CONTEXTO
James Randi has established himself as the most uncompromising debunker of psi. This makes it all the more extraordinary that his interviewer for The Psi Researcher should have allowed him to make what in effect was a protracted public relations job for himself, in the course of which he was not challenged to account for some of his actions - or inactions. For example:
Randi was a founder-member of CSICOP. Why did he not resign over the scandal of CSICOP's admission that following its first investigation (into Gauquelin's work) it published a report so wildly at variance with its findings that it eventually had to admit the deception?
Randi carries around a cheque for $10,000 which he claims he will give to anybody who provides proof of psi; why will he not deposit it with some independent body, rather than claim the right to adjudicate himself? Could it be that, as his friend Dennis Rawlings has disclosed, Randi privately admits 'I always have an out?
Why did Randi, having gone on television to claim he could show how Ted Serios produces thoughtographs, back down when Jule Eisenbud accepted the challenge?
Why did Randi pretend that his two accomplices had exposed the researchers at the McDonnell laboratory as dupes when he knew, as he later admitted, that this was untrue?
You say that Randi has resigned from CSICOP. Surely he should explain why?
Brian Inglis
RESPOSTA DE RANDI:
Brian Inglis has often been informed at length of the facts behind his oft-resurrected gripes and accusations about me, but he has published them here in The Psi Researcher yet again, as if nothing had ever been offered in refutation. I cannot allow him to perpetuate this nonsense. First, there was no 'deception' by CSICOP in the Gauquelin matter. The error was in not taking the report seriously enough, and a full admission of that fact and an apology was made by the late Professor George Abell, who also expressed his profound regret. CSICOP made an error, and admitted it. I don't recall that Mr Inglis has ever admitted having seriously erred in any of the cases where I have shown him to have been wrong and careless.
Second, Mr Inglis knows full well that I always "deposit [my cheque] with some independent body" prior to engaging in tests of any claim. This is done in accordance with my standard rules of the challenge, published widely. If Mr Inglis is suggesting that I give over that cheque to someone else before the rules of any test have been agreed upon, he must think me a total ass. Third, the statement, "I always have an out" is not, as Mr Inglis chooses to call it, an "admission" by me of anything. What he fails to points out, in spite of his having been told several times, is that I followed that statement by explaining that the 'out' was the fact that these claims were false in the first place, and would not be supported by the test. That statement was made many years ago, before I was fully aware of how some persons could take it out-of-context and ignore total meaning.
Fourth, Mr Inglis well knows that Jule Eisenbud did not answer my challenge, but instead chose to make a silly offer involving my getting drunk, dressing up in a rubber suit in a metal room and duplicating the Serios effect. Serios was only once ever in a metal room, and then he failed to produce his miraculous pictures, but that fact is not brought up by Eisenbud nor by Inglis. Eisenbud never accepted my challenge.
Fifth, I will quote the entire astonishing canard (new to me, I must admit) that Mr Inglis has invented for your readers: 'Why did Randi pretend that his two accomplices had exposed the researchers at the McDonnell laboratory as dupes when he knew, as he later admitted, that this was untrue?' Shaw and Edwards showed clearly, in Project Alpha, that the McDonnell parapsychologists were incompetent at their work. The scientists were completely fooled by the two inexperienced, amateur conjurors, to the point that they issued a very positive report on their "experiments" and were prepared to publish it when the whole thing began to unravel—at my insistence, and the urging of the boys. I have in my files a copy of the original paper, before it was toned down to be non¬committal. I will not publish it, but I am willing to show it to a responsible person, such as Susan Blackmore, who will not reveal the exact contents. I will award Mr Inglis my $10,000 cheque immediately upon his producing evidence that the statement of his quoted above, is true. It is untrue, and he knows it.
Finally, Mr Inglis, if he has troubled to read any of the news items on my resignation from CSICOP, would have had an answer to the question with which he closed his tirade. CSICOP was named as co-defendant in the lawsuits brought against me. I resigned in order to spare CSICOP the burden of having to defend itself in those suits. In closing, let me correct the paragraph by Jane Henry, headed "Geller v Randi". Mr Geller is not suing me and CSICOP "in a number of different countries", though he has threatened to do so. The only remaining lawsuit is being brought in the USA, and presiding judge has now ruled that Mr Geller must prove his claims of psychic power in the court-room. I can hardly wait.
James Randi
TRÉPLICA DE INGLIS
May I take Randi's points one by one?
He claims 'there was no deception by CSICOP in the Gauquelin matter1. If the claim in the Humanist in 1977 that CSICOP's investigation had demolished Gauquelin's case, when it had done precisely the opposite, did not constitute deception, the term has lost all meaning. Anybody who is unfamiliar with this disgraceful episode can find it described in detail in Fate, October 1981, and Zetetic Scholar, March 1982. CSICOP did indeed eventually 'admit error but not until the deception had been exposed.
Eisenbud, he claims, 'never accepted my challenge' in connection with Ted Serios's thoughtography. The challenge I referred to was issued by Eisenbud, and Randi publicly accepted it, only to back down. But I will leave it to Jule to reply in detail.
If Randi thinks that Uri Geller has abandoned the idea of suing him in countries other than America, he is in for a rude shock. As for Randi's claim that the judge in the case in the USA has ruled that Geller must prove his claim of psychic power in court, as Randi must know only too well the case does not hinge on whether or not Geller has psychic powers, and no such demand could be made, or has been made, on him.
I am pleased to hear that Randi now deposits his $10,000 cheque with an 'independent body' when he issues a challenge. He says that he will award me the cheque if I can produce evidence upsetting his account of the 'Project Alpha' affair. The evidence has already been produced by Michael Thalbourne in his 1983 paper. Randi now claims that he has evidence which, I take it, he believes would rebut Thalbourne. If he has, why not publish it?
On the more general issue, whether Randi's claims are to be trusted, I would recommend anybody who can get hold of the CSICOP journal, Skeptical Inquirer, for Winter 1992, to study Paul Kurtz's editorial. The heading — 'On being sued: the chilling of freedom of expression' is clearly designed to suggest that the court actions with which CSICOP has become involved as a defendant are a threat to CSICOP's freedom to continue as 'often the lone voice defending rationality'. In fact, as Kurtz is compelled to admit, the threat has come not from Geller and the others who are bringing the actions. CSICOP is in trouble because Randi has claimed that he was acting as a CSICOP's agent, and had been explicitly authorized by the Executive Council, when he made the statements. These statements are false, Kurtz insists; but Randi's attorneys have refused to withdraw them.
Brian Inglis, London
COMPLEMENTO DE JULIE EINSENBUD
It is beyond me why anyone should allow himself to be drawn into a tangle Randi.
For the record, at any rate, the only challenge Randi ever made in relation to the Serios data was one which he used to draw attention to himself on a nationally televised broadcast on October 4,1967. He backed out of this as soon as the broadcast was concluded, at the same time declining my challenge to him referred to (loosely) in his letter. In 1982 he declined my offer to wager $10,000 that he could not duplicate the Serios "effect" even with the aid of a prop in which a gimmick could be housed.
As to Randi's claim that "Serios was only once ever in a metal room, and then he failed to produce his miraculous pictures," Serios is on record in my book The World of Ted Serios (first and second editions) as having twice produced distinct anomolous images in "metal rooms", once in a Faraday cage, another time in a whole radiation body counting chamber, where his images corresponded closely to a target image chosen after he was installed in the chamber.
Dr Julie Eisenbud, Denver, Colorado
COMENTÁRIO DE AMIGO DE RANDI
Telephoned apology
Mike Hutchinson, 'a friend of Randi', left the following telephone message.
In his letter to Psi Researcher 3 Randi should have said that Mr Geller must prove his psychic powers 'in desposition' not 'in court'. Randi apologies for this error.
Mike Hutchinson
Pronto. Esse é o contexto. Várias declarações demonstradas falsas, e a atitude de Randi de considerar a alegação falsa desde o princípio mostra que ele não está nem um pouco a fim de pagar o prêmio mesmo.
