Profile: James Randi — "A Skeptically Inquiring Mind"

Me PROFILE: JAMES RANDI
bie 20310 6 : CIA-RDP96-00791RUGHS GUT eD AAS Bi crsity, d John F

A Skeptically Inquiring

~ Approved For Relg

ou communist pervert creep.

Breakfast at the San Jose Holiday

Inn restaurant has continued for
more than three hours now, and it be-
comes clear why such letter salutations
are common for James “The Amazing”
Randi. Despite a kindly appearance—
he resembles a trimmer and shorter
Santa Claus—sacks full of hate mail ar-
rive at his door routinely. “Really vitri-
olic stuff,” he comments, “and then
they’re signed, ‘Yours in Christ.’”

Threats of death only make him testy,
though. He invited one such letter writ-
er to a lecture and punched him
in the mouth. “I don’t take crap
from people. I did for a long
time in my life. I’m not the nice
little boy anymore.”

The 66-year-old Randi is an
expert on crap. “I lecture on
bullshit,” he explains by way of
indicating his main source of in-
come. The former professional
magician has become perhaps
the world’s leading investigator
of pseudoscientific and para-
normal claims. His targets have
included faith healers, psychics,
dowsers and other charlatans.
He has been drafted to explore
homeopathic results and per-
petual motion machines. Along
the way he helped to found the
Committee for the Scientific In-
vestigation of Claims of the
Paranormal (CSICOP), a skeptics
organization based in Amherst,
N.Y., which publishes the bi-
monthly Skeptical Inquirer.

Years of performing magic—he has
accumulated innumerable television ap-
pearances, including more than 30 on
the Tonight Show—have equipped Ran-
di with a useful skill: “I have a peculiar
expertise that enables me to do two
things very well. I know how people are
deceived, and I know how people de-
ceive themselves.” Unlike scientists,
Randi points out, magicians are taught
methods of trickery. Scientists think
logically, but the swindler does not, and
like a magician, “he gives you lots of
very good evidence that’s false. A magi-
cian doesn't say, ‘This is an empty box.’
He drops the box on the stage, and it
sounds like an empty box.”

Because Randi understands such mis-
direction, he can devise countermea-
sures. To expose a fellow who claimed
to tun the pages of a telephone book

34 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN July 1995

SG1I

antibodies. Then there are Stamey rons

Mind

and Martin Fleischmann’s pronounce-

cludes that some adolescents really
were abducted by UFOs.

by mind alone, Randi sprinkled bits of
Styrofoam around the book, figuring
that the trickster was actually flipping
the pages by exhaling discreetly. A
breath would disturb the Styrofoam.
Sure enough, the man balked. “You can’t
slip a trick by Randi,” observes Barry
Karr, the executive director of CSICOP.

Despite exposing charlatans, Randi
does not hesitate to practice some flum-
mery. In explaining the art of decep-
tion, he is all too ready to bend a couple
of spoons and to make sugar packets
and crumpled paper napkins disappear.

é

THE AMAZING RANDI exposes all manner of pseudo-
science and the paranormal.

“Pd take that as proof of divinity my-
self,” he deadpans and suggests I pock-
et the damaged utensils, in case the du-
tiful waiter who keeps hovering about
notices. .

Not that scientists should be taught
magic tricks. “But what they should
know,” Randi insists, “is that there are
things beyond their expertise.” Too
many academics think they are too
smart to be fooled. “Physicists are most
easily deceived, because they deal in a
real world of objects,” Randi says, not-
ing that their natural inclination is to
take anomalies as discoveries rather
than as hoaxes.

Of course, scientists fall prey to self-
delusion as readily as anyone else.
Jacques Benveniste of the University of
Paris-South claimed that water could
“remember” the Molecular structure of

- Approved For Release-2003/09/1& ~CtAcRBPVS 607 ST

Some suspicious assertions, though,
cannot be debunked easily. Physicist
Robert Jahn of Princeton University has
found that people seem to be able to in-
fluence the outcomes of a random-num-
ber generator by mere thought. Randi
suggests that the key to this telekinetic
claim may lie with Brenda Dunne, Jahn’s
chief investigator, who is well known in
the parapsychology field. “She's not
very cooperative. She won't let people
see the program or allow them to inter-~
fere with the protocol. I think it raises...
certain doubts whether these experi-
ments will ever be replicated,” Randi
opines. “It is such a big experi-
ment. Nobody in the skeptics
field can afford to do it.”

Such practical limits might
only exacerbate the current re-
surgence of belief in the para-
normal. “The cornmunications
media have made it available to
everyone,” Randi observes. He
cites a self-proclaimed psychic
who calls himself “The Great
Samaritan.” Advertising on
Spanish-language television, he
asks viewers to dial a 900 num-
ber for psychic advice. With
caller-identification technology
and banks of networked com-
puters at their disposal, opera-
tors can obtain financial and
health records, convincing their
unsuspecting callers of their as-
trological prowess.

The economic cost of such
exploitation is difficult to ascer-
tain, but Randi believes it
amounts to hundreds of mil-
lions of doilars in faith healing alone.
In rooting through nearby dumpsters
after one such show, he found many $5
checks—apparently too small a sum to
bother depositing, given the suitcases
full of cash that had just been loaded
into the limousine.

So profitable is the field and so pow-
erful is the allure of the paranormal
that exposed psychics can easily set up
shop again. A case in point is the faith
healer Reverend Peter Popoff, whom
Randi defrocked in 1986. Randi inter-
cepted and taped radio transmissions
from Popoff’s wife to her husband as he
worked the audience and “read” their
minds. His wife had previously inter-
viewed these people and was directing
her husband, who wore a concealed ear-
phone. Obscenities, insults and jokes
fill the tape. “A guy showed up with tes-

BERND AUERS


~~

. ticifér cancer, and ne ARREQVED Bor Re IPaSR AOS LOPES: GARR Rae OB 79 ABRONADRLSGR 2 Sriudes. “You

they're laughing at him,” Randi exclaims.
After the California Attorney General’s
Office declined to shut down the min-
istry (citing the separation of church
and state), Randi appealed to a higher
authority: Johnny Carson. Public expo-
sure of the tape eventually forced Pop-
off into bankruptcy.

“But now Popoff is back in business,”
Randi laments. “There’s no continuing
agency or law that will stop him from
doing the same thing all over again.” A
change in the name of the ministry and
a new location are all that is needed.

Many people reject scientific thinking
because science deals with probabilities,
not black-and-white answers. Randi
finds that devotees of faith healers
mostly watch soap operas and pro-
fessional “wrestling” because those
programs provide definitive out-
comes. “You will be amused at your
own expense if in the long run you
don’t take them seriously,” he warns.
“These are facts of life for very many
people.” A case in point is his own
brother. “He believes in cuckoo
stuff,” Randi remarks of the sibling
with whom he has largely lost touch.

Randi developed his skepticism
early in life. A child prodigy, Randall
James Hamilton Zwinge was given
permission at age 12 to study inde-
pendently out of the classroom. He
used the opportunity to his advan-
tage, wandering the streets of his
native Toronto and venturing into a
theater where he witnessed magi-
cian Harry Blackstone, Sr., levitating
a woman. “I remember categorizing
it,” Randi states. “Either it was some
sort of misperception, or some sort
of mechanical or physical trick.”
Trips to the library and mentoring
by Blackstone enabled Randi to de-
velop his own conjuring abilities.

Q
§
9
2
c
WwW
o

a small step. “They're both part of the
same thing,” Randi says, Even so, his
first investigation, at age 15, got mixed
results. An evangelist at a local church
was apparently answering sealed re-
quests from his congregation by men-
tally reading the contents. “He was do-
ing the one-ahead method,” deduced
Randi, who stormed to the pulpit and
fished out the last opened envelope to
show that the preacher was answering
the previous question, not the one in
the sealed envelope. For his troubles,
he was roundly booed and escorted to
the police station. “At that moment, I
became determined that I was going to
spend some time doing this. One of
these days, they will listen,” Randi

MAGIC AND DEBUNKING are essentially the

have to be totally dedicated and be a
little obsessed.”

And being such an outspoken critic
does have its drawbacks. He has been
sued several times for allegedly defam-
atory comments, the most notorious
about spoon-bender Uri Geller. In an
newspaper interview, Randi claimed
that Geller’s abilities derived from the
kinds of tricks printed on cereal boxes.
Geller sued both Randi and CSICOP. “In
my opinion, he was getting desperate
for funds,” Randi remarks. “He thought
he would always be able to make a liv-
ing by bending spoons. A dumb profes-
sion if I ever heard of it.” The courts
ruled in favor of the skeptics and or-
dered Geller to pay $150,000 in sanc-
tions. This past March, CSICOP an-
nounced that it had settled with
Geller for somewhat less than that
amount.

The legal actiori, however, has had
some negative impact. “These law-
suits from psychics have wiped me
out financially,” Randi complains.
That includes the $272,000 MacAr-
thur fellowship he received in 1986.
The lawsuits have also made Randi
more circumspect in his declara-
tions. “I am being more careful about
what I say,” he concedes. “I have a
right to an opinion—it just depends
on how it’s phrased.” Others seem
equally cautious: CSICOP relies on
prepared statements rather than
any verbal comment.

Perhaps more disconcerting for
Randi are his sour feelings for CSI-
COP. “They got wimpy on me,” Ran-
di groans. “They essentially forced
me to resign. They were afraid of
my continuing to make statements
about Geller.” The official policy of
the organization is that individual
members do not speak for the group.

Those skills served him well. “I sare thing, notes Randi as he levitates some As a result, CSICOP’s insurance com-

didn’t find much point in graduat-
ing, because I had met several peo-
ple ahead of me at the University of
Toronto, and they didn’t seem to know
how to think, how to originate materi-
af,” Randi explains. “That was not my
idea of an education.” Instead a 17-year-
old Randi joined a traveling carnival, in
part to overcome his acute shyness:
“The most difficult thing to do,” he rea-
soned, “would be to face an audience.”
He became known as Prince Ibis, a
mentalist who wore “a funny black tur-
ban,” Randi recalls. “I just about died. It
was a terrible experience, having to walk
out in front of a really savage crowd.”
“ Nevertheless, he stuck with it and soon
graduated to the nightclub circuit, even-
tually adopting his stage name and
legally becoming James Randi.

dice—at least momentarily.

vowed. “And by golly, they are listening.”

Debunking occupies most of Randi’s
time. “Nature abhors a vacuum; Randi
abhors free time,” he sums up. “I’ve got
a busy life ahead and so many projects
under way. The minute before I die, I
want to be exceedingly annoyed over
the fact that I've got a lot of unfinished
projects. That's going to be a happy
time for me.”

For Randi, the rewards for a hectic
schedule come in the appreciation he
feels from young people, many of
whom beat a path to his Florida home

in the hopes of following in his foot-.

steps. But the skeptic has not found
any suitable protégés, “You have to be
a little nuts to fly in the face of what is

pany has been balking at recouping
Randi’s losses, although he is cur-
rently trying to recover some cash.

Randi is unsure if he wants to rejoin
CSICOP., “I never heard any kind of ad-
mission that they had cut me adrift, de-
serted me when I needed them.” Randi
becomes somewhat philosophical. “Hey,
T'm not complaining, believe me,” he
says. “I consider CSICOP my baby. I’m
happy it's in good hands, and I'll al-
ways do anything for the committee to
promote it.”

It is almost noon. Feeling a bit guilty
about the damaged flatware, I leave a
larger than usual tip. I wonder what to
say to airport security if the bent spoons
set off the metal detector. “Do what I
do,” Randi advises. “Tell them it’s a
hobby.” —Philip Yam

Approved For Release 2003/09/16 : CIA-RDP96-0ScfEROOAROATAHOARYIIS § 35