The Philippines' most famous promoter of the paranormal is Jaime Licauco. As early as the 70s, he's been writing books about the mystical, and his bibliography charts the fantastical trends in our country -- from psychic surgery and faith healing to reincarnation and New Age abilities. He is considered an authority on the supernatural, which unfortunately means something in this country. Businessmen, politicians, and other leaders consult him on non-supernatural subjects, and one of our major local newspapers gave him a regular column: Inner Awareness.
A recent two-part column is titled, "Hard scientific evidence of psychic phenomena." In the first part, he argues that there is "tons of research data pointing to the existence of psychic and paranormal phenomena." To support this, he mentions the work of "scientists" such as JB Rhine, Dr Russell Targ, Dr. Harold Puthoff, Patrick Price, Ingo Swann -- the list goes on -- and even psychics like Uri Geller, Olof Jonsson, Gerard Croiset, and Barbara Ivanova.
He asserts that although there is proof, "the problem is that skeptics and critics never really bothered to look at the evidence." Those skeptics who did look and weren't convinced "have stubbornly maintained their untenable position." One of those skeptics is James Randi, and although he is not named in the article, the reference is obvious:
There was one publicity-seeking magician who put up a prize of $1 million to anyone who can prove that psychic ability exists. According to him, after over two decades of waiting, nobody had claimed the prize. It is obvious that this skeptic has not bothered to pore over the tons of scientific proof of the existence of psychic ability, and no amount of scientific proof thrown in his face will ever convince him.
These are strong accusations, and unfortunately, none of it is new. In 2006, Licauco wrote a column titled, "Two ways to be fooled," and it's apparent that his recent piece is just a rehash of this one. In both articles, he uses the same Kierkegaard quotation: “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what is not true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” He uses this to criticize skeptics such as Randi who -- according to Licauco -- ignore the "hard scientific evidence."
While Licauco's mention of Randi in the new article was brief and implicit, Licauco's 2006 column did more than just explicitly name Randi and say that he refuses to accept scientific evidence. He also accused Randi of, among other things, changing the rules of the Million-Dollar Challenge so that nobody can ever win, and harassing psychics such as Uri Geller. In Geller's case, Licauco said that Randi was ordered by court to stop the harassment.
Regulars of the JREF forum saw the column and easily debunked most, if not all, of its false assertions. Randi himself wrote a rebuttal, which was published in the Letters to the Editor section of the same newspaper that publishes Licauco's columns.
I recently asked Randi about all this, and here's what he had to say: "We're accustomed to people like Licauco, who has been carrying on like this for years. Licauco isn't looking to take the MDC; he wants to keep babbling about it by perpetuating the lies rather than actually doing it."
Unfortunately, Licauco, being the regular columnist , had the last word when he published a two-part response titled, "Setting the Record Straight."
He simply reiterates many of his earlier assertions, supporting them with more supposedly scientific experiments. To prove his accusations related to Geller, he takes Geller's word as proof. But what struck me most was Licauco's response to taking the Million-Dollar Challenge.
When Randi wrote that Licauco, with his psychic abilities, failed to apply for the challenge, Licauco replied with this:
That’s a lie. I have never claimed to have any paranormal or psychic ability. I don’t know where Randi got that idea.In fact, every time somebody asks me if I am a psychic, my standard answer is: “No, I’m a psycho.” To the question “Are you a mystic?” my answer is: “No, I’m a mistake.”
Now this is a lie. His own columns show this. In several he clearly states that "everybody is a psychic." His psychic seminars are based on the his claim that everybody has psychic abilities which he can help develop. How can he claim to help others develop their abilities without having developed his first? And to settle the issue once and for all, consider the title of a book about Licauco which he wrote himself: "When the Impossible Happens: Confessions of a Reluctant Psychic."
Licauco's blatant self-contradiction is nothing new to those who are used to him. As fellow Filipino Freethinker Michael Aquino pointed out, Licauco fits Harry Frankfurter's definition of a bullshitter:
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
Licauco is a bullshitter, and he will use any argument, however contradictory it is. In the first part of his recent column, he says that there are hard scientific evidence that will prove the paranormal beyond any doubt. But in the second part, he says that the "Science is simply inadequate to explain the whole range of human experience and phenomena," and that using "the orthodox scientific method for these nonphysical phenomena would be to use the wrong instruments."
So hard scientific evidence both can and cannot prove the paranormal, and Licauco sees nothing wrong with this, because this is the kind of bullshit he routinely comes up with to suit his purpose. And what might that be? The way he ends each of his columns may give us a clue:
For information on scientifically based Inner Mind Development and Psychic seminars anybody can attend, please call 8107245 or (0920) 9818962.
Red Tani is the founder of the Filipino Freethinkers and a volunteer for the James Randi Educational Foundation.