We've already hammered this out often enough on this forum, but it seems the message isn't spreading very far beyond it.Skeptics, can you please stop using this joke of a ‘challenge’ to browbeat believers?
The article was reasonably well-written, until the closing statement,
We've already hammered this out often enough on this forum, but it seems the message isn't spreading very far beyond it.
The use of the terms 'skeptic' and ' believer' might be considered interchangeable, they don't necessarily mean what they imply, and might even mean the opposite.
The use of the terms 'skeptic' and ' believer' might be considered interchangeable, they don't necessarily mean what they imply, and might even mean the opposite.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" but mediocre evidence seems to be enough to "debunk" them.
Randi asked a medium/clairvoyant to identify people from some data they gave about them (but totally unrelated to their looks). The people who had to prove her powers had to identify 9 out of 12 to be accepted as "winner". This represents one chance in millions ! What if she performed in a way to succeed for one chance in 60 ? Randi wasn't trying to find the truth because if there are phenomenon beyond our comprehension, we also don't know how to validate them. This is why often Dean Radin is satisfied to identify a phenomenon that goes beyond statistical chance (like being close to 50% on successive heads or tails). I think this would be real science.
James Randi's was a debunking show and nobody really realized that the real bunk was the challenge itself.
Randi always wanted to verify things "under controlled conditions" but who actually controlled him ?