James Randi

Public Lecture Write Up

The public lecture that I attended was “Search for the Chimera,” by James Randi. James Randi is a magician who is a defender of science, and a debunker of pseudo-science. His background is that he started off his career as a magician, and then started to prove the falsehood of pseudo-science in popular culture. James Randi has a foundation where if anyone is able to prove that they have psychic powers or can communicate with paranormals he will give them $1 million.

During the lecture James Randi did and showed many examples of the falsehood of pseudo-science. He first proved that the medicine Zicam has no actual medical benefit. In Zicam the active ingredient has been so diluted that according to James Randi, “one would have to eat 16 swimming pools full of Zicam pills to be exposed to the actual medicine.” Continuing on the Zicam debunking, James Randi explained that one of the ingredients in the pills is duck liver. But this has also been diluted so much that one duck liver could make enough pills to fill a sphere with its circumference starting at our Sun, extending out to Pluto.

The next topic that James Randi discussed was how people are gullible and how we should be careful when trusting people with “magical powers.” He gave an example of Peter Popoff, the faith healer that exploited people’s sicknesses to his advantage. Peter Popoff was discovered for the fraud that he is by James Randi, who showed clips of Peter Popoff getting information from his wife during the “healings” on the Johnny Carson Show.

The last example of pseudo-science that James Randi talked about was the people that were going down to South America to get non-evasive surgery. James Randi exposed these surgeons as slight-of-hand artists, and he proved this by doing one of their surgeries live, once again on the Johnny Carson Show. The haunting truth about these people that paid for the travel to South American and the surgery, was they would return...