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From: dir@cbosgd.UUCP (Dean Radin)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: ESP
Message-ID: <939@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Feb-84 17:38:05 EST
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.939
Posted: Tue Feb  7 17:38:05 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Feb-84 01:40:13 EST
References: <595@seismo.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 22

If all you know about psi research is what you read in 
Martin Gardner's and James Randi's books, then you know very little.
The books are entertaining, to be sure, but accurate and dispassionate?  Hardly.

Randi and Gardner both make handsome livings hawking their books 
and acting the arch-rivals of psi researchers.  They are showmen 
and magicians, and Randi has stated in public that one 
of the reasons he's so strongly against psi is pure economics:  
As a magician, Randi relies on the audience's belief that what he 
does is NOT psi, but stage illusion, otherwise anyone could do 
the kind of magic he does using psi, and the mystery would be 
deflated from his act.

Mentalists, on the other hand, for the most part strongly support 
belief in psi for exactly the opposite reason.  It is to their 
economic benefit to have people believe that psi exists so their 
mentalist tricks seem real.

If you want a more balanced, less suspect approach to psi criticism, 
try reading a book like "The Psychology of Transcendence" by Andrew Neher
or "The Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective" 
by Robert Jahn, in the Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 70, No. 2, Feb. 1982.