Pages

Friday, October 23, 2020

Randi's Million Dollar Challenge And The Eisenbud Challenge

James Randi did some good things, and he ought to be getting some positive coverage in the context of his death earlier this week. But the coverage has been far too positive, which is unsurprising in light of the media's biases. You can read our archive of posts on Randi here. While the media give so much attention to Randi's Million Dollar Challenge, keep in mind his failure to meet a challenge in the other direction:

Nevertheless, with his usual bluster, Randi accepted a $10,000 challenge (a considerable sum in those days) to duplicate the Serios phenomena and make good on his claim.

Of course, confidence is easy to feign, and Randi does it routinely in his role as magician. He also cleverly takes advantage of the occasional high-profile case he successfully exposes as fraudulent, by publicizing those successes and creating the impression that he's a generally reliable guide when it comes to the paranormal. So Randi's dismissal of the Serios case was all it took for those already disposed to believe that Serios was a fake, and it was probably enough even for those sympathetic to parapsychology but unaware of Randi's dishonesty....

What the TV audience never learned was that when the show was over and Randi was pressed to make good on his wager, he simply weaseled out of it. To keep that side of the story under wraps, Randi prohibited publication of his correspondence on the matter. That was undoubtedly a shrewd move, because the letters show clearly how Randi backed down from his empty challenge. However, Randi's original letters now reside in the library at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and researchers, finally, can easily confirm this for themselves. When Serios's principal investigator, Jule Eisenbud, died, I was assigned the task of going through his papers. I collected all the material relevant to the Serios case and deposited it in the Special Collections section of the UMBC library. (This includes correspondence, the original photos and film, and signed affidavits from witnesses.)...

But there's no documentary evidence of Randi having even attempted to duplicate the Serios phenomena under anything like the conditions in which Serios succeeded, much less evidence of his having actually pulled it off....

In fact, the history of parapsychology chronicles some remarkable examples of dishonest testimony and other reprehensible behavior on the part of skeptics....

Skepticism is just as glib and dishonest now as it was in 1882 when the British SPR [Society for Psychical Research] was founded. In fact, despite sensible and careful dismantling of the traditional skeptical objections, the same tired arguments surface again and again. And those arguments all too easily mislead those who haven't yet heard the other side of the story or examined the evidence for themselves.

(Stephen Braude, The Gold Leaf Lady [Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 2007], 22, 34, 126)


See my post here about how other magicians have misled people about the paranormal.

2 comments:

  1. There is an episode called Tsunami Spirits of a show on Netflix called Unsolved Mysteries: https://www.netflix.com/au/title/81026055

    It is about (apparently reasonably widespread) reports of ghosts in a certain Japanese area in the wake of the 2011 tsunami.

    What do you make of these sorts of reports?

    One thing against their veridicality (and in favour of widespread PTSD phenomena) is the limit of the sightings to this particular area and that (even on the admission of one of the monks interviewed) the area has a fairly unique religious profile in which the reality of ghosts is broadly accepted, as is the idea that the difference between life and post mortem life is very fine (metaphorically, the two worlds only separated by a thin piece of paper that can be seen through)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't know much about the situation in Japan you've referenced, but I would apply the same principles I've outlined elsewhere, like here. You can start with examining whether something paranormal seems to have occurred. If so, then ask whether it seems to involve a personal or impersonal entity. You can then go on to examine how much more can be determined about the nature of that entity.

      Delete