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

On the other hand, if the inventor at least left behind his equipment, then that could be used to analyse some of the methods used for the experiment.

The point is that empiricism in science is based upon being able to reproduce the result independently given certain standard conditions, based upon understanding of what methods must be used and why they must be used.

If you don't have that, you just have a good story to tell around the campfire and nothing more.

No. (And ?!)

This is an unusual thread.

This was my favorite thread ever. It gets my "best of the web" award:

http://www.ronandjoe.com/cheese/silly/red_fez.jpg

Is it completely pointless for me to ask for some cites here? By verifiable, I assume you mean "verifiable by people without some vested interest in believing he can do that".

http://www.firstscience.com/SITE/factfile/factfile1421_1440.asp
Weird Science fact # 1422/ It has been demonstrated that humans are able to control their body temperatures to an amazing degree. In one experiment involving skilled yoga practitioners, the yogi was able to change the temperature of two areas of skin just two inches apart by a difference of ten degrees fahrenheit.

http://health.discovery.com/centers/fitness/runsmart/runsmart3.html
This article shows that you can not only use your mind to change your body, but that you can use your body to change your mind, which is exactly what Tantra/Yoga is all about.

http://www.newscientist.com/conferences/confarticle.jsp?conf=soneu200011&id=ns9999154
This article reaffirms this, specifically citing Yoga.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,106356-1,00.html
This article shows that scientific analysis of Yoga is about as controversial as eggs. One study shows one thing, someone else says it's inconclusive. Do you eat the yolks or not?

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_41237.htm
Scientists at the Medical College of Georgia examined how transcendental meditation decreases constriction of blood vessels and affects the heart’s output.  They found that transcendental meditation decreases blood pressure by reducing constriction of the blood vessels and thereby decreases the risk of heart disease.  This is yet another study that shows evidence of mind-body connections.  While clearing one’s mind and concentrating upon soothing images, one can ease the physical condition of high blood pressure by allowing the body’s blood vessels to dilate.  This is not a conscious process in that you are thinking, “please blood vessels dilate” but an awareness process of recognizing the stressors of your everyday life.  By becoming aware of your need to take time to relax and release tension you are able to transfer this healthy awareness to your body.

....And here's a whole bunch of articles on Yoga related to physical and mental health:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/search/?keyword=yoga&topic=all&sort=relevance

I'M BEING SARCASTIC

My argument does not have to prove the unproveable. For an unsolved mystery to be solved, it has be proved. Otherwise, it is not solved. For it to remain unsolved, all we have to do is admit the evidence for the mystery and the lack of evidence for its solution.

They actually cut the guy in half. Of course, there are frauds who use various tricks to create a similar illusion.

Well, fine, then what about this book?

http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opbooks.jsp?id=ns24122

"...Psi Wars begins with a look at the sheer strangeness of paranormal phenomena and their implications. Then lead editor James Alcock of the University of Toronto argues cogently for scepticism based on evidence rather than ignorance. And as the bulk of the book shows, the evidence is far more extensive than you might think. Furthermore, some of it, notably in studies of telepathy, is strongly positive...

Far from being the flaky obsession of nutcases, paranormal phenomena emerge as a valuable test bed for techniques whose reliability too often goes unquestioned. Anyone seeking something more sophisticated than the usual mud-slinging should buy this book."

"...Cue the ritual slanging match between the wide-eyed credulist ("Well, it works for me") and the sceptic ("There's not a shred of scientific evidence").

Those who loathe such exchanges because of their sterile predictability now have a powerful antidote in this authoritative and accessible review of the state of scientific research into paranormal phenomena, based on a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Almost all of the pieces are written by university academics with a track record of peer-reviewed research, and they cover paranormal phenomena thought by some to cast light on human consciousness, primarily telepathy (communication between minds), psychokinesis (affecting objects with the mind) and astrology (celestial effects on the mind)."

you should find another bulletin board. really.

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.