James Randi Speaks: Can't Fool Me!

good morning afternoon or night depending on where you are i'm james randy a few words about parapsychologists that may better inform you about this peculiar subspecies of homo sapiens they exhibit strange characteristics one of which is overconfidence most of these parasites are groundly soothed and confident when surrounded with enough misapplied technology and when it reflects regular recognized lab procedures well enough it brings them great comfort they freely use electronic systems that would provide useful data in the hands of real researchers and displays of these bells and whistles lend an atmosphere of authenticity that can encourage acceptance and funding from observers who don't venture or even care to grab the cheesecloth i must explain that term refers to the material used by spirit mediums in earlier days a thin fabric sometimes treated with luminous compounds that in a darkened room produce the illusion of ectoplasm a theoretical substance formed from the bodies of spirits that they summoned up grabbing the cheesecloth was just that seizing this prop and retaining it as further proof of the deception there are a few examples of parapsychologists i'd like to give you dr gary e schwartz is the university of arizona's professor of psychology surgery medicine neurology and psychiatry as well as director of their center for frontier medicine in biofield science and of their veritas research program of the laboratory for advances in consciousness and health he carefully festooned the head of i talked to the dead artist john edward with very colored cables very much as in an ekg just as if the chimerical signs he sought originated in that performer's encephalon those wires should have been stuck to his own skull where the great naive force was actually being so generously manifested dr colin a ross a psychiatrist from richardson texas is the director of dissociative disorders at charter hospital of dallas he's published some 130 papers in peer-reviewed journals he's very active in preaching about secret government mind control and has been researching the cia for 20 years in respect to operatives there who have become deceased dr ross uses recovered memory therapy which is widely regarded in the medical community as useless without adequate corroborating evidence and he specializes in post-traumatic stress and dissociative identity disorder formerly termed multiple personality disorder in the case he researched the patient had been diagnosed as having 12 separate alternate personalities but under the care of dr ross that number significantly grew to 200. well in 2008 he applied sensitive electronic leads to his own face and goggles his then current illusion being that his generated mental signals were sending out esp pulses that registered on the sensor within the goggles when it was actually the motion of his own eyeball that was triggering the tiny squawks of feedback that so enchanted him that basic electronic fact was something that dr ross should have known about so the finger doesn't have anything to do with it is just showing you when i'm going to make it happen so that's basically how it works i could just keep going dr ross had applied for our million dollar prize and at the jref we're eagerly anticipating that he will be reapplying for the million-dollar prize as soon as he gets his act together again jacques benveniste in the comfortable atmosphere of his lab in clamor france was comforted by error bars between which his cursor obediently wandered when it was simply a lack of double-blind precautions that impelled him to publish his imaginary data in my forthcoming book a magician in the laboratory i'll be devoting an entire chapter to this classic adventure in frustration consider the very handsomely funded princeton engineering anomalies research lab pear where they carried out coin tossing experiments in which normally expected variances were misinterpreted as significant deviations from this very basic on or off up or down yes or no flip-flop operation the very simplicity and elegance of which had them enchanted and thoroughly deceived this lab too will be a major subject of my book ghost hunters with overtuned meters probes antenna thermocouples digital cameras and hundreds of pounds of equipment that they just don't understand read into every faint burp or squeak of signal heavy significance they too call this science but all this makes for great tv and sponsors love it i can tell you teller of penn teller fame has a startling illusion in which a handful of coins he has materialized from thin air wherever that is suddenly becomes a school of goldfish flashing about in a large aquarium this understandably evokes gasps from the audience [Applause] c now it's not reaching too far to imagine the pair of scientists hooking teller up to a chart recorder via a set of leads to read his skin conductivity transparency and resistance at the instant when the brilliant specialized carp manifest in the water they would call this research but as usual they would learn nothing would not solve the trick and would have to assert that it was paranormal that is outside normal science much to the mixed amusement and chagrin of the conjuring trade who pay taxes to support such idiocy as all of us do a word about that paranormal term there's no such thing as bad science it's either science or it's not the word paranormal was used by duke university's dr joseph banks rhein to designate what he thought he'd discovered extrasensory perception and psychokinesis esp and pk that existed in a special category beyond orthodox science with no explanations in science but the possibility exists and is eagerly pursued even today in the woo-woo labs that real science and this chimera could be reconciled ryan engaged in endless dice tossing tests and even more endless card guessing marathons and imagined tiny barely significant margins of data that were later shown to be at least partly due to misrecording and outright error but it was the live performances of tricksters that validated for him and for so many others who followed him the possible trace significance he'd celebrated ryan was effectively and easily fooled by such performers because he was convinced as all parapsychologists are even today that he couldn't be fooled in other words he was the perfect foil for a magic trick when he came up with words that sounded scientific were properly derived and carried the in premature of academia a new pseudoscience was born and it has grown into a monster i'm james randy until next time keep asking questions and stay skeptical we thank you for watching this latest episode of james randy speaks for more of james randy and the educational foundation make sure you visit randy.org

Channel: JamesRandiFoundation

Views: 206,795

Rating: 4.7619939 out of 5

Keywords: james randi, parapsychologists, ghost hunters, taps, evp, scientists, bad science, gary schwartz, dr colin ross, magician, jref

Id: SUMY7epfsHs

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 13 2009