In
SWIFT: The Weekly Newsletter of the JREF on January 12th
2007, Randi wrote "A
letter to Mr Science UK" posting an email he wrote to me
on January 10th. I replied to him on January 13th.
Since
he ended his item with the words "Let's see what transpires
...". I assumed that he would also post my reply. Six weeks
later he had not done so and so I reproduced my reply below.
On 23rd February Randi finally responded. Click
here to read his comments.
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Hart-Davis
Sent: 13 January 2007 14:45
To: 'James Randi'
Subject: RE: Your comments...
Dear Randi,
Many thanks for your email and for your kind words about my
work. You
may remember we had lunch in London around 1979 while I was
working on
one of the Arthur C Clarke series, and I later filmed you giving
a
lecture about spoon-bending at UCLA.
Last week I received a letter from a Chris Oldman who had, I
think,
heard a casual remark I made in a radio interview, and said it
had
caused his jaw to bounce off the floor. In the interview I was
asked
whether, having worked on the Clarke series, I believed in the
paranormal. I said no, definitely not, although I was not
prepared
utterly to rule out natural dowsing, since people with forked
twigs had
walked over ground and later dug to find water.
In his letter, Mr Oldman accused me of accepting a claim of the
paranormal, which I definitely did not; this was simply not
true.
In my reply to Mr Oldman I criticised the handling of the
statistics in
your Australian dowsing test, a test which we showed in the
Clarke
series, for the following reason. I paraphrase from the book
ARTHUR C
CLARKE'S WORLD OF STRANGE POWERS by John Fairley and Simon
Welfare:
Searching for gold and for water, with a ten per cent chance of
getting
the right answer, the dowsers claimed they would get 80 per cent
success. In practice they achieved an overall success rate of 12
per
cent, combining the gold test and the water test. But on the
water test
alone they scored 22 per cent - well above chance. The results
of the
two tests should not have been combined.
I don't think that anyone's jaw needs to drop at my taking a
skeptical
and critical approach to such evidence. I strongly approve of
your
skeptical stance and your million-dollar challenge, and
frequently refer
people to your website, especially those who write to me with
perpetual
motion machines.
Take care, and please keep up the good work,
Adam Hart-Davis
-----Original Message-----
From: James Randi [mailto:randi@randi.org]
Sent: 10 January 2007 18:25
To:
adam-hart-davis@lineone.net
Cc:
jeff@randi.org; 'Chris Oldman'
Subject: Your comments...
Importance: High
Dear Mr. Hart-Davis:
I am of course familiar with you through your work on UK TV and
via many
comments that my readers (at
www.randi.org <http://www.randi.org/>
)
offer on your efforts, which they much admire. However, a recent
comment
attributed to you has my surprised - I might say, "jaw-dropping"
-
attention. It was a response to a Mr. Chris Oldman, shown here:
Dear Chris Oldman,
Thanks for your jaw-dropping letter.
I am no sort of believer in the paranormal, but I have seen too
much
dowsing success to dismiss it out of hand, and I have seen a
sensible
professor of engineering set up a successful investigative test.
Yes I do know about Randi's cheque, and I have also looked
critically at
the footage of a massive dowsing test he carried out in
Australia. In
that test he bamboozled the contestants with muddled statistics.
They
did indeed show a significant effect, but he managed to flannel
his way
out of it.
So I am not prepared to deny dowsing out of hand.
I must tell you that the majority - some 80% - of those who
apply for
our million-dollar prize, claim they are dowsers. In all parts
the world
- the UK, the USA, Australia, Russia, Canada, Peru, Mexico,
Venezuela,
Germany, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Norway, Sri Lanka,
Indonesia, China, Japan - they have tried to perform their
stunt, with
very average - but expected - results. As for the "bamboozling"
you say
I did with the Australian dowsers, they attained less than their
own
estimated success rate, so they did not win the prize - which at
that
point was only US$10,000. You should know that the two Aussies
who got
slightly over the expected success rate - not statistically
significant,
but over expectation - were re-tried in Perth, Australia, a few
weeks
later after I had left the country, and at that time they
attained
results significantly below expectation. There was no
"bamboozling,"
nor "flannelling," except by those who claimed there was. Even
Arthur C.
Clarke now understands this; he had been misinformed.
Dowsing simply does not work. We wager our million-dollar prize
on that
statement.
Please bear in mind that our million-dollar prize still stands,
for
dowsing or for any other paranormal claim, and we regularly test
claimants. None have ever passed the preliminaries.
If your "sensible professor of engineering" should wish to try
for the
prize - under conditions and parameters that he himself designs
and
supervises - we are prepared to offer him the opportunity. And,
please,
think of what reasons he might have for refusing to do so, if he
chooses
to refuse. Why would a man who claims to be a violinist, refuse
to play
the violin for a prize of US$1,000,000.? A dowsing test could
probably
be done within a 2-hour period; that's an exceedingly fine rate
of
remuneration, I think.
Please offer the prize to your un-named "sensible professor of
engineering." Simply filling out the application at
www.randi.org/research/challenge.html will begin the
process...
Thank you for your attention to this letter, sir. With respect,
James Randi
James Randi Educational Foundation
201 S.E. 12th Street
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316-1815
USA
phone: 1-954-467-1112
fax: 1-954-467-1660
e-mail:
randi@randi.org
