It would not take much editing to make this piece an argument for other questionable areas of study, such as homeopathy.
Paranormal research has had centuries to create a reliable evidence base. It has failed to do so.
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Hey, you’re not the Arrested Development guy!
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My exposure to James Randi consists of seeing video clips of his entertaining debunkings of charlatans and reading one of his popular books years ago. I certainly didn’t come away with the idea that there is no valid research on paranormal claims–quite the opposite. I also came away with a resource for warning friends and family who are unfortunately susceptible to con artists. The fact that Randi may have exaggerated his achievements or trash-talked somebody too harshly seems pretty trivial compared to the service he provided to a too-credulous public.
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The difference here is that in the movie, the Ghostbusters eventually confirmed the existence of ghosts, whereas on psi phenomenon in the real world, the verdict is ‘unproven’.
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Wow im really surprised by the comments on this article.As a regular reader (but never having registered to comment) I felt the need to do so here. I have been a longtime reader and fan of Robert Anton Wilson and had read his book “The New Inquisition” which is a critique of" fundamental materialism". The greater take away being skepticism can be taken to the dogmatic extreme, were any research outside the “norms” of codified scientific consensus is heretical.
As Arthur C Clark said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” I wouldn’t bet against that being true
Its ok, probably good practice to be skeptical, but to think there aren’t things to be discovered that will contradict our current state of knowledge is the hubris that this article attempts to address (I think.).
It wasn’t that long ago science didn’t believe that rocks fell from the sky, until meteorites were discovered.
Rain Rocks 
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Exactly! As a “serious university based academically trained researched” I don’t see why we would waste time funding studies with no preliminary evidence (and I do mean none). You can’t even get funding to study real things without some robust preliminary data… Its like setting up a homeopathy division in the School of Medicine…
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This is 100% a straw-man argument, and fundamentally misunderstands Randi’s body of work.
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The article itself doesn’t seem to lend that same kind of respect to Randi, which I think is a large part of the pushback against the article.
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This is one (very severely overcooked) hot take. Long live James Randi, long live the king.
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I signed up for an account to add that this article is garbage. I was relieved as I started reading the comments.
We need more Randis and fewer articles like this in the world.
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But what I think it is isn’t what you think I think it is.
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We have wasted enough money “researching” shit we have no preliminary evidence for.
Boo. This article is just a naked attack on Randi for not being nice to social parasites.
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The Egyptians were making things from meteoric iron over 5000 years ago. That’s “long ago” in my book.
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Just checking in here to see how the commentariat feel about the article/author.
My faith in boingers is restored.
Carry on.
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Well, that’s some red hot nonsense. Ironically, you even acknowledge that it’s nonsense by citing the example of a thing that was thought to be stupid, got studied and hey-ho it’s now commonly accepted fact.
Other recent examples:
A Einstein. He even thought some of the conclusions derived from his own work were nonsense. Now he’s revered as one of the smartest guys last century.
Blackholes were just a mathematical curio for a long time, until people started actually finding them. Now the observable effects of them are used as a tool for seeing and understanding the cosmos.
C Darwin. Didn’t get a lot of love initially, but modified and refined versions of his insights are now fundamental to how we view the living world. Well, at least the way most of us do.
So, do please tell us again how science has become ossified by refusing to take evidence-free assertions as fundamental truths?
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I doubt that they outright intend this outcome; but I’d be inclined to suspect that ongoing exposure to sufficiently extreme environments(here in the intellectual sense) probably has a tendency to produce people who are calibrated to improve balance in context at the expense of a certain amount of wobble if considered in isolation.
There’s both the behavioral aspect: if it’s you vs. a deluge of spoon benders and faith healers and mixed woo enthusiasts many of them either not advancing novel positions at all or deep into distinction-without-difference territory it’s going to require patience somewhere between “extreme” and “downright machine-like” to avoid giving the opposing argument a little less of the time of day each time it pops up out of sheer weariness; and the pragmatic aspect: if you get too bogged down in rebutting claims that (at least by the the worse-faith elements of the group you are opposed to) can be made profusely and swiftly you’ll be Gish galloped off the field in short order.
I’d be pretty unsurprised if, as an individual, Randi hardened well further into default skepticism than would be desirable in an active investigator; it would honestly be rather more surprising and impressive if he managed not to. However, as a defensive reaction to an outbreak of credulity you probably do a better job of playing counterweight by going as far as is balanced in context rather than is balanced in isolation so long as anyone you end up inspiring doesn’t follow you too closely.
Had Randi managed to harden ‘skepticism’ into the First Church Of Skepticology; Orthodox, sure, he’d probably be at serious risk of deserving charges of having done serious damage to skepticism as a thing. As is, though, (my impression at least) of his legacy is pretty much entirely a popularizer of doubt in the face of certain flavors of credulity; and demonstrator of how easy and attractive some flavors of self-delusion are; not a serious influence on the epistemology of negative controls and experimental blinding or gatekeeper of Real True Skepticism except perhaps on certain corners of the internet.
People just seem like they are very, very, rarely large enough to, personally, be both the response to current trends that they believe is necessary and an exemplar of exactly the ideal that makes them believe that response is necessary.
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It almost sounds as if he’s describing quantum entanglement… but sensible people know that quantum entanglement can’t possibly apply to human beings, otherwise Randi would be a million dollars poorer!
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While I disagree with the entire article, at the very least the comparison to McCarthy is a direct and unjustified insult. Even if the article is to allowed stand as not unrepresentative of Boing Boing, this aspect surely should be retracted.
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This is yet another in a long line of examples of how Boing Boing has gone to shit. You can’t open an article or comments without being bombarded with ads and , when you finally pick out an actual article from the “Ads disguised as articles” it’s this piece of shit personal attack by someone who has demonstrated time and again that they are one of the most gullible on the site.
Goodbye Boing Boing. I can get better content without the ads or slay elsewhere.
You should be ashamed.
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He wavered on AGW, but ultimately decided to defer to experts in the field. IIRC it took some time, but he ultimately conceded the point.
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