Novella very embarrassingly defends his 'research' going to a 'psychic fair' having doctored photographs, approaching 3 fortune tellers and proclaiming his feeling on the outcome of the matter was 'zero' or 'zippo' .
I'm sure if someone faked a medical condition (e.g. produced artificial damage to skin surface) , gave false information and went along to tape record Dr Steven Novella, he would grossly misdiagnose or get 'zippo' right. Following his own logic, is he implying such experiments would make him unqualified to be in medicine or a fraudulent practitioner?
During the skepiko interview Novella claims
'The goal is to design an experiment in such a manner it doesn't matter what you believe Nobel sounding words indeed, yet in his own trial, we see the very opposite action at work, he chose money seeking fortune tellers, unaware they were being tested or deceived, set the bar high (assuming any scientific measurement was employed at all) so that what is under test is extremely unlikely to contradict ones own cherished viewpoint.
One thing become increasingly clear from listening to his broadcast, Novella feels somewhat hostile towards paranormal claims and dismisses 80 years of controlled lab research ( i.e. not a trip to a psychic fair for an easy debunk) as 'noise' . Para psychological effects have been shown to be above 'noise', would he also dismiss the existence of neutrinos from the sun because the measurement of effects are also weak and erratic?
Novella statements about what percentages indicate a real effect are extraordinary arbitrary, one could dismiss much of his own medical field's statistical outcomes merely because these are lower than other areas of science such as physics. If Novella is unwilling to trust meta-analysis in that case particle physics, clinical medicine, psychology are all in serious trouble in his 'guide to the universe'.
Novella's viewpoints merely add 'noise' and confusion upon the work of those parapsychologists doing serious minded research into the subject of psi.