Skeptic group offers $500,000 for proof of paranormal abilities

[ChrLzs]

On 1/10/2024 at 3:17 PM, Alex_Rogan said:

What constitutes "paranormal abilities"? Seems a bit vague.

Would a well-witcher with dowsing rods qualify? Seems there are people who make a living finding water underground for wells with their practice of "divination".

My grandpa, who lived in central Victoria in Australia, was quite respected as a dowser in the 50's-60's.  He happily admitted to close friends and family that:

1. He knew the lie of the land and the sort of plants that had deep root systems, etc.

2. That region had two major rivers flowing through it, and good quality groundwater was almost everywhere..

He was happy, his clients were happy, so it was a pretty harmless fraud.., and he played it well, with long pieces of steel wire as his dowsing 'devices' of choice.

[Hazzard]

They could throw in the same amount for that undeniable and final evidence of extraterrestrial visitation.

[papageorge1]

8 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

That's absolute bull****E.  The Randi prize worked on the basis the judge/s had to be acceptable to BOTH parties, and the participants were even invited to submit how they should be tested.  Ie fairly, and in such a way they could not cheat.  How could it have been fairer, just accept the claims and hand over the money?

Please don't soil this forum with more of your deceit.

Allow me to clean your soil for site hygiene. 

The problem became, and I've read testimony of people involved, that Randi would not accept judges he felt might be sympathetic to the paranormal side. 

[psyche101]

On 1/26/2024 at 3:32 AM, papageorge1 said:

Allow me to clean your soil for site hygiene. 

Unbelievable.

As if you could.

On 1/26/2024 at 3:32 AM, papageorge1 said:

The problem became, and I've read testimony of people involved, that Randi would not accept judges he felt might be sympathetic to the paranormal side. 

Nonsense anecdotes from losers. 

All you follow is anecdotes. People have been challenged on live television including notable claimants and all backed off.

They knew they couldn't prove their claims because they knew they are liars. 

Carson show. Great example. No Randi and fails every time a challenge got air time. 

Your just angry that Randi was able to expose so many. He has become a target for you because he ruins the fantasy. It more shows the weakness of your arguments in general. 

[Harte]

On 1/8/2024 at 11:42 AM, papageorge1 said:

The problem with this (and Randi's prize) is that the final judges are people determined not to lose and antagonistic to the paranormal in attitude. It's a publicity stunt. And UM is giving them a little publicity here.

Any meaningful real test requires neutral and independent final judges. I believe there are people that could win such tests.

In Randi's challenge, judges are agreed upon or there is no agreement.
You can't just make up your own crap and expect it to fly.

Harte

[Harte]

On 1/8/2024 at 6:45 PM, papageorge1 said:

Odd that we disagree, but I believe the paranormal is firmly established by controlled statistical experiments by fair and respected researchers.

 

 

“After a century of increasingly sophisticated investigations and more than a thousand controlled studies with combined odds against chance of 10 to the 104th power to 1, there is now strong evidence that psi phenomena exist. While this is an impressive statistic, all it means is that the outcomes of these experiments are definitely not due to coincidence. We’ve considered other common explanations like selective reporting and variations in experimental quality, and while those factors do moderate the overall results, there can be no little doubt that overall something interesting is going on. It seems increasingly likely that as physics continues to redefine our understanding of the fabric of reality, a theoretical outlook for a rational explanation for psi will eventually be established

 

Dr. Dean Radin Parapsychologist

 

Why am I not surprised?
Harte

[Harte]

On 1/8/2024 at 8:34 PM, papageorge1 said:

Hmmm.....is everyone that disagrees with your positions a charlatan or incompetent fool. I've noticed a pattern.

No, but all your sources are.
We've ALL noticed that pattern.

Harte

[Harte]

On 1/9/2024 at 12:46 PM, papageorge1 said:

Here we go again, lol, bit I can't control myself.

IMO: Randi would take challenges for which he was sure he was going to keep his prize money. For the better psychics he'd obfuscate. 

Your stated opinion here comes from your own ignorance of how Randi's challenge worked.
Of course, I wouldn't expect you to have read the rules of the challenge, considering you wouldn't have a nail to hang your opinion on if you did, and that might reduce the sparkle in that sparkly magical worldview you so desperately cling to.

Harte

[ChrLzs]

28 minutes ago, Harte said:

Your stated opinion here comes from your own ignorance of how Randi's challenge worked.
Of course, I wouldn't expect you to have read the rules of the challenge, considering you wouldn't have a nail to hang your opinion on if you did, and that might reduce the sparkle in that sparkly magical worldview you so desperately cling to.

Harte

In fact, I'd like to take this further with some direct questions for Papa:

1. Is it appropriate to post false information on this forum?  - Yes or No.

2. How did you 'research' the rules of the James Randi challenge? (Even though that challenge is now closed, there are plenty of historical references easily findable.)

3. Which of the rules of that challenge are, in your opinion, unfair?  - What rules would you replace them with?

 

[papageorge1]

2 hours ago, Harte said:

Your stated opinion here comes from your own ignorance of how Randi's challenge worked.
Of course, I wouldn't expect you to have read the rules of the challenge, considering you wouldn't have a nail to hang your opinion on if you did, and that might reduce the sparkle in that sparkly magical worldview you so desperately cling to.

Harte

To me it reads like the constitution of Russia. Everything is written to sound good……but the reality….. is a dictatorship of one. 

[ChrLzs]

I'll repeat the questions for Papa...:

2 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

1. Is it appropriate to post false information on this forum?  - Yes or No.

2. How did you 'research' the rules of the James Randi challenge? (Even though that challenge is now closed, there are plenty of historical references easily findable.)

3. Which of the rules of that challenge are, in your opinion, unfair?  - What rules would you replace them with?

 

[psyche101]

25 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

To me it reads like the constitution of Russia. Everything is written to sound good……but the reality….. is a dictatorship of one. 

What a weak poor excuse. 

Generalisation. No specifics. 

I can see why you avoid Chrlzs. Harte really exposed you with a very simple question didn't he. 

[papageorge1]

1 hour ago, ChrLzs said:

I'll repeat the questions for Papa...:

 

As a courtesy when addressing me please include me with a @ sign indication so I get a notification. I don't read every post on the forum.

Randi I'm sure will claim all the right things in the rules. But from many people I respect I hear case after case of him just being a showman and a fraud.

Here's just the first link I found that exposes his fraud. JAMES RANDI AND THE ULTIMATE PSYCHIC CHALLENGE

Here's just an excerpt regarding one man I find to be serious in the field.

The Randi/Schwartz episode

That these doubts about the genuineness of Mr. Randi’s dedication to objective research are far from theoretical may be concluded from the efforts made by Professor Gary Schwartz of Arizona University in designing his multi-centre, double-blind procedure for testing mediums. Schwartz was not interested in the prize money: he merely sought to obtain Mr. Randi’s approval for his protocol for testing mediums – and he duly modified it to met Mr. Randi’s suggestions. Having falsely declared that the eminent parapsychologist Professor Stanley Krippner had agreed to serve on his referee panel, Mr. Randi ensured that the other judges would be his skeptical friends Drs Minsky, Sherman and Hyman, all well-known and dedicated opponents of anything allegedly paranormal.

As the ensuing Randi/Schwartz correspondence (which Mr. Randi declined to print on his website) makes clear, when the outcome of the experiment proved an overwhelming success, Mr. Randi subsequently confused a binary (yes/no) analysis with the statistical method required to score for accuracy each statement made by a medium, and falsely accused Dr Schwartz and his colleagues of selecting only half the data for analysis. He then derided the publication of Professor Schwartz’s findings in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, the world’s oldest scientific peer-reviewed publication devoted to the paranormal, and in which Mr. Randi himself has published contributions. He criticised the fact that the Schwartz findings appeared in neither Nature nor Science, although he must have been aware of the long-standing refusal of these two leading scientific journals to publish anything touching on the paranormal. He then reported that one of the gifted mediums, John Edward, could have seen the sitter through a 2″ curtain gap, regardless of the facts that the crack was about quarter of an inch, was subsequently sealed from ceiling to floor, and that readings were later done long distance. Mr. Randi declined an invitation to see all the raw footage for himself, while protesting that he would never [be allowed to] see it. Yet all the media representatives who visited the Arizona laboratory saw the raw footage, as did magicians and visiting scientists. Mr Randi specifically declined an invitation to be videoed viewing the data and commenting on it.

Equally, despite his confident assertions that cold reading can produce results as impressive as any from a platform medium, he declined an offer to prove it by comparing his performance with that of a genuine medium, surely a crucial test. Similarly, Mr. Randi accused the experimenters of “blatant data searching”, i.e. remembering the hits and forgetting the misses. This was false, and could readily have been shown to be so . He thereafter publicly declined to read any of Professor Schwartz’s emails, having confined himself to deriding the Professor for believing in the tooth fairy, making wild claims and being a “doctor who embraces bump-in-the-night theories without a trace of shame”. Further, that he had been a colleague at Harvard of Dr John Mack, “the man who has never met anyone who hasn’t been abducted by aliens”, and similar abuse. This is the language and conduct of the gutter, not of an honest difference of opinion expressed in civilized and restrained terms about scientific issues..

Mr. Randi notoriously failed to fulfil his boast to be able to replicate Ted Serios’ “thoughtography” tests (as described by his investigator, Dr Jule Eisenbud in The World of Ted Serios, Jonathan Cape, 1968) and has consistently ignored efforts by Mr. Maurice Grosse, the principal investigator of Britain’s most famous recent poltergeist event, the Enfield Case (See Guy Lyon Playfair’s book This House is Haunted, Souvenir Press, 1980), to examine the recorded visual and aural evidence to support a claim of paranormality and apparent veridical messages from a discarnate entity.

Worse still are the multiple errors of fact, admixed with derision, abuse and misrepresentation, which Mr. Randi makes in his book Flim-Flam (1980) about a number of distinguished scientists, notably Russell Targ, Harold Puthoff and Charles Tart and their roles in the remote viewing experiments with Ingo Swann and the clairvoyant claims of Uri Geller. That Randi’s denunciations turned out to be mainly a tissue of lies is apparent from the penetrating account given by parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo in Psychic Breakthroughs Today (Aquarian Press, 1987, p. 216-226), and devastatingly amplified in a recent website publication by Michael Prescott.

 

Basically the serious people consider him a fraud and a showman.

Edited January 31 by papageorge1

[ChrLzs]

First up, I think a more important rule than the one where I have to @name you, is that if you quote someone and they asked ontopic questions, you should answer them.

I'm not addressing your wall of text that appears to be a series of claims and anecdotes.

 

Just ANSWER the questions.  Or would you rather I report you for spreading disinformation.  Here they are again:

Quote

 

1. Is it appropriate to post false information on this forum?  - Yes or No.

2. How did you 'research' the rules of the James Randi challenge? (Even though that challenge is now closed, there are plenty of historical references easily findable.)

3. Which of the rules of that challenge are, in your opinion, unfair?  - What rules would you replace them with?

 

If you don't answer the questions, I WILL.

[psyche101]

5 minutes ago, ChrLzs said:

First up, I think a more important rule than the one where I have to @name you, is that if you quote someone and they asked ontopic questions, you should answer them.

I'm not addressing your wall of text that appears to be a series of claims and anecdotes.

 

Just ANSWER the questions.  Or would you rather I report you for spreading disinformation.  Here they are again:

If you don't answer the questions, I WILL.

To provide Montague Keen as an actual neutral participant is nothing short of laughable. If not an insult when in place of answers to questions. 

Referencing Geller Putoff and Tath is almost an admission of fraud. 

Psychics to prove psychics. Next he will be using the bible to prove the bible is a factual document.

What a joke. 

[papageorge1]

17 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

In fact, I'd like to take this further with some direct questions for Papa:

1. Is it appropriate to post false information on this forum?  - Yes or No.

2. How did you 'research' the rules of the James Randi challenge? (Even though that challenge is now closed, there are plenty of historical references easily findable.)

3. Which of the rules of that challenge are, in your opinion, unfair?  - What rules would you replace them with?

 

Your questions are predicated upon the wrong assumption that I am claiming the rules themselves are unfair. That's not my point.

It is Randi's lying and obfuscation that is the issue when confronted with genuine positive results. I presented examples earlier but you claim to not be interested because you are all on your wrong tangent.

[ChrLzs]

7 hours ago, papageorge1 said:

Your questions are predicated upon the wrong assumption that I am claiming the rules themselves are unfair. That's not my point.

It's not your point?  Then why did you raise it? - read your own quotes below....

7 hours ago, papageorge1 said:

It is Randi's lying and obfuscation that is the issue when confronted with genuine positive results. I presented examples earlier but you claim to not be interested because you are all on your wrong tangent.

Really?  Funny that the only examples you gave were subjective opinions, and they were not directly involved in the challenge process.  You didn't actually claim a lie or obfuscation relating to the challenge/s - funny, that.  And did you not know that your country has these things called laws, and if someone breaks them, or breaks a contract or promise, they can be sued.  Why didn't that happen, do you think?

Here's what you initially posted - my emphasis...

Quote

The problem with this (and Randi's prize) is that the final judges are people determined not to lose and antagonistic to the paranormal in attitude. It's a publicity stunt. And UM is giving them a little publicity here.

Any meaningful real test requires neutral and independent final judges. I believe there are people that could win such tests.

.. AND..

Quote

IMO: Randi was a conman and quite intelligent. He preferred accepting cases where thought he could show a legitimate failure. Better people stayed away from the show knowing he was not going to lose when he had final control or it would never get past an intermediate stage because he knew they might pass. I remember one of his quotes was 'I always have an out'. He is of course controversial, and I am giving you my honest considered take.

So, as YOU posted nothing to back those insults up, other than some stuff that was NOT to do with the Challenge, I'll now answer the questions for you... But first, a couple of major points..  Re Randi saying: "I always have an out ", you deleted context.  He actually said:  "Concerning the challenge, I always have an 'out': I'm right!".   

Clearly those last two words, the part you didn't include shows he was joking around.  That is proven as Randi did not usually participate in the experiments unless he was asked to do so.  Your deletion of the context is deliberate and deceitful.

Now, to answer the questions.....

1. Is it appropriate to post false information on this forum?

YES, of course it is.  I think people who deliberately mislead, like in the examples above, should be removed from the forum if they do it habitually.

2. How did you 'research' the rules of the James Randi challenge?

Clearly, you didn't, otherwise you wouldn't have made the comments you did, which were completely wrong.

3. Which of the rules of that challenge are, in your opinion, unfair?  - What rules would you replace them with?

You couldn't answer this one, as none of the rules were/are unfair.

[papageorge1]

45 minutes ago, ChrLzs said:

It's not your point?  Then why did you raise it? - read your own quotes below....

Really?  Funny that the only examples you gave were subjective opinions, and they were not directly involved in the challenge process.  You didn't actually claim a lie or obfuscation relating to the challenge/s - funny, that.  And did you not know that your country has these things called laws, and if someone breaks them, or breaks a contract or promise, they can be sued.  Why didn't that happen, do you think?

Here's what you initially posted - my emphasis...

.. AND..

So, as YOU posted nothing to back those insults up, other than some stuff that was NOT to do with the Challenge, I'll now answer the questions for you... But first, a couple of major points..  Re Randi saying: "I always have an out ", you deleted context.  He actually said:  "Concerning the challenge, I always have an 'out': I'm right!".   

Clearly those last two words, the part you didn't include shows he was joking around.  That is proven as Randi did not usually participate in the experiments unless he was asked to do so.  Your deletion of the context is deliberate and deceitful.

Now, to answer the questions.....

1. Is it appropriate to post false information on this forum?

YES, of course it is.  I think people who deliberately mislead, like in the examples above, should be removed from the forum if they do it habitually.

2. How did you 'research' the rules of the James Randi challenge?

Clearly, you didn't, otherwise you wouldn't have made the comments you did, which were completely wrong.

3. Which of the rules of that challenge are, in your opinion, unfair?  - What rules would you replace them with?

You couldn't answer this one, as none of the rules were/are unfair.

We can argue forever but it comes down to which side do you think is being most honest, fair, serious and professional with the facts.

We cannot solve that subjective disagreement with argumentation.

I’m fine and confident with my position on this one and this one is  really beyond my reasonable doubt and that’s all I can control.

[ChrLzs]

20 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

 which side do you think is being most honest, fair, serious and professional with the facts.

Well, forum, who thinks Papa is being honest? fair? Professional?

20 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

We cannot solve that subjective disagreement with argumentation.

Most of it is NOT subjective.  You deliberately lied about the rules, you deliberately left out context of a quote, you ignored all my questions.  Nothing subjective there, but it reveals your true colours.

20 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

this one is  really beyond my reasonable doubt and that’s all I can control.

So, you've dropped the ludicrous 'meter'?  Just as well, as saying this was 100% proof of anything would be utterly ridiculous.

Next time, don't misinform or leave out context.  Not that it will help your reputation much..

[papageorge1]

25 minutes ago, ChrLzs said:

Well, forum, who thinks Papa is being honest? fair? Professional?

If it wasn’t obvious I was referring to Randi, Schwartz, Radin and all the other academics and professionals in the field.

As for me, I’ll be the judge that matters to me. I’m interested in truth, reason and honesty.

Edited February 1 by papageorge1

[psyche101]

9 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

If it wasn’t obvious I was referring to Randi, Schwartz, Radin and all the other academics and professionals in the field.

 

These people have been rejected as universal unbiased sources for good reasons.

Why do you feel your opinion is superior to that of the majority?

[Trelane]

"Skeptic group offers $500,000 for proof of paranormal abilities"

[Hazzard]

3 hours ago, Trelane said:

"Skeptic group offers $500,000 for proof of paranormal abilities"

[ChrLzs]

And just remember folks, Papa has deliberately presented misinformation on this thread, both in terms of flat out lies, and then removing context from a quote.  Opinions are fine, but lies?

[Black Red Devil]

Finally, a guy in China has provided proof of the paranormal.