Randi Fraud?

Beast Rabban · Randi Fraud?

Hi - I thought this would interest those of you who are concerned about the way James Randi operates in his attempts to debunk proof of the paranormal. It's an article by Montague Keen, an extremely well-respected veteran researcher of the paranormal, on the tactics used by Randi and the producers of a programme on the paranormal, Fulcrum TV broadcast in 2003, on the Survivalafterdeath website. According to him, one of the things the producers did was deliberately cut Keen's description of how parapsychologists were aware of cold reading and the use of blind and double-blind protocols against it, so that Randi could appear more knowledgable than them in this. However, when Randi tried cold reading himself, the producer stopped it because the Amazing one was failing dismally and embarrassingly. It also seems that Randi also has a great line in personal abuse, telling Keen's wife afterwards that she was 'ugly'. Mind you, she did tell him to his face that he was a fraud, which no doubt upset the great materialist's composure somewhat.

The full article's at: http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/keen/randi.htm, along with another article by Keen further responding to Randi (mis)representations of the incident and asking if Randi can be trusted. I would hazard a guess that Keen's answer is probably 'no'.

I find it interesting as debunkers like Randi and his proteges, Penn and Teller, are very, very good at criticising paranormal programmers for selective editing and fakery, yet apparently have little qualms in employing the same tactics themselves. It also severely damages Randi's claim to be an honest sceptic merely attempting to investigate the truth and clear away paranormal falsehoods.

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I read that article recently.
Dont know anyting much about Randi and what he is trying to do but I do recall seeing the programme where he was supposed to be pretending to be a psychic.

We said at the time that while it looked good we dont know how much editing went on.

From what I can gather it seems that Randi is on some sort of vendetta which is not good for a fair and balanced view.