think or thwim

James Randi from an Australian Broadcasting Corporation interview:

I investigated for my book The Faith Healers, 104 cases of people who said they had been healed by faith healers or about whom it was said they were healed. And I found out those 104 people belonged to three classes: first class is people who never had the disease that they thought they did…

The second class of people that I examined in those 104 people, were people who still had the diseases of which they said they’d been healed…

The third class of people was even sadder. They were people who were already dead by the time I got around to interview them…

I can’t say that faith healing has never worked or that it doesn’t ever work. All I can say is my experience is 100% failure.

Uri Geller and Peter Popoff:

Randi teamed up with Johnny Carson to call these two out on the Tonight Show. Unbelievably, Geller still continued convincing people he could bend spoons with his mind after this appearance.

James Hydrick:

Hydrick later confessed to blowing a powerful stream of air out of his mouth, which he taught himself during an 18 month stay in solitary confinement while in prison.

Sylvia Brown:

Brown accepted James Randi’s million dollar challenge on the Larry King show in 2001, but she has never showed up to be tested. Randi and Brown still periodically appear together on TV shows and argue.

The Media and the Public

Randi recruited artist, Jose Alverez, to become famous in Australia. In one week, they used the Australian media to create a fake channeling personality named Carlos who filled a large auditorium for his first performance.

:: haha.nu

carlos, james hydrick, james randi, jose alverez, magicians, peter popoff, psychics, sylvia brown, uri geller

Since 1964, magician James Randi has been offering a prize to anyone who can offer proof of anything paranormal. The JREF (James Randi Educational Foundation) prize is currently US$1,000,000. To date, 650 people have applied to be tested, but none have been able to negotiate terms of a test that both parties consider fair.

In JREF’s January 12, 2007 Newsletter, Randi created a special challenge for “remote viewers” who claim to be able to sense objects from a distance. From the newsletter:

…all they have to do is “remote” to Fort Lauderdale and discern what’s in the special “target” locker in my office. It’s a test object best described by:

0679
4388
66/27
5 -14

That’s a definitive encoding, since we always call our shots in advance.

Ten days later Matt Blazer and Jutta Degener announced that they had successfully visualized the contents of Randi’s locker. Matt’s blog details how they did it:

Matt Blazer | James Randi Owes Me a Million Dollars

Blazer and Degener are cryptographers. 0-679-43886-6 is the ISBN number of the 1995 Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. On page 275 the 14th entry from the bottom is the definition for compact disc. Randi confirmed that it was, in fact, a CD, but there was nothing paranormal about the solution. So remote viewing is still bullshit until proven otherwise.

For more info on JREF and the million dollar challenge, this FAQ is a good place to start.

:: Kottke.org :: Wired

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