Skeptics duped by Fraudulent Skeptics

[anonymous]

There is a big problem in the skeptical community. There is rampant obscuration of the truth by prominent skeptics who have misled masses of people. Skeptics often say that believers in the paranormal have been fooled by charlatans but it is the skeptics who have been fooled by prominent members of their community who seem to be more interested in winning the debate than in illuminating the truth.

Don't believe me?

Have a look at these links (excerpts below).

Richard Dawkins refuses to consider peer reviewed scientific studies in a debunking documentary.
http://dailygrail.com/node/5817

James Randi who claims mediums routinely use cold reading to fool people fails to demonstrate it that can be done:
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/ar...keen/randi.htm

Randi FAQ makes incorrect claims about parapsychology
http://www.randi.org/jr/faq.html

Randi forced to retract false statements about paranormal research:
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...Randi_dogs.htm

Michael Prescott discusses rampant innacuracy in a chapter of a book by Randi.
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...cott_Randi.htm

I am trying to collect more evidence of this rampant disregard for the truth by prominent skeptics and would appreciate it if others would post any other examples they may be aware of.

Here are more details:

http://dailygrail.com/node/5817

Richard seemed uneasy and said, "I don’t want to discuss evidence". "Why not?" I asked. "There isn’t time. It’s too complicated. And that’s not what this programme is about." The camera stopped.

The Director, Russell Barnes, confirmed that he too was not interested in evidence. The film he was making was another Dawkins polemic.

I said to Russell, "If you’re treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it’s not irrational to believe in it. I thought that’s what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn’t interested in taking part in another low grade debunking exercise."

From the randi.org faq:

http://www.randi.org/jr/faq.html

"And, there is not a single example of a scientific discovery in the field of parapsychology that has been independently replicated. That makes parapsychology absolutely unique in the world of science."

The truth is:

http://www.deanradin.com/para2.html#ninea

"A meta-analysis of the database, published in 1989, examined 800 experiments by more than 60 researchers over the preceding 30 years. The effect size was found to be very small, but remarkably consistent, resulting in an overall statistical deviation of approximately 15 standard errors from a chance effect. The probability that the observed effect was actually zero (i.e., no psi) was less than one part in a trillion, verifying that human consciousness can indeed affect the behavior of a random physical system."

That's 800 experiments by more than 60 researchers over the preceding 30 years demonstrating odds of a trillion to one in favor of psychokenesis being real.

Michael Prescott discusses rampant innacuracy in just a chapter of a book by Randi.

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...cott_Randi.htm

"Randi comes across as a bullying figure, eager to attack and ridicule, willing to distort and even invent evidence - in short, the sort of person who will do anything to prevail in a debate, whether by fair means or foul.

The title of his book thus takes on a new and unintended meaning. From what I can tell, James Randi really is the Flim-Flam man."

...

Hebard, Randi says disputes the Targ-Puthoff account. He [Hebard] is quoted [by Randi] as saying, "It's a lie. You can say it any way you want, but that's what I call a lie."

"Dr Hebard was very annoyed by this claim since, as he explained to me, Randi had tried to get him to make this charge and he had refused. Dr Hebard later signed a statement to this effect for me."

You have to read the full article to get the full effect, but if one chapter is so full of inaccuracies how many are in the entire book?

[anonymous]

A prominent skeptic who claims mediums routinely use cold reading to fool people demonstrates that cold reading does not replicate what mediums do.

http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/ar...keen/randi.htm

The edited version omitted his [the prominent skeptic's] first futile but extended attempts at cold reading which was so unsuccessful that the embarrassed floor manager had to announce a technical fault and stop the show.

After making false claims "debunking" research by Rupert Sheldrake a prominent skeptic was forced to admit his own deception:

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...Randi_dogs.htm

He wrote: "I overstated my case for doubting the reality of dog ESP based on the small amount of data I obtained. It was rash and improper of me to do so."

[A prominent skeptic] stated: "Viewing the entire tape, we see that the dog responded to every car that drove by, and to every person who walked by." This is simply not true, and [the prominent skeptic] now admits that he has never seen the tape.

[LeoM]

Here's more

research of the skeptics on Dr. Susan Blackmore

Skeptical Investigations - Investigating the Skeptics - Anomalistics - Research of the Skeptics


George Hansen review of Professor Ray Hyman's book the elusive Agenda

Review of The Elusive Quarry by Ray Hyman


A reply to Michael Shermer '' medical evidence for nde by Dr. Pim Van Lommel

Skeptical Investigations - Investigating Skeptics - Media Skeptics - Medical Evidence for NDEs


Unscienific statement on the non -existence of telepathy refuting Michael Shermer by Dr. Petrus Pennanen

Skeptical Investigations - Investigating Skeptics - Media Skeptics - Non-existence of Telepathy

Shermer distorts the meaning of skepticism

Skeptical Investigations - Investigating Skeptics - Media Skeptics - Statements By Critics of Michael Shermer

Richard Wiseman attempts to debunk evidence on dogs by Dr. Rupert Sheldrake

Dialogues and Controversies - Controversies - Richard Wiseman - Evidence on Dogs

Respected scientists? The Natasha Demkina Case

By Mary Rose Barrington

Respected Scientists

How Martin Gardner bamboozled his readers

Michael Prescott's Blog: How Martin Gardner bamboozled his readers


A critique of Susan Blackmore's Dying Brain Hypothesis by Greg Stone

Greg Stone - A critique of Susan Blackmore and the dying brain hypothesis

[anonymous]

Thanks Leo!

I found these to be especially interesting:

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o..._research.html

Martin Gardner wrote:

But as Honorton pointed out, “Gardner does not attempt to document this assertion, nor could he. It is pure fiction. Look for the skeptics’ experiments and see what you find.” For the most part, skeptics have simply criticized from the sidelines, and have produced no experimental research of their own.

One notable exception to this rule has been British psychologist Susan Blackmore .... she wrote in 1996: “When I decided to become a parapsychologist I had no idea it would mean 20 years of failing to find the paranormal. These claims led parapsychologist Rick Berger to critically examine the Blackmore experiments in great detail, and he found that “The claim of ‘ten years of psi research’ actually represents a series of hastily constructed, executed, and reported studies that were primarily conducted during a 2-year period.’” These consisted of a set of experiments conducted between October 1976 and December 1978 for her PhD dissertation.

So, how does Blackmore reconcile the fact of 7 successful experiments out of 21 with her often-repeated claim that her own research led her to become a skeptic? Simple: results from successful experiments were dismissed as due to flaws in the experiment, yet study quality was simply ignored when the results were nonsignificant.

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...vanLommel.html

In his "Skeptic" column in Scientific American in March, 2003, Michael Shermer cited a research study published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal, by Pim van Lommel and colleagues. He asserted this study "delivered a blow" to the idea that the mind and the brain could separate. Yet the researchers argued the exact opposite, and showed that conscious experience outside the body took place during a period of clinical death when the brain was flatlined. As Jay Ingram, of the 'Canadian Discovery Channel' commented: "His use of this study to bolster his point is bogus. He could have said, 'The authors think there's a mystery, but I choose to interpret their findings differently'. But he didn't. I find that very disappointing" (Toronto Star, March 16, 2003). Here, Pim van Lommel sets out the evidence that Shermer misrepresented.

http://www.sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/wiseman.html

With the help of his assistant, Matthew Smith, he did four experiments with Jaytee, two in June and two in December 1995, and in all of them Jaytee went to the window to wait for Pam when she was indeed on the way home. As in my own experiments, he sometimes went to the window at other times, for example to bark at passing cats, but he was at the window far more when Pam was on her way home than when she was not. In the three experiments Wiseman did in Pam's parents' flat, Jaytee was at the window an average of 4% of the time during the main period of Pam's absence, and 78% of the time when she was on the way home. This difference was statistically significant. When Wiseman's data were plotted on graphs, they showed essentially the same pattern as my own. In other words Wiseman replicated my own results.

I was astonished to hear that in the summer of 1996 Wiseman went to a series of conferences, including the World Skeptics Congress, announcing that he had refuted the 'psychic pet' phenomenon. He said Jaytee had failed his tests because he had gone to the window before Pam set off to come home.

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.o...scientists.htm

Natasha Demkina, a 17-year-old Russian schoolgirl celebrated in her home town of Saransk for making accurate diagnoses of people's medical ailments just by looking at them, was brought to New York (a gruelling 24-hour journey by train, flight and bus) to have her 'paranormal claims' tested by the self-styled world authorities.

She was required to match seven written diagnoses against seven corresponding test persons wearing black-lens spectacles to avoid any eye contact. She said from the outset that two of the diagnoses were outside her range, but she was kindly reassured by Wiseman that she would pass her test if she scored five out of five on the other trials. Under these fairly taxing conditions she was in fact correct in four out of the seven trials, a result yielding a significant p value of .02, an outcome calling for a fair degree of congratulation.

But there were no congratulations for Natasha. While noting (in passing) that the odds against this result being due to chance were around 50 to 1, Wiseman told her that she had failed, and the patronising Hyman advised that she should forget her delusions and pursue her proposed medical studies (his own delusion being presumably that the diagnoses of medical practitioners are invariably correct). The commentator crowed that the girl would now return to Russia discredited. Mission accomplished!

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/m...rtin-gard.html

"Records of Mrs. Piper’s séances show plainly that her controls did an enormous amount of what was called 'fishing,' and today is called 'cold reading.' Vague statements would be followed by more precise information based on how sitters reacted. Mrs. Piper usually held a client’s hand throughout a sitting, sometimes holding the hand against her forehead. This made it easy to detect muscular responses even when a sitter was silent. Moreover, her eyes were often only half closed, allowing her to observe reactions."

Somehow, Gardner forgets to tell us that many of the readings involved proxy sitters - people who did not know the facts of the case they were inquiring about. Strange how this little fact was overlooked. Could Gardner have forgotten to mention it because cold reading is useless in a proxy sitting?

[Psibeliever]

I know psi is real because I've tested the previous psi researchers, informally, and I'm satisfied that they have a power. I'm also satisfied that the predictions they have given me in my personal life are real, and not just vague generalities - though they have been wrong sometimes, they are usually correct.

As for Randi, he can rant and rave all he wants, but he hasn't destroyed the paranormal industry, and, if so, then he isn't relevant.