Talk:James Randi/Archive 1

message: I'm deleting the cat "Atheist thinkers and activists" in this article. POV categories with no support in the article itself are IMO just sneaky vandalism. I'm actually grateful to the user who exchanged the even more objectionable category  "Atheists" for  "Atheist thinkers and activists", but none of them are acceptable for Randi. Either don't have a cat, or write something in the article  that supports it, because there is nothing now. (Nor could be, as far as I'm concerned. "Atheist activist"? Randi? It's ridiculous.) Bishonen 10:51, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is the category Atheist objectionable? James Randi is one, if you've ever read his column. He's definitly an atheist thinker; an atheist activist is harder, but he certainly argues against religion in his column enough. I hardly see how any of this is objectionable. --Prosfilaes 01:17, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories 

message: I know that SB has made these claims (well the first anyway not sure about the second). I can't recall much in the way of evidence that they are true.Geni 15:08, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the correction. You might want to take a look at the Sylvia Browne article where I have copied this text from. Rafał Pocztarski 13:48, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  including the [[FBI]] and former [[U.S. president]]s 

message: The article makes mention of the "'one ahead' routine," but does not explain what this is. - anonymous
::I also would like to know what that means. Andreac 17:12, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Fascinating, thanks! Can that get made into an article which could then be linked to from the Randi page? Andreac 21:04, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The above would be a copyvio - feel free to write your own version... Rick Boatright 22:11, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See new article: billet reading.  Please add to it.  -- Krash 23:13, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  One ahead 

message: The Amusing Randi is as big a fraud as the people he exposes.
Randi's "challenge" is structured in such a way that no one CAN pass the tests he creates. And isn't it interesting that he has the "preliminary" tests done entirely by his own people? (That's from his own website.) That is how he can ensure that no one ever passes the test.  The catch is the psychic must agree to a test according to Randi's guidelines, where he is the sole judge. And as part of his challenge, the applicant must give up all rights to any legal action. In essence, the deal is rigged. 
James Randi's behavior and demeanor were so culturally insensitive that he actually created a gigantic backlash against skepticism.
Here are the ways that the test is rigged, from Randi's own website:
http://www.randi.org/research/index.html 
"Preliminary tests are conducted by associates of the JREF"
"Remember; it's the JREF Paranormal Challenge, and The JREF alone dictates the rules surrounding it and how it is run."'''
In addition, according to The Amusing Randi's own rules, he controls all data generated from the tests and all information about them and you have to waive your right to sue him.  This combination of facts makes it very easy to rig the tests and essentially impossible for anyone to pass it.
IOW, Randi and his people control the testing process. They are setting up the process to guarantee that it finds the results that they wanted it to find.
And Randi has been quoted as saying that there is no possibility that any paranormal acts could be genuine.   
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/keen/randi.htm
"Under Article 3, the applicant allows all his test data to be used by the Foundation in any way Mr. Randi may choose. That means that Mr. Randi can pick and chose the data at will and decide what to do with it and what verdict to pronounce on it. Under Article 7, the applicant surrenders all rights to legal action against the Foundation, or Mr. Randi, no matter what emotional, professional or financial injury he may consider he has sustained. Thus even if Mr. Randi comes to a conclusion different from that reached by his judges and publicly denounces the test, the applicant would have no redress. The Foundation and Mr. Randi own all the data. Mr. Randi can claim that the judges were fooled. The implicit accusation of fraud would leave the challenger devoid of remedy."
This is how Randi rigs the system so he will never have to pay out the million dollars, or even acknowledge the possibility of anyone having any paranormal abilities.
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/James-Randi
"Randi revealed that he had been able to orchestrate a years-long and complete compromise of a privately-funded psychic research experiment."
By his own admission, Randi sponsored one of his aides as a fake "psychic."  He toured and took people's money for his performances.  Randi says they did this "to show how gullible people are," but it's still a fraudulent method of doing so.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/2/prweb106721.htm
"For years the Randi organization has pretended to offer a bogus million dollar reward to any person who can successfully demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability. This has naturally generated a lot of publicity and profit for the lead charlatan of the Randi organization, former sleight of hand con artist James Randi. That is until the Yellow Bamboo organization from Bali INDONESIA called his bluff and actually demonstrated paranormal ability in front of scores of independent witnesses and a media representative from the Radio Republik Indonesia broadcasting network On 14 September 2003 Mr. Nyoman Serengen, the founder of Yellow Bamboo (with over 40,000 members) successfully slammed down, without touching, the Randi representative Mr. Joko Tri clearly demonstrating extraordinary paranormal ability. Once the demonstration was successfully carried out James Randi frantically scrambled to concoct a phony pretext not to pay."
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/keen/randi.htm
"That these doubts about the genuineness of Mr. Randi's dedication to objective research are far from theoretical may be concluded from the efforts made by Professor Gary Schwartz of Arizona University in designing his multi-centre, double-blind procedure for testing mediums. Schwartz was not interested in the prize money: he merely sought to obtain Mr. Randi's approval for his protocol for testing mediums - and he duly modified it to met Mr. Randi's suggestions. Having falsely declared that the eminent parapsychologist Professor Stanley Krippner had agreed to serve on his referee panel, Mr. Randi ensured that the other judges would be his skeptical friends Drs Minsky, Sherman and Hyman, all well-known and dedicated opponents of anything allegedly paranormal. 
As the ensuing Randi/Schwartz correspondence (which Mr. Randi declined to print on his website) makes clear, when the outcome of the experiment proved an overwhelming success, Mr. Randi subsequently confused a binary (yes/no) analysis with the statistical method required to score for accuracy each statement made by a medium, and falsely accused Dr Gary Schwartz and his colleagues of selecting only half the data for analysis. He then derided the publication of Professor Schwartz's findings in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, the world's oldest scientific peer-reviewed publication devoted to the paranormal, and in which Mr. Randi himself has published contributions. He criticised the fact that the Schwartz findings appeared in neither Nature nor Science, although he must have been aware of the long-standing refusal of these two leading scientific journals to publish anything touching on the paranormal."
"Mr. Randi notoriously failed to fulfill his boast to be able to replicate Ted Serios' "thoughtography" tests"'''
http://www.rense.com/general50/james.htm
"Repeatedly, Randi has shown himself to be not only contradictory and hypocritical but eminently illogical in his defense of the Challenge's application process. Bear in mind that Randi asserts there is no valid evidence to support any paranormal, supernatural, or occult phenomena. 
(So) What exactly is Randi asserting when he writes: "We only respond to responsible claims."?
Again, we must remember, it is Randi's assertion that there is NO VALID EVIDENCE of any paranormal or supernatural phenomena, so there really can be no such thing as "degrees of plausibility" in this field."'''
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/whoswho/index.htm#JamesRandi
"James Randi is a conjurer (the “Amazing Randi”) and showman who is described on his web site as “the world’s most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudo-scientific claims.” He used to be a leading figure in CSICOP, but had to resign because of litigation against him."
"(A)s a leading Fellow of CSICOP, Ray Hyman, has pointed out, this "prize" cannot be taken seriously from a scientific point of view: "Scientists don't settle issues with a single test, so even if someone does win a big cash prize in a demonstration, this isn't going to convince anyone. Proof in science happens through replication, not through single experiments." ( www.skeptic.com/archives03.html) 
Randi’s fellow showman Loyd Auerbach, President of the Psychic Entertainers Association, is likewise sceptical about this “prize” and sees it as a stunt of no scientific value."'''
This is from a "skeptic" website, so it's not just people that The Amusing Randi "debunked."
 
From the same "skeptic" website:
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/exam/Prescott_Randi.htm
"Some idea of the counter-arguments to Randi's claims can be obtained by taking another look at D. Scott Rogo, who earlier showed the initiative to track down Dr. Hebard. Unlike Randi, who, as we have seen, had "never even set foot" inside the research facility, Rogo visited SRI on June 12, 1981. He found that Randi had misrepresented the hole in the wall of the isolation room through which Geller was supposedly able to spy on the researchers. The hole, a conduit for cables, is depicted in Flim-Flam as being three and a half inches wide and therefore offering a good view of the experimental area where the researchers were working. Rogo found, however, that the hole "is three-and-a-quarter inches [wide] and extends through a twelve-and-a-half inch wall. This scopes your vision and severely limits what you can see through it. The hole is not left open either, since it is covered by a plate through which cables are routinely run. Dr Puthoff and his colleague were, however, concerned that their subject might be ingenious enough to insert an optical probe through this hole, so they monitored the opening throughout their telepathy experiments." 
Randi also indicates that the hole is stationed 34 inches above the floor. Not so, says Rogo. "It isn't three feet above the floor, but is located only a little above floor level. The only thing you can see through it - even under optimal conditions - is a small bit of exterior floor and opposing wall. (The viewing radius is only about 20°, and the targets for the Geller experiments were hung on a different wall completely.) I also discovered during my trip to SRI that an equipment rack was situated in front of the hole throughout the Geller work, which obstructed any view through it even further. I ended my little investigation by talking with two people who were present during these critical experiments. They both agreed that wires were running through the hole - therefore totally blocking it - during the time of the Geller experiments." "'''
William James nailed Randi (even before Randi was here) when he said, "I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible." Yet this is exactly the mindset from which Randi operates and from which his million-dollar challenge is issued. Stated simply, there is NO proof, no matter how thorough, that someone with James Randi's worldview will EVER accept! They have already ruled out the possibility of any of these experiments succeeding before they conduct them. 
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." -- Albert Einstein, in The New Convergence.
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/exam/Prescott_Randi.htm
"The title of his book thus takes on a new and unintended meaning. From what I can tell, James Randi really is the Flim-Flam man."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Now, I'm certainly no advocate of the paranormal. I tend to be very skeptical of these paranormal things myself -- although I am not closed to them. Some may be real. 
I know these fields attract a lot of hucksters and charlatans. But they are no bigger frauds than Mr. Randi himself, IMO.
"The real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery." -- Fred Alan Wolf 
"The Universe is self-aware through us." -- Dr. Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World
:This isn't UBB.  Your attempts at markup are distracting; HTML works, as do Wikipedia's own proprietary tags explained at Wikipedia:Editing.  At least preview before you post to see that your markup isn't working, and remove it if you don't know how to fix it.
:What sorts of experiments would fail these 'rigged' tests of Mr. Randi's? So far as I can tell, at most paranormal ones, and really at most fraudulent ones by scientific lights.  This is of course debatable, but this whole section of yours sounds like special pleading -  "what I favor can't pass the test but that's the test's fault", but you know what special pleading means already...
:The rest (no bigger frauds than Mr. Randi himself? Even if I were to grant your main point, have you met more than a few of these people? Some of them certainly are frauds of the highest order.) is hyperbole.  Recognize it. Avoid it. Schissel : bowl listen 16:30, May 26, 2005 (UTC)
:You said: "This is from a "skeptic" website, so it's not just people that The Amusing Randi "debunked."" - Look at the people you made that page. You are wrong, those are not part of the current skeptic movement. Gary Schwartz, Rupert Sheldrake, and Brian Josephson are well-known pro-paranormalists, and Marcello Truzzi's main job is criticizing skeptics. Those people call themselves "real skeptics", as opposed to skeptics (who they call "pseudoskeptics"). They maintain that sitting on the fence is the only valid position. Disagreeing with them is unscientific, according to them - especially if you disagree in one particular direction, which borders on being a crime. So you should take their propaganda with a grain of salt - look at both sides instead of just believing what they write. And it is "Amazing", not "Amusing". --Hob Gadling 13:02, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
:: I think this addresses addresses that point - they claim to be skeptical investigators when they're really the opposite.  Bubba73 (talk), 21:56, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Randi can be irritating, dogmatic and wrong-headed without being a fraud. I agree with him sometimes and disagree others, but nobody is compelled to take his test, and all are entitled to draw their own conclusions about it. Doovinator 16:59, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: That's a silly site. It's full of bad logic. For example, it uses one definition of the word "skeptic" when in fact there are several definitions in use, and it claims (not in those words) that all cases where other definitions apply, should be called "pseudo". By the same reasoning, all homonymous words should be preceded by "pseudo". Your definition of "skeptic" includes that opinions are a big no-no. Others allow more freedom. So you and your ilk are the Only True Skeptics, and want to ban everybody who disagrees with you from using the word. That's just a power game by seizing the definition. There are a lot more errors in your site, but this is the basic one. As long as this error is there, the site is hopeless. --Hob Gadling 10:18, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Randi is a fraud 

message: Ah, James Randi. Idiocy at its best...
I really hate television. And the tabloids. Perhaps if psychic abilities were not shown to be "fictional" all over the media, people like this wouldn't exist... one can only dream what that would be like. (by 66.190.145.221)
: The goal of Wikipedia is make neutral encyclopedia, and the talk pages are here in service to that goal. Your personal opinions on the subject, as they don't pertain to the article, don't help that at all; it's just basically a troll. --Prosfilaes 02:05, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hmmm... 

message: I have removed a disputed sentence from the article about one of the court cases with Geller leading Randi to part ways with Csicop. Randi has sent an e-mail advising that this is not correct and there does not seem to be any verifiable evidence to suggest otherwise. Capitalistroadster 10:27, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disputed sentence about Csicop 

message: I have just removed massive overlinking from the article, especially these types:
*Links that have little or nothing to do with the subject. 
*Links that lead to places that a reader is unlikely to be interested in going. 
Generally dates, common words, and ordinary terms should never be linked. Only things relevant to the article topic need linking.
Will whoever it is who is doing this please quit it! If anyone can find out who it is, please notify/warn them on their own talk page. -- Fyslee 17:11, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overlinking 

message: I removed this:
:Randi's website claims that on Thursday 2 February, 2006, Randi underwent emergency coronary artery bypass surgery. He is said to be "in stable condition' and "receiving excellent care" . The circumstances surrounding his admission to hospital are not clear at this time but it appears to be unexpected.
Wikipedia is not a news report. I'm not questioning the verifiability of the text, only its importance and relevance. If his condition worsens, something notable or public comes of the surgery, or he dies as a result of it then I could justify its mention here. But presently it's only an unneeded breaking news mention which is completely unnecessary. -- Krash (Talk) 01:44, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WP often follows developing news stories and has a Template:current tag just for that purpose.  Also, if someone has had emergency heart surgery, that's worthy of mention in a biography even as non-current info.  So IMO the mention should go back.  70.231.131.185 11:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree.  I think that the article should state that "on Thursday February 2, 2006, Randi underwent emergency coronary artery bypass surgery".  I would leave out "He is said to be "in stable condition' and "receiving excellent care" [1]. The circumstances surrounding his admission to hospital are not clear at this time but it appears to be unexpected. "  Bubba73 (talk), 04:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems okay to me to have the single sentence describing the event in a consise manner. :) Ansell 11:33, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, the right way is to wait for the mainstream press or other reliable source to report this information. Barring that, Randi's or others' published statements in Swift (not the JREF Forum!) may be acceptable, so we can wait for those as well. This is probably not such an essential element to the article (however critical it obviously is to Randi and his fans, and possibly his detractors) that we should be overly concerned about the latest updates. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed that that the forum would not be the place to cite, and given no press articles as such that I have found, I'm not sure if there will be any.   However, I think it's relevant and important to note that Mr. Randi got through his surgery well and is doing well.  The current biography is somewhat dated to early 2006, when things were still uncertain.   The fact that Mr. Randi is no longer hospitalized and that he has resumed speaking, traveling and writing seems a completely legitimate and important amendment to the information on his health.    The only way I can think of citing it would possibly be to cite one of his television appearances as the source of the information.   Even though the information that he is out of the hospital and has resumed activities is not given in the interview, it is apparent by his very appearance at all. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DrBuzz0 (talk • contribs) 02:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ticker trouble 

message: Does the CSICOP fellowship count as an award?  (If so, it should be added.) Bubba73 (talk), 16:56, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Awards 

message: The photograph of the offices of the JREF in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is out of date. That office has been closed for over a year. I personally took photos in October 2011 that show "For Sale" signs on the property. Rumor has it that a site has been selected in Los Angeles for a new office, but the location hasn't been announced. But in any event, the photo shown is at least a year out of date. I'd delete it myself, but I'm not experienced with with photos, I don't want to mess up something else.Professor Hosquith (talk) 03:44, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Section James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF)