Bronze-level articleJames Randi

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James Randi, looking rather bored (probably due to a lack of effort from people after his challenge's money).

James "The Amazing" Randi is a former stage magician and a scientific skeptic perhaps best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. He is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF).

The foundation sponsors a challenge offering a prize of US $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event. The prize has yet to be claimed. No one has ever produced any actual evidence for faith-healing, telepaths, psionics, dowsing, precognative psychic friends with astral bodies, past life remembrance, or spectral manifestations of any kind.

In 1987 he exposed the Peter Popoff ministry for faking their faith healing claims. The resulting scandal drove Popoff into bankruptcy.[1]

He is also claimed as an enthusiastic member of the Brights Movement. Randi has received numerous awards and recognitions, including a Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1986.

Contents

[edit] James Randi Educational Foundation

Randi started the James Randi Educational Foundation to monitor applications for the $1 million prize, and to serve as an organizing body to help promote skepticism and provide educational resources on claims of the paranormal.[2]

The foundation was headed by James Randi for many years before he retired from its presidency. From August 2008[3] to December 2009[4] astronomer, blogger, and pseudoscience debunker Phil Plait ran the organisation. Plait has been succeeded by D.J. Grothe, formerly of the Center for Inquiry. In 2013, former Foundation employee Carrie Poppy accused D.J. Grothe and to some extent, the entire Foundation of sexism and dishonesty and specifically of failing to heed women's warnings about potential threats. Ms. Poppy herself claims to have been assaulted at a Foundation event. [5]. Several noted female skeptics have suggested that though no formal charges have been brought, either in the criminal or civil system, given the problems that the skeptical community has had with women, the Foundation would be wise to address the accusations before the silence itself becomes a bigger "scandal" [6].

[edit] Million-dollar challenge

The million-dollar challenge is a prize offered by the James Randi foundation to anyone "who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event."[7]

Unsurprisingly, it has yet to be won though there have been a vast number of attempts.[8]

When challenged in 2011 Sally Morgan did not even attempt the challenge.[9]

[edit] Kooks

A fork bent by Randi, stunning proof of Randi's physical powers.

Randi's challenge has made him a target for a number of kooks, particularly on the Internet, claiming that they have demonstrated supernatural abilities and that he therefore owes them money, though some go so far as to claim that a pound of flesh will do. This is one of the hazards of being a rationalist in our current society.

[edit] Sylvia Browne

The James Randi and the James Randi Foundation offer of $1,000,000 prize to anyone who could prove any supernatural power has attracted many amateurs. However, Sylvia Browne is the only widely known psychic who has offered to take up the challenge[10]. Sylvia was a popular television psychic (who was made famous when she began to appear as a frequent guest on The Montel Williams show) who claimed that she could communicate with the dead. On March 6, 2001, she agreed to take up the challenge. On the Larry King Live show, Browne stated that she would take up Randi's challenge (that was on September 3, 2001)[11]. To her dying day she did not take the challenge. Sylvia's first excuse was because she did not know how to contact Randi. That is comical: a professional psychic who speaks to dead people cannot figure out how to reach Randi. Her following excuse was that she did not want to take the challenge because Randi is a godless individual—all the more reason to take the challenge, Sylvia. If the supernatural could be proven and demonstrated, and the $1,000,000 were claimed, it would silence Randi and the skeptical and atheist community. Sylvia Browne was special because she was the only professional psychic to accept Randi's challenge, and then back off.

[edit] Homeopathy

James Randi strongly opposes the pseudoscience of homeopathy.[12] Homeopathy is water "with memory." Randi has testified before Congress of the fakery and lies of homeopathy. Randi has lectured across the nation and made several videos and blogs educating the public about the uselessness of homeopathy (apart from removing that bulge in people's pocket books). Randi has promoted the 10:23 challenge, in which people across the world would purchase homeopathic "products" (we will not give them the credit of calling them medicines) and purposely overdose on them. No one has ever died from the 10:23 challenge, and that is the point. Overdosing on homeopathic pills is near impossible. Why? Because there is no medicine in them, and that is what the 10:23 challenge is all about: to educate the world what is in these products and how ineffective they are.

[edit] Global warming flap

In a notable case of a skeptic being unskeptical, Randi caused a tempest in a teacup by mouthing off about global warming on his blog. His sins included citing the Oregon Petition and pulling the "science was wrong before" gambit.[13][14] Randi retracted his earlier comments and included a link to eSkeptic's debunking of the Petition.[15]

[edit] Publications

  • The Truth About Uri Geller
  • The Faith Healers
  • Flim-Flam!
  • An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

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