"When sceptics fight back"

[Leif Roar]

There is a rather fun article up at news.bbc today: When sceptics fight back (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8291688.stm)

[Amapola]

Hey - that's pretty cool! Too bad they ended on a sort of depressing note, but very nice.

It seems accurate too, so even better.

[Pure Argent]

Pretty cool article. But how come it mentions Bad Science and not us?

:D

[Madalch]

Pretty cool article. But how come it mentions Bad Science and not us?

:D

Enter the sceptics with the gathering of The Amazing Meeting (TAM) in London, the first of the conferences outside the US. A fundraising offshoot of the non-profit James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), TAM London saw scientists, writers and comedians target conspiracy theories - and their close cousins pseudoscience and medical quackery - in front of an audience loosely allied by their desire for more rational, critical thinking.
Eh?

[Pure Argent]

Ah. Thanks, Madalch. Missed that.

[rjh01]

It does not mention the forum. It does mention JREF, TAM. Neither of which is the JREF forum. In fact the word forum is not mentioned.
The quote above refers to JREF, not the forum itself.

Remember
JREF <> JREF forum

[Pure Argent]

Remember
JREF <> JREF forum

That's
JREF != JREF forum
thank you very much.

[Moochie]

Heck, as a "skeptical community" isn't it time we elected a mayor?


M.

[tkingdoll]

It's a PR piece about TAM London. As such, it's unlikely to mention the forum. However, I consider this forum the best resource on the internet for Conspiracy Theory stuff, so hopefully the extra traffic the article generated to randi.org will lead a fair few people here. I don't have any numbers for that but tamlondon.org got an extra 10k page impressions from the article so I expect randi.org got a decent boost of traffic too.

[Careyp74]

"Ronson's book of the same name revealed that the US operated a secret army of psychic spies in the 1970s and 80s."

Really? Never heard that one before, sounds like a conspiracy theory :)
Seriously didn't know about that, has anything been proven?

[Jontg]

By "secret army of psychic spies," he means "a bunch of people in a lab trying to remote-view Khrushchev." It was called Project Stargate--one of the many, many, many stupid projects that the government greenlighted in that era because somebody managed to convinced them that Ivan had psychics, mind control, and the like, so we had to have them, too. It's since been declassified, and is a matter of public record.

[Pure Argent]

Heck, as a "skeptical community" isn't it time we elected a mayor?


M.

I nominate...

Oh, heck, I dunno. Besides, isn't it kind of a moot point? With Darat, Lisa and Tricky around, the mayor would never get anything done.

[Careyp74]

By "secret army of psychic spies," he means "a bunch of people in a lab trying to remote-view Khrushchev." It was called Project Stargate--one of the many, many, many stupid projects that the government greenlighted in that era because somebody managed to convinced them that Ivan had psychics, mind control, and the like, so we had to have them, too. It's since been declassified, and is a matter of public record.

aside from the Ronson book, can anyone recommend a good book that deals specifically with these government projects?

[Drudgewire]

By "secret army of psychic spies," he means "a bunch of people in a lab trying to remote-view Khrushchev." It was called Project Stargate--one of the many, many, many stupid projects that the government greenlighted in that era because somebody managed to convinced them that Ivan had psychics, mind control, and the like, so we had to have them, too. It's since been declassified, and is a matter of public record.


Such a great book. I'm really hoping Hollywood doesn't screw it up.

[Psi Baba]

I wish writers wouldn't use phrases like "sceptics' high priest James Randi..." That kind of metaphor really doesn't do us any good.

[Darat]

I suspect that they think it is funny or even worse, they think it is ironic.

[Audible Click]

Mr. Randi sort of looks like a high priest.

[Aitch]

Mr. Randi sort of looks like a high priest.

Like I said in another thread, has anyone ever seen these guys in the same room?

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/2435548abfbac8a095.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=13479)

[Cuddles]

By "secret army of psychic spies," he means "a bunch of people in a lab trying to remote-view Khrushchev."

It's actually a lot more than that. The name of the book is because they actually did stare at goats - they were trying to train people to kill goats (presumably other animals would come later) with their minds. One general spent years trying to walk through the wall of his office. All in all, there was some pretty nutty stuff going on. Obviously none of it actually worked.

As for it being a conspiracy, since it wasn't illegal technically it's not. It was certainly a secret project involving a small number of people, but that's not hugely unusual with the military. There's plenty of declassified material around, and Ronson records his interviews, so it's pretty well confirmed that this stuff really did happen.

The film of the book doesn't look too bad, and Ronson seems happy enough that it doesn't promote the idea that these projects were actually successful. Of course, he's being played by Ewan McGregor, so he would be happy.:)