Acknowledgements

  Some small part of the material here included appeared originally under my name in The Humanist, The Skeptical Inquirer, Technology Review, Science et Vie, La Recherche, and other periodicals. To the editors who gave me permission to use the material again in this book, many thanks.

  The staffs of the Monmouth County Library and the Red Bank Public Library were unstinting in their efforts to assist me.

  Mr. Brian Coe, of the Kodak Museum, London, was exceedingly patient and generous with his time and expertise assisting with the Cottingley photos.

  For assistance in many ways, I must thank Piero Angela, Dr. Isaac Asimov, Professor Persi Diaconis, Dr. Eric J. Dingwall, Ken Frazier, Michael Hutchinson, Professor Ray Hyman, Drs. Richard Kammann and David Marks, Professor Phil Morrison, James Oberg, Dennis Rawlins, Hugh Rawson, William Rodriguez, and Alexis Vallejo.

 

And Broomhilda....

 

Acknowledgements for the Digital Edition

  I would like to thank Michael Blanford, Director of Educational Programs at the James Randi Educational Foundation, for overseeing the process of converting and formatting this book for various digital devices. Thanks also to D. J. Grothe, President of the JREF, who has made digital publishing a priority for the Foundation.

  Travis Dick volunteered his creative talents to produce a fine cover for this edition.

  I especially appreciate the assistance of Fred Bremmer, Rhys Morgan, Lee Elliott, and Beth Burke in proofing and making formatting recommendations for this digital edition.

 

Introduction The Deadly Misinformation

  Not very long ago, I attended a conference at which, among other things, the reliability of the news media as purveyors of scientific inormation was discussed.

  One person at the conference table described, with considerable contempt, an item on a television news program which went into detail concerning someone who claimed he had perfected a perpetual motion device, one which got energy out of nowhere.

  It was reported "straight." No effort was made by the news program to point out that according to the best scientific knowledge of the day such a device is flatly impossible; that any number of perpetual motion devices had been presented to the world in the past and that not one had really worked; that all the inventors, in every case, had either been honestly mistaken or were knowingly perpetrating hoaxes.

  He said, "Oh, well, what harm does it do? The newspeople are merely reporting a claim and, if it doesn't work, so what? No one is damaged!"

  Whereupon I leaned forward and said, "You really don't see the harm it does? The world has now been plunged into an energy crisis. The availability of energy is going down year by year, the price is going up year by year, and the underpinnings of civilization are growing weaker as a result, year by year.

  If civilization is to survive, humanity is going to have to make hard decisions and take strenuous action, and as soon as possible. We cannot continue to waste energy. We must develop alternate sources. We dare not continue to be heedless of the problem.

  And then some newsman tells tens of millions of people of a claim that energy can be obtained out of nowhere and feels no responsibility at all for telling them that the claim is undoubtedly mistaken. He leaves the public with the feeling that there is no energy crisis since we can get energy out of nowhere, and that therefore no hard decisions need be made and no strenuous action need be taken.

  That might just add the necessary amount of heedlessness that will keep humanity from solving this life-and-death problem and will therefore send civilization crashing. And you ask what harm it will do!

  I doubt that I impressed the fellow. He clearly had no idea of the power of his profession, or of its responsibilities. He had not plumbed the depth of the good it could do; or the evil, either. I presume he merely looked at his profession as a way to make a living.

  It is not just this one small claim and this one small bit of sleazy stupidity on the part of a news program that assails us.

  Never in history has humanity faced a crisis so deep, so intense, so pervasive, and so multi-faceted. There have never, till now, been so many people on Earth, so dependent on a complex technology, so burdened by its flaws, and so likely to witness a complete breakdown of that technology in a matter of decades.

  If we are to pull through, we must thread our way carefully through the rapids that lie ahead. At every step, we will be depending on our knowledge, grasp and understanding of science, of its potentialities and of its limitations. If we are careless and over-hasty, we may destroy ourselves through the misuse of science. If we are forethoughtful and knowledgeable, we may find salvation through the wise use of science.

  Under these circumstances, what crime is greater than that of deliberately misteaching the public about science, of deliberately misleading them, of defrauding them, of feeding and stimulating their ignorance?

  Folly and fakery have always been with us, to be sure, but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now; never in history have we been able to afford it less.

  At any other time in history, we would be grateful to any hard-headed realist who undertook to expose knaves and rascals, and would applaud his courage. *

  How much more must we express our gratitude and admiration to someone doing so now at this critical point in history.

  Randi is one person who has the ability and the temperament for the job;—none better!

  He has no academic credentials, and therefore no academic restrictions. He can call things as he sees them, and is not held back by professional politeness in discussing those scientists who not only fall for the paranormal, but promote it in their ignorance.

  He does have a profession that is useful to his task. He is an accomplished professional magician and there is no trick or illusion that he is not aware of and prepared for—which is more than is true of those scientific innocents who, in dealing with fakery, are so eager to accept the surface appearance that they are easier to fool than children are (for children are, by nature, skeptical).

  Randi has, at one time or another, assailed every wall and buttress of the vast Castle of Pseudoscience and has never pulled his punches. He has, for that reason, been called the "hitman" of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (to which he and I both belong) and he doesn't completely deny the label.

  Why should he? The practitioners of pseudoscientific fakery assail "conventional" science with every weapon of innuendo and falsehood they can think of, and demand that, in return, scientists be "open-minded." They may strike, in other words, but scientists must not return the blow, or even parry it.

  Well, the hell with that! Randi strikes back and when the pseudo-scientists howl, he knows he has hit the mark.

  In a nutshell: Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.