The Amazing Randi at NY Area Skeptics
by Irma S. Jarcho
James Randi, "The Amazing Randi" (and amazing he is!) gave the Fourth Isaac Asimov Memorial Lecture sponsored by the New York Area Skeptics (NYASK) on Friday, 16 May 1997. A magician who has become equally famous for debunking pseudoscientific nonsense, Mr. Randi reviewed the latest, including quackery, psychic hotlines, and therapeutic touch. The last is the modern witchcraft which has bemused millions of Americans including, unfortunately, all the nursing associations. All these pseudoscientific claims, here and abroad, are saturating the news media. At the James Randi Educational Foundation six people are busy, full time, keeping up with these accounts.
Randi's lecture was chock-full of amusing accounts of psychic frauds he has investigated. Amusing, that is, until you realize that the credulous "clients" of these psychics are paying them a great deal of money. Randi insisted that exposing the large proportion of these frauds does not require elaborate scientific apparatus -- the simplest methods work best. As an example, there was a "psychic" who could turn the pages of a telephone book by thought waves alone. Randi realized he was blowing on the pages and exposed the fraud by the simple process of scattering peanut shells all around the phone book. He pointed out that most psychics depend on cues provided, unwittingly, by the "clients" themselves. If the client refuses to be led along, the "psychic" is powerless.
Much to our amusement, Randi not only bent a spoon (Uri Geller's most famous trick, which Randi had exposed as fraudulent) but also broke it! (I wonder how he did it!)
He discussed therapeutic touch (TT) at length. There are now 80,000 practitioners of this flim-flam in the United States, most of them in California. According to this doctrine, each person is surrounded by an invisible Human Energy Field (HEF) like a layer of sponge rubber. Tears in the HEF cause ailments. A TT practitioner runs his/her hands around your field, finds all the tears and imperfections, rolls them into a ball and throws them away. (S)he then takes replacement from the therapists own body and adds this to yours. A major test of this technique is slated for June 1997. Let us see if this test puts quietus to this nonsense which Randi labeled witchcraft, magic which does not work.
If there turns out to be any successful practitioner in paranormal tests such as these, they will walk away with a prize which has been outstanding for years. In 1968 Randi was challenged to "put his money where is mouth is," and he began to carry a $10,000 check to be awarded to anyone who could demonstrate a paranormal feat under proper observing conditions. The prize has now grown to over a million dollars, the balance offered by interested people who have pledged from $1000 to $15,000.
Randi also told the story of the 11-year-old who, though thoroughly blindfolded, could read The New York Times. To start with, she insisted on chewing gum "to relax" with vigorous movements of her jaws, thus loosening the blindfold. Then she scratched her nose, creating a small peephole in the loosened blindfold. And a small peephole was all that was needed.
It happened that "Carlos" was in the audience and Randi gave an extensive account of the elaborate hoax he and "Carlos" perpetrated on the Australians. Enormous advance publicity and testimonials of Carlos' powers as a "channeler" all contributed to a sellout crowd in a large theater. It is my guess that Randi and Carlos still did not disillusion believers when they confessed the hoax, which is detailed in Carl Sagan's A Demon Haunted World (reviewed in our Winter 1997 issue).
Randi concluded by demonstrating a very amusing trick in which a matchbox placed on the wrist was made to stand up on end. Unfortunately, this trick took in a whole audience of physicists.
On display was Randi's book, The Mask of Nostradamus (Scribners, New York, 1990). He believes the Nostradamus nonsense will suffer a revival (if that is the term I want) as the millennium approaches, since one of Nostradamus' predictions is that a great King of Terror will come from the sky in July 1999.
During the question-and-answer period Randi discussed "dowsing," on which he has done extensive investigations. Dowsers go around finding natural vortexes (their term) underground. But the dowser cannot find the same spot twice, and two dowsers cannot find the same spots.
Particularly amusing was the story of a dentist who had gone to California to take a course in, I believe, "Applied Kinesthiology," which he demonstrated by first trying to push down an outstretched arm, then putting a sugar cube in the patient's mouth, showing how easily he could push down the arm, thereby demonstrating how sugar weakens you. A young man, unbeknownst to the dentist, substituted a plastic cube for the sugar cube, with the same results. When confronted with this, the dentists rushed to the phone, dialed his mentor, and happily shouted, "It works with plastic, too!"
Randi answered the most important question of all: "Have you ever found any paranormal event you couldn't explain?" His reply: "Never -- if I am allowed to get close enough or to take samples."
Readers interested in following up on this information can contact the James Randi Educational Foundation at 201 SE 12th Street (E. Davie Blvd.), Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316-1815. New Yorkers might wish to join NYASK, 44 Parkview Drive, Millburn, NJ 07041, (201)-379-3408.
Home Spring 97 Full Screen
The TEACHERS CLEARINGHOUSE FOR SCIENCE AND SOCIETY EDUCATION