News From Around The Blogosphere 10.27.11

1. Skeptical zombies ignored by James Van Praagh – In possibly the best PR stunt the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) has ever come up with, their president, DJ Grothe led an army of zombies on a mission to get self-proclaimed “psychic” James Van Praagh to finally take the JREF’s Million Dollar Psychic Challenge. Not surprisingly, Praagh’s goons kept the zombies from meeting with him but of course that doesn’t matter as this story is getting a lot of press.

2. Church’s bogus AIDS cure causes 3 deaths – Though this is an isolated incident, this is precisely the kind of tragedy that can be expected in a culture that demands unquestioned belief and condemns skepticism.

3. 60 Minutes pisses off anti-vaxxers – As part of their Steve Jobs-centered episode this week, 60 Minutes ran a segment on the remarkable benefits that iPads and other tablet devices have demonstrated for people with autism. And somehow by simply highlighting an important, practical tool in helping autistic people communicate, they’ve pissed off Age of Autism. And bravo to Age of Autism’s commenters for declaring war on Temple Grandin of all people. That takes serious balls. Maybe their next target will be blind nuns, adorable puppies, and AIDS-infected orphans. I’m just shocked Age of Autism didn’t rant about the fact that Pfizer is a major sponsor of the show.

4. ‘Sybil’ admits she never really had multiple personalities – The most famous alleged case of multiple personality syndrome, or what’s now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder was based on lies and manipulations.

5. Atheists doing volunteer work – This is something I want to see more of in atheist groups. This is one of the ways we’ll change people’s negative stereotypes about atheists.

 

Related articles

• James van Praagh Can’t Talk to Dead People (patheos.com)
• Open letter from JREF to James Van Praagh (thinkthatthrough.wordpress.com)
• Zombies vs. Psychics (aquantumofknowledge.com)

Psychic Sally exposed as a fraud

BUSTED!

Back in the 80’s, James Randi exposed “faith healer” Peter Popoff as a charlatan on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. It seemed that Popoff was being fed information about his audience by his wife through an earpiece. When Randi and company found the right frequency, they managed to record Popoff’s wife feeding her husband everything he needed to know to appear as though “God” was directing him to the specific person he was to “heal.”

The earpiece has been a common tactic for those pseudo-psychic mentalists who are just too lazy to cold read and just want to have everything they need to know spoon-fed to them. Now  one such lazy “psychic” is Psychic Sally Morgan, who is clearly spotted in HER OWN VIDEO removing a hidden earpiece at the end of her act.

Of course, coward that she is, she’s actually threatening her accusers with legal action. I for one hope she does. It will be very entertaining listening to her try to prove her magic powers in court…which of course she would have to do in a defamation suit because, among other requirements, defamation cases demand that the defendants’ accusations are actually false. She’d also have to prove the defendants knowingly lied. Good luck with that, Sally. It doesn’t take a psychic to figure out that her threats of legal action are empty and that, if carried out, would only end in embarrassing defeat for her.

Related articles

• Psychic Sally Morgan hears voices from the other side (via a hidden earpiece) | Chris French (guardian.co.uk)

Marie Claire vs. the psychics

I know I’ve been gone awhile. I’ve been a bit busy lately, but I hope to be back to posting more regularly soon.

In the meantime though, I just wanted to highlight an recent article a friend pointed me to in Marie Claire magazine of all places, entitled, “Are Psychics the New Dating Gurus?”

The article is surprisingly pretty considering the source. The author managed to do a better reporting job than most mainstream news media when discussing alleged “psychics” by not providing false balance by extensively quoting “psychic” defending their claims against critics. Instead, the writer doesn’t make much of an attempt to editorialize about psychic claims in the broader sense and just points to how wrong many specific predictions are and how they tend to always closely resemble vague and obvious guesses about the wishful thinking of whoever is receiving the reading. For instance, a remarkable number of customers are told they’ll meet their soul-mate within a short period of time after receiving the reading.

The article also mentions how women are disproportionally much more likely to believe those selling psychic services. This is why I’m particularly glad to see such a strong skeptical piece in a magazine like Marie Claire with a readership that’s almost exclusively women. This isn’t just some sensational TV special that will only attract viewers interested in seeing an investigation into psychics but a publication where women will see this skeptical article with its sensational title without having to go out of their way.

News From Around The Blogosphere 8.21.11

1. Bionic leg gives amputee natural gait – Once again, science achieves where gods have failed, creating a practical prosthetic leg that closely simulates the function of a biological one. Now unfortunately, the article was unclear whether the leg comes with a Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman sound effect option.

2. A pro-science GOP candidate? – Republican presidential candidate John Huntsman has come out in support of both evolution and climate change. It began with a Twitter post where they tweeted: ”To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming.  Call me crazy.”  He then went on ABC’s Sunday morning show This Week and came out even stronger in support of science. And in doing so, he’s proven to be the only GOP candidate who seems to have graduated from elementary school and has immediately moved up to the top of my list of who I’d like to see running in the general election against Obama…at least out of the options that are currently on the table…which admittedly doesn’t say much.

I'm pretty sure this is the right Rhett S. Daniels

3. Science blogger silenced by quack’s lawsuit – Fortunately, U.S. libel cases are notoriously hard to prove and Rhett Daniels doesn’t seem to have anything even resembling a good case. But at least for the time being, René Najera has been successfully silenced by this intellectual coward’s bullying tactic.

4. Can science engineer a human with bulletproof skin? –

By mixing the genomes of spiders and humans, researchers say they can create genetically altered human skin that could withstand a bullet fired from a .22-caliber long rifle.

They just better make sure this spider-man is taught that with great power comes great responsibility. This story sounds pretty far-fetched but it still makes for an interesting read.

5. JREF targets famous ‘psychics’ following Nightline episode – Last week’s episode of Nightline looked at the world of alleged psychics. It did a pretty decent job of representing the skeptical side, featuring guys like Banachek and James Randi himself voicing their criticisms and mimicking standard mentalist tricks. And now the James Randi Educational Foundation is following up the piece by issuing personal invites for several of the famous psychics featured in the show such as James Van Praagh to apply for their Million Dollar Challenge. Of course, one doesn’t have to be psychic to predict they’ll either ignore the challenge or refuse to take it with a silly excuse.

6. Psychic family caught in fraud case:

Julia Galef on The Ethics of Paranormal Investigation

My friend, Julia Galef, recently moderated a panel at The Amazing Meeting 9 on the topic of The Ethics of Paranormal Investigation. Since then, she has put up on Measure of Doubt, the blog she shares with her brother, these two videos discussing her own further thoughts on the subject:

News From Around The Blogosphere 6.23.11

1. Introducing the solar-kini – A designer has created a bikini with embedded solar panels that can charge your mobile technology while your sunbathe.

2. Granite State skeptics hand out psychic bingo cards to John Edward’s audience –

The cards had a five-by-five grid of vague “hot words” and scenarios that often come up in cold reading, a term used to describe how it’s possible to elicit information from people without their knowing it.

Mentalist Mark Edward also weighed in on this story here.

3. Hundreds of Mormon ads appear in NYC – Maybe this is just a really elaborate campaign to promote the Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon, but something tells me not a single one of these ads mentions the Mormon home planet of Kolob. Maybe if Mormons were a little more honest about their beliefs and practices, more would trust them more and they wouldn’t need the improve their image. And if you’re embarrassed by your own beliefs, maybe you should change your beliefs. Just a thought.

4. Self-help guru James Arthur Ray convicted in sweat lodge deaths – He was found guilty of negligent homicide in the deaths of three of his followers during a botched sweat lodge ceremony.

5. More proof that reality TV is not real – I’ve worked in reality TV, so I don’t need convincing. But for those who aren’t convinced yet, the opening to “MasterChef” featuring a crowd of allegedly thousands of applicants has been exposed as a clumsy Photoshop job that just pastes the same groups of people multiple times.

Related articles

• Sweat Lodge Guru’s Homicide Verdict (thedailybeast.com)
• Self-Help Author Convicted in Sweat Lodge Deaths (newser.com)
• Where In The Universe Is Kolob? (savoringscripture.wordpress.com)
• Mormons try to brush up image while in spotlight (cbsnews.com)

News From Around The Blogosphere 6.9.11

I’ve been away for almost a week, so I’m going to have to play catch-up for the next few days.

1. New Pew Poll suggests atheists still unelectable – If the poll is accurate, atheists are less electable than a candidate who is Mormon, gay, divorced, or even an adulterer.

2. ‘Psychic’ leads Texas Rangers and FBI down dead end  – Police followed a tip by an alleged psychic who told them where to find a supposed mass grave containing dozens of dismembered bodies. Now Craig McNair, head of the county commissioners, is looking to hold her responsible for giving a false tip and creating havoc.

3. ‘Expelled’ production company expelled from existence – Premise Media Holdings LP has gone bankrupt and its shitty creationist propaganda film starring Ben Stein is going up for auction:

The high bidder will become the owner of the movie that The New York Times (2008 Apr 18) described as “[o]ne of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time … a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry … an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike” and that was denounced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for its “profound dishonesty” and condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its “outrageous” misuse of the Holocaust to “tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution.” (NCSE’s Expelled Exposed provides a collection of reviews, commentary, and resources documenting the extensive problems with Expelled.)

4. Tennessee passes law banning images that “cause emotional distress” – Though it remains to be seen if anyone will actually try to enforce this new law signed by Gov. Bill Haslam, it’s hard to imagine a greater offense to the First Amendment.

5. Hot nun fired over lap-dancing past – Wasn’t there something in Christian mythology about turning the other cheek? Which cheeks the passage was talking about is unclear.

And on a related note…

6. Pole dancing for Jesus causes controversy – There’s a pole dancing class that allegedly is intended to help women stay in shape while simultaneously bringing them closer to God:

Set to Christian music, church-going women spin and slither around poles. But the instructor and the students say it’s not about sex.

7. South Carolina prison insist lingerie ads lead to “deviant behavior” –

But the organization says the jail has gone even further in its screening of mail to inmates by banning publications that contain any level of nudity, including beachwear and underwear.

Oh, and there’s a video in the link above.

 

And finally…

8. Congratulations to my friend Page Van Meter, who’s been named the new president of the NYC Skeptics!

 

Mehmet Oz joins John Edward in grief-raping

Those who may have been following this blog for awhile probably know that I don’t care much for Dr. Mehmet Oz. At least fifty percent of any medical advice he gives is complete bullshit and he seems to feel that the only way anyone will take him seriously as a medical professional is if he constantly wears his scrubs everywhere he goes.

But as much as I dislike Dr. Oz, he is nowhere near as repulsive as John Edward, who has been named the Biggest Douche in the Universe for his tireless commitment to grief-raping. But now Oz seems to looking to steal that title as he recently invited John Edward, the professional fraudster himself, on his show. On that show, he sat there and let Edward re-define grief as a form of cancer and then cross the line into full-blown sadism:

His next victim (patient?) was a middle-aged man who rose to his feet when Edward suggested someone had lost a son. As the reading continued, Edward informed the grief-stricken parent that the car accident that claimed his son’s life was in fact a suicide.

“I’ve never known that he committed suicide for sure,” said the grieving father, “but I believe it.”

This father seemed able to cope with that information, but I’m not sure every grieving parent would take that kind of news as well. What’s particularly noteworthy is that it has no basis in fact or truth.

Instead of having the dignity to criticize Edward, Oz brought in a critic, Katherine Nordal, to assess Edward’s psychic readings. Then according to Nordal, the producers heavily edited her portion to distort and quote-mine her criticism:

In a letter to producers of “The Dr. Oz” show Nordal said, “I provided very balanced responses to Dr. Oz’s questions during the show’s taping, however, the editing of my responses did not capture my full comments or give viewers an accurate portrayal of my professional view on John Edward’s methods. Instead, it seems that ‘The Doctor Oz’ show intentionally edited my responses in a way that gave the appearance of my endorsement of Edward’s methods as a legitimate intervention.”

I’m no psychic, but I predict a broken nose in John Edward’s and Mehmet Oz’s futures if either ever crosses my path.

Related articles

• Kathleen Nordal on Dr. Oz and John Edward: I was edited beyond recognition! (scienceblogs.com)
• When faith healing isn’t enough woo for Dr. Oz (scienceblogs.com)

Richard Wiseman talks Paranormality

My dog ate my homework or conversations with brick walls, part 2

Okay, so the other day I reported an exchange I had with a commenter on an older article calling himself Dusty. Dusty is a devoted believer in psychic phenomena and not a big fan of those who aren’t, particularly James Randi, who he despises…for some reason. Well while mostly ignoring my responses, he wrote three more consecutive ones, which I responded to. Then he wrote another comment that mostly ignored what I said previously, which I have now just responded to, but which he’ll probably never see.

In any case, I decided to make another post featuring our exchange for educational (and entertainment) purposes. Since his three comments were posted together, I’ll treat them like one long comment and, like my previous article, I will intersperse my responses to specific passages immediately after those passages in [brackets] and in BOLD.

So here we go with those first three comments:

It’s late and I don’t have time to respond in detail right now…..
However, one of the passeges in Carter’s book sums it up for me when it comes to Randi [Your friend Carter doesn’t seem to know much of anything about Randi’s Challenge, or else you didn’t read his book very thoroughly because I’ve already addressed numerous misconceptions you’ve had about Randi’s Challenge. Of course, again, if you don’t like that challenge, you can apply to the far more difficult challenge of proving psi to the scientific community by producing peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate this phenomena exists. Of course when you tell me that you already “know” this phenomena exists despite its lack of compelling scientific evidence because you don’t understand how flawed human perception is and don’t seem to know what a coincidence means, I find it nearly impossible to ignore your admitted bias on the subject and to take you seriously. Knowledge should be proportional to the available evidence; if you’re going to say you know something despite the evidence, this is called blind faith, and it’s not a virtue when doing science.]

“With regard to his “challenge” Randi has been quoted as saying, “I always have an out”… That’s not Chris’s quote, but he does site the source….

The book also talks about someone that Randi refused to test… Again, Chris backs up the sources. [Now I would very much like to see evidence that Randi has said what, according to you, Mr. Carter has said he said as I suspect that he either said no such thing or has been horribly quote-mined by an ideologue who is simply looking for any means of poisoning the well of his critics. That being said, in the grand scheme of things, who the fuck cares what Randi has or hasn’t said or whether his particular challenge is legitimate, as if psi were real and empirically falsifiable, there are many equally lucrative alternative avenues of demonstrating it is real that have yet to yield the results you happen to like. When all you do is focus your energy on ad hominem attacks against your critics and making up endless excuses for failure instead of actually demonstrating empirically that the phenomena is real, this is a massive red flag.]

Randi is far from the Saint that you make him out to be, but you can continue to worship him, that’s fine.

enuff said….

Cynics need to step away from the lab and at least acknowledge the possibility that science doesn’t have all the answers regarding our brains and consciousness, and perhaps there are things well beyond our comprehension, and until mainstream science can humble itself enough to do so, it’s just going to be the same old arguments over and over again.. [Simply demanding scientific claims be proven with the appropriate level of evidence is not cynicism…at least that’s what the invisible leprechauns tell me. And when you condescendingly suggest that science needs to “humble itself”, you reveal nothing but your fundamental ignorance of how science works. Science is not just a body of knowledge but a method for determining what is true, the best method we have. And if you’ve ever spent any time doing science or even knew any professional scientist, you’d know that science is nothing but humble. Science is a meritocracy where good ideas go far while bad ideas get discarded like used condoms. The arrogance here is coming from you who state outright that you just “know” what is true regardless of the evidence.]

Some people can’t just accept the possibility of existence beond their physical senses. …..It’s just too hard for them to grasp, so the best way out of it is to refute any possiblity. Well, in the end, the joke may be on them. [I am more than willing to accept any belief that has can be empirically demonstrated to exist under proper controlled conditions. Otherwise, we’re just dealing in magical thinking here and your beliefs are no more legitimate than saying Harry Potter is real. Again, evidence talks whereas endless excuses don’t. But I guess some people can’t just accept that the possibility that they’re wrong and have been horribly misled by fools…if’s just too hard for them to grasp, so the best way out of it is to make excuses for why their beliefs fail every legitimate means of testing. Well, in the end, the joke is on them.]

I meant to also say that your blind belief in Randi just blows me away..

Another quote that I totally agree with is:

“Given his countless disparaging and insulting remarks concerning parapsychology and his financial stake in the debunking movement, he can hardly be considered an unbiased observer”…

Again, your trust in him blows me away… I’d much rather prefer a non-biased group of scientists doing the testing that had absolutely NOTHING to do with Randi whatsover, and I’ve felt that way about Randi for a long time, even when I was a hard core skeptic myself. Something about him has always rubbed me the wrong way… I’ve just never had a good feeling about the guy. I just don’t think his ego would allow him to be wrong. Sorry, that’s just the way I feel. [I have met hundreds of people in the skeptic community and have yet to meet anyone who had “blind belief in Randi.” Again, that’s not what the skeptical movement is about. In fact, it couldn’t be more dissimilar to how you describe it. Our goal is science advocacy and merely ask that beliefs be proportional to the evidence. In fact, when Randi started flirting with climate change denial claims, many in the movement harshly criticized him for it.
http://www.nycskeptics.org/blog/?p=1713&cpage=1#comment-491
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/say_it_aint_so_randi.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/randi_responds.php
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/12/17/randi-and-global-warming/
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/12/james_randi_anthropogenic_global_warming.php
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/12/james_randi_anthropogenic_global_warming_1.php

Our scientific positions are in no way reliant on James Randi thinks. And my patients has run out on this pathetic attempt to dodge the scientific evidence against you by pretending its all a conspiracy by James Randi and his cult of deniers who just won’t accept the amazing evidence despite your admitted inability to present any evidence.

There is no such “debunking movement”, only a movement that values truth and demands extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And I have no more “trust” in him than anyone else. I too harshly criticized him for his flirtation with climate change denial. You seem to be projecting your own admitted blind faith onto those who disagree with you. Well sorry but you don’t know what you’re talking about and have clearly not made any genuine attempt to understand the position of those who disagree with you. And the only reason Randi “rubs you the wrong way” is because he disagrees with you, not because you have any good reason to believe he’s behaved poorly. It’s unfortunate that you can’t seem to put your own beliefs under scrutiny and would rather invent accusations against those who disagree with you than accept the possibility that you’re wrong. And if Mr. Carter has any legitimate evidence of foul play, again, he can sue Randi with my blessing.]

Here’s an other post to chew on…One of the things that I’ve experienced in the past is precognative dreaming. [What about all those mornings where your dreams did not have any similarity to events that happened in the real world?]

For example, I’e been meditating for about 25 years now on a daily basis and prior to the meditations, I didn’t have any psychic experiences, nothing.

Now, I had a very bad thing happen to me on 911. I was living alone. The morning of the 911 event, I had a dream that morning of a plane flying into a building and the building exploded. Keep in mind that prior to that, I had never ever had a dream about a plane crashing into anything whatsover. I woke up actually shaking. Now, after I had composed myself I walked into the kitchen, had some breakfast and turned on the tv and it was exactly as I had seen it. As a matter of fact I was so shook up about it that I didn’t go to work that day. Never again after that did I have a dream of a plane flying into a building. Heck, I don’t think I had a dream of a plane period. [I once had a dream that I was fucking Angelina Jolie. Still hasn’t happened in the real world. Coincidences happen all the time. And on a long enough time line, the odds of really impressive coincidences happening are inevitable. There’s no mystery here. There’s also no testable hypothesis here. It’s just an anecdote, which on its own is scientifically worthless. And for the record, we dream every night and forgot most of our dreams. And if a plane hadn’t crashed on that day, you probably wouldn’t even remember that dream. This is just cherry-picking from millions of occasions where no such coincidences happened. And since 9/11, I’ve had probably a dozen dreams involving planes crashing into buildings, as I’m sure have countless over people, without it actually coming to pass.]

Now, during that same month I had another dream of my dog getting out and getting hit by a car, and it woke me up suddenly in the middle of the night, trembling again…..I had never even thought about the dog getting out because I knew he couldn’t dig under the fence. So I thought that dream was just a bad coincidence and I went back to sleep for another hour….

Well, I woke up in the middle of the night and found out that one of the neighbors kids had left the gate open and he got out. that was the first time he ever got out. I didn’t know he got hit by a car until later that morning when I found him in the road…He was in the same exact location that I saw him in the dream. There were also a couple of other more minor dream events after that…. [You you can keep listing anecdotes about your dreams but the plural of anecdote is not data, and its certainly not any more compelling. In Iceland, people see elves all the time. That doesn’t mean they’re real.]

Now, I didn’t want this and I was completely petrified as to why it was happening to me…I remember going into meditation and trying to heal my mind with the intent that I didn’t want to know this information. I wanted to be released from the pain that it was bringing me… Well, sure enough it cleared up the next month and I haven’t had ANY horrible pre-event dreams ever again….. In fact, all of my dreams are beautiful. I don’t even have bad dreams.
Now, you would have had to have been in my mind to see the clarity and precision that was in those dreams and just how detailed they were to the actual event..I don’t expect anyone to believe me unless they WERE in my mind. Heck, it was even hard for me to believe. In fact, I didn’t WANT to believe it.

Now with that said, how is one to explain something that comes and goes like that to a scientist? Do I just put my head in the sand and say, “It must have a logical explanation or a coincidence?”[Yes. Because that’s exactly what the word coincidence means.], or do I humble myself and say that the world may be completely different than what we believe it to be. Well, I tend to be a humble guy who believes that science doesn’t have all the answers, so the last reasoning made much more sense to me…. [Just because you don’t understand the definition of the word “coincidence” doesn’t make you “humble” for embracing magical thinking. And refusing to consider you may be wrong and align your beliefs with the available evidence is the exact opposite of humble.] I’m skeptical of my own experiences, so I’m tough on myself.  [Clearly (sarcasm overload!)] But if you would have seen what I had seen, you would have felt the same exact way. [No, I wouldn’t. I’m too humble to think I have special knowledge no one else has]

Other than to a few close friends and family members, I really don’t like to talk about those dreams because the pain was just too much….I don’t think it was precognative dreaming either, because it seemed as if I dreamed the events just as they were happening, but to me that was just as bad and just as painful….. Believe me, this is something that I wouldn’t wish on anyone…
Goodnight…….. [Listen, you’re going to believe whatever you want to believe regardless of what I say because you’re just so incredibly “humble”, so I see no place for this conversation to go. I guess you’re just too damned humble to proportion your beliefs to the available evidence. Best of luck to you.]

Now onto the last comment he wrote after presumably reading my above comments:

Well, I know it’s not a coincidence because I don’t dream normal dreams that can happen in reall life. My dreams, while usually awesome and beautiful, usually have no root in real life, as they are usually nonsensical in nature. [The definition of the word “coincidence” is:
“the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection” Please explain how what you describe is not, by definition, a coincidence.] Again, you would have had to have been in my head to even be able to judge something like this. [I once had a dream that my next door neighbor in his 80s was being hailed out by EMTs in a stretcher and a few weeks later, he died. Is that a pretty weird coincidence? Sure, but that doesn’t make it prophetic. You you have millions of dreams that don’t match closely with reality all the time and had 9/11 never happened, you probably would have forgotten that particular dream a long time ago. This is just a classic lottery fallacy, aka the Law of Large Numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Truly_Large_Numbers), where you’re remembering the hits and forgetting the misses. The Law states that with a sample size large enough, any outrageous thing is likely to happen. Because we never find it notable when likely events occur, we highlight unlikely events and notice them more. It’s like you won the lottery and decided that, given the odds of you winning, some force must have deliberately caused your victory even though the odds that someone was going to win the lottery was almost 100% and you just happened to be that person by chance alone.] You would have had to seen the extreme level of clarity and details that I saw…[while these anecdotes may superficially seem impressive, merely noting anecdotes is not science. Science, recognizing how flawed human perception is, requires specific testable, falsifiable predictions that can be repeated and that show measurable outcomes. And to quote Barry Beyerstein, “Anecdotal evidence leads us to conclusions that we wish to be true, not conclusions that actually are true.” If anecdotes were worth their salt, we’d all have to believe that the Martians invaded Grovers Mill, NJ in 1938. Afterall, just look at the extreme level of clarity and details of the accounts.]

That’s the thing, I had never ever dreamed of a plane crash or my dog getting hit by a car EVER in my entire life, and I keep a dream journal and remember all of my dreams, because I practice lucid dreaming on a nightly basis.

But then again, I don’t care if you or anyone else believes me or not, as I know what happened and that’s all that matters. You can scoff, that’s fine. I should have known just to keep my mouth shut.

and I’m sorry but many experiences like this do come as anecdotal nature, that’s just the nature of the paranormal…Sure you can ignore the millions of experiences of others as say they are ALL hallucinations, that’s your right. However, experiences is the best teacher.

Sorry, but you can’t change my mind on Randi.[Cause you’re so open-minded] I’ve heard way too many negative stories about the guy to trust him. I would never trust someone who worked as a magician in the first place, and YES, his reputation would be ruined if someone ever passed his test…He knows that as well. He would no longer be the debunker that constantly and rudely put down and lashed out at the paranormal at every opportunity he could…You think he really wants to lose that title? Really? Are you kidding me? [As for your insistence on blacklisting James Randi, a man you’ve never met and know next to nothing about other than he disagrees with you, have at it. I don’t really give a damn. McCarthyism never worked in the past, so I don’t know why you people think it will start working now.]

I had thought by a couple of your earlier posts that you MAY have been more open-minded and at least be a skeptic and not a pseudoskeptic. Somebody who’s a true open-minded skeptic would say:

“Ya know, paranormal experiences are interesting, and even though I can’t accept it without proof, there may be paranormal phenonmena that very well may be valid, but we just don’t have the proof we need right now, but I very well could be wrong on my current assumptions of the paranormal.”…

That’s what a true skeptic would say… I don’t see anything on here reflecting that attitude from you at all, which means that your beliefs are cemented as factual, and no amount of testing(no matter what the results) will ever change your mid… [Oh, don’t you dare pretend I’m not open-minded when I repeatedly asked for proof and you provided absolutely none or pretend you’re open-minded when you flat-out stated that you “knew” your beliefs are true despite a complete lack of empirical evidence. If you’re open-minded, then what would convince you that you’re wrong?]

So yes, we are both wasting our time… [because you are too open-minded to accept the possibility that you’re wrong or change your mind while I have no such problem]

Read the following book by Elizabeth Mayer and you’ll see what a true skeptic is who still keeps an open mind..

Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer

One final word, by locking in such a rigid anti- metaphysical belief system, you are also locking out an amazing beatiful life that goes beyond any words I can accurately express here…

Deleting this site from my bookmarks as it’s obviously just a waste of my time…
Take Care

[Now you recommended a book and I’ll do the same: Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World.” To quote Sagan, “”Pseudoscience differs from erroneous science. Science thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one. False conclusions are drawn all the time, but they are drawn tentatively. Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. A succession of alternative hypotheses is confronted by experiment and observation. Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding. Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise. Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated.”]

You just can’t reason with people out of beliefs they didn’t reason their way into in the first place. I used to believe in this psychic crap too but I was never that devoted to it and once I was actually presented with rational arguments, I stopped believing very quickly. All you can do is hope that you’ve planted some kind of seed of doubt in them that others will water down the road.

First, this guy tries to poison the well of his critics, accusing James Randi and the JREF of moving the goalpost without presenting a single example of this happening. Then he himself moves the goalpost by insisting that though he “knows” psychic phenomena exists, it may just be too “subtle” and “unpredictable” to be falsifiable with any scientific test…but he still just “knows” it’s real because of a couple of cherry-picked anecdotes involving rather minor coincidences that he feels somehow transcend the definition of coincidence because he doesn’t actually understand what the word “coincidence” means or how likely seemingly uncanny coincidences are to occur on a long enough time line (the answer is very fuckin’ likely). This guy is putting the proverbial cart before the horse, beginning with his conclusion and then working backwards to justify it as he plainly says science can’t test the validity of this phenomenon but still is absolutely certain its real. That’s not science. That’s religion. And it will always be religion unless he can present a hypothesis that can actually be tested.

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