I’m very disappointed to see Boing Boing publish hot garbage like this article. Randi dedicated his life to exposing fraud, at great personal expense I might add.
With misinformation becoming a way of life for so many people today, we need proponents of critical thought more than ever.
It’s a bit more tricky when there is private funding. The Danish businessman Poul Thorsen donated money, and after a couple of unversities declined them, Lund University chose to accept the donation and add a professor in parapsychology.given to Etzel Cardeña. Even if the money was free, it did cost them a bit of reputation.
On the other hand, if you talk to scientists you wlll find that lots of them have ideas that are no less crazy than ESP, it’s just part of how universities work. You put a lot of creative people together, have them come up with crazy stuff and see what survives contact with their colleagues. The few ideas that work out pay for the rest. The problem is when people not familiar with research assume that just because someone is a professor everything he says should be taken seriously.
I’m sure it has all be covered before, but I felt I I had to register to comment to say this is a clear conflict of interests and possibly the most ill-informed article I have read on Boing Boing. I’m all for open-minded journalism, but this is not that. Will Sylvia Browne be writing the followup?
Thank you, BB community!
Faith in humanity slowing being restored.
Scourge of psychics James Randi was no skeptic; our culture is poorer as a result
Well no, he was a fantastic skeptic. You’re just mad that he debunked your particular favour of woo.
making it more difficult for serious university-based and academically trained researchers to study ESP and mental anomalies, and to receive a fair hearing in the news media.
Good, these studies were universally a waste of time, and fully explainable by researchers being deceived by unscrupulous subjects or their own bias causing them to p-hack their own results.
Another case was Randi’s yearly “million-dollar challenge,” often held in Las Vegas, in which he tempted psychics with a cash prize. For years it was an annual charade to which virtually no serious observer or claimant would venture near.
Because they would all fail when subjected to serious scrutiny.
If one truly had psychic abilities, even inconsistent ones, it would be relatively easy to prove through any number of means. Yet for all these supposed psychics claiming paranormal abilities the world has somehow yet to see one who can be bothered to provide real evidence of their abilities.
I’ve got one word for you son… phlogiston.
One of the wonderful things that differentiates science from psuedoscience is that science doesn’t care about, let alone revere, researchers. The heroes of one generation are milestones for the next generation to check off in the rearview mirror as part of their undergrad education, quickly followed by the the flaws in their work solved by the next and much better models we’ve since developed.
What hot garbage is this?
If human brains were able to detect the future or others thoughts or see through cards and walls than those things would be somehow detectable by other means. Birds can detect magnetic fields, so can a compass. Holding up cards until someone guesses enough in a row is not a field of scientific study universities should be putting money into.
On top of that. Boing boing is hosting a roast of a skeptic by a fan of quacks right after his death? WTF
yah, now how am I going to get the astronomy department to fund my research into that teapot orbiting the Sun?
Really Boingboing? this is where we are now? I’ve had to read this several times, as it really seems like an odd thing for you to publish. Was telling my wife about Omni magazine that started as Science and Science fiction, then devolved to the Loc Ness monsters, astrology, and other such. Please reconsider.
The usage of “skepticism” that Horowitz uses here seems to be the same usage that people use when they use phrases like “Global Warming skepticism” or “Vaccine skepticism”. It isn’t skepticism, it is science denialism.
Well it would be, if a controlled study of the card-guessers showed an actual effect that could not be explained via conventional understanding of physics and statistics. We needn’t understand the nature of a phenomenon order to confirm its existence through the scientific process.
So sure, it’s theoretically possible that a human brain could react to some unknown stimulus that no other technology we currently possess can detect, and studying such a phenomenon might yield as-yet-unimagined new technologies. But if you can’t demonstrate any such effect exists in the first place then it’s probably a waste of time and money trying to study it.
A man who believes himself to be always right can’t help but be wrong.
It’s interesting to me that the article focused on the lack of funding for academic research in these areas.
If clairvoyance / ESP / Remote Viewing / etc. were real phenomena there would be several non-academic avenues to secure significant funding, including in Wall Street or Las Vegas, not to mention interest from government agencies all over the world. (Of course, some governments have already wasted their money on that and unfortunately will probably continue to do so despite Mr. Randi)
If someone was able to consistently win at higher-than-even odds when gambling on a game of pure chance, they would undoubtedly earn the attention of researchers while simultaneously winning all the money needed to seriously study this type of phenomenon and there’s not a darn thing that skeptics could do to stop that.
I agree with this article because I am still upset that no one is interested in funding my research into whether Ponzi schemes are actually a legitimate business practice.
Please buy my book for some great investment tips. So long as you read it unquestioningly it’ll be very persuasive too. PS: The SEC is just like Stalin.
To be clear, I believe science is the best and most reliable way to operate in this world, but it is not infallible and should be be questioned. I stand by The climate change model, as it best represents what is known and clean air a water are a no brainer. I wear a mask because most studies say it helps mitigate spread of COVID. But even Randi questioned some science. There are no absolutes here. And yes there is a the phenomenon of “tribes with flags” (Or colors) that humans identify with a group (both sides!) in an emotional way, separate from reason. Nationalism, xenophobia, religion.
and yes there are factions in science , were the so called empirical data is interpreted differently.
In regard to medical therapies in general (both mainstream and alternative), I think it is important to keep in mind the considerable power of the placebo effect. This clearly is a big factor in the apparent effectiveness of acupuncture, chiropractic and this “EDMR” thing mentioned above.
The gold standard against whether a treatment can be considered effective is a prospective, placebo-controlled, double-blinded study. And it is interesting that woo^H^H^H alternative medicine therapies that have thrived are those for which it is most difficult to find a good placebo.
Where it is possible to devise a rigorous, placebo-controlled test (e.g. homeopathic medications), it becomes painfully obvious the treatment doesn’t work any better than an (intentionally) fake treatment. Have there been any trials of acupuncture that show benefit when the practitioner hits the target points, but not when (s)he misses?
Some things are real but hard to measure. However, if something is impossible to measure, it is not real.
In my mind the strongest evidence that ESP and other “paranormal” phenomena are not real is that nobody has figured out to make money using it.
Questioning and testing established science (i.e. explanations and predictions for why a phenomenon occurs) is science. What’s being questioned and tested here is the very existence of certain phenomena. If the “so-called” (telling qualifier, that) empirical data does not demonstrate something exists, it’s a waste of time to devote scientific resources to its study and in certain cases it’s dangerous and harmful to posit it as the basis of a technological solution to a problem.
As others (Randi more than most) have said, prove with a reasonable amount of empirical evidence that homeopathy/crystal healing/telepathy/telekinesis/the power of positive thinking/an omnipotent and omniscient being/etc. empirically exists and works, then we’ll give you the resources to study it scientifically and develop technological applications for it. Otherwise, go back to woo-woo land with what is simply a belief.
If you want to claim that there are unknown unknowns, that’s fine too, but don’t expect resources to study them and don’t expect to win any million-dollar prizes or grants.
I didn’t deny that peddlers of pseudoscience and woo stir up emotions – quite the opposite. You think that response in defense of actual science is unwarranted, but others (especially those living through this new gilded age of American charlatanism) don’t.
Anyhow, I’ve had enough of lofty pronouncements defending research into pseudo-science from people who clearly don’t know the difference between science, the empirical observation of phenomena, and technology. I’ve also had enough of pronouncements of disappointment that BoingBoing would publish (as it does now and then) a dishonest, distasteful and self-promoting article by a charlatan who’s friends with one of the Happy Mutants (see also: James Altucher). While the original dumpster fire article will unfortunately stand as a blot on the site, I will stop feeding it and respectfully suggest to the moderators that this resulting dumpster fire Topic be closed early.
This seems in pretty poor taste, bashing a man this soon after his death for petty gripes. If legit research into ESP etc was actually threatened by Randi and his foundation then I have to question the value of it. I would argue the lack of funding likely has more to do with the lack of results than anything Randi said or did.
Basically, Randi denied things of interest to the author and got famous doing so. Now we get this shortly after his death.
