Reply #13: People often say "It would violate the laws of physics" without ever says WHICH laws.

[Speck Tater]

It smacks of a fundamentalist saying that evolution violates the laws of God. It's a statement without any real content.

Personally, I'm on the fence. As far as I'm concerned the parapsychologists haven't proven their case and the skeptics haven't proven theirs. I've followed both side closely for years, but I canceled my subscription to Skeptical Inquirer after I got sick of seeing how much sloppy bad science they published to "debunk" claims they didn't believe in.*

When both sides in an argument resort to sloppy science to prove their point I lose respect for both sides. I refuse to believe the parapsychologists and I refuse to believe the hard-core skeptics because both so an unacceptable amount of bias in their published work.

* I recall an article in Skeptical Inquirer that "disproved" Rupert Shelldrake's theory of "morphic resonance" by showing that a computer failed to run faster and faster if it kept solving the same problem over and over. Now I don't for a minute believe in Shelldrake's nonsense, but nor do I believe a "scientist" who thinks that the constant speed of a quartz crystal in a computer clock circuit disproves morphic resonance. The theory may be nonsense, but Skeptical Inquirer's debunking of the theory was even bigger nonsense. Junk science is junk science whether done by "true believers" or hard-core debunkers. Randi is a hard-core debunker, not a scientist.

For more info on the challenge read: The Myth of the Million Dollar Challenge and some links to other information: About the James Randi Million dollar challenge

Some snippets from various author's links found at the second link:

"They call themselves the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. In fact, they are a group of would-be de-bunkers who bungled their major investigation, falsified the results, covered up their errors and gave the boot to a colleague (Dennis Rawlins) who threatened to tell the truth."

"One of the things going against the challenge is that it’s hard to apply and to get to the part where you actually have to prove something. In the review of the FAQ Prescott shows various parts of the challenge that demonstrate the nature of the prize offer, where some claims are not even considered because they are being pre-decided as being false claims."

Sean describes how his question about the nature of the Million dollars (offered in some kind of bonds) was left unanswered and his correspondence with the foundation was edited to remove foul language of the foundation’s representative and an email which he never wrote was posted on the forum as being written by him. This is a very interesting evidence of how hard it is to apply and how the foundation treats the applicants. Read Beware Pseudo-Skepticism.

"Although on the popular media scene many magicians-such as the Amazing Randi have claimed that they can duplicate parapsychological effects using magic tricks, they have consistently been unable or unwilling to do so under controlled laboratory conditions"