Stossel: Skepticism Part 4 James Randi's Million Dollar Prize

Oh shattering conventional wisdom John Stossel how many of you believe in ghosts a couple of you but you raised your hand before our wall 20 I'm glad it's fewer now 27 percent of Americans believe in ghosts how many of you have felt in touch with someone who died if you'd raise your hand just one here 29 percent of Americans say they have felt in touch with someone who died I I'm not even going to ask you how many of you believe in astrology but 20 and five percent of Americans say they believe in astrology or psychic psychics claim that they will help people find dead bodies and the police do hire them they people often believe the police sometimes believe and yet if any of it were true you'd think the astrologers are the psychics or the ghost hunters whatever would be eager to prove it were true because not only would they be proven right they'd make a million dollars this man will give you a million dollars if you could just prove that you actually have an ability that can't be explained by science really you will yep it's in the back he's magician James Randi and he runs the James Randi Educational Foundation which offers that million dollars so how does that work well all people have to do is make a claim come to us to load the form a range of protocol and then we have somebody else to the test I don't do it myself because they say I put out evil vibrations they believe in this sort of thing they believe in quantum vibrations and all this nonsense and they they don't want to be tested by me personally so I usually have someone else that they trust and that I trust do the tests we've done over 200 of them all over the world so far nobody's gotten close to the million dollars you can't get close to it John it's a case of we designed the protocol in such a way that you can tell right away without doing a struggle glean out the window you can fly by flapping your arms go ahead whoops you lose what kind of people really apply for it well these are people who are believers they really are believer leavers in what in their own powers they say they can cure sickness that they can douse for water in the ground with a fork stick they have all kinds of claims like this and how do you test it well it depends exactly on what will claim it in dowsing Oh dowsing for example if they say they can find water underground we take them around a field if they use a fork stick or whatever and we count the number of times that they're successful and the number of times if they fail but then we do it by random drilling as well and we find out whether that agrees with it if it's not spectacularly above what would be expected by chance alone sorry you lose and some of the hucksters I call them genuinely believe that they have this gift I mean when I was doing consumer reporting and I would go after the people selling the breast enlargers and the baldness cures and all this nonsense I thought they were just cheats but a lot of them really had come to believe that their stuff work well some of them do but these people like John Edwards and Sylvia Browne and such these are people who make big money advising people this way Sylvia Braun alone gets seven hundred and fifty dollars for a 20-minute conversation over the telephone and she's booked up for the next two years so that's a pretty good business I don't think anybody in this audience certainly not I makes that kind of money don't think she really believes she has the gift I don't think so no because when she works around it you know she comes up to something which is absolutely wrong of that oh yes but I was mistaken for the color of the grass on the floor floor she makes all kinds of excuses right away you have to be quick thinking in order to do that well people make money off people's dubious beliefs in things like these special bracelets I've been wearing this one all weekend the basketball player wears one just like it could this make me stronger there are lots of these bracelet companies and they all make similar claims for those who are serious about living a healthy lifestyle the fewer a bracelet is for you just watch these strength and balance tests without irony these people couldn't even stay on their feet so what about that test that they do this demonstration that the people Sims seems sincere they get pulled over and then with the bracelet they don't alright let's try one shall we okay alright take off the bracelet first of all I'll hold operator this isn't working it's very powerful you got to be careful of these things for the vibrations alone now stand over here if you would Jon over here yes now I'm going to ask you to hold your hands together behind your back clenched like this alright there we go now turn a little bit like this that's fine now I'm going to push down on your hands in order to make you fall over and I think you probably will I put this powerful bracelet aside for a moment here now you should fall over because I'm pushing straight down and I'm pulling you over all right here we go look at that see you don't want to be hit by a falling star so that could be fatal I'm full alright I'm gonna do it again now I'm pushing down with you with the big Eclipse right goodness alright now I'm gonna ask you to hold this bracelet you can hold it in your how you put it on the wrist okay slipping on your vest alright now turn around again now at this point you shouldn't fall over if you're wearing the powerbase okay I'll do it again ready yeah I'm pushing much much harder than I did with the else the same but you didn't care for so what's the what's the gimmick well the gimmick is really simple I was holding you up do it again you see before I push down like this and he fell over he came this way because I was pushing him but now I stood up against him right there and when he comes back he's leaning against me he doesn't fall over now that's only one demonstration that these people do they do a great number of them just like this well who wants my bracelet here I've worn this all week but you know Shaquille O'Neal whoops I assume he's big and strong oh he's very big because of the all right no I guess he got big and strong before I've been bracelets so there's a million dollars out there all you have to do is show that this stuff that a third of Americans believe works now John I'm amazed I went by the doorway just a moment as I came into the studio there isn't a lineup of people out there all waiting and saying I lost a million they would be lined up outside the studio they would be lined up outside any place I went in the world if they were really sincere there are millions of people out there who say they've got these mystical powers that they can influence you they can predict the future they can tell your fortunes of what not where are they a million dollar prize that's there come & get it put your money put his money where your mouth is thank you James Randi you do a wonderful thing with your foundation next I will tell you what I'm really skeptical about and you should be too you I began my television career as a consumer reporter partly because I was a skeptic okay also because I have a stutterer I didn't want to try to compete with sam donaldson shouting questions in press conferences but I mainly became a consumer reporter because I was skeptical of many claims made by those greedy businesses that wanted to sell me stuff and at the time there were no TV reporters check out the claim so I told my bosses I'll do it and there was a lot to be skeptical about hucksters were selling breast and largers burn fat while you sleep pills the coffee institute was running ads saying coffees the drink that picks you up well it calms you down so I called him up and asked how can you say this it's contradictory they said well we surveyed people we asked them what do you get out of your coffee break some people said it picked them up others said it calmed them down today I could spend all my time on skeptical investigations of nonsense like those bracelets that they claim make you stronger after all lots of people waste money on wheatley bottom one time did it work didn't work no I didn't think so they got ripped off and consumer reporters should report on stuff like that but after doing it for 25 years I realized the harm that was done to people from products like that are is minor compared to the big ripoff we need to be most skeptical about and that's government government promises fiscal responsibility then they spend like drunken sailors though that's not fair to the sailors because they spend their own government promises to cure poverty and then their programs perpetuate poverty they promise to create jobs and then they create thousand-page bills that make life so complex and unpredictable that entrepreneurs are afraid to create jobs almost all their promises end up making life worse but few people approach government with even a fraction of the skepticism it deserves whether you believe in God or medical bracelets or global warming that's your business I may have an opinion about whether you're smart or stupid but if you waste money and say those bracelets that mostly harms you but not having enough skepticism toward government hurts all of us because government is force when government sells a spunk we have to pay for it doesn't matter if we don't believe or don't want the junk government makes us pay for whatever it's selling if you don't pay they don't pay your taxes men will gone men with guns will eventually come to your home and make sure you do to lock you up so it's good to be skeptical but it's really good to be skeptical about government and that's our show for tonight thanks for watching catch the bozo conversation and get ticket information at John Stossel calm you

Channel: PLSheffield

Views: 964,129

Rating: 4.717123 out of 5

Keywords: John Stossel, James Randi

Id: Mak252eVB5o

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/darkcalling]

I grew up watching them too. They were never normal. They were always right-wing spin, pro-Christian nonsense and culture war. It's just they've gone all out recently and abandoned all pretense of being anything but a very loud propaganda organ for the extreme right.

Stossel was there for only a small amount of time and he came in late in the network's existence (actually he came on Fox Business which came in something like over a decade after the main network launched).

Trust me when I say they've been flogging conspiracies for years, they're been pushing bullshit like the war on Christmas for decades. This is not new. They're just upped the level of it to create a new reality to insulate their viewers against the scandal and evil of the present inept, corrupt, tainted administration.

I don't know if this is an attempt at white-washing or if you're genuinely this ignorant about them. People like Jon Stewart took them to task for ten years, organizations like media matters have been tracking their lies and spin and religious nonsense for longer than that and have archives. Check them out if you don't believe me.

[u/minusman652]

James Randi was a huge influence on my transition out of supernatural and religious ideology.

[u/RustyMacbeth]

Faux News has always been a right-wing fever dream.

[u/hurricanelantern]

They were normal?

[u/King-Hell]

Fox was created to serve as a propaganda factory for the GOP. As the Republicans descend into fantasy land, so does their message.

[u/Mecharonin]

I think YOU were the one who changed.

[u/long0pig]

I live with the in-laws right now. Father-in-law blares FOX all day. Hannity and Tucker say the craziest shit. The day I walked into the house “the left will use our right to own guns against us and get us to kill each other”. Don’t get me wrong TYT goes off the deep end but these guys are a whole different level. Secular Talk is where its at, Humanist Report is good to.

[u/[deleted]]

That’s John Stossl. He’s extremely skeptical. Hes also agnostic. Usually he tests those sorts of shenanigans to make a point.

[u/tsdguy]

False.