James Randi - Investigating Pseudoscientific and Paranormal Claims

This hour long lecture is from the McGill University's Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium on the confrontation and threat of pseudoscience in contemporary society. As one of the central figures in the area of "flim-flam," James Randi has exposed fraud, deceit, cheats, fakes, liars, and charlatans with effervescent ease. Trained as a magician, his insight into pseudoscience is much more into how people fool themselves and others into believing an array of tricks from the bag of a learned conjurer. In this lecture he gives examples of such tricks and examines how they relate to modern paranormal nonsense.

I myself do not own the copyright to this material. As stated previously, this was filmed, funded, and produced by McGill University, and so far as I can tell, this is their intellectual property. I have uploaded it here so that it may reach a greater audience and showcase the truly great work of the presenter and the hosts. If anyone should wish for me to take it down, I would oblige.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• James Randi
• Pseudoscience
• Nonsense
• Nonscience
• Junk Science
• Paranormal
• McGill University
• Lecture
• Lorne Trottier
• Science
• Science Education

[TheATHEISTNOW]

A brilliant man and quite wonderful personality!

[Hermy1138]

man he has aged!!! love the guy. Reminds me of pictures of Darwin

[Nikolaii2571]

Well, there are "unicorns". The late serial killer Leonard Lake and his wife sported a surgically altered goat to make his horns come out as one. A photograph exists of this when Leonard Lake were at Marin County's Renaissance Faire at the Black Point in the early 1980's. This photograph was published in Marin County's Independent Journal after Lake commited suicide.

Those surgically altered goats are called "Unicorns", but I doubt if there is a mythical creature of wonderful fables.

[colourmegone]

@SkillableTV And then breaks up again. I didn't watch all the way to the end but it kept coming and going with no fading, just periods of complete silence.

[SkillableTV]

@colourmegone the sound continues about a minute later.

[colourmegone]

Thanks for the post but the sound goes completely at 41:22. It comes back and then goes again so I stopped watching at that point. Just thought you'd like to know.

[TeddysMind]

He's awesome, The end.

[godscuttingyoudown]

magician origin of the word "magi" or in the bible they were called "wise men" were men that specialized in the art of mind control, brainwashing, emotional manipulating mass crowds

people think the kgb and cia was the birth of mind control. mind control is not a modern phenomenon

there were a people called the "medes" (from Old Persian Māda-) were from Iran who would spread false news, rumors, and suspicions to undermined a nations mental stability. medes is where you get the word MEDIA

[18booma]

I saw the microphone coming, but he had me with the glasses.

[RedDaVincy]

Holy shit, I recognized that ugly auditorium! He was here! Wow.

[CompletlyBunned]

Brilliant man, and an amazing sense of humor too! :)

[DeadlyDreamerX]

@telinit5

There are some cosmic rays(gamma burst, I think) that can burn down the atmosphere of earth, or something along that line.