It’s also a misrepresentation of the meaning of Arther C. Clarke’s statement.
One does not need to understand the mechanism behind an advanced technology or natural phenomena to subject it to scientific testing. If any people out there really have ESP, there are plenty of ways one can construct a sound scientific test to confirm the existence of ESP even if it takes centuries of investigation to figure out how and why it works.
Was Randi perfect? Of course not. Did the Rhine’s reputation deserved to be razed to the ground and their research kicked off campus? Yes. Mitch’s whine to the contrary, ESP is a pseudoscience.
Toward the end of JREF’s challenge, Randi did get a little testy with his testing. He’d seen it all at this point, and folks like Sheldrake were peddling warmed over psychic nonsense that Randi probably didn’t look all that hard into to refute.
Dean Radin and Rupert Sheldrake are wibbly wobbly woo machines whose work requires more handwaving than someone conducting Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
Randi was, indeed, amazing. Not perfect. He had his flaws, as any person.
I desperately hope he finished The Magician in the Laboratory; he’d been threatening to write his autobiography for the last 20 years, at least.
That’s right, it doesn’t, in any meaningful sense. I really hope this wasn’t an attempt at sarcasm.
Thank you.
I’m going to listen to a couple of episodes of The Skeptics Guide to cleanse my pallet of this article
BAM. Yep.
Looking at the author’s body of work, I can now understand why he’s so antagonistic toward a woo debunker like Randi in this article. In two of the books he actually promotes the idea that victim-blaming and bully-enabling* (from the Amazon blurb of one) “practices known as the Law of Attraction, Positive Thinking, ‘the Secret,’ and the Science of Getting Rich actually work.” These practises are all long-debunked BS similar to Jared Kushner’s recent comment that “[his father-in-law] can’t want [Black people] to be successful more than they want to be successful.”
[* I draw this conclusion from noted snake-oil saleman Norman Vincent Peale’s influence on Il Douche. In a fundamentally rigged system “the power of positive thinking” is not close to being enough.]
Wow. The author went to a great effort to misrepresent Randi’s huge impact on modern Skepticism, and spends so many words to outright slag Randi’s well earned good character… When he could have simply provided one good source to some truly high quality evidence of any supernatural / paranormal thing being definitively shown to be real.
Sorry if the Scientific Method and Reality touched you bad in your naughty place.
Oh hey it was cute how you claimed that the million dollar challenge was only tested once per year… When I have no doubt that a first year journalism student on their first exercise could have told you that many thousands of people around the world applied every year but were generally too inept to even be able to precisely describe their super power, let alone get through the easier first stage of testing applicants go through before the big test.
The million dollar challenge may be over, but several other challenges are active around the world… And have yet to find one single person with real paranormal powers.
Prove it. I’ll give you a million dollars if you can.
Ha! That ain’t how it works, pal. 
BB has in the past written good articles about the difference between scientific and sciencey. The latter is when one uses the presence of scientific evidence to support a conclusion that isn’t supported by the evidence.
The classic example is there has never been solid evidence that bigfoot exists therefore bigfoot does not exist. Lack of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Affordable practical room temperature superconductors have never been found yet I am much more confident that they may be found in some place than bigfoot being found in some as yet undiscovered location. What scientific principle explains the difference? Occams razor isn’t really science, more a rule of thumb.
I was hoping as I read this article to delve deeper into this paradox, namely that there is no way to scientifically prove that ESP doesnt exist, yet many scientists act as if it has been proven.
Instead I got a bunch of grudges and petty examples where he just complained about grouchiness and general crochety old guy behavior.
Well, Frauenfelder has gone on record thinking this piece is “terrific.”
There’s an even-handed book about William James and his research into the paranormal:
It provides an interesting contrast to the way James Randi went about his business.
Honestly, if I had to choose, I’d go with the more open-minded William.
I recall an interview with the author, where she said her research for the book had made her
realize that the world is a more interesting place than we allow it to be (I paraphrase, alas).
Than we allow it – I have to admit, I rather like that notion.
I don’t guess it would appeal to the made-up-mind-ers of the anti-paranormal persuasion,
but I found the book quite well done. Maybe there are a few fence-sitters who would enjoy
it as well.
Hey, show me clear-cut, repeatable evidence of a well-characterized phenomenon, and I may have a reason to believe in it.
Play vague word-games to try and redefine your “super special for serial seekrit power” into meaninglessness and logical untestability and, I’ll give you less than the time of day.
We live in a universe rich with wonders and amongst a species rich with fraudsters. It helps to have people around who are adept at telling one from the other.
It’s great to keep an open mind so long as it isn’t left so wide open that one’s brain falls out.
William James could have stood to be educated by Randi. For example, James was taken in by Leonora Piper, yet another “medium” later found to employ cold reading and other techniques of talented charlatans. There’s a reason that grifters who try to profit off shoddy old tricks like cold reading or variations on “the power of positive thinking” hate professional magicians like Randi (and before him Houdini) who expose them because of the pain they cause.
Somehow, I’m not all that impressed or swayed by a poorly written, poorly thought out article by the writer of books like Occult America: White House Seances, Ouija Circles, Masons, and the Secret Mystic History of Our Nation as he tries to claim that James Randi damaged the field of skepticism because he made it harder for people who peddle the type of woo Mitch Horowitz likes to peddle.
Thank you for that. This thread really highlights how polarized some people are about this stuff.
It reminds me of my brief association with the Sunday Assembly, a bunch of athiests who would get together and sing pop songs, enjoy science presentations, and indulge a bunch of other church-like behaviors. It quickly stopped being fun when it turned out that denial of a supreme being is closely correlated with rejection of any talk of spiritual needs/desires/aspirations. Oceanic feelings are right out!
If I talk about my subjective experiences that correspond to “ghost stories” or anything that might resemble telepathy, there’s always one of these hard core skeptics to explain it all away in terms of random chance in a vast statistical universe. Which doesn’t really add anything to the conversation. Being called a snake oil salesman isn’t really all that different from being called a witch: neither accusation actually explains anything at all.
Gregory Bateson toward the end of his career made some sad observations about what it felt like to become a kind of saint. People following him no longer felt called to challenge his ideas, he just got a whole bunch of yes men aroubd him, echoing his ideas.
In that sense, it appears Randi has also achieved sainthood, in that challenging his methods gets one excommunicated from the church of true reason. You can honor the work of JB Rhine, or you can honor the work of James Randi, but -in the eyes of these zealots- you cannot honor them both. It’s necessary to choose.
It’s not all that different from the divide seperating political conservatives from political liberals here in the US. It’s considered a weakness to even entertain ideas offered up by the other side, and to suggest any sort of synthesis gets you laughed right out of the forum.
He considered the evidence and followed it where it led. That is the heart of Skepticism and scientific empiricism.
What a disgrace to publish nonsense like this so soon after Randi passed away. Shame.
