James Randi was a Canadian-American stage magician and a scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, originally known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.
The one million dollar paranormal challenge was never claimed.
I knew he was old and ill, but this crushes me. I constantly use his debunking of magic in my class to illustrate how to put pseudoscience to the test.
Here's a great Ted talk he did about cold reading and quackery. We'll miss you James.
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"You know, that's kinda why I came here, to show that I don't suck that much" ~ Devin Cooley, Professional Goaltender
Last edited by Cali Panthers Fan; 10-21-2020 at 05:57 PM.
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I had just heard of the guy for the first time earlier this year and went down a YouTube rabbit hole for a period watching clips of both his magic tricks and debunking appearances. Very interesting guy.
There's a decent but not great documentary on one of the streaming services called An Honest Liar which ends with a deception in his own life.
Spoiler!
His longtime partner had assumed someone else's identity and lived under that name for decades. I can't recall exactly but it's heavily implied or even outright confessed that Randi was well aware of the duplicity.
Loved that guy for how he outed and fought against evangelist scam artists, same with the bull#### psychics. I know he influenced, inspired and led me to realize how damaging those charlatans can be to the naive.
Last edited by Engine09; 10-23-2020 at 01:51 PM.
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I used to read the detailed reports that JREF would put out on all of the million dollar challengers. They don't seem to be archived anywhere. One challenger that stood out was a young guy who thought he could get words transmitted psychically from his girlfriend.
If I recall, he had to reschedule a couple times because he didn't have the money for the transportation to where JREF would run the experiment. When he finally arrived, the guy was completely sincere and polite, and when he failed, was puzzled but respectful. And I recall the writeup as showing James as being really kind to him - it was a stark contrast to some of the other charlatans that participated. It showed me that he reserved his outrage to those who were trying to trick or mislead, but understood there were some who genuinely felt they were psychically gifted, and treated them with humanity.
To me that showed character beyond "let me expose these people as the cheats that they are".
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