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As the editing on my 10th book “A Magician in the Laboratory” passes its half-way mark, I’ve come once again to the name George Vithoulkas, a george-vithoulkasGreek homeopath – but a bit of history before I continue. The JREF includes the efficacy of homeopathy as a legitimate paranormal claim for the Million Dollar Challenge because if it worked as claimed, it certainly would be paranormal – magical. With not a single atom or molecule present in a diluted solution, yet still effecting a cure, that ranks as "paranormal."

This man Vithoulkas had become aware of my 2003 appearance on BBC television in which homeopathy failed a definitive and comprehensive test, and he decided to apply for the JREF prize. A protocol was devised in agreement with a group of international scientists and the experiment was to take place in a hospital in Athens. It involved homeopaths, under Vithoulkas` supervision, prescribing individualized remedies to a number of patients in a double-blind fashion with half of the patients receiving a homeopathic remedy, and the other half no remedy. In August 2006, I sent my signed agreement to Vithoulkas in which I stated my satisfaction with the suggested protocol. I also waived the preliminary test, as I had with the BBC tests, to speed up the process. However, I was then forced to delay the start of the experiment owing to serious health problems.

Vithoulkas has claimed that I knew of certain impending political changes in the Greek government at that time that might have affected his involvement in such a series of tests. It seems that the new administration would not have been agreeable to paying the costs of these tests. I was of course unaware of this situation, yet Vithoulkas now claims that I was looking for a way of getting out of the challenge, certainly one of the most rigorous and well-organized attempts to win the one million dollars that had ever been attempted.

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I’ve been a skeptic for almost as long as I can remember. There’s a story I’ve often told about being at theJamy_and_Randi_at_TAM_8 World’s Fair in New York City when I was eleven years old – I had already been doing magic for several years – and figuring out that the IBM pavilion had scammed me out of two weeks of allowance money with a phony computerized handwriting analysis. Although I didn’t know it at the time, when I look back I can see that as a defining moment of sorts.  A moment when my already consuming interest in magic crossed circuits with my fascination with science, and with my admiration for Harry Houdini’s historic work as a psychic-buster, and crystallized my identity as a skeptic. But of course, not quite yet as an activist, movement-oriented skeptic.  That would take longer. But I think it’s safe to say that by age eleven I was already personally, as an individual, a skeptic.

I can still recall watching The Amazing Randi on television when I was a little boy, on a popular local New York Sunday children’s show called “Wonderama,” hosted by Sonny Fox (who spoke at TAM a few years ago and with whom I was thrilled to get a photo!). But I was in my early twenties when Randi wrote a book called The Magic of Uri Geller that would change my life. (I still prefer that original title to the later reissue as The Truth About Uri Geller. One word tells the whole story: MAGIC. As in TRICKS. So simple and direct and devastatingly blunt. So … Randi.)

Randi’s book didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about Uri Geller in particular or psychics in general. I’d been weaned on Harry Houdini along with the art and craft and psychology of deception. But that book radicalized me about the harm that con men and phony psychics do, whether it is distracting the pursuit of science down rabbit holes of confusion and anti-science, or setting the public up with toxic misinformation that can readily lead to victimization by an army of similar con men and women and their catalog of techniques with which to take people’s time, and money, and sometimes even lives away from them.

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If you have a friend who likes to lift weights, it’s time to make a bet. Bet them that you can use your supernatural abilities to change the gravity around your body, making yourself impossible to lift. And make sure it is a good bet, because you are going to win this one.

When Penn and Teller hosted Penn & Teller Tell a Lie on the Discovery Channel, they featured a woman who claimed exactly that: that she could make herself impossible to lift, even for Muscle Beach body builders. The demonstration was pretty convincing. None of the macho men could lift her once she activated her “powers.” She had all the would-be lifters stumped. She fooled everyone except a physics professor.  

So before you bet the farm with your willing friend, let’s look at the physics behind this little trick. At least you won’t be engendering some kind of belief in the supernatural once you fleece your lifter.  

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Happy Darwin Day!

Here is a rundown of the top stories in pseudoscience, superstition and conspiracy mongering from the past week courtesy of Doubtful News.

It was a big week in conspiracy ties. Of course, that never brings good news. The WORST news was another killing tied to conspiratorial thinking. The motive for why this man killed his children, himself and EVEN the dog is not clear, but his work on 9/11 government conspiracy is mentioned.

The misinformation about Sandy Hook continues. Thanks for your sloppiness, media.

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Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo-woo in medicine.  

Epigenetics: It doesn’t mean what quacks think it means (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/epigenetics-it-doesnt-mean-what-quacks-think-it-means/ Epigenetics is misunderstood and used by quacks as evidence of mind over matter and the ability of people to re-program the expression of their own genes. Dr. Gorski explains what epigenetics really means and corrects common misconceptions.  

Here we go again: A bill licensing naturopaths rears its ugly head in Michigan (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/here-we-go-again-a-bill-licensing-naturopaths-rears-its-ugly-head-in-michigan/ Naturopathy is a cornucopia of quackery. A proposed bill in Michigan would authorize them to engage in a whole list of disturbing practices. We hope this year’s bill will meet the same fate as last year’s: oblivion.  

  1. Priming, Probability, and Plagiarism
  2. Licensing Nonsense
  3. Homeopathy Again Strikes Out In Style
  4. Witch Hunts in Papua New Guinea