioned is Psi Wars, which nobody has read obviously.

My socks get smelly.

"Jaunty, and HOW DOES IT WORK? What is the empirical evidence for the placebo effect? It is invisible aside from the result, correct?

The funny thing is nobody here has even looked at PSI research, let alone an actual research paper or experimental data on the topic and carefully analyzed it. And certainly nobody here has carefully analyzed all the experimental data as a whole.

There are a handful of books on the subject and the only one here mentioned is Psi Wars, which nobody has read obviously."

you should go away and read about the placebo effect.

Posting pics of trolls doesn't do say for Giro, either.

http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:BFtCHuMO390J:www.speedqueen.com/vend/images/big_gold_medal.jpg

You should go away and read about PSI research.

http://www.kathleengiordano.com/ilxdebate.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True-believer_syndrome

The true-believer syndrome is a term coined by the reformed psychic fraud M. Lamar Keene to refer to an irrational belief in the paranormal. Skeptics see this as a form of self-deception caused by wishful thinking in which a believer continues to accept paranormal explanations for phenomena or events, or denies the relevance of scientific findings, even after the believer has been confronted with abundant evidence that the phenomena or events have natural causes. The term is mainly used by skeptics in the debate over the existence of certain sorts of paranormal phenomena and the persistence of belief in these phenomena.

For example, skeptics generally agree there is sufficient proof to conclude that the alleged miracles of Uri Geller, Sathya Sai Baba and Jim Jones are or were false; they therefore have often reasoned that believers who have been given the extant evidence of fraud in these cases, and yet continue to believe in these men, are described by this condition. Some ex-followers of Sathya Sai Baba accept this syndrome as an explanation of what has happened to them.[1] (http://www.saiguru.net/english/sai_org/14oclery.htm), [2] (http://home.hetnet.nl/~ex_baba/engels/articles/p_holbach/eng/trueb_e.htm?FACTNet)

Robert T. Carroll, the webmaster of the skeptic's dictionary, sees some similarity with a cognitive disorder. However, this syndrome is not used in the scientific literature, has not been included in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and no clinical evidence has been provided for its links with demonstrable cognitive impairment or psychopathology.

The true-believer syndrome seems similar in many ways to belief processes identified by Thomas Kuhn in his study on the sociology of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn demonstrated that scientists can hold onto beliefs in scientific theories despite overwhelming prevailing counter-evidence, and suggested that social forces, as much as ones purely concerned with rationality, are a strong influence on the beliefs we hold. This is an area studied by the sociology of knowledge where the social function of paranormal beliefs has been a focus of research.

The term was not coined by mainstream psychologists nor is it used by them and hence the term could be classified as popular psychology. Though unlike many concepts in popular psychology, there is some empirical proof for its existence.

http://www.kathleengiordano.com/ilxdebate.jpg

http://www.creativelightworldwide.com/pages/buyers/featurefilm/superguy/images/superguy-main.jpg +
http://www.sirbacon.org/graphics/arigo.jpg +
http://www.monalisa-prod.com/vi/images/catalogue/science/traqueurs/fantomes03.jpg +
http://www.journals.apa.org/prevention/volume1/pre0010002afig2a.gif =
http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:xr1aLypy54YJ:www.eso.org/seaspace/img/superprize.gif
http://www.uneedaenterprises.com/ilxdebate.jpg

This thread is hilarious! Wow!

Well, at Sébastian's request, I dug up an old thread about Randi (this appears to be the only one), to say he's a carny and the Randi prize is a publicity stunt by a has-been pseudo-skeptic flim-flam. If you are clearly a fraud, Randi will be glad to "test" you. But, for those with the remotest possibility of being able to provide evidence of "paranormal activity," Randi has a history of lying and avoiding these cases entirely. Randi himself has even admitted it when confronted with the fact that his methods are dishonest. He gets away with it, of course, because his audience wants him to succeed and doesn't really care how he does it. If the prize ever was given away, most likely all the pseudo-skeptics in his audience would think he was slipping or in cahoots with the prize-winner.

See first two posts on this thread, if bored:
http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/index.php?showtopic=50207&hl=

But, I wouldn't trust a guy with a rusty knife to stab me in the balls LOL.

Man, I love this guy for being such a ranty, insane little gnome man. The world of skeptics is just as weird as the world of the people they're railing against.