grim
9-20-05, 6:44 PM
My brother was telling me about this guy James "The Amazing" Randi. Randi has one million dollars. All you have to do to get that one million dollars is "show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event." "Your claim casts you in the role of the defendant, and the only thing the JREF [James Randi Educational Foundation] asks of you in defending your claim, is to demonstrate it. No theories, no stories, no anecdotal evidence, no photographs, no tape recordings; just a simple demonstration. Nothing more is required. The Challenge rules may seem complicated upon first glance, but they are not. You have a paranormal claim? Great! Demonstrate it successfully, and the Million Dollar Prize is yours. It?s really that simple."
Good luck. :]
Fakers and Innocents
The One Million Dollar Challenge and Those Who Try for It
James Randi describes some of the difficult, innocent, and impossible people who apply to be tested for his foundation?s $1 million challenge for evidence of paranormal powers.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2005-07/randi-01.gif
JAMES RANDI
I am going to describe difficult, impossible, and unknowing contestants who?ve applied for the James Randi Educational Foundation?s million-dollar prize. I can say this from the very beginning: give me a faker, give me someone who appears before me and is lying, who is attempting to fool me, to deceive me, or to deceive anyone else, the media, or other scientists. Please don?t give me the innocent who really believe they have the powers. They?re the difficult ones to handle; a true believer is a terrible enemy, but the fakers I can handle. Those people I can come out against, I can confront them, I can show what they are doing, and get rid of ?em.
Now, of the people who apply for the million-dollar challenge of the James Randi Educational Foundation?and I?m sure you all go to my Web site regularly, right? It?s www.randi.org. All right. You will find, reading over the archives on that Web site, that about 80 percent or more of the people who apply are dowsers, or diviners. That is, people who, with a forked stick or with a pendulum or with some sort of wire stretched out in front of them, believe that they can find water, gold, oil, lost jewelry, children, anything.
One man even told us that he had a particular, specific ability. This dowser lived in Kentucky, and said that he had the ability to find lost hunting dogs; that was the only thing he could find. He was very sensitive to that, and if you were able to give him a little hair from the hunting dog, he would put it on the end of his dowsing stick and it would lead him directly to the dog.
Sometimes there was an error. Sometimes it would lead him to another hunting dog, which was very similar because the DNA would be very similar, you see? He actually told me that he was tuning in on the DNA, and then he said, ?Oh, there?s one other thing that I can find, too.? We said, ?What is that?? He said, ?I can find bullets, because I tune in on the DNA of bullets.?
Now, I didn?t know that bullets reproduce that way. Perhaps you take two .38-caliber bullets, leave them alone for a while, and they produce .22-caliber bullets? I don?t know. These people are so exceedingly na?ve. These are the hard people to handle. Someone who has a trick, I can get ?em right away.
Now, handling the subject of difficult cases that we have to investigate, I hate to tell you this, but the application form for the James Randi Educational Foundation prize has twelve, I think now thirteen, rules. Very simple. They?re not difficult to understand. The most important one of the rules is that you have to say what you can do, under what circumstances, with what accuracy. How could anything be simpler?
Well, a good 80 percent of the people who apply can?t make that statement. Not only that, they?re told on the application form that they must write two paragraphs?no more? describing what their ability is.
People can write very long paragraphs. Some of those paragraphs run three pages. We had one just recently from a gentleman who had some strange claim?I don?t remember?he did 18 pages, filled on both sides, in handwriting. I think his ancestry must have been Turkish or something, he was still using, I think, the Turkish alphabet. It was almost impossible to understand what he was writing about. We had to get him down to two paragraphs, and that?s not easy.
Completing the form is the most difficult thing that these people have to do. After that, it?s pretty easy. That doesn?t seem logical. You would think at this very moment there should be people knocking on the door trying to get my attention so they could try for the million-dollar prize. I don?t hear anybody knocking, do you? No.
Now, another thing that is very, very difficult to investigate is medical claims. Our colleagues in India, through B. Premanand there, a most estimable gentleman, good friend of mine, the people in India have a little more freedom to investigate these things. There is a wonderful documentary made by the BBC some years ago in which they followed Mr. Premanand around and they had to demonstrate that the so- called ?god men? of India could not heal as they claimed they could heal. They actually had a snake bite a dog. Now, that?s not acceptable in our society, particularly not in England, where animals are more important than human beings, believe me. They had the snake bite the dog, and then the guru, the ?god man,? tried to save the dog. Not to your great surprise, I will tell you that the dog died.
Now, the guru, the ?god man,? was most amazed at this. ?Oh, it always worked before,? he said. Well, we offered to do another test with him. He didn?t want to do that, and we haven?t seen him since. See, you can get away with that sort of thing in some countries, but certainly not in England, not in the United States, and?I suspect?certainly not in Italy.
Now, every now and then the difficult cases are ridden, like a horse, by some scientist, some academic who has adopted this as his cause c?l?bre, something that he?s going to promote, he just knows the claim must be true.
Just recently I was in W?rzburg, in Germany, where we ran some tests of people who were applying for the prize. Again, so that the tension won?t be too much for you, they all failed and the million dollars is still quite safe. There was a gentleman there who I won?t name so that he won?t be embarrassed. This is a scientist with a German university, retired, who said I cheat all the time, otherwise there would have been a winner a long time ago. And, he said, in some cases, people have already won the prize but I won?t pay them. He also said that I?m too aggressive and rude.
Now, I can be aggressive, that?s quite true. Yes, just try me and you?ll see. But with these innocent people who are self- deceived, certainly I am not aggressive.
Well, this professor, he showed up in W?rzburg and at first he was very angry about everything, and he looked at me with this awful expression on his face. After half an hour he was lightening up a little bit because he found that I was not the very bad person that he?d believed I was.
But then?it?s hard to tell you this, really?he was doing tests that he wanted the million dollars for, but he wanted to see how I did the tests first, that?s why he was in W?rzburg. This man had said that he didn?t like my attitude?all of those things. He showed up, he watched me do some of the tests, and he lightened up considerably, but then he showed his weakness. Now, this is an academic, a man with a university degree. I don?t have a university degree. I?m merely someone who observes and uses common sense. You don?t get a university degree for common sense, apparently.
This gentleman was doing tests with children in which he had a large bag, and inside were ping-pong balls numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., all the way up to 25, and the children were supposed to reach in and select any given number?ah-ha! There it is! I win!
Well, I wondered about that. What was his expertise in ping-pong balls? He showed me the bag. He laid it on the table, and Martin Mahner and I, who were there watching the tests, looked at one another in astonishment. The bag was made out of a netlike plastic material. You could read the numbers of the balls from outside the bag! You could see it very plainly, and on my Web site I have?I will have shortly? some photographs that I took with my digital camera where you can see the numbers through the bag.
Well, then I decided to test the man to see what his observing powers were, so I said, ?Let me demonstrate.? I reached into the bag and I took out a ball with number 3 on it, and I said, ?That would be ball number 3.? He said, ?Yes.? I put it aside and said, ?Now I will choose ball number 5.? Ball number 5!
He was astonished. Of course, now he assumed that I had psychic powers, too, you see? Well, I?ll tell you the secret, it?s very simple: when I reached in, I took two balls. One here, and one down here [shows hand] and I looked at both number 3 and number 5, and I said, ?Number 3??having the number 5 ball still in my hand?then I reached into the bag and came out with number 5. That?s what had astonished him.
Now, that?s two things in which he demonstrated his ignorance of scientific procedure. But then it really got to me. We had two thermometers laid there that were measuring the air temperature. He wanted to photograph them with his digital camera to make sure the two of them were reading exactly the same temperature. He reached down and took one of the thermometers and he turned it around so the numbers were facing his camera. He took the photograph, then he looked at the thermometers. He said, ?Oh, this thermometer is reading about one- third of one degree Celsius higher.? That was because he had picked it up by the bulb end so it was measuring his body temperature! This is a scientist! I am not a scientist, but I have common sense.
Now, we get claims all the time?as far as difficult claims go?from people asking, can we prove that God doesn?t exist? Ah, but they have the wrong picture, you see? I don?t say that any of these powers, including God, doesn?t exist; I make no claim. I ask them to make the claim, and they have to prove that they?re right. So they say, okay, ?God exists.? I say, ?Prove it.? ?Ah, um, I?ll call you back.? ?Hello?? and we never hear from them again.
Now, the other people who are difficult to test are those with very strong emotional investment in the tests. I?m a sympathetic man, I really am, I?m considerate of these people. They come to me and they want to be tested, but I know that when they fail the test, theoretically they should be very depressed, they should feel very sorry: ?Oh, something?s awfully wrong here.? It will destroy their emotional stability. I don?t want to do that, but in some cases it?s not possible to avoid it.
For example: Linda, my administrative director, came to me recently and she said, ?There?re some people at the front door from Lithuania.? Now, I?m in Florida. They came all the way from Lithuania because they were sure they could win the million-dollar prize. They said they could do psychic diagnosis of the human body, and I said, ?Well, we?re not ready for you. If you want to give a quick try, you can do that, sure. Ah, try me.?
Now, that was unwise of me because many details about me are on the Web and can be found with the search engine Google. Google knows everything, you know that, yes? Google knows all facts. And I thought maybe they would look me up in Google. No, they weren?t that smart.
The two women who came in did a complete analysis of my body, and they decided that I had every disease that a 74-year-old man should have. I don?t have any of those. I have others, and they didn?t spot any of the other ones, and I won?t tell you what they are.
But it was so typical. They know that I should have prostate problems. I should have this. I should have other problems. But I didn?t have any of those, and I said, ?Now, you told me that you would be one-hundred percent correct.? ?Yes, yes, yes.? And I said, ?Well, here?s a medical examination from two months ago, there?s all the details there.? They just pushed it aside. I said, ?But you aren?t a hundred percent correct.? ?Oh, yes, yes! But we know things that the doctors don?t know.?
..............
The rest of this article (http://www.csicop.org/si/2005-07/randi.html)
Good luck. :]
Fakers and Innocents
The One Million Dollar Challenge and Those Who Try for It
James Randi describes some of the difficult, innocent, and impossible people who apply to be tested for his foundation?s $1 million challenge for evidence of paranormal powers.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2005-07/randi-01.gif
JAMES RANDI
I am going to describe difficult, impossible, and unknowing contestants who?ve applied for the James Randi Educational Foundation?s million-dollar prize. I can say this from the very beginning: give me a faker, give me someone who appears before me and is lying, who is attempting to fool me, to deceive me, or to deceive anyone else, the media, or other scientists. Please don?t give me the innocent who really believe they have the powers. They?re the difficult ones to handle; a true believer is a terrible enemy, but the fakers I can handle. Those people I can come out against, I can confront them, I can show what they are doing, and get rid of ?em.
Now, of the people who apply for the million-dollar challenge of the James Randi Educational Foundation?and I?m sure you all go to my Web site regularly, right? It?s www.randi.org. All right. You will find, reading over the archives on that Web site, that about 80 percent or more of the people who apply are dowsers, or diviners. That is, people who, with a forked stick or with a pendulum or with some sort of wire stretched out in front of them, believe that they can find water, gold, oil, lost jewelry, children, anything.
One man even told us that he had a particular, specific ability. This dowser lived in Kentucky, and said that he had the ability to find lost hunting dogs; that was the only thing he could find. He was very sensitive to that, and if you were able to give him a little hair from the hunting dog, he would put it on the end of his dowsing stick and it would lead him directly to the dog.
Sometimes there was an error. Sometimes it would lead him to another hunting dog, which was very similar because the DNA would be very similar, you see? He actually told me that he was tuning in on the DNA, and then he said, ?Oh, there?s one other thing that I can find, too.? We said, ?What is that?? He said, ?I can find bullets, because I tune in on the DNA of bullets.?
Now, I didn?t know that bullets reproduce that way. Perhaps you take two .38-caliber bullets, leave them alone for a while, and they produce .22-caliber bullets? I don?t know. These people are so exceedingly na?ve. These are the hard people to handle. Someone who has a trick, I can get ?em right away.
Now, handling the subject of difficult cases that we have to investigate, I hate to tell you this, but the application form for the James Randi Educational Foundation prize has twelve, I think now thirteen, rules. Very simple. They?re not difficult to understand. The most important one of the rules is that you have to say what you can do, under what circumstances, with what accuracy. How could anything be simpler?
Well, a good 80 percent of the people who apply can?t make that statement. Not only that, they?re told on the application form that they must write two paragraphs?no more? describing what their ability is.
People can write very long paragraphs. Some of those paragraphs run three pages. We had one just recently from a gentleman who had some strange claim?I don?t remember?he did 18 pages, filled on both sides, in handwriting. I think his ancestry must have been Turkish or something, he was still using, I think, the Turkish alphabet. It was almost impossible to understand what he was writing about. We had to get him down to two paragraphs, and that?s not easy.
Completing the form is the most difficult thing that these people have to do. After that, it?s pretty easy. That doesn?t seem logical. You would think at this very moment there should be people knocking on the door trying to get my attention so they could try for the million-dollar prize. I don?t hear anybody knocking, do you? No.
Now, another thing that is very, very difficult to investigate is medical claims. Our colleagues in India, through B. Premanand there, a most estimable gentleman, good friend of mine, the people in India have a little more freedom to investigate these things. There is a wonderful documentary made by the BBC some years ago in which they followed Mr. Premanand around and they had to demonstrate that the so- called ?god men? of India could not heal as they claimed they could heal. They actually had a snake bite a dog. Now, that?s not acceptable in our society, particularly not in England, where animals are more important than human beings, believe me. They had the snake bite the dog, and then the guru, the ?god man,? tried to save the dog. Not to your great surprise, I will tell you that the dog died.
Now, the guru, the ?god man,? was most amazed at this. ?Oh, it always worked before,? he said. Well, we offered to do another test with him. He didn?t want to do that, and we haven?t seen him since. See, you can get away with that sort of thing in some countries, but certainly not in England, not in the United States, and?I suspect?certainly not in Italy.
Now, every now and then the difficult cases are ridden, like a horse, by some scientist, some academic who has adopted this as his cause c?l?bre, something that he?s going to promote, he just knows the claim must be true.
Just recently I was in W?rzburg, in Germany, where we ran some tests of people who were applying for the prize. Again, so that the tension won?t be too much for you, they all failed and the million dollars is still quite safe. There was a gentleman there who I won?t name so that he won?t be embarrassed. This is a scientist with a German university, retired, who said I cheat all the time, otherwise there would have been a winner a long time ago. And, he said, in some cases, people have already won the prize but I won?t pay them. He also said that I?m too aggressive and rude.
Now, I can be aggressive, that?s quite true. Yes, just try me and you?ll see. But with these innocent people who are self- deceived, certainly I am not aggressive.
Well, this professor, he showed up in W?rzburg and at first he was very angry about everything, and he looked at me with this awful expression on his face. After half an hour he was lightening up a little bit because he found that I was not the very bad person that he?d believed I was.
But then?it?s hard to tell you this, really?he was doing tests that he wanted the million dollars for, but he wanted to see how I did the tests first, that?s why he was in W?rzburg. This man had said that he didn?t like my attitude?all of those things. He showed up, he watched me do some of the tests, and he lightened up considerably, but then he showed his weakness. Now, this is an academic, a man with a university degree. I don?t have a university degree. I?m merely someone who observes and uses common sense. You don?t get a university degree for common sense, apparently.
This gentleman was doing tests with children in which he had a large bag, and inside were ping-pong balls numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., all the way up to 25, and the children were supposed to reach in and select any given number?ah-ha! There it is! I win!
Well, I wondered about that. What was his expertise in ping-pong balls? He showed me the bag. He laid it on the table, and Martin Mahner and I, who were there watching the tests, looked at one another in astonishment. The bag was made out of a netlike plastic material. You could read the numbers of the balls from outside the bag! You could see it very plainly, and on my Web site I have?I will have shortly? some photographs that I took with my digital camera where you can see the numbers through the bag.
Well, then I decided to test the man to see what his observing powers were, so I said, ?Let me demonstrate.? I reached into the bag and I took out a ball with number 3 on it, and I said, ?That would be ball number 3.? He said, ?Yes.? I put it aside and said, ?Now I will choose ball number 5.? Ball number 5!
He was astonished. Of course, now he assumed that I had psychic powers, too, you see? Well, I?ll tell you the secret, it?s very simple: when I reached in, I took two balls. One here, and one down here [shows hand] and I looked at both number 3 and number 5, and I said, ?Number 3??having the number 5 ball still in my hand?then I reached into the bag and came out with number 5. That?s what had astonished him.
Now, that?s two things in which he demonstrated his ignorance of scientific procedure. But then it really got to me. We had two thermometers laid there that were measuring the air temperature. He wanted to photograph them with his digital camera to make sure the two of them were reading exactly the same temperature. He reached down and took one of the thermometers and he turned it around so the numbers were facing his camera. He took the photograph, then he looked at the thermometers. He said, ?Oh, this thermometer is reading about one- third of one degree Celsius higher.? That was because he had picked it up by the bulb end so it was measuring his body temperature! This is a scientist! I am not a scientist, but I have common sense.
Now, we get claims all the time?as far as difficult claims go?from people asking, can we prove that God doesn?t exist? Ah, but they have the wrong picture, you see? I don?t say that any of these powers, including God, doesn?t exist; I make no claim. I ask them to make the claim, and they have to prove that they?re right. So they say, okay, ?God exists.? I say, ?Prove it.? ?Ah, um, I?ll call you back.? ?Hello?? and we never hear from them again.
Now, the other people who are difficult to test are those with very strong emotional investment in the tests. I?m a sympathetic man, I really am, I?m considerate of these people. They come to me and they want to be tested, but I know that when they fail the test, theoretically they should be very depressed, they should feel very sorry: ?Oh, something?s awfully wrong here.? It will destroy their emotional stability. I don?t want to do that, but in some cases it?s not possible to avoid it.
For example: Linda, my administrative director, came to me recently and she said, ?There?re some people at the front door from Lithuania.? Now, I?m in Florida. They came all the way from Lithuania because they were sure they could win the million-dollar prize. They said they could do psychic diagnosis of the human body, and I said, ?Well, we?re not ready for you. If you want to give a quick try, you can do that, sure. Ah, try me.?
Now, that was unwise of me because many details about me are on the Web and can be found with the search engine Google. Google knows everything, you know that, yes? Google knows all facts. And I thought maybe they would look me up in Google. No, they weren?t that smart.
The two women who came in did a complete analysis of my body, and they decided that I had every disease that a 74-year-old man should have. I don?t have any of those. I have others, and they didn?t spot any of the other ones, and I won?t tell you what they are.
But it was so typical. They know that I should have prostate problems. I should have this. I should have other problems. But I didn?t have any of those, and I said, ?Now, you told me that you would be one-hundred percent correct.? ?Yes, yes, yes.? And I said, ?Well, here?s a medical examination from two months ago, there?s all the details there.? They just pushed it aside. I said, ?But you aren?t a hundred percent correct.? ?Oh, yes, yes! But we know things that the doctors don?t know.?
..............
The rest of this article (http://www.csicop.org/si/2005-07/randi.html)