James Randi - Surviving the Quacks!

okay thank you so much but I have one simple question Jamie who chose the act I was to follow how mean can you get to an old guy I mean but in the spirit of what you've just seen this remark remarkable young man tween this really breathtaking demonstration I would just add something to that years ago I used to do during my act I used to do a certain mentalism stunt where I would address the audience and say I'm going to throw a ping pong ball into the audience to make sure that it was fair you see would I cheat yeah but I didn't in this case throw the cream pong ball up and whoever catches that ping pong ball please stand up fell into the lap of a little lady down in the audience and she stood up looking a little nervous as most people would and I said Europe ma'am I want you to name for me any four-digit number please she said there other silently and there was a little bit of a titty from the audience and she said one one two three four and the audience titters is he and I said well no no a random number just any any old four digit number at all yes four three two one and the audience really yeah he got bigger laughs that way and I quieted the audience and lady was bewildered she'd caught a ping-pong ball didn't know what to do with it you know and I said you know just any random number whatsoever and she said yeah I don't know any random numbers but she was absolutely right I was the one who had made the terrible mistake like that I could have said scramble a phone number of a friend of yours or something like but she didn't know any random numbers no one knows any random numbers so I had to give her the victory that evening and I never used the same line again I can assure you in any case I have been asked to address this very full audience on the subject of faith years and how to avoid them and what to do about them ah the last part of that what to do about them I think is to write as many articles and books and pieces and bits of email and sites that you possibly can complaining to people who should have some responsibility in government agencies and municipal local agencies as well as federal because something really should be done about these people I I will just tell you when I first started to investigate peter Popoff now you may not know that name or you may but dead peter Popoff is someone that we later thoroughly exposed on the Johnny Carson show much to my delight and I made a trip out to a small town in New Mexico where pop offers to appear and there was a huge parking lot there jammed with cars and had a film crew with me and from one of the local stations and we saw a car pull up pretty ratty old car in an Asian couple with a little boy got out of the car and my book the faith is is dedicated to this kid it's hard for me to tell you this he was walking on aluminum crutches that were very worn and rather bent his legs were terribly twisted and his parents and he were both beaming and the head of the the film crew rushed over to him and held a microphone out to the little kid and said are you here to be healed by Reverend Popoff and the kid looked up beaming just beaming from ear to ear Ernie he said yes I'm here so that Reverend Popoff and he looked at his father and his father was encouraging him he'd memorized something to say in response to a question like this obviously to receive to receive the blessing of Jesus Christ through Reverend Popoff he finally got it right I just father nodded like that and he said I'm going to throw away these crutches and I butted in and I said okay we'll see him when he comes out after the service not thinking that that would happen at all he went into the service with his parents we went into and he was strangely enough he and his parents were the people who were asked to stand behind a big rope that they had across the back of the auditorium that's what Popoff did and still does and most of the faith heaters have done this Oral Roberts and all the rest of them did this stand them back there because these are people who won't improve at all and that nothing can be done for and we looked through the whole show and we saw that he never got up anywhere near the front and then they left and we were packing up the van afterwards I'm sorry this is difficult and the kid came walking over to pass by us and his parents were behind him weeping copiously the father saw me and he took me aside he said and the cameraman rushed over and he said we've been to five of his healing services now and he always puts us behind the rope and we drove 800 miles today to be at the service and the little man with his crutches he he waved his father he said we're going now the cameraman turned to me and he said I can't do this I said fine we won't do it the book that I wrote the faith eaters as I said is dedicated to this little kid he's still crippled he's older now maybe he's learned something maybe he's learned that this is not the thing to do that this is not going to work that the faith eaters are our fates and they're liars and cheaters that they don't give a damn about you they just want your money this angers me a great deal ladies and gentlemen I'm sorry to be getting crazy in front of you but I had no choice the faith years have angered me so much the cruel first that they carry on I met one one gentleman who had a job with with Oral Roberts when Oral Roberts had the tenth show and there were ten shows all over this country at one time and not so many auditoriums that were so easily available and his job was to wait in the truck until all the people had gone into the tent to the service and they'd been singing him to the top of it along the course and the the offering basket had been passed around many many times and taken into the back of the tent to be counted and finally Oral Roberts would walk out there and this kids job he had a pair of very worn crutches and his job was to run up the aisle on his crutches like this he wasn't crippled not crippled at all this was his job and walk up there and say save me Reverend Roberts and they would go down and they would pick him up and put him on the stage and he had learned to cry he actually learned for his part he learned how to cry and Oral Roberts would go over to him and heal him and then he would throw away the crutches run down the stairs down the aisle out the back of the tent and hide in the truck that's where he slept and they'd take him to the next place that was his job he also served lunch to the truck drivers and whatnot but that was his main job was to act as a cripple for Oral Roberts I've been through so much on writing that book the faith hitters it really hurt a great deal having to be interviewing people who had suffered so greatly at the hands of the faith years and what can we do about it what can politicians do about it what can as I said earlier federal and municipal authorities do about it they don't want to do anything about it because you're questioning God and you can't question God because God works in mysterious ways well screw that peter Popoff showed up at Fort Lauderdale Florida where I live that's Florida if you call that living and I determined that I was going to go down there and take a look at what he did now I have a standard disguise that I put on I use the name Adam Jason Jay ER SI n which is an anagram for a James Randi see no one seems to have noticed that now you know that that's a dirty laugh it must be Jamie yeah there you are I recognize Jamie's dirty laugh I have heard it so many times it's delicious he cultured that for a long time they just so would sound that evil yeah I use named Adam Jason I put on a red wig at brownish red wig and I dye my beard this hurts too and I had red and I put in very black contact lenses so I don't look like myself at all as a matter of fact I used to have a pet a kinkajou I didn't it's a bear like critter that runs around over your shoulders and stuff as a waterphone flannel and his name was salmon he didn't recognize me when I put in the black contact lenses because that's a recognition thing that animals and humans have for them I color is important in recognizing individuals so I never handled Sam because he thought I was a dreadful looking guy and he probably would have taken a bite out of me if I'd let him loose but I went to as Adam Jason and on many occasions to to not not to be healed personally but to take pictures and do manage to move in close and I I will tell you that with the peter Popoff thing just how the the exposure came about we expose them as I said earlier on the Johnny Carson show and we got the material by her brother clever ruse I would say I had Banacek which is the the professional name of one of the Alpha kids that that's another story altogether read my next book he he went out there with all kinds of identification around his neck and he got up close to Peter Popov Popov was working and he came back to me rather excited and he said he's got a hearing aid in his left ear and I said Popoff himself he said yeah so I thought to myself self a man who heals the deaf he's wearing a hearing aid I suspect something is a there's not quite right here and indeed the next night that we went back I I took a felon who was trouble necessarily named him but he's a private investigator and a he dotes on material like this he worked for me for free he thought it was a good cause and he went in costume the next day with all kinds of electronic equipment and he went around testing receptacles in the auditorium and what he was actually doing was tried to pick up on the radio signal that we're pretty sure that Popoff was receiving and he intercepted one and I've got the original tape of it where Popoff walks out after a lot of hallelujahs and such and you hear a voice saying hello PD this is your wife can you hear me if you can't you're in deep I got the recording that's the way they talk to one another you see now what was happening was mrs. Popoff was touring the audience in the auditorium in advance of the actual show taking place there wasn't a surface it was a show a ratty show but it was a show and she would go down the aisles and say hi I'm mrs. Popov is Reverend Popov going to heal you tonight I see right to her name down on here and your yes and we will send you when make sure you put your telephone number into and we will send you a free subscription to our magazine and that way they would get the information you see what is your ailment I'll just put that down here so the verb from prop off will know when he's writing you to pray to Jesus to heal this disease that information was all taken backstage mrs. Popoff sat at a transmitter and Reverend Popoff had the the business in his ear of course and then hello Petey can you hear me that was his wife you see but I'm going to going to tell you some of this stuff that I have at home that peter Popoff doesn't know about one of his lawyers does in case peter Popoff ever decides to sue me because of what I've written about him what I'm telling you about him now I have some rather special excerpts from those recording tapes she spoke to Peter pop off as he was going down the aisle yelling hallelujah praise Jesus the whole thing and reading from the Bible now he had slips all through the Bible you see and he would turn to a spot in the Bible and read some quotation and the information that he needed was what what is the disease of this person the other person and some of the stuff was written inside the book but most of it was just little slips of paper so he got down the aisle and I heard or this is hard to tell you too I heard mrs. Popoff over the system saying she's laughing and she says oh referred thinks this is so funny because he knows you Peter now this is your wife talking remember go to the end of the aisle it's the big black nigger in the wheelchair and you keep your hands off those tips I know you Peter I'm watching you ha ha ha and she's laughing away and then then you see the woman in the wheelchair she's near death she's huge she must weigh 250 400 pounds she's in a specially constructed wheelchair with reinforcements and a pathetic figure and Peter Popoff's wife is up in the engineering room they're laughing at this woman then we saw in the same episode that was in San Francisco I remember the same episode the same time in the same arena there was a man with testicular cancer he looked like he had a shopping bag literally in front of him it was a dreadful thing to see in a supporting sling in a wheelchair and he had two doctors with him and they were laughing so loud they in the engineering room from which they were broadcasting that they couldn't get the message across to peter Popoff what kind of people are these these are cruel callous uncaring people in all ways and that the scene I saw at the end of that one we looked out the back window it was too dark outside to get video of it unfortunately two huge Samsonite cases full of money in checks we're being tossed in the back of a limousine why after the other and off went the Popoff's to the local restaurant because they were hungry they had masses of cash with them well in Fort Lauderdale Florida when he came to Fort Lauderdale Florida we searched through the garbage afterwards and we came up with dozens of checks that he hadn't bothered with they were for ten or fifteen dollars that's a lot of work friends to write on a deposit slip ten - - next ten oh what a bore he threw away ten and fifteen dollar checks and in some cases twenty five dollar checks as well because he couldn't be bothered with them that's how callous and uncaring these people are and we found a note in there that had been handed to peter Popoff down to the end of the service in Elizabeth Popoff's handwriting Peter hurry the hell up I'm hungry we've got all that stuff we got a box full of Italy box full of checks that were never cashed this is very discouraging folks we have to get a system going where by law enforcement is going to move in on these people and we can't do a damn thing about it because you can't get politicians interested in coming out against anything that's against god or one of God's ministers you've got to be very careful of that because people won't vote for you is that the kind of mentality it is running our country looking at the Republican convention right now and all the mentions of God and His wonders inside it it's like being at a church service not a political rally at all we've got to get our our wits together in this country we've got to get organized we've got to fight this sort of belief and this this preoccupation that people have with something in the sky or under the earth or angels or whatever I'm sick and tired of it I want to be relieved of the burden of having to take this on my shoulders because the letters I get on email and in the post they are so pathetic and I will not send out forum letters I don't answer email with form letters either or form comments no each one is individually answered I gladly give the time to it I'd rise sometimes at 3 o'clock in the morning and catch up on it on the computer I want personal notes from me that I really mean sincerely to go to these people when they ask me what can I do about it I have met with families in the library at the James Randi Educational Foundation with closed doors where the whole family sits around the table weeping and says that their their mother or whoever the patriarch the family is has cashed in all the CDs and has sold the antique furniture and everything to send to some faith heater someplace or another and they're broke they owe money she's taken another mortgage on the house they can't pay the mortgage and they're destitute what can be done about it I have to tell them I don't know you'll have to find yourself a lawyer who might be interested in serving you pro bono I really don't know what to tell you I wish I did this is a desperate situation the faith here is our only one variety of religious scam of course they're there talking to the dead people of course like John Edward and such what do Shakespeare say why I too I too can speak to the dead but when I when I speak to them we'll the answer is something that effect I'm sorry I don't remember like Shakespeare that well but he'll forgive me I'm sure thank you very much yes or thank you very much I don't know where he went folks there's this group of people seated in front of me here so refreshing me to look into your faces because I know that you you feel very much the same way I do that the faith healers and the other people who talk to the dead the John Edwards and the Sylvia Browns that harpy the talons as I call her with the long fingernails one of these days I just hope he goes to scratch your nose and cut your throat save somebody else the trouble and she might very well do that please Sylvia please with Sylvia Browne of by the way she agreed on as I'm sure you know she agreed on the Larry King show but eight years eight nine years ago now I believe it is she agreed to take the million dollar challenge that the James Randi Educational Foundation offers now you know about the million dollar challenge the MDC as we call it the billion dollar challenge involves and simple offer we will give you 1 billion dollars if you can prove any paranoiac holders supernatural event or claim of any kind under observing good observing conditions that's all very simple all in one sentence and though we've got hundreds and hundreds of applications from all over the world and we've done hundreds of tests of people from all over the world and Sylvia Browne we sort of tricked her into it would I do that yes absolutely we tricked her into it on the Larry King show that Larry King went along with it he said will you accept the million dollar challenge he said oh yes I'll I'll accept that it anything he wants anything what I can prove it and Larry King said and he looked at the camera and he said and I will make sure that Sylvia Browne does accept with what he'd nine years ago I forgotten exactly now but he never he never went after her to do this or anything he dropped it to because he had other more sensational things to show at that time but some reporters got to her and dear Sylvia she sometimes puts her foot right down her throat not only into her mouth but down her throat and she hadn't come to me and they called me and they said that he heard them so you brown yet no Edward and so they called her and she said to one of them she said oh yes him I don't know how to reach him she talks to dead people I still got some life in me not much but I've got some I can hear you when you call Sylvia well I took it upon myself to send her a registered letter now I I had a return address on it they couldn't be read as she had seen a real address then it identified when me she wouldn't have accepted it because but she signed for it and I gave her the names of all my living relatives and and a couple of dead ones too it couldn't hurt if she could certainly contact him of course and the phone numbers and email addresses the whole thing still didn't hear a thing from her and then the excuse she came up with I know you're going to love this one reporter asked her from major magazine have you contacted James Randi yet he'll I've tried I've tried I I've sent letters all over she hadn't sent one down litter of course and she said finally I don't want to answer the challenge now and the reporter raised his eyebrows and she said yes because he's he's not a godly person that's true absolutely true yes with a vengeance but wouldn't that make me a much more attractive object for her to doom and take the million dollars that the J ref owns wouldn't that have been the thing to do you would think so they she want to take the million dollars just to make us list rather foolish but she hasn't done it and she won't do it and she continues on and she gets eight hundred and fifty dollars for a seance over the phone and you have a two-year waiting period because she's booked up solidly is there anybody in this audience who makes eight hundred and fifty dollars for a 20-minute phone call I don't think so we got the lights up and we can still can't see anybody who who makes that kind of money it's a ridiculous situation that we can't do something about this harpy and other people just like her the John Edwards and the other folks as well this is an incredible situation under which we should not have to have to to labor I don't want to bear up to this sort of thing I think it should be done by law enforcement where are the politicians who will get interested enough that they will go after these TomTom thumpers who are screaming for Jesus all the time I don't know if you know where I can find one Claude pepper in Florida that used to be one and he went after them to a certain period he's no longer with us but I want someone to replace someone like Claude pepper and get out there and say what you have to say ladies and gentlemen we I thank you for your patience during this tirade and I know I got a little crazy on it but I think you can understand why I hope that you're equally incensed about this situation in the absence of law enforcement agencies going after these people what do you think what do you see is the role of magicians and mentalists and people who know the arts of deception what do you see a sort of their role I know there's a historical tradition of magicians like Houdini going after fake psychic expect mediums and and to what extent do you think it sort of behooves people who are expert in this craft to take on the role of outing these people okay I am I will tell you in passing that I just received a very considerable honor from the Magic Castle in Los Angeles and at that ceremony I was asked to to talk to that I essentially all magicians and their spouses and whatnot so they were very experienced in the field and I appealed to them and I addressed it this way that the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of magicians both very reputable and very sizable organizations of professional and amateur magicians well-known all around the world at one time when Houdini was president of the SA em the Society of American Magicians he had an occult committee there working very hard and our good friend Bob Steiner as well who was president of the SA m at one time a few years ago he was very very active in having the alcohol committee investigate these people and then suddenly they dropped it they just lost interest in the thing and I think Jamie you'll agree with me I'm sure on this that there are two kinds of magicians out there people who who think that we're doing a good job by opposing the fakers and the liars and the cheaters and the swindlers other people who think what as Penn Jillette puts it that guys like uri geller are just colleagues with work yeah there's an ID Penn Jillette doesn't have any sympathy for her ego let's not imagine like that exactly but yeah there isn't know that but there is a breed and also with the popularity of mentalism to I think in a way that may also have had an affair because there has always been a long-standing dispute in the magic community and especially in the Mentalist community of whether what we do is is a responsible thing there were people who say well yeah we have no business trying to out the irregulars of the world and their opinion is say generally speaking we certainly disagree with this that stupid people are stupid people and they deserve to be swindled that's not true that is not true at all and the magicians and I call upon them again at this moment I call upon the magicians to get organized and get organizations together and committees and whatnot to oppose these people and to make public statements about it because any media outlet will welcome having you on their rolodex electronic of course oh yeah I'm not that old they are yeah I am I'll cop to show it but it's true we we the magicians we really owe a debt to our audiences they they allow us to make a hell of a good living and and enjoy it doing it and entertain them what a joyous arrangement to have an audience that enjoys what you do and you enjoy doing a great arrangement it's just a great arrangement and it can't be equalled I think so they owe us as well the magicians they all all the rest of their public to cooperate and and get the occult committees going for the IBM International burger magicians and the S am the Society of American Magicians and so this is an appeal to them there are any magicians and the audience who disagree with me if a state or not I'm ready for it and it's it's at this it's a dispute I'll never be resolved but but by the same token the intersection between magicians and critical thinking it has a long historic tradition that you know that we are continuing but that goes back not only to Houdini but actually over four centuries in the literature so and it does continue today the issue of the organization's yes that's something that seems to a phone by the wayside but there's still plenty of magicians in the community who try and protect the public from deception and that's what our expertise is Randi always says and now I say that he we are experts in deception we are expert eases our narrow but deep we know how to fool people and we know how to recognize when people are being fooled yeah over here okay next please and one of your previous appearances here at Nexus there was a talk of a script based on the alpha project flowing around Hollywood if that script ever gets made who would you like to play you in the movie we do I play him yes okay so if they would make a movie of the alpha project who should play you the Alpha kid should play it should play part of the advocate right me they're not always hard to choose you know Paul Mooney isn't still around that all okay so no no no I have no ideas whatsoever but I'd have to approve them of course you test him on a few card tricks I think Steve's hair is you know starting to go gray might just be time we could it might be we do segue into the bar yes I move everything up again oh there you go right next please but wouldn't the first step in in tackling the question of a fraud in the name of religion be to approach the issue piecemeal where fraud which is strictly secular truth in advertising etc is enforced by the government rather than left to lawyers to file a lawsuit which is the general tradition here as opposed to you mentioned earlier the case of Australia where there are government and quasi governmental bodies with enforcement power to demand that their companies return money to to people they've misled yeah well I wish I knew more about the law frankly and it's something you I'm sure hey where's Jay Feldman huh yeah I mean there are certainly laws against against fraud and and the problem is well there's a number of problems there's no one single problems or any points out nobody really wants to go near trying to prosecute churches for fraud in this kind of when they're making a spiritual demonstration now we argument about where do you exactly do you draw the line although obviously we think there are places you can clearly draw the line and even when it comes to storefront psychics there are disputes in the law of whether or not how easy or difficult it is even to prosecute them there are always cases just the other day or the other week of a fortune-teller that was taking taken that was the Marx family and some money same old marshmallow exactly again yeah limb tomorrow so you know psychics do get prosecuted for fraud but they but they tend not to get prosecuted for fraud until they've really taken big chunks of money and it's very hard to get at the little pieces that they're chipping away from you know that they're trying to chip away from every person who walks through the door yeah and a good friend of mine who I've never met but we've been friends for years by mail is sanal Edamaruku in India because all right thank you and he is it's a great man who has come out against all the gurus and the Wonder workers the Jeddah wallows in in India and he is now threatened with serious jail time because at two point three percent of Indians in India are Roman Catholic and yet the Roman Catholic influence there is so strong because they have brought this action against him they want him arrested and put in jail because he questioned a miracle where sewage water was coming down through a wall in one of the churches and dripping out at the foot of a statue and people were gathering it up and taking it home as holy medicine or whatever yeah just insane stuff and the church is now saying oh no we don't make any comment on that the people want to gather the water that's okay with us as long as they put some money on the on the plate I'm sure on Sunday you can read more about this if you're not aware just recently Randi has begun to write a regular blog column as a weekly I think for Wired I guess some of which is going to move to yes it's going to move into there pretty been four or five pieces so far yeah the most recent is about this this problem with this in India where this guy really needs your support so I encourage you to go look at that online they also are an excellent piece about what we were discussing a few minutes ago about the role of magicians and the magician's play has helped not just in well not just in this narrow kind of sense but in the sense of helping science and helping scientist which is often misunderstood you know nobody's saying that we're here to advise scientists about their particular specialties or about statistical analyses or whatever what we're here to do is and this is a message that goes back to Houdini in the earliest days of psychical research is again we have that expertise in deception and all the scientific and academic training in the world does not train you in deception you know we don't get fooled just to fool the slow students in the class we get paid to fool everybody including the smart ones and anyone can be fooled by expert deception and after all you know you don't get the bunch of sneaky amoeba joining a meeting on the slide going hey let's pull the big guy so if you if you are looking at an area where fraud is likely and we have a long history of fraud in the in the power of Sciences then it takes one to catch one and this is where you need our expertise and deception so an example example I was in Boston of quite some years ago and David Copperfield show was in Boston at the time and I guess he heard I was there he somehow got some passes to me and I I won't mention his name later Gator very secret and widely down state er yes a prominent scientist at MIT was standing nearby and I said I almost hit his name yeah would you like to go and he said oh yeah well it means so we went that night and David had seated us in the front row where you can't see anything but his nostrils and so we moved back four or five rows and we had excellent seats in that position and he came what he did his flying the famous flying where he actually he flies around they do an astonishing illusion just astonishing and the follower Simon said oh this is really dangerous I said no you won't fall he's really no no no I mean the electromagnetic field they set up they obviously have you know I didn't tell you this I was here but pull of liquid nitrogen underneath this underneath the stage rotating around and that produces a super conductivity but I looked at him when I said no and I whispered one word to him and he said I don't see anything I said that's why it's called an illusion but he actually had a fantastic explanation would cost a million dollars to make for that theater or there's a really interesting lesson in that is really quickly have to tell you which is that not just scientists but smart people in general when they are faced with something that fools them like a good magic trick they tend to invent elaborate complex answers within their expertise within their own expertise within their expertise over there or within uh is it somehow you know one other thing if you saw the movie The Prestige one of the wonderful things I had nothing to do with it what is one of the one of the wonderful things about the prestige and the magic consultants on that are well what some of them are friends might but one of the wonderful things about that is that prestige doesn't really reflect anything that's real about magic at all but what it does do is it fulfills the audience's expectations because the explanations and mechanics that are portrayed are incredibly complex and arcane and people want to think that what fools you must be incredibly complex rrk because I couldn't be fooled by a simple trick but the principles of magic tend to be fairly simple it's all the stuff we build on top and all the psychology and performance all these other multi layers very delicate things that actually make an illusion of effective not usually the basic method and you know how does your regular or any of these idiots how do they bend a spoon oh what's the method for bending a spoon well don't look now but you know they bent it when you're not looking that's it this the whole it that's the method but the hard part the skillful part is to make is to convince you that you never looked away and that there was no opportunity say for you to not be looking that's the skillful part of the method and that's the part of the method that non magicians find it very difficult to understand and this is where you need the magician because anyone can be what we call misdirected but misdirected is not just making you look away it's actually fooling your mind not your eye that's why you need magicians to to see through that next face someone over here over here sorry hi James I met you about 15 years ago at the American Physical Society meeting I'm not responsible I had those charges were dropped saw the one before in my life and since then I truly admire them and respect their work you absolutely told me that I told you that you were one of my heroes and you said that you questioned my ability to choose my heroes should hire ya but what I want to ask is I recently attended a David Lynch foundation course on Transcendental Meditation or what not and this is just one of the many events that I attend where people have all sorts of crazy claims and pseudo scientific beliefs and I got up and I said this really doesn't make any sense and I you know I opened my view of my skepticism and of course I'm always proud to be humiliated in public in the name of skepticism my worry was that it was packed with medical doctors from the NIH actually doing now research and being funded to research this and I connect that to the increase in a government funding towards all these claims and it's incredibly disturbing and as a young person or not that young but I'm I am I would like to ask for your advice and what exactly we can do when we face people like that in institutions of that sort well I'll give you an example of exactly the same thing Harvard Medical School is now offering an advanced course for physicians in acupuncture which has been tested endlessly for centuries and it does not work in any way I believe me I know what I'm talking about and it'll be in my next book so there and this is Harvard Medical School this is not just some place from podunk cadet Kentucky or whatever this is Harvard Medical School and they're offering at a very very high cost of course for physicians and they will be able to walk away from this with a piece of paper to put on their wall saying that they took this course in acupuncture and that means that Harvard Medical School endorses it now I I don't think they say any place that they endorse it but they take the money from the physicians who attend that that classroom the point is when you hear about this kind of thing right to the people in this case Harvard Medical School for example until you know it has been tested endlessly and endlessly it does not work it in it's a parse and it's a superstition why are you offering courses in this sort of thing whether you receive a response or not is a different matter altogether but it gives you a great deal of satisfaction to fire these things off and do it repeatedly and and send it to your local newspaper too and say that you sent this letter and they didn't respond my guess is you may have had those if there were government medical people there it might have been from the office of alternative medicine this is a relatively relatively recent development you know that was pushed through by a senator yes har thank you so you know he represents the wool contingent and and the but actually the alternative medicine industry which of course is no shortage of money but that that office continues to come under fire and under serious criticism and I think that's you know I read a pretty public piece recently I can't recall where that was talking about the the money wasted by that office and which is a claim that can clearly be made not just in the generic way where we say we already know that there's so much nonsense but in fact that now they have a record of having spent so much money on so many studies they have nothing to show for zero actually zilch not one positive test test it came up positive now that's a record you got to admit that it's bad science so that's a case where I do think that writing the letter to the cot to your representatives in Congress whoever your representatives are in that case is an actual powerful and effective thing to do it's your tax money it is you know this is created by an officer that's basically there by did of special interests and it's tax dollars being wasted you know and this is a favorite thing of the Congress to talk about tax dollars being wasted well if every tax dollars was being wasted right and being wasted in support of special interest as well as I really that's as far as the office of alternative medicine goes it's a great example write your Congressman yeah over here I was wondering if you are aware of any efforts or have an opinion on how effective it might be sorry if I'm probably to make people cringe here but the possibility of reaching out to more progressive religious communities to be allies in the fight against faith healers types who are from their point of view exploiting something very valuable to them to victimize as they would call it their brothers and sisters in Christ and it would also if this would be an effective technique might help reframe it as not so much a theist against religion but ethical people against you know the scum of the earth so do you think this might be a tactic that we could possibly try to utilize I've never received any support from any religious organization because I feel that they're they're thinking well it's the same racket except we call ours religion and theirs is called quackery by people who no I don't think that that's a good tree to be barking up frankly I have never received any support from any religious organization either in the expressions of support or certainly not in cash that's for sure it's an interesting question I mean certainly the more mainstream moderate religious arms are not in any kind of open support of faith healers and those kinds of open predators whether they're willing to engage publicly in combating it it's another question I'll yeah they you know it's a good question I'm going to take one what we're already running late but I wanted to give you folks this chance and I have one more question maybe I can't see is there somebody over here by the mic yeah yeah okay hi I was wondering we we have a good rise I think in a lot of great public science communicators but I'm just wondering Randy do you see anybody taking up your charge of continuing this skepticism we have a lot of great personalities like neil degrasse tyson stuff like that but it's not necessarily so focused to take on people like faith healers and something like that he's replaceable no I that's true but but I read said I retract my dad says there's an organization yeah oh yes hey James Randi Educational Foundation hallelujah I know monk but I I will repeat in fact I will even do a small imitation of Harry Blackstone senior when I first saw him as a kid I went backstage afterwards and got to Norman I was doomed to become a magician there was the sealing of my fate I was going to become an archaeologist or a chemist but archeology and chemistry probably they didn't probably lose much by losing me but maybe magic gained something from me and Harry Blackstone floated this lady in the air and she was in the air above him and he stepped forward and he list I must say but it was a lovely list ladies and gentlemen you see this young lady suspended in the air between heaven and earth and she could stay there for forever in a day should I so desire but in the interest of time and your patience I will once again return her to the couch from which he rose only a moment ago he began with his hands like this and she would float down to the coach stand up take her boughs and walk off there that was magic guys that was magic and that's what what sank me and they got me under the company of people like this if you can imagine it now folks yeah I say that because this man oh man Blackstone had such a wonderful influence on me he he brought me into this state right here and he is long departed but he will always be very very foremost in my in my memory and I have a photograph from of him on my wall right beside Martin Gardner's photograph and I I say good morning gentlemen when I walk into my office because I have a certain amount of woowoo going for me too and let me know if you start getting answers to that okay I haven't heard anything so far good carry what I've got your address right there in your phone number he said I know you want to hear about it sighs that happens do I I don't the jrf the James Randi Educational Foundation a my most devote wish and can you have a devotee okay all right is that it continues after my demise and which is way up that people asking how old am I say I'm 83 going on 100 because I I have great hopes you see and I may not look like it but I'm going to hang in there the the jrf if it will survive me and go on for decades after that that is my most devote wish I really want that to happen and we've got look at DJ Grothe growth you just took over I mean the jrf and he did miracles for it no not miracles I'm sorry hee hee did wonderful things for it and has perpetuated our existence I'm sure and we have all kinds of supporters including many people in this very audience who are very faithful supporters and made people who joined our organization even today how long the wrong word you know this is very encouraging to me the jrf is important to me it's secondary only to my partner which is a different matter altogether that's personal but the jrf comes a second it's a very close second and I want it to be perpetuated anything you folks can do to make our lives a little easier a smoother will be most appreciated my being invited to this conference here over this weekend has been quite a thrill for me and I want to thank both Jay and Michael Feldman of course and the other folks who invited me here I love them both I love you all thank you very much James Randi thank you pegye go

Channel: NECSS

Views: 444,718

Rating: 4.8483472 out of 5

Keywords: science, skepticism, james randi, jref, jamy ian swiss, necss

Id: f2izaEqs0pE

Length: 54min 1sec (3241 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/not_a_famous_actor]

It saddens me that I'm downvoting this, but this is not a documentary. It's a talk, a lecture possibly. /r/lectures