I don’t believe there’s anything dishonest about this. The import of Randi’s tests is not that “Based solely on these tests, I have proven that dowsing does not exist.” By debunking specific claims of dowsing power, he is adding to all the other reasons not to believe in dowsing.
In short, he is gutless and won’t go anywhere the moderators don’t protect him from the dismantling he deserves and has received in the past.
Tempting, but most threads that eventually mention Randi are probably started by folks who are not aware of Peter’s psychotic behavior.
And heck, there was a recent thread where Peter brought Randi to the thread so he could froth and rave about him.
And now he has been officially barred from discussing Randi at all; I give him about a week until he’s banned for either outright disobeying or creating a sock.
I had a feeling that a topic ban was coming down the pipe sooner or later.
$5 says Peter can’t resist ranting about Randi in his upcoming ATMB thread and wins a new shiny suspension.
He’s been instructed not to do so. I’ll probably go back and edit my mod note; the fact that Peter Morris can’t post about Randi also means posters can’t try to bait him into doing it.
I know. But he’s been instructed before and failed to follow the guidelines. My bet is that he just cannot restrain himself.
I don’t think you have to be one (& I’m not the guy this was a response to). But it does relate to another point.
I would speculate that the nature of Randi’s tests is rooted in his background. He is - if I’m not mistaken - a former professional magician who went into the skepticism field because he became convinced that professional psychics were nothing but frauds using magician-like tricks and similar.
I think this may account both for the publicity & hype nature of his challenge, and the focus on the individuals making claims versus the underlying phenomena themselves.
You are quite correct, Sir.
Also true. A word about the MDC – it is common knowledge at JREF that Randi’s original intentions were to challenge the “professional” scam artists or the seriously deluded; people like Sylvia Browne (whichever category she falls in) come to mind. I don’t suppose he expected them all to trip over themselves to get in line, but maybe a few astrologers or psychics would stop by, and the resulting publicity and tests would be a good thing for the skeptic movement.
But 100% of the professionals have avoided the MDC religiously (which says a lot about them). Instead, there have been a parade of minor nut cases and mental midgets with strange and usual claims (“I can make you urinate from a distance with only my mind,” “I can cause an alien spaceship to materialize over Vegas on demand”). Designing special tests has taken way too much time and most claimants bow out long before a test can be agreed upon. Even getting them to read and follow the simple requirements is difficult. It’s been very unrewarding.
So the MDC has been altered over time. One of the most recent added requirements, designed to reduce the most frivolous and mentally-lll claims, is that the claimant have some kind of press presence – newpaper articles, books, papers. Surely that could be obtained if the claim were strong enough, if the claimant could fool enough people. It doesn’t seem to have helped much.
At one time, Randi was so discouraged that he planned to discontinue the Challenge, but that has been put aside for now. No official word on what may happen when he dies, and he is presently in his 80’s. I wish him a long life.
But ISTM that this undermines the cumulative import of the Challenge (and the arguments of many in this thread).
As previous, I don’t think the argument that focuses on “this was the claims of those tested” is valid when applied to the phenomena themselves. But even more so, I don’t think you can simultaniously make this argument and also acknowledge that the tests have mostly tested fringe characters with bizarre claims.
Similarly, while I don’t think “they agreed to the terms” is a valid counter to an argument about flaws in the test (as applied to the phenomena) even in and of itself, you additionally can’t simultaniously use this argument to counter claims that the tests test at too high a level and while also claiming that the refusal to take it “say a lot about” the refusers.
No doubt most professionals who refuse to take the test would prefer that their claims not be scrutinized too closely altogether. But it also leaves room for those who feel that their level of accuracy is not up to the type of tests that Randi runs.
Some “professionals” that make claims that are unlikely to hold up in an actual Challenge, and would make ideal test subjects due to publicity:[ul][]John Edward[]Sylvia Browne[]Rosemary Altea[]Uri Geller[]Delores Krieger (Therapeutic Touch)[]The Amega Wand (a pen-like device that claims to cure any ailment known to man by waving it around)[]Audiophile magazine (outrageously expensive audio & power cables)[]any homeopathic doctor.[/ul]Contrast these heavy hitters with the claims and names the JREF has actually tested or been approached for a test. I think you’ll find they are in a different league:[ul][]Adam Hugo: I can move clouds with my mind[]Anita Ikonen (X-ray vision)[]Connie Sonne: I can dowse for playing cards in sealed envelopes[](I forget her name): I can make you pee just by looking at you[/ul]
Not at all. The minor nut cases are eithr those who actually believe in their power, or low level scamsters that aren;t smart enough to realize they can’t scam a expert.
The “heavy hitters” are all major level scamsters who have been very successful at this, they know full well they would fail. None of them are saying “well, you know, my accuracy is only twice that you would expect from chance, so Randi’s tests can’t test for my level”. The refusal does say a lot about them.
And, “they agreed to the terms” is exactly the argument to use. They have every right to ask for a lower level, but do not. They claim they are able to operate at a high level. Thus, their claims are bogus.
If we did have someone claiming that, then you’d have a point. But none make that claim, or anything like it.
Perhaps you are too young to remember the SRI/Uri Geller issue. Geller could do stuff in front of the scientists he couldn’t do in front of people with training in magic like Johnny Carson.
The psychology experiments I am aware of usually use lots of people, so fraudulent answers won’t matter very much, but do not usually check for fraud. They often do check for answers biased for some reason, but why would a lot of people try to scam the investigator?
Okay, now I’m convinced that this “Randi is dishonest” argument is entirely spurious. Voyager’s post about Uri Geller made me go back and look up one of Randi’s Geller segments – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo.
They show a video of Geller demonstrating his key and spoon-bending trick and then Randi shows how you can “prepare” a spoon by bending it in advance so that at the time of the trick it’s already soft.
Now here’s the kicker: At 5:28 he says explicitly “Now this isn’t proof positive that other demonstrations aren’t the result of supernatural power. But isn’t this a more reasonable explanation?”
So Randi’s position is explicitly not: My success in demonstrating how a trick can be done is proof positive that there is no such thing as supernatural power. And it makes sense that this is the same attitude that he takes toward his debunking of individual claimants.
Technically true, if she looked at me long enough.
I’ve only seen Randi one time, on some sort of TV show. This was a couple of decades back, when he went by the name “The Amazing Randi”. Thing that stuck in my mind all these years is the spoon thing. The host asked him “can you bend spoons with the power of your mind?” and he responded “can Dolly Parton sleep on her back?” He then had the guy feel a spoon to see that it was solid, and then he wriggled it lightly (or so it appeared) back and forth until the end started wobbling and then fell off.
He didn’t actually explain how it was done, which I found annoying at the time - perhaps that’s why it stuck in my mind.
On the whole, he came off as a pretty interesting and personable guy.
Admit it – you’re just a sucker for a psychic. 
(She was given 5 minutes, IIRC. It didn’t work.)
Not all tricks are done the same way every time. Some tricks are well known; others, more obscure or even improvised. Only the best known are likely to be revealed.
If you ask Randi, “How did you do that?” he is likely to reply, “Very well, thank you.”
It personally irks me if the solution isn’t revealed or obvious, too, but that’s sho biz. I can’t fault a professional artist too much for wanting to not reveal his best secrets, the ones he or others make a living from.
To be clear, he was not appearing on the show as a magician - he was appearing as a psychic exposer. (He did use the name The Amazing Randi, though. Perhaps he was transitioning at the time.)
He was pretty impressive on the whole, and did explain the other things these psychics did. The spoon thing he did at the very end, and left me hanging all these years. 
Watch the video I linked to. He shows how to do it. You “prepare” the spoon by bending in advance so by the time you’re ready to do the trick, it’s already pliable at the point that you’re going to rub it.
Penn and Teller also showed how to do the trick in their book How to Play With Your Food, and specifically said it was Randi’s trick. There’s obviously a lot more than just “preparing the spoon”–there’s all the prattle and misdirection–and P&T explain that, too.