Yes, Randi may have bagged some con artists along the way. Senator McCarthy may have caught a few authentic Soviet sympathizers or spies. But at what cost?
Seriously?!? That’s like saying Joseph McCarthy killed fascism. This argument is so antithetical to reality is makes my head hurt. How can you write garbage like this?
Ah. The old “it’s not enough to be right, you have to also gently kiss the asses of those who are wrong” argument.
So the long-story-short version of this post is that Randi was bad because he wasn’t nice to scam artists, or those academics who were studying scam artists?
That’s an insult to horseshit because at least that can be used as fertilizer. Parapsychology can’t even be used for that.
These are points another BoingBoing-Revered-Personage, the late Robert Anton Wilson, wrote about as well. He was quite a critic of Randi.
Me, I haven’t researched James Randi’s methods sufficiently to have a well-founded opinion.
This is absolutely a terrible article. I thought at first that maybe I didn’t know something about Randi – maybe he had become the type of “skeptic” who doubts climate change or the Holocaust. But no, the guy is seriously criticizing Randi for doing what he was supposed to do – attack ESPers, spoon benders, faith healers, and the like.
This article should never have been published by BoingBoing. It cites no evidence. It’s sad to see BoingBoing decline like this. Rhine has been thoroughly discredited.
This is just fucking gross.
There is literally no evidence other than statistical noise of the existence of the paranormal. It saddens me that BB would side with the purveyors of woo. This article is full of accusations that are more like confessions and is indeed an ax that has been ground to a nub over the years.
There are differences between “woo-woo con artists” and self-styled “serious researchers” of the paranormal (ironic quotes needed for “serious”). However, the validity of their claims is not one of them. One would assume the con artists have few true believers among them, and the researchers would mainly consist of these. In the end it’s a distinction without a difference.
All I know about Randi is what I saw on tv and the documentary about him so I don’t have any vested interest in defending him but if you are going to criticize him at least do it for a valid reason. Being mean to people who practice quackery and scam people isn’t a good reason to criticize him.
This is a shitty and mean spirited article and whomever approved it made a mistake in doing so.
That was a bit of a whopper that made me raise my eyebrow. Exactly which spies did McCarthy catch? What is this guy talking about. McCarthy was, as you no doubt understand, a complete fraud. Randi exposed frauds. WTF? Tortured logic at work here.
Randi was an entertainer and an advocate for science and rational thinking, not a scientist. His methods were sensationalistic, but that was a feature, not a bug. I’m unfamiliar with RAW’s criticisms of Randi, but if they’re the same as presented in this story, to wit: “Waaah, Randi was a big meanie!” I’d be just as dismissive, whether or not RAW was a BoingBoing darling.
There is an offhand comment about that buried this giant wall of text about climate skepticism that would have been worth exploring. I think there is something interesting to say about how sometimes skeptics get so wrapped up in skepticism that they don’t bother to consider evidence, or assume that because they don’t understand the evidence that it is wrong. I don’t know if this describes Randi because I am don’t know that much about him.
But instead it was just a screed about how mean he was to con artists.
Eh - having never read either Randi or Wilson much at all I don’t need to appeal to the authority of either.
If the author of this article has proof of any psychic abilities- submit them for review and replication. If he doesn’t - he has an interesting career choice that might bear his reconsidering.
Appeal to authority is never anything to found an argument on, of course. Just interesting to note, is all.
I don’t see how it’s interesting at all.
Come to think of it, those those anti-flat earthers aren’t real skeptics either. They are just oppressing serious flat earth research.
And don’t get me started about those anti-anti-vax people. Just a bunch of frauds that use facts and evidence instead of allowing feelings and anecdotes decide what is true.
It’s interesting to me because when I read (many years ago) what RAW wrote about Randi, I thought “maybe he’s onto something here”, but with this conversation I’m now thinking it may be worth reading that again.
Only a little interesting, I admit; I have far more pressing things to worry about these days, tbh.
He would if Randi didn’t stigmatize all the research… 
I’m sure there is a fallacy somewhere in there, right?
Yeah, I’d say Randi’s biggest impact was in making clear that “skepticism” didn’t mean greeting the open grifting of certain “paranormal” scammers with the uncritical credulity with which other researchers accepted them. So that quote is actually true, but only in the sense that the field was previously full of people acting in bad faith being indiscriminately accepted as if they weren’t. So yeah, fraudsters and the researchers they dupe aren’t being accepted as readily as they once were - how unfair!
