Ramblings of an Armchair Skeptic

Back in 1979 board chairman of McDonnell-Douglas aircraft, James S McDonnell, gave a $500,000.00 grant to Washington University. Thus was established the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research. This laboratory was to be headed up by physics professor Peter R. Phillips who already had a strong background in parapsychology. When James Randi heard of this, he immediately got the idea of testing some hypotheses. He was certain that the testers chosen could be fooled by a conjurer placed in the lab under the guise of being psychical gifted. Randi sent Phillips a list of caveats that he urged the professor to heed. Amongst these was the very important rule of not letting the subjects run the experiments by changing the protocols along with other suggestions that Randi has found to be a good way to rule out those who are using subterfuge to feign supernatural powers. James Randi is after all a gifted magician and conjurer and knows very well the ways of trickery. These rules were dismiss...

In 1988 Australia a phenomenon called channeling was becoming very popular indeed. Channeling is when an ancient spirit decides to enter a human body and speak through them. This is usually for the purpose of imparting some great wisdom that the spirit feels we need to know. It looks like a painful process and involves much writhing and speaking as if one just had good swift kick in the nether regions. Australia's channel 9 decided that things were getting a bit out of hand and thought they might be able to find a way to encourage some critical thinking in the populace. They contacted James Randi for some ideas and Carlos was born. Randi enlisted 19 year old Jose Luis Alvarez to play the part of a channeler who was being possessed by a 1000 year old spirit by the name of Carlos. Jose would give free performances to packed theatres. He spouted spiritual teachings and extolled the various powers of crystals. People lapped it up and worshipped the wise spirit and his nonsensical adv...

Many people I've talked to who believe in certain types of woo believe it because they have experienced something that they can't otherwise explain in natural ways. They tell me that I will believe once it happens to me. They were there, they saw it with their own eyes and that is all the proof they need. Well I'm sorry to break it to them but people are unfortunately frighteningly easy to fool. For one thing, our memories are far more malleable then we would like to acknowledge. Professor Richard Wiseman describes a memory manipulation test in his book "Quirkology" which involved showing adults several pictures of themselves as children. Two of the pictures were real but a third was a doctored photo of an event (a hot air balloon ride) that never happened. The participants were asked to describe the events in the photos and after awhile half of them were able to describe the day the hot air balloon ride took place. Many in great detail. We also routinely engage ...

I will tell you a story. Once upon a time, because all good stories start with once upon a time, little Susie came home from school crying. She clung to her mother and sobbed. "What's wrong darling?" her mother asked. "Oh momma (sob) it's awful (sob) Mr. Jones told us today that dinosaurs were alive like (sob) 250 million years ago!" "Oh dear." says Susie's mother. Susie is so upset that she can barely continue "But you, Daddy and Pastor John always say that the whole world was made by God 6000 years ago!!!" (SOB) So what's a distraught parent to do? Aside from assuring Susie that all of science is wrong that is? Well, the Alberta government has provided that solution in the form of Bill 44 . Litigate! That's right, parents can now bring teachers in front of the Human Rights Commission when they make the mistake of saying something in the classroom that goes against their beliefs. Schools have always had their own opt-out ...

Skeptics everywhere (and fans of South Park) will know the above as none other than John Edward . Psychic medium extraordinaire and top shelf asshat. John is famous for his show "Crossing Over" which featured him making contact with the deceased family members of a studio audience. A friend recently reminded me of how bad he is at what he does. By "what he does" I don't mean talk to the dead as he would have us believe. I mean cold reading. What is cold reading you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked. Cold reading is when the psychic throws out generalities or initials and hopes for a hit that they can build upon. They rapid fire guesses and make vague statements, inviting the subject to interpret them. For example, they may say "I see the name Marg or Maggie, some sort of M-G name." When there is several people in an audience then that is likely to resonate with someone. Also, people reveal more about themselves than they realize. The psychic can tell...

I apologize. It appears as though I have been harping a lot on religion lately. Maybe that’s because I’m reading “God is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything” by Christopher Hitchens. It would be awesome to see him at TAM. But let’s discuss something else. How about some more about psychic abilities? I was telling my step father about how I’m quite certain that there are no people out there that are psychic. I cited the fact that Randi’s million remains unclaimed along with the many other challenges that offer monetary prizes. He disagreed and said that he still believes that there are psychics out there but that they are few and far between and that they prefer to remain hidden. Now if they are hidden, I’m not sure how he knows about them but I guess he just does. So I asked him why these folks would prefer to remain anonymous. After all there is a lot of fame and fortune involved in letting the world know they exist. Not to mention the fact that they are selfishly hoarding a p...

As I've mentioned before, I'm very interested in learning how to become a paranormal investigator of the scientific kind. So to that end I attended a Joe Nickell workshop at TAM7. Mr. Nickell is in his fourth decade of investigating mysteries. He is the only salaried paranormal investigator in the world. Sadly, he declined my offer to serve as his apprentice citing a lack of funds to pay me with but I would gladly do it for free if I could find a way to get to New York. I would love to tag along with him to even just one of his investigations . I learned much from his workshop and took away many things to mull over. Mr. Nickell investigates with the goal of solving the mystery. This is in contrast to those he calls mystery mongers who try to find "evidence" to support their pre -existing notions such as those on the television show "Paranormal State" which I discussed in an earlier post. He talked about a case he solved early on. That of Mackenzie...