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Summary: Randi: The Sarcastic Skeptic
Review: Randi's "Flim Flam!" is a definite addition to any skeptic's arsenal. It shows specific instances where "believers," when given a chance to prove their powers in a controlled environment, consistently fail to substantiate their claims. In this sense, it is an good illustration of how paranormal claims fail.Also of particular interest is the chapter on the "fairies" that were photographed in England around the turn of the century. That chapter alone should be photocopied and handed out at Blockbuster whenever the 1997 film "Fairy Tale: A True Story" is rented. Then, after watching that film, parents could talk critically about the incident. Unfortunately, the impression this book gave me was that Randi thinks that "believers" are stupid for believing what they do. Irrational? Possibly. Non-scientific? Maybe. But stupid? No. Randi's sarcastic tone is a real turn off to those would much rather have the facts and a clear, unbiased analysis of the events. In summary, a good skeptical resource, but if you don't mind the author being a bit full of himself. For a more pleasant, skeptical look at paranormal claims, see the Skeptical Inquirer collection, "The Hundredth Monkey: and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal" by Kendrick Frazier.
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Summary: Randi slays the paranormal kooks
Review: This book is a very good reference about paranormal quackeries of all kinds, but it is primarily the story of Randi's debunking of many tricksters and deluded people in their quest for aliens, fairies, or paranormal powers. The last chapter details Randi's examinations of dowsers and other nonsense in the context of his million-dollar challenge, and is especially interesting. Randi does not hold any barrels in his investigation of claims and uses his razor-sharp reason in a delectable way. But he also points out how society in general, and even scientists, can easily get conned by con-artists of all kinds, even children. His expertise in debunking is essential in our modern society. My only objection to this book : it doesn't concentrate enough on religious flim-flam. He seems to have talked about it a bit more in his reference book "Encyclopedia of claims, frauds...", albeit not much.
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Summary: Absolute genius and integrity.
Review: Flim Flam is the kind of book you will be recommending to people for the rest of your life. This battering ram single-handedly manages to demolish the pretensions of all of those tree-wasting books that have managed to taint the word "metaphysics." Give "metaphysics" back to the philosophers, where it belongs. I would also recommend Randi's excellent book about Nostradamus. When you hear the mantra about Randi's "close-mindedness," ask yourself why these people think that believing things without any evidence is "open-minded." They surely don't believe in the existence of leprechauns. Does that make them close-minded? It takes an open mind and open eyes to see.
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Summary: REQUIRED READING...BUT...
Review: If James Randi had done nothing else, his exposing of Uri Geller as a stage magician pretending to be an Agent of the Supernatural would have been public service enough. In a bewildering world of all kinds of claims you really have to read correctives like those by James Randi and Martin Gardner to keep from falling off the deep end. And as an important antidote to nonsense this book deserves 5 stars. However... It can be frightening and discouraging to realize how often large groups of people are willing to sacrifice common sense in the quest to find something...anything...to give meaning and purpose to life. But that "sacrifice of common sense" can also include dogmatic faith in science. There are Evangelists on every street corner of human discourse and Randi can, at times, come across with all the Fire, and close-mindedness, of any Evangelist. At the foundation of both scientism and occultism you will find the same hubris: that human beings can understand it all. Religion and Occultism promise us that we are extraordinary beings, "little less than the angels", with extraordinary powers. Scientism tells us that, eventually, we will conquer it all, space, time, disease, death. Behind both stances is the refusal to accept, to greater/lesser degree, that in reality we are mere animals living within an extraordinary universe we will never be able to fully fathom. Both mysticism and scientism are more than happy to quickly dismiss anything that doesn't fit into their paradigms; but what happens when something or someone upsets those paradigms? Why does the Universe exist at all? Beliefs that it is the creation of a Super Being are disenchanting,(at least to me), but it also strikes me as just as intellectually "lazy" to dismiss the question as irrelevant as scientism often does. On your bookshelf along with Randi should be at least one or two books by John Keel and Robert Anton Wilson. Adherents to the Religion of Scientism fiercely cling to the works of professional skeptics like Randi as much as some cling to the Bible, and booke by folks like R.A.Wilson and Keel are bound to make them gnash their teeth as much as Randi does the same to "Gellerites". Randi is qouted as saying on one of his television specials, "I try to live as much as possible in the real world"; respectfully, and humbly, we all have to ask, what in the hell is REAL? Randi's works are important medicine for gullibility; just don't fall from one mistaken assumption headlong into another.
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Summary: Amazing Book
Review: This book exposes those who make things up and try and pass them off as reality. It shows that it is easy to fool most of the people a lot more than we like to think. James Randi is one of the leaders of the skeptical movement. He would love to be presented with a verifiable paranormal event. But whenever somebody looks for a verifiable paranormal event, they pretty much always find that there was no paranormal event taking place. Just a cleverly disguised normal event that it rigged up to look like magic. This is why a real magicain is good to have when inventigating a claim of a paranormal event. Lay persons, and even scientists, can be fooled into believing something just because they are used to having the truth told to them. This book is good to read so that one can learn how to avoid falling into some traps.
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Summary: Little outdated, but best of its kind
Review: No matter how insane your crackpot theory, it seems you can find hundreds of adherents in this country alone. "Massive doses of Vitamin C will protect you from Alien Abductions!" In Flim-Flam Randi takes a critical look at the evidence for many unproven theories, and shows how believers can be fooled. Regardless of one's belief or non-belief in the phenomenon he studies, it's hard to argue that a good examination of the evidence is not required, and if it survives... then you can call it a Science. Randi provides just that examination, and a look at how the scientific method works. A shorter, updated version of this book should be required reading in every high school science class. Everyone should know how the scientific method works, because it applies to a lot more than just science. You will learn from this book.
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Summary: Flim-Flam! Aged a bit, but still good.
Review: In Flim-Flam, James Randi explains the trials and tribulations of his attempts to separate true paranormal activity from what just looks like paranormal activity. For those who wish desperately to believe in paranormal activity at any cost this book will serve no purpose. For those truly interested in proving the existence of the paranormal this book is a must. A person who is sincerely interested in psychic phenomena will not wish to be tricked by con artists or people who erroneously believe they are psychic. The fact that there are con artists in this world is an undisputed proven fact. Psychic phenomena are not. Therefore, the study of psychic phonemena must be geared towards eliminating known causes in order to be meaningful. This is what James Randi does and what he so clearly chronicles in Flim-Flam. His detractors are generally those who have a stake in believing or in having others believe in psychic phonemena irrespective of whether their belief is justified by the real facts. Flim-Flam's age shows in the examples Randi uses but the activities he investigates are still pertinent examples. If Randi has one fault it is his alegence to the Magician's Code. As an expert professional magician Randi has special insight into tricks often used to imitate psychic phenomena and often he replicates the event in question to show it can be done with conjuring tricks. But many times he won't give away the trick. I think fewer people would be fooled by con artists if they actually knew the techniques behind the con. Even so, James Randi is at his best in Flim-Flam. It is a very enjoyable and fascinating read.
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Summary: Randi socks it to them!!!
Review: This is a fun book to read. It's amazing how we all fall for this crazy stuff like the Bermuda Triangle without really checking out the facts. Mr.Randi is a fact checker, and we can now all stop believing aliens built the pyramids. We all need to have a little more amazement at ourselves (wow, we can fly - in airplanes we built! wow we can splice genes -way better than spoon bending!) and a little less amazement at the flim flam artists who are after a buck at the expense of truth.
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Summary: Infomative and a lot of fun
Review: This book is a wonderful example of what happens when you pay close attention to some of the so-called "unexplained mysteries" - they get explained. Mr. Randi will be the first to tell there is a lot we don't know - that's why we have science! But what we do know is that a lot of the mysteries our media promotes aren't that mysterious when looked at with a skeptical eye. To complain that Mr. Randi is taking away our purpose in life is just plain stupid. We determine our own purpose in life! And thank you Mr. Randi for making it your purpose to write this great book!
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Summary: A book which is itself a kind of 'flim-flam'
Review: James Randi is a zealot of the religion of Scientific-Materialism. Like all religions, SM seeks to define reality and howit operates; its assumption is that all phenomena are both observable and testable, and it is characterized by an exaggerated faith in the methods of natural science and the conclusions of (some) scientists. Scientific-Materialists are not skeptics - they have a deep and profound faith and examine alternative philosophies not as possibly true but as heresies against modernism. Randi has made his name in the SM community in the '70's, claiming that all psychic phenomena are fake. This book, written in 1980, is his claim to be Grand Inquisitor of the SM organization, the Committee to Scientifically Investigate Claims Of the Paranormal (CSICOP, pronounced 'psy-cop'.) Unfortunately for Randi he has learned an expensive and time-consuming lesson: simply being able to demonstrate an alternative explanation for phenomena is not the same as PROVING a psychic claim to be fake. Randi's fanatical assertions that the psychic abilities claimed by some people (Uri Geller for one) were 'fake' was challenged in court in the mid-80's. Randi lost, as any honest scientist could have predicted - without using psychic powers! As the other reviews indicate, this book will be treated as holy writ by believers in SM, as an entertaining sideshow by the open-minded, and as repugnant by believers in the philosophies Randi scorns.
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