An evening with James Randi
Last night, together with friends Eric, Andy, Nick and Toni, I was at a fascinating and fun event at the Conway Hall in London organised by “The Skeptic magazine” and Skeptics in the Pub. There were six interesting speakers:
- Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertford [biog here]
Incredibly funny and witty, he hosted the evening and entertained us with some of his magic tricks which encouraged us to think of issues like perception and deception.
He outlined the sceptic scene in the UK and made a number of references to the problem of false memories.- Dr Simon Singh, an author and television producer [biog here]
He has just co-authored a book on complementary medicine called “Trick Or Treatment?” and described the astonishing popularity of so-called alternative medicine.- Dr Ben Goldacre, a writer, broadcaster and medical doctor [biog here]
He argued that the real story is often more compelling than the falsehood and instanced the remarkable power of the placebo effect which we need to understand better.- Dr Susan Blackmore, a writer, lecturer and broadcaster [biog here]
She confessed very honestly to many years of being a believer in psychic phenomena and outlined her academic attempts – all failures – to prove that psychics could produce results which were outside the range of mere chance.- James Randi, Canadian sceptic and magician [biog here]
This diminutive, elderly man with a huge white beard was the highlight of the evening and described as “the most famous sceptic in the world”. He illustrated the methods he uses to expose charlatans by showing two video clips.
The first exposed the fakery of the so-called faith healer Peter Popoff in a clip similar to this one:The second was his exposure of the ‘operations’ conducted in the Philippines by psychic healers without conventional surgical techniques. He used a clip from which this is an extract (the full clip was more stomach-churning):
Randi made the chilling point that, however often these falsehoods are exposed, many people still believe them. He called the fakeries “unsinkable rubber ducks” and insisted “people just will not listen”. At this meeting anyway, some 300 were listening to every word.
- Dr Simon Singh, an author and television producer [biog here]