Hey! What about my rebuttal!? You obviously haven't been waiting for that!
My answer to Agitprop is that I actually didn't debunk anything in my post at all! I won't however rehearse here my arguments as to what constitutes a "scientifically retarded society"!
That alternativescience.com (Richard Milton) is a mishmash of misdirection and misrepresentation, by the way. His
attack on James Randi is almost hilarious.
The second ambiguity is in Clause 4, which says that "Tests will be designed in such a way that no "judging" procedure is required. Results will be self-evident to any observer, in accordance with the rules which will be agreed upon by all parties in advance of any formal testing procedure taking place."
This means, quite reasonably, that there will be no interminable arguments by 'experts' over statistical measurements. Either the spoon bends or it doesn't: either the claimant reads minds or he doesn't. The written rules, agreed up front, will decide.
This seems clear enough.
But it also means that there will be no objective, independent judging or adjudication, by scientific criteria, carried out by qualified professional scientists. Randi alone will say whether the terms of the challenge have been met -- whether the metal was bent psychically, or the electronic instrument deflected by mental power, or the remote image was correctly reproduced. In the event that the claimant insists the written terms have been met, but Randi disagrees, then it will be Randi's decision that prevails.
Not only will Randi be the sole judge of whether the claimant is successful, but even if a claimant appeals on scientific grounds that he has met the agreed terms of the challenge, Randi will be the sole arbiter of any appeal as well. Randi says there will be "no judging". In reality, he is both judge and jury -- not only of the claimant's cause but of his own cause as well.
This totally contradicts the first part!!
Milton doesn't appear to understand that the test is done under rigorous conditions which preclude all possible alternative,
natural causes for the effect. These conditions are pre-agreed with the claimant. Presumably if someone says that with the power only of his mind he can turn the pages of a telephone directory, Randi makes sure the test takes place with the claimant wearing some sort of breathing mask to ensure that he is not simply blowing the pages over (as in one notorious 70s case, the name of the guy escapes me).
What Milton seems to fail to realise is that the result of the test being unambiguous means exactly that - either the spoon will bend or it will not. Either the book pages will turn or they will not. Either the image being watched by Randi or his co-worker will be picked up by the claimant and described in detail, or not. Randi does not then impose a determination as to whether the cause was mental power or otherwise, he will have designed the test to eliminate everything
except mental power (including of course illusionism and trickery on the part of the claimant). The result is not that Randi has "judged" umpteen occurrences of bending spoons, moving objects and mind reading as being caused naturally rather than supernaturally - it is that these events
did not take place at all during the preliminary tests! That is what Randi means by "unambiguous" - the expected result was never forthcoming and no interpretation was required.
About the only bit of integrity in the article is the fact that he links to James Randi's site where you will find an excellent explanation of the challenge.
Then he just gets too funny for words: he goes on to say "Find out what happened when a serious challenger applied to take Randi's "challenge" click here." Under the heading "Randi Runs Away" he tells the story of how one claimant was just rejected out of hand by the Randi Foundation. Did he actually have powers to move objects? Was he a genuine "remote viewer"? No.
In June 1999, a Mr Rico Kolodzey of Germany wrote to James Randi and challenged for the reputed $1 million prize. Mr Kolodzey is one of several thousand people who believe and claim that they can live on water alone, absorbing 'prana' or life energy from space around them.
Randi's response was to send the guy a letter telling him he was an outright fraud. Milton responds
The claim is one that most people would treat with great skepticism, and might well run a mile from. But James Randi is not most people -- he is the person who has publicly claimed that he has $1 million on offer to all comers who challenge him and are willing to submit to rigorous testing, as Mr Kolodzey has offered to do.
It should not be very difficult to arrange a test of Mr Kolodzey's claim. All that is needed is to lock him in a police cell, under CCTV observation, with only water to drink. If he experiences significant measurable weight loss, or asks for food, then his claim is false. If, on the other hand, he does somehow survive on water alone, then Randi is wrong, conventional science is wrong, and Mr Kolodzey has won $1 million.
I think it really is rather more than conventional science which quite conclusively shows that people who do not eat eventually perish. The part I find interesting (from a man evidently of some years and experience) is that he thinks that following such a challenge up will be "easy". I can't begin to imagine what kind of legalistic and ethical problems would be
instantly thrown up by Randi locking a person up with no food - even with the participant's total agreement. After all, on the face of it a man who claims he can live without food is simply insane. So Randi is supposed to take a possibly insane man and lock him away with no food?
Milton thinks that "after a week or two" it would be obvious that the man was losing weight but a) that would not necessarily be an unambiguous test and b) without food the man is going to be in a weakened, ill state which may induce a fatal heart attack or stroke at any time. This is a risk too great to take.
The last piece of total disingenuousness from Richard Milton is that he totally fails to mention that one of Randi's rules now is that no challenge can risk being harmful to the health of the claimant - precisely because of "I don't have to eat" claimants. He says (as I quoted above): "he is the person who has publicly claimed that he has $1 million on offer to all comers who challenge him and are willing to submit to rigorous testing". Yes, indeed, you could say that if you were deliberately misleading your readers - no, Randi does not in fact challenge "all comers" (even if he says he does for publicity purposes, scarcely a major crime).
But really the thing that gets me is that Milton shows the "Randi letter" (the one in response to Kolodzey) as proof of Randi's lack of integrity, when it's such an obviously nonsensical claim!!
