{"id":175927,"date":"2020-10-21T20:01:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T01:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/10\/21\/we-have-lost-a-giant\/"},"modified":"2020-10-21T20:01:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T01:01:00","slug":"we-have-lost-a-giant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/10\/21\/we-have-lost-a-giant\/","title":{"rendered":"We Have Lost a Giant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Skeptic, magician, and exposer of frauds James Randi, aka “The Amazing Randi”, has died at age 92<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He was central to the skeptic community, which debunked phony claims about ghosts, ESP, and aliens.<\/p>\n

One of his most important accomplishment was that he showed that the skill set of scientists was inadequate to exposing deliberate fraud, because the frauds use the techniques of stage magic:<\/p>\n

James Randi, a famed magician known as \u201cThe Amazing Randi\u201d and a scientific investigator who debunked sensational claims of paranormal and occult occurences \u2014 has died. He was 92. <\/p>\n

The James Randi Foundation announced his passing in a tweet<\/a>, saying he died of \u201cage-related causes\u201d on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Randi was remembered on Wednesday by magician Penn Jillette in a pair of tweets as an \u201cinspiration, mentor and dear friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/p>\n

By age 60, Randi had retired from magic and was one of the co-founders of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, or CSI. The committee responded to a rise of interest in the paranormal in the \u201970s and promoted scientific inquiry and critical thinking in the investigation of extraordinary or controversial claims.<\/p>\n

Among one of Randi\u2019s more famous instances as a debunker \u2014 a word he said he disliked in favor of \u201cinvestigator\u201d \u2014 was of the religious televangelist Peter Popoff, who became famous in the mid-\u201980s for televised healing sermons in which he seemed to know intimate details of random attendees. Randi discovered that Popoff was using an electronic transmitter to get information about his subjects broadcast to him by his wife behind the scenes, and he then exposed the preacher on \u201cThe Tonight Show.\u201d <\/p>\n

In 1996 he founded the James Randi Educational Foundation, a non-profit group that encouraged and educated the public and media on vetting unverified and outlandish claims, later launching the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge for people who could demonstrate paranormal abilities under agreed-upon scientific testing conditions. While over 1000 people have applied, no one has proved their supernatural strength. The New York Times<\/a> described the trials in detail in an article republished back in 2014. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/p>\n

Randi is survived by his husband, Deyvi Pe\u00f1a.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Re wad devastating, and very entertaining, when he exposed frauds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Skeptic, magician, and exposer of frauds James Randi, aka “The Amazing Randi”, has died at age 92. He was central to the skeptic community, which debunked phony claims about ghosts, ESP, and aliens. One of his most important accomplishment was that he showed that the skill set of scientists was inadequate to exposing deliberate fraud, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[575,507,427],"class_list":["post-175927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-fraud","tag-obituaries","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}