The January/February 2021 issue of SI was dedicated to the memory of James Randi, every skeptic’s hero. There was a request for Randi stories; here’s mine.
First, the backstory: Randi was part of a panel the Eastern Psychological Association had put together to look at parapsychology in 1980. After the various presentations were over, Randi did a few tricks for us. A young woman took to the floor microphone and stated that she thought the presentations were rather one-sided. She said that she was completing her PhD at the City University of New York under Gertrude Schmeidler and asked if she could have some time to tell them what she’d found. This is the point where my ears went up, as I was on the faculty of the Brooklyn Campus and the Graduate Center of CUNY. Schmeidler was a full professor at the City campus known for her research in social and clinical psychology. At the time, I did not know about her work in psi.
Randi said to her, “Of course you may. Take the time you need,” which, of course, was typical of him. She proceeded to describe the study, which looked at telepathy in children and found what Schmeidler had dubbed the “sheep-goat” effect—her effort to explain why large-sample studies always seemed to come out at chance. When she finished, the panelists asked some questions, and she responded politely and effectively. Afterward, an old friend who was on the panel introduced me to Randi, who said, “Get in touch if there’s anything I can do for you,” and gave me his phone number.
When I got home, I told my wife, who was also completing her PhD at CUNY, about this session. “Oh,” she laughed. “I know her. She was in our dissertation seminar last semester. That study, by the way, is fatally flawed. It took us a good half hour to find the procedural gaffe, but it virtually guarantees getting a false ‘sheep-goat’ outcome.”
“What happened then?” I asked. “Oh, when she realized what was happening, she got angry, upset, insulted us, and started crying. So we just backed off and went on to someone else’s research.”
“Now that is fascinating,” I said. “Four months ago, she discovered that the research methodology was flawed and the data useless … and there she was, confidently presenting her findings as though they were valid.” That was the day I decided to propose a new course titled Parapsychology: A Critical Examination. I taught it every year from 1981 until my retirement in 2005. It is still offered regularly by other faculty.
That brings me to Randi. I called him up (this was when he lived in New Jersey), told him about the flaws in the student’s study and how the session inspired me to introduce the new course. “Excellent,” he said. “Would you like me to come out to Brooklyn and be a ‘guest lecturer’?” I replied, “Yes, of course,” astonished that he would do this for someone he’d only met once. And he did, and he was, well, “amazing.” He wouldn’t do magic, though. He always said he was there for the science. But at lunch later, magic was never far away. On one of his visits, our daughter—who was in her early teens then—joined us. Predictably, her wristwatch ended up on Randi’s wrist and the salt shaker in her zipped-up purse. I watched, seeing if I could catch the swindle-moment. Nope. He was the master at distraction, and it was always done so you didn’t realize you were being manipulated.
As his fame grew, his time became more precious, and he said he had to “bail out” on the Brooklyn visits. I understood. I, for one, am ever grateful for his generosity with his time and his genius, and I still do not understand how you can take someone’s wristwatch off without them realizing it.