Flim-Flam!: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions by James Randi

Flim-Flam!: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions Reviews

• 
  Chris

  Now hold still while I read your aura. Yes, my spirit guide is telling me something, that you are experiencing some kind of pain or discomfort in your back, or perhaps your shoulders. And this is typical of someone born under your star sign, you know? Of course you do - your type is very insightful, even if you do sometimes let little things escape your notice from time to time. Here - I have a medicine that will help you, a special homeopathic formula that I mixed myself. It's proof against all aches and pains. Yes, I have a spoon somewhere around - no, not that one, that one's bent. I could tell you that I got the recipe from visiting aliens, but you would never believe me. Perhaps it was Atlanteans....
  
  Ah, there is one other thing.... My spirit guide tells me that there is another spirit who would talk to you - someone you miss very much. I'm getting the letter P, or maybe G.... Does that mean something to you? Ah, good, good. My abilities have increased a hundredfold since I started transcendental meditation, and I credit the Master with my improved skills. Well, our time is almost up. I have to go charge my dowsing rod with the crystals that were given to me by my young daughters. They say that the fairies gave them to them, and who am I to say otherwise? But I will say this before we part - the numbers of your name, crossed against your biorhythms, tell me that you must not enter into any dealings of a financial nature this week.
  
  You can leave your check on the table by the door.
  
  There is one truth that I have learned in my days, and that there is no idea so ridiculous, so implausible, so poorly-defined, that someone, somewhere won't fall for it. Whether it's psychic surgeons, aura readers, tellers of the future or viewers of past lives, UFO hunters, witch doctors, table-tippers, spoon-benders, mind-readers or water-dowsers, if you can figure out some simple slight of hand, the odds are good that you can convince someone you have supernatural powers. A few blurry photographs and some enthusiasm, and you can have aliens on our shores. Some clever guesses and a keen knowledge of human nature, and you'll never have to work a day in your life.
  
  If you're like me, it's enough to make you want to disavow humankind and just go live somewhere off in the woods. Thankfully, James Randi is not like me.
  
  A longtime magician and skeptic, James Randi has been one of the driving forces of modern skepticism. Since his 1972 debunking of spoon-bender Uri Geller, he has been an authority on people who claim to have supernatural abilities. He has traveled the world in search of these people, revealing the methods by which they knowingly or unknowingly deceive people who want so desperately to believe. This book, written in 1982 and well in need of an updated and revised edition, documents many of Randi's investigations in painstaking and unrelenting detail.
  
  He tells us first of the hoax perpetrated by two young English girls, one which was good enough to capture not just a credulous nation of newspaper readers, but a man regarded as one of the greatest minds of his time - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1917, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths released several photographs which showed them surrounded by gossamer-winged fairies. The public went wild for their story. Experts were called in to examine the photographs, and they all pronounced them genuine. The girls were interviewed, their cameras and equipment checked out, and no evidence of trickery could be found. In any case, believers said, two young girls would have no incentive to lie to the entire nation like this, would they?
  
  Well, they did. Perhaps it wasn't their intention to deceive the world, but that's how it turned out. As of Randi's writing, they hadn't admitted it outright, but a year after publication, they did. What started as simple fun with a camera and some paper cut-outs escalated into something uncontrollable by two young girls, and a legend was born.
  
  Elsie and Frances may have been innocents overtaken by events, but there are far more people who are fully conscious of their deceptions. A Holy Man who promises everything up to and including the ability to fly if you just follow his word and his special meditation technique. Researchers so intent on discovering psychic powers that they disregard even the most basic of experimental controls. People who manufacture fake artifacts to support their belief in ancient alien astronauts. There are those who take money from the unwitting and those who don't, some who treat the ability they believe they have with humility and those who don't. The weird, the arrogant and the dangerous - Randi's seen 'em all. And every time another one pops up, he knows what to look for.
  
  Belief is a weird thing. Under careful examination, every claim that Randi has seen has fallen apart. He has listened to them carefully and asked a very simple question that seems to elude so many others: How else could this effect be achieved? As a lifetime magician (though he prefers the term "conjurer"), Randi is an expert at getting you to think you see something that really isn't there, and he brings this expertise to bear when he investigates claims of the paranormal. What's more, he has a very good grasp of experimental procedure and how to test for a specific effect, and he is ruthless in making sure they are adhered to.
  
  But - and this is important - Randi is fair. If you come up to him and say, "Randi, I can see auras which tell me who the all gay people are," he won't just laugh in your face and say that you're crazy. He'll listen to your story, how your power works and how you use it, and then propose a simple test to see if it really exists. The test is to be double-blind, so when the target people come in and check the "gay" or "straight" box, that information is kept from both the aura-reader and the person administering the test. What's more, the psychic has to agree in advance on the conditions of the test, signing a promise (rarely kept) to accept the results. Tests are usually done multiple times, just to give the subject a chance. When the results come in as negative - as they always have thus far - Randi doesn't gloat. He doesn't laugh and say "I told you so." In fact, in one chapter he mentions that he feels bad sometimes, telling people who honestly believe they have a unique gift that, in fact, they don't.
  
  I suspect that Randi really wants supernatural powers to exist. I think he wants to meet someone who can move objects with her mind, talk to the dead or find water just by concentrating hard. Why else, then, would he have his Million-Dollar Challenge? What is described in Flim-Flam as a $10,000 reward for proof of supernatural abilities has grown significantly. Not because Randi is richer, but because he feels that his money is absolutely safe. Yet I think he would be happy to be able to give it away one day.
  
  This book should be required reading for everyone who has encountered what they believe to be the paranormal. It is detailed, it is harsh and it is unequivocal in its assertion that if you see someone doing something that logic demands cannot be done, chances are excellent that it's a trick rather than super-powers.
  
  Unfortunately, the True Believers will invariably be unaffected, and that is something else that Randi takes great pains to show. No matter how often someone was shown to be a liar, a fake or a fraud, there were always supporters ready to make excuses. The psychics themselves are also very good at inventing reasons why their powers cannot be tested - the wrong kind of weather, interference from the cameras that are recording the tests, or just bad energy from the skeptics in the room. All the logic and science in the world won't convince those who don't want to be convinced.
  
  As much fun as it is to read about The Amazing Randi rushing about the globe to put hoaxers in their places, it's also a little depressing. It was written in 1982, on the heels of Randi's book The Truth About Uri Geller, which exposed the spoon-bending psychic as a fraud, so you would think the one-two punch of these books would be enough to put paid to ridiculous beliefs in ideas that were demonstrably false. Well, you'd be wrong. Newspapers still run horoscopes every day, you can get a biorhythm app for your iPhone, psychics and mediums still rake in tons of cash, and there still innumerable people who put their faith, money and lives in the hands of psychic healers - only to lose all three.
  
  But Randi is undaunted. He started the James Randi Educational Foundation to support critical thinking and skepticism, he's still active in the skeptical community, and he's still accepting applications from people who want his million dollars. He may have hoped that this book would be a nail in the coffin of psuedoscience and woo, but even though that didn't pan out, he never gave up. One by one, case by case, the Amazing Randi has stared down the wild-eyed stare of unreason, and he has never blinked.
  
  For that, I will always be grateful.
• 
  Ross Blocher

  James Randi is a looming figure in my circle of friends, but for those unfamiliar: he was a well-known magician ("The Amazing Randi") who devoted an entire second career to exposing fakes and charlatans. With his cash prize for proof of the paranormal ($10,000 in these pages, but eventually reaching $1,000,000), he almost single-handedly ushered in the modern skeptical movement. Flim-Flam!: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions is his best-known work, and details his frequent clashes with those who claim they can talk to the dead, bend spoons with their minds, dowse for water, see with their eyes closed, levitate without mechanical assistance, and otherwise defy the known laws of physics. Alas, unicorns are not featured: that was just rhetorical flair.
  
  Flim-Flam! came out the same year I did, 1982, but I did not learn of Randi's existence until 2003 when I was in college and started attending the Skeptic's Society lecture series that sparked my own journey away from belief. I got to meet Randi at one of those events on May 13, 2005, and numerous times thereafter. I probably bought this book then, and I've seen Randi give dozens of lectures and interviews, and featured in countless
  online clips, as well as the film
  An Honest Liar, which is a great way to learn more about his life. He's influenced my life in many ways, and I now co-host
  a podcast about fringe science, spirituality and claims of the paranormal. I've even volunteered for 15 years with
  the CFIIG (Center for Inquiry Investigations Group), which offers a $250,000 cash prize for proof of claims of the paranormal.
  
  All of this is to establish that, as an avid reader and public skeptic, it is absurd that I had never read Flim-Flam!. When my [skeptic] book club devoted a month to the books that have evaded us the longest, this one cocked its eyebrow at me from the bookshelf. Now that I've read it, it has lived up to my expectations!
  
  The thing that stands out most is Randi's forceful, unapologetic tone. Typically in books, one expects a certain careful detachment and circumspect delivery, but that has never been Randi's style. He has no qualms calling out fakers, mountebanks, bamboozlers, and charlatans for their humbuggery, malarky, and general bunkum. No bushes are beaten around. The archaisms may not be quite so closely grouped, but they are present and I appreciate them. There are scare quotes, sarcastic taunts, and exasperated asides, which makes for a lively if unconventional reading experience. "Wow, he actually said that!" A quick example, leveled by Randi at a family of "table-tippers" who claimed to be in contact with the spirit world: "When I notified them that I had caught them cheating, they informed me that they denied my expertise and did not accept my opinion. Tough, kids. You failed on a grand scale. No Kewpie doll."
  
  As you might suspect, Randi garnered enemies in his lifetime, but as Arnold Schwarzenegger demurred in True Lies: "Yeah, but they were all bad." One who rose to the level of arch-nemesis was Uri Geller, the Israeli psychic and spoon bender, whom Randi
  famously exposed on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show for doing tricks while claiming supernatural ability. Randi wrote a dedicated book The Truth About Uri Geller, but here shares revelations from one of Geller's assistants, who details some of his former boss's deceptions.
  
  Randi addresses a wide variety of pseudosciences, from the Cottingly Fairies (photos that were accepted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but are shown conclusively here to be paper cutouts), the Bermuda Triangle (there's no phenomenon to explain - ships and planes do not disappear there in any significant number), astrology, UFO sightings, Transcendental Meditation levitators, medical intuitives, ancient alien theories, telepathy, numerology, psychic surgery, dowsing, psychic photography, and a host of other unproven claims. Randi uses his magical acumen to design tests that quickly separate performers from sleight of hand trickery, and often calls upon other experts to explain quirks of photography, materials science, and other relevant phenomena. He reserves particular ire for parapsychologists and intellectuals who claim to use the tools of science but don't, as well as otherwise legitimate scientists who refuse to admit they can be fooled. In the process, they allow fakers to hijack the credibility of scientific methods and institutions.
  
  This remains an important book for understanding the nature of paranormal claims, and should convince anyone who reads it that many, if not all, claims of the paranormal are the results of poor thinking and often outright trickery. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Before we alter or abandon our scientific understanding of the physical world, we should thoroughly vet anyone who claims otherwise.
• 
  Zadignose

  Another reason to think humanity is doomed.
  
  Also, nothing changes.
  
  Also, I needed to read the debunking of TM just to remind me that, as much as I admire David Lynch as one of the great artists of our time, his faith in this wacky cult is misplaced... which is why knowing the artist is almost always a bad idea.
  
  Of course, on the other side, I did read
  Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity.
  
  One thing I was forced to wonder: having grown up learning about biorhythms, "mysteries" like big-foot and the Bermuda Triangle, having owned a Ouija board, and having read various books about occult topics, how come I was never taken in by any of it? How come I never managed to fool myself or others into thinking it was anything more than something goofy and imaginative? I.e., why, upon discovering that there's no sense at the bottom of astrology or tarot, after figuring out that one cannot will oneself into flying, why didn't I just lie to myself the way so many hundreds of thousands of others have? It's not as if I didn't grow up in a hippy age full of lunatics.
  
  Well, anyway, maybe I found other ways to go insane.
• 
  Marijan Šiško

  Although writing style is quite dry occasionally, the book does a great job in discrediting various fradulent and simply nonsensical an mystical practices.
• 
  GD

  This is a book written by James Randi, a famous magician and also a famous pre-MythBusters exposer of ESP/magic/UFO/etc frauds. I really love James Randi, and I'm glad he's still around and at 90 years old still seems as sharp and with it as ever. But this book, well, mainly it's a little too dated.
  
  The edition I have has a foreward from 2010 I think, and he himself notes that it's a little outdated, but still valid. The thing is though, the things he's exposing in this book, Bermuda Triangle, Chariot of the Gods, etc., are things that almost no one would take seriously today, unlike when I was a little kid and there was actually a copy of Chariot of the Gods in my school's library. Which is nothing against Randi, it's just too contemporary with the world when it was written that it got a little left behind. The other complaint I have is that it is too detailed for a popular audience, just a little. He warns at the beginning of the book, before he lays into the famous English fairies hoax, that he will go overboard with the fairies to set the tone for the book, but he kind of goes overboard on most of the chapters, where I kept having to flip back and look at names and details he would bring up later. This does show that Randi is a fucking keen observer of bullshit, and he's harder to trick than a professional scientist a lot of the time, but it's a little hard for a general audience to keep interested in a lot of the minutia.
  
  I'd still recommend this book for people who make a hobby of skepticism, but I think I'll just admire Randi from afar after this. Very cool and useful guy.
• 
  Melissa McShane

  This was probably a more exciting read thirty years ago, when it was written, because so many of the parapsychological organizations or ideas Randi writes about debunking don't exist anymore. Randi's frustration at the continuing gullibility of people who fall for "psychic" cons comes through a little too loudly at times, making some sections seem more strident than necessary. I was particularly interested in his account of Arthur Conan Doyle's fairies, as well as a few of the stories of people who knowingly conned others into believing they had psychic powers, but there were a couple of chapters I skimmed. But probably the most moving chapter was his discussion of religious cons, particularly the Jonestown massacre, that ends with Randi being furious at the misuse of religion to get gain or manipulate others. Randi continues to investigate parapsychological phenomena to this day, and I would love to see an updated version of this book.
• 
  Leonard Pierce

  James Randi's first major study of pseudoscience and the paranormal is lively, passionate, and incredible well-reasoned. It made a huge impression on me when I first read it as a teenager, and it's held up surprisingly well over the years, largely because the methods of buncombe he condemns rarely change.
• 
  Patrick

  If we found something paranormal, we wouldn't call it paranormal
  
  JDN 2456387 EDT 16:50.
  
  
  Since I won $2500 of his money (The James Randi Educational Foundation scholarship), I felt I should probably read some of James Randi's books. I happened upon Flim-Flam!, which is older than I am, and yet... the nonsense it catalogues and refutes is pretty much the same stuff we're dealing with today. Why, just this last Tuesday I had someone try to convince me that quantum mechanics allows precognition, citing Daryl Bem's 2010 precognition experiments, which really serve to indict research standards in social science more than anything else. Flim-Flam! contains a number of examples basically indistinguishable from these claims.
  Randi is a magician by trade, so he doesn't have any erudite academic qualifications. This makes his writing breezy and easy to read; it also makes him more willing than most to actually call people out as frauds and charlatans. Dawkins does not suffer fools well; Randi does not suffer them at all. He has tested a great many paranormalists, and can thoroughly catalogue their frauds and failures.
  Most of the book is exactly that; Randi goes through a long list of paranormalists whose claims he has tested experimentally; not surprisingly all of them fail, and some of them fail catastrophically. The numerous frauds were to be expected; but a large number of Randi's subjects seem to be true believers. They really think they have mysterious paranormal powers, and are shocked and disappointed when they fail Randi's tests.
  Somewhere between hilarious and pathetic are the excuses they all make; whatever the result, they can always come up with a reason that doesn't involve abandoning belief in the phenomenon. At some level, they know exactly how things will turn out, exactly as non-paranormal science would predict; and yet, they still believe.
  Randi doesn't try to make any deep philosophical arguments against the paranormal, preferring instead a strictly empirical approach. He rigorously tests every claim using the best scientific tools available. Provide compelling scientific evidence of a paranormal event under appropriately controlled conditions, and Randi will shower you with apologizes, fame, and above all, money. In 1982 his prize was $10,000 ($24,000 in today's dollars); today it is $1 million. No one has won it, and like Randi I strongly suspect no one ever will.
  Fuzzy-headed paranormalists will of course argue that the reason for this is that Randi doesn't play fair, or his "negative energy" ruins the process; some even go as far to say that he is himself a psychic who suppresses other psychics for personal gain. But from reading his work, I get the strong impression that Randi really does play fair, and really would be delighted to see evidence of paranormal events. The reason I don't expect him to ever pay out is not that he would refuse, but that the phenomena simply do not exist to be found.
  Randi also makes a point that I've found to be true in my own life: If you don't place a bet, people say you aren't putting your money where your mouth is; and then if you do, they say you are showboating and being theatrical. I had precisely this reaction when an acquaintance of mine made the preposterous claim that he could justify morality without making any assumptions at all. I offered him his choice of $100 or a 10% share in the Science of Morality, and he naturally refused and complained about my theatrics. When he finally did reveal his brilliant theory... suffice to say it was underwhelming. I think I experienced a little taste of Randi's life in that moment.
  There are two reasons why I'm not sure Flim-Flam! succeeds. The first is that the sort of people who believe in the paranormal are unlikely to read it at all. The second is that I think paranormal claims fail even before they have to be empirically investigated.
  How can I be so sure that we will never find anything paranormal? Randi would say he isn't completely sure, just 99.999% sure after all the negative results. That's certainly a scientifically respectable position, and it's definitely the one I take on certain things, like unicorns, yetis, and faster-than-light travel.
  But when it comes to claims of the paranormal, I think we may be able to go a bit further than that. Still not absolutely certain, since nothing is; but as close to certainty as we are ever going to get. There is a fundamental logical reason why paranormal, and also magical, and also miraculous, phenomena cannot exist: If they existed, we wouldn't call them that.
  It's funny how paranormalists abuse quantum mechanics, because quantum mechanics really does say a lot of baffling, marvelous, mind-bending things about the universe. But the reason we don't call it "magical" or "paranormal" is that it's actually real. It works. It can be quantified and verified. Indeed, quantum mechanics has been verified to a level of precision that is almost impossible to conceive: The anomalous magnetic moment of the electron has been predicted to one part in a trillion. This would be like measuring the width of the United States to within a human hair or the distance from Earth to Mars to the nearest inch. Far from being the "anything goes" that most people seem to think it is, quantum mechanics is so incredibly precise that it can tell the difference between 1.42582 GHz and 1.42584 GHz. The reason it seems so weird is that we are so weird; we're these huge 10^28-nucleon monstrosities that operate in the bizarre world of large-scale decoherence.
  But suppose we do find something very different from what we currently predict. Suppose we find a way to achieve faster-than-light travel, or discover telepathy, or even, wonder of wonders, verify that Bem was right about precognition all along. Once that new discovery became verified, explained, and fitted into our scientific paradigm, people would stop calling it paranormal. Yesterday's magic is tomorrow's technology.
  This is really the problem with supernatural beliefs in general: They couldn't possibly be true, for if they were, you wouldn't call them "supernatural". For most people, things stop seeming magical once they start making sense; this is an incredibly dumb approach to the world, because it means that the better you can function the more disillusioned you feel, but it's also the way most people seem to work. This may be the fundamental difference between scientists and the rest of humanity; when scientists figure out how something works, it feels more fascinating to us, more magical if you like that word. Perhaps this mindset is trainable; if it is, we must endeavor to train it in as many people as possible. People must learn to take joy in the merely real, to see the magic in what is called mundane.
  Most people, however, are exactly the opposite. When something becomes explained or even explainable, it loses its sense of wonder for them. And they tend to project this attitude onto scientists: "Your life must feel so meaningless! You take all the wonder out of everything!"
  But of course, any wonder that knowledge can take away... wasn't really there in the first place. If it's not cool enough that we can communicate thoughts to each other's minds thousands of miles away--because we do it using hands and eyes and Internet connections--then how would it ever be cool enough? Suppose we had telepathy that used quantum physics, or Slipspace, or even the spirits of the dead; once we understood it, you'd say that wasn't magical either.
  If it's not wondrous enough that we can manipulate objects in space, even create whole new classes of objects that can then be sent off autonomously into the void, then what would be wondrous enough for you? Suppose we had telekinesis or astral projection; once it was explained in terms of energy conservation, you'd find it boring again.
  
• 
  Todd Martin

  In order to fully appreciate Flim-Flam! you have to go back to 1982 when the book was first published. Uri Geller was bending spoons on national television talk shows, In Search Of was on TV, and there was a national fascination with ESP, Big Foot, crop circles, the Loch Ness Monster, psychics, faith healers, astrology and a host of other nonsensical gobbledygook (some of which still exists today). The time was right for a healthy dose of skepticism and rationality and who better to kick off the conversation than a leading expert in the arts of trickery and deception … noted magician, mentalist and escape artist James (The Amazing) Randi.
  
  Subjects tackled in the book include: UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, astrology, Arthur Conan Doyle and the Cottingley Fairies, transcendental meditation, so-called ‘alien artifacts’ (aka Nazca Lines, Egyptian Pyramids, or the moai of Easter Island), parapsychology studies at the Standford Research Institute in the 70s and 80s, and others. Although a deconstruction of astrology or the Bermuda Triangle may seem akin to shooting fish in a barrel, the exercise is of value since it instructs the reader on the principles of critical thinking, rationality and the many ways individuals can misinterpret evidence to produce an erroneous conclusion. Once you’ve mastered the techniques of evaluating the evidence for astrology it’s a short jump to apply the same approach to topics such as: whether vaccines cause autism, whether anthropocentric climate change is a hoax, whether high levels of gun ownership make us safe, whether trickle-down economics is effective, and whether prayer works (the evidence for each is decidedly ‘no’).
  
  Unlike a ‘denialist’ that dismisses claims out of hand or cherry picks evidence to support their position (i.e. climate change denialists, evolution denialists, holocaust denialists, HIV denialists etc.) a true skeptic investigates the evidence impartially, determines whether simpler explanations for the phenomenon exist, and whether those who promote the claims have motivations to perpetrate a hoax. In every case throughout all of history the preponderance of evidence points to explanations for these phenomenon that are decidedly non-supernatural in origin. In fact, Randi has put his money where his mouth is through the
  One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge in which the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) has agreed to pay one million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. Needless to say, no one has successfully completed the test, because the paranormal doesn’t exist.
  
  Randi is blunt with his denunciation of “woo-woo”, which is certainly appropriate when dealing with those who benefit from perpetrating dishonesty. Though I do believe he could have been somewhat more sensitive in the manner in which he addresses those who believe in such nonsense. Sure … they are gullible, credible and lazy for not bothering to critically examine the issues for themselves, but they are also victims of fraud and perhaps deserve some sympathy as such. Randi has apologized for his tone, describing it as, "killing the gnat with a sledgehammer."
  
  Personally, I found the tone of the book appropriate. While it is indeed overkill to use a sledgehammer to dispose of a tiny insect, when it comes to a bug that is particularly irksome, annoying and carries potentially dangerous diseases … it is also very, very satisfying.
• 
  ariane

  I have yet to read a skeptic book that I didn't like, but Randi's is particularly loveable. He's seen the same garbage a million times over and doesn't give a shit. Yet he curses like a country vicar and I love it. Flim-flam! Codswallop! Poppycock! Its delightful and charming, especially so because the man is right. A skeptic oldie but goodie.
• 
  Laura

  One day I was telling my coworker about how frustrated I was that my father goes to see a chiropractor when they are total quacks. It bothers me particularly because my dad is a science teacher who is a stereotype of those “I Fucking Love Science” science worshippers. My 60 year old coworker was sympathetic to my complaints as he is an avid reader of The Skeptical Enquirer. He recommended I read this book, which I had coincidentally already set aside so that I could show a picture to Kai because the title made me laugh.
  
  The book is by a magician, James Randi, who has dedicated his life to debunking psychics, paranormal claims, astrology and that sort of thing. I’m never quite sure where I stand on all of this. My partner and I both grew up in families that place a very high emphasis on spirituality. Her grandpa was a professional astrologist. My childhood home had a whole room dedicated to the altar where my dad does this whole divination runestone process every morning. Even though he considers himself a man of science his spirituality is deeply, deeply important. It’s something i’ve always been surrounded by and it continues as many people I know are really into spirituality and tarot and astrology and the like. I had a few years of being an atheist (this was mostly as backlash to going to church) but now I’m kinda at the stage where it seems like a buzzkill to be against it and some of it is fun. I don’t really care as long as it isn’t actively harmful. I am not particularly into woo woo stuff but I respect other’s beliefs. But what gets me is when there is a veneer of scientific legitimacy over it, like the way people think Chiropractors are serious medical facilities. The whole thing is tricky because I can completely understand the problems with western medicine and the deification of Science as something Pure and True opposing other fields of knowledge as lesser and silly. There is of course a racial component to all of this, with white western medicine seen as legitimate and nonwhite medicine as unscientific hocus pocus. But at the same time if a loved one were refusing cancer treatment and only getting reiki I would be furious. Idk.
  
  Randi has an ongoing offer of 10,000 to anyone who can prove a paranormal/ESP/etc claim to him. Because he is a magician, he is well qualified to expose sleight of hand trickery. Most of the book is him detailing (the details are VERY detailed to the detriment of the reader’s enjoyment) the experiments and either flaws in the experiments or the way the subject deceived the testers. He goes into overwhelming detail on every one of them. He warned us in the first chapter that he would be “killing the gnat with a sledgehammer”, so I can’t say I didn’t know it would be like this. He debunks psychics, the bermuda triangle, biorhythms, dowsing, and various other paranormal events. It gets to be exhausting.
  
  Here lies the fatal flaw of the book. People literally don’t care about proof or facts. Belief and faith do not need facts. To quote Paramore, it’s not faith if you use your eyes. If you could simply disprove something to get people to stop believing it, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in today.The problem with atheists/skeptics is the human spirit yearns to believe in magic, and science/enlightenment has not proved sufficient to fill that void in people’s hearts. To his credit, Randi is aware of this: “Once an individual, especially a fairly bright one, latches onto a belief system that offers comfort and universal answers, then nature has provided him with innumerable mechanisms to avoid facing up to discomforting challenges to that belief” (106).
  
  Part of the book I wondered why exactly Randi cared so much– what’s it to him if some 15 year old says they can read while blindfolded? How would that trick impact anything? But I guess at this time there were so many legitimate and respected institutions like Stanford throwing money at what should’ve been obviously seen as hogwash. Randi seems aware of the fact that facts don’t dissuade people, citing millenarian sects such as the 7th day adventists that are still around today despite the world ending prophecies not happening back in 1844. Yet he soldiers on, because he wants a rational world.
  
  I felt sad for him knowing that in many ways we still have just as many problems with determining what is true or not. In fact things are probably as bad as they’ve ever been. I’m not the first person to go on about post truth society, so I won’t get too much into it. It’s even worse because beliefs are determined along culture war lines. Thinking specifically of how “science” has been trotted out during the pandemic and all the shoddy treatments people have been taking.
  
  I was like what’s Randi’s deal re: being so obsessed with Uri Gellar’s claims being fake, let the man live! But then I thought of some examples of times someone has been unrelenting about proving the truth to society’s benefit. I could say the same about John Carreyrou, the author of Bad Blood, being obsessed with Elizabeth Holmes. Just let her live, she just wants to help people get simpler healthcare! But of course we all know how the Theranos saga went down, and I’m glad for it.
  
  Overall, I found this book thought provoking even though it is a little outdated. But it is interesting to see what things are still around today 40 years after this book came out. Harold Puthoff, one of the parapsychologists in chapter 7, is still around today. He actually is the co-founder of To The Stars, the UFO organization with Tom Delonge the Blink 182 guy. I file the UFO conspiracies in the harmless fun category. I never hear about Dowsing these days, but astrology is more popular than ever. I don’t see the harm in that, but I do see the harm in cults or in damaging medical beliefs.
  
  I thought much of Randi’s criticism to be misplaced. He spends a whole chapter on Transcendental meditation, and cites experiments that seem to show that meditation is just falling asleep. I don’t see the point in disparaging meditation itself, who cares if you can prove whether someone goes into a different brain wave state or not. If there are benefits like less anxiety, which he acknowledges, why not do it? But I do see the harm in the organization Transcendental Meditation. I don’t think disproving meditation itself is a good way to stop people from joining it, I think showing people the cultiness and financial drain and level of control is a better deterrent. Randi has a blanket anti-falsehood stance and believes all of it is harmful. I can respect the consistency, but I think to be effective in convincing others you have to choose your battles.
  
  My coworker the skeptic and I were discussing the book and I voiced some of these concerns. He said that he feels that sometimes the skeptic community is just as fanatical as those they decry. He said that I should take what good I can find with the book and throw out what isn’t useful to me. I know that I have almost at random decided what things I will and won’t believe, and they are not all based in reason or logic. I also know I have experienced plenty of things that I simply can’t explain.
  
  
  Other thoughts:
  My whole thing with numerology is that none of it makes sense because it is all using our base 10 system when anyone with a brain should know the cosmos and magic and nature should all be using a base 12 system… Many of my friends have kindly sat through my powerpoint on this topic.
  
  The whole book reminded me of 2 stories in the Exhalation collection by Ted Chiang. One was the truth of fact the truth of feeling, about the myths we make for ourselves, and the other was the story of the scientist coming to terms with the fact that the world may not be 6,000 years old. I think I talked about this a lot in that review so no need to rehash.
  
  Randi has a good takedown of why the ancient aliens theory is simply racist. “At no point does he [ancient alien theory proponent] call to our attention the miracle of the Parthenon or Stonehenge, because these wonders are European, built by people he expects to have the intelligence and ability to do such work. He cannot conceive of our brown and black brothers having the wit to conceive or the skill to build the great structures they did leave behind. Instead, to satisfy what appear to be his personal prejudices, he invents some sort of divine/extraterrestrial/supernatural intervention that he maintains was necessary to enable inferior races to put stone upon stone of place paint upon a cave wall” He spends the rest of the chapter talking about how he finds the sublime everywhere he goes. I get that he feels frustrated that people need to seek out all this extra divine magic when the world is already pretty magical as it is.
• 
  Ana Mardoll

  Flim-Flam / 0-87975-198-3
  
  Having been born in the 80's and relatively insulated from the majority of the claims presented in the book, I can honestly say that James Randi's book is still useful today, if only as a guidebook to the past. If those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, then similarly those who do not read Randi's book are doomed to fall prey to such schemes as fake fairies and make-believe aliens who provide blueprints on rocks of open-heart surgery...for a small fee, of course. This book is an incredible and fascinating catalog of the search for faeries, UFOs, spoon-benders, card-readers, and faith healers through the years, as well as several interesting applicants to the famous Randi Challenge.
  
  James Randi has been criticized in the past for his somewhat hectoring authorial tone and his sometimes open disdain for the believers he deals with. I am sympathetic to both points, as I certainly believe in the use of honey rather than vinegar, yet I sympathize also with Randi faced with the frustrating hurdles he must clear. Consider all the Uri Geller believers who not only refuse to consider the evidence that James Randi presents, but who also persist in the belief that Randi, too, is 'the real thing' because of his duplication of the tricks of the false 'psychics' - even in the face of his repeated insistence that he is not a psychic but just an entertainer. How frustrating that would be!
  
  Or consider the hundreds of people Randi has seen stop taking their medications on the say so of men he knows to be charlatans, only to watch these poor souls die weeks later, often ignoring the pleas of their loved ones and convinced that all they need is more faith. How can Randi *not* be angry, frustrated, and - yes - hectoring toward the charlatans who steal and lie and kill, and even against those who facilitate them by saying that they don't really 'hurt' anyone, so what is the problem? These uncritical followers provide them the necessary media attention to perform more and more damage to the human race as a whole.
  
  So if Randi is no saint or angel, it is equally true that a saint or angel is not what is required. What is needed is a man wielding the sledgehammers of logic and stage-magic, and Randi provides this, superbly. This book is both fascinating and entertaining to read, and definitely worth checking out even at this much later date.
  
  ~ Ana Mardoll
• 
  Emelie

  Sure, I'm interest in the paranormal but I also have an open, critical mind to it all. Both sides believes and views are fascinating. But the book was just boring. Nothing against the subject itself. Didn't catch my interest with the writing, is all.
• 
  Nick Riba-Ramírez

  i couldn't even finish it. i hated randi's voice in it and although i have a lot of respect for his dedication to debunking things like these, he came off very unnecessarily aggressive. and you would think that no one actually believes in psychics these days and if they do then they're not really putting anyone in danger are they? that was just kind of my mindset throughout the bit that i did read. and i hate that this book can be used in a way that it wasn't meant to be used; to discredit legitimate sources in order to push an agenda of more conspiracies (yes i am speaking from personal experience here), the opposite of what it was meant to do. also the style it's written in is so boring at time i couldn't even get through a paragraph without zoning out. it moves so slowly and it's written in such a hostile way that 1) it damages the ethos of the writer and 2) makes it way less accessible to readers in that it's hard to actually enjoy it. so yeah in short i hated it but i'm rating it two stars because i have respect for the man for being dedicated to researching this and educating people who need it about the topic.
• 
  Colleen Flaherty

  I had seen a documentary on Randi years ago, and I thought I would enjoy this book based on his story. Basically, uncovering hoaxes, especially used to exploit people (and what better time is there for truth?).
  
  But the book was painful. It’s somewhat not his fault; the book was so dated that it was hard to get into. It was written in the early 80s, and I just think an expose of the Bermuda Triangle isn’t super relevant. Also his chapter on Transcendental Meditation borders on racist.
  
  But mostly, it’s pedantic, overly detailed and just not a good read. Randi comes off like such a pretentious douche that I’m almost rooting for the charlatans.
• 
  Mark Plaid

  The words of a master skeptic!
• 
  Robu-sensei

  Skeptic and professional magician James Randi has made a second career of investigation claims of paranormal phenomena and psychic abilities, as a representative of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). In Flim-Flam!, The Amazing Randi dissects a variety of paranormal beliefs and claims, exposing each as a case of deliberate fraud or unintentional self-delusion. In doing so, Randi establishes a code of skepticism not unlike Carl Sagan's famous "Baloney Detection Kit" (see Science as a Candle in the Dark).
  
  Most of the phenomena dealt with in this book are fairly obscure, but significant in that many of the unsubstantiated claims and outright hoaxes managed to convince scientists and other "experts," including famed Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, who examined the claims with a startlingly uncritical eye. Surprising to me was the large proportion of reported paranormal phenomena that were not fraudulent, but rather "honest" cases of distorted perceptions compounded with faulty logic. Of special interest was the chapter on "dowsing," in light of claims by former Analog Science Fiction and Fact editor John W. Campbell that the US military regularly used dowsers to find underground water.
  
  It is crucial to note that the mission of CSICOP is not to "demonstrate" that paranormal claims are false, as this would require an a priori assumption of falsehood. Instead, CSICOP provides a means of testing such claims in a well-controlled setting, so that genuine psychic or paranormal activity can be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt. Nonetheless, no applicant for Randi's $10,000 prize (now $1 million) for verifiable paranormal activity has met with anything but utter failure in a rigorously controlled environment, where chicanery and flawed perception are readily identified.
• 
  Kirsty

  James Randi is well-known as a magician and outspoken sceptic of all things paranormal. His mission to expose paranormal and pseudoscientific frauds and promote critical thinking among the public is well documented, as is his million dollar prize for anyone who can demonstrate paranormal abilities under controlled conditions.
  
  This book, published in 1982, discusses some of the main areas of the paranormal and pseudoscience, including dowsing, UFOs, fairies, psychic surgery and religious cults. In terms of subject matter, this book is excellent. Randi discusses all of the topics in great detail, with a huge amount of information regarding previous ‘tests’ performed on those claiming to have paranormal abilities and his own investigations. He discusses in detail the lengths to which he has gone to investigate as objectively as possible the extraordinary claims of those wishing to win his prize. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the various rationalisations and excuses that some of these people give to explain away their failures. It really makes you think about what you believe and why. The book ends with a long list of publications, some of which are pro-paranormal and others are anti-paranormal, for anyone wishing to look into any of the topics further.
  
  The only negative aspect of this book for me was the sometimes rather long-winded prose. I found myself getting bored at times, as the pace of the text really slowed down. That said, I’m very glad I persevered as it is certainly a very important and informative book for anyone willing to take a critical look at the paranormal and pseudoscience.
  
• 
  Marlowe

  I don't consider myself to be a Skeptic. I run with a lot of people in the skeptic community, and I do think of myself and generally skeptical, but I'm not a big-S Skeptic. I knew of James Randi, of course, but I was never terribly familiar with him or his work. So when the Centre for Inquiry managed to book him for a pan-Canada tour, I figured that I ought to read up on him a little bit before he hit Ottawa.
  
  Because I was reading Flim-Flam around the same time that I saw Randi speak live, the parallels between the two were made quite evident. In both cases, there's an ostensible thesis, although the experience is much more of a series of vignettes from Randi's professional life.
  
  The tone throughout the book is light and conversational, like Randi's telling an acquaintance about the work he does. He covers a number of psychics and supernatural phenomena, explaining the tricks. He personally exposed most of them, although some, such as the Cottingley fairies, are merely explained.
  
  I found Flim-Flam to be an interesting read - enough so to inspire me to want to learn more about conjuring and mentalism. And while it was written in the early '80s, it really isn't at all dated. Recommended for anyone with an interest in the paranormal, or with skepticism in general.
• 
  Kacee Moreton

  Too bad Randi is retired because I'd love to see him debunk all the Flim Flam flying about currently. Great read!
• 
  Петър Стойков

  Нищо особено интересно в тази книга.
  
  Джеймс Ранди е един от най-известните и активни скептици - посветил се е на изучаване и разобличаване на астролози, фън-шуи, екстрасенси, хомеопати, лечители, гадатели в всякаква друга "окултна" паплач. Той дава и наградата от 1 млн. долара на фондация "Ранди" на всеки, който демонстрира (пред свидетели и в контролирани условия където е сигурно, че не мами), че притежава каквито и да е свръхестествени способности. За 35 г. до сега никой не е прибрал наградата...
  
  Та тази книга е първата му и е посветена на... изобличаването на гореописаните мошеници, разбира се. В началото на книгата Ранди казва, че "в тази книга ще ги удрям здраво", но нищо такова не прави. Текстът е скучен, без живец, без собствено мнение, без грам оригиналност.
  
  Описани някакви събития, обяснено защо не са свръхестествени. Уау. Няма анализ, няма обяснение как точно се правят мошеничествата (а Ранди е професионален илюзионист и ги вдява тия работи), няма съвети как да ги преебем, няма лично мнение, ��яма... нищо няма.
  
  Не си губете времето
  
  
• 
  Halden

  James Randi is known to many as a stage magician but because of his work with CSICOP, his million dollar challenge and his book Flim Flam! he is a veritable guru to the sceptical movement. Flim Flam is a riveting account of Randi’s efforts to shed light and bring a bit of reality to the world of the paranormal. The book focuses on many of Randi’s specific experiments and analysis of various charlatans but can be used as a great tool to learn and/or improve one’s grasp of critical thinking. Flim Flam! is a great example of how a scientific controls and rational examination can easily debunk extraordinary claims.
  
  The desire to see favorable results where none exist is obviously the source of much of the “evidence” presented by parapsychologists. This failing is not limited to those who seek to prove paranormal phenomena; there are also examples of such wishful thinking in the annals of orthodox science.
  
  James Randi Flim Flam!
• 
  Anaala

  Isn't it odd that a book this old is still accurately portraying the tricks that these charlatans use to fool the credulous? How have we as a society become so blind to reality that we allow these charlatans to take advantage of us at our most vulnerable? Why are lies so much more comforting to the masses than the truth?
  
  In this book Randi embarks on a mission to mercilessly expose these people for what they are. He gives each person an adequate test that they agree to to confirm or deny the existence of the powers that they claim to have. Many of those tested honestly believe in their power but one would think that when the tests have proved otherwise and the explanations for the phenomenon that they couldn't understand are given, they would walk away with a better understanding of just how easily we fool ourselves. Instead against all sense they choose their belief over reality mostly because the lies are so much more profitable.
• 
  Yosep

  I've been a James Randi fan and admirer for a long time. You might even say he's one of my heroes. My love got me this book along with a few others of his for Christmas. It is a great book! You seriously have no idea how supposed professionals get stuff wrong all the time and people's desire to believe in the paranormal results in 'Chinese-telephone' style information sharing about paranormal claims...as Isaac Asimov calls it, "The Deadly Misinformation."
  
  You will also learn a bit about 20th century history and how the field of parapsychology is fraught with kooks, frauds, and half-wits. You'll learn some very interesting things indeed! For example, I was floored by the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series, believed that fairies were real. On that note, I hope your curiosity at that last statement leads you to read this book cover to cover.
• 
  Charlie

  This book systematically takes psuedoscience from the 60s and 70s and smashes it with the hammer of science. It can seem a little outdated, talking about pyramids, the Bermuda triangle, etc, until you start to see the patterns that are still around today. No one may be trying to pass off photoshopped pictures of fairies as real anymore, but there are plenty of people who believe in "power hologram" rubber bracelets, homeopathy, astrology, numerology, fung shui, tarot cards, palm reading, acupuncture, and any number of other hoaxes. This book teaches you to see these things like a magician sees them, to look for the trick, and to see them like a scientist sees them, as a phenomenon that, if genuine, is testable.
• 
  Leo Abrantes

  I'm sorry to say that this one was a little bit disappointing, mainly because it's a bit outdated.
  Most of book is a review of the several tests that James Randi carried out in the 70's under the Paranormal challenge. Most of the stories I have read, listened or seen on different blogs and You Tube, so none of them were really new to me.
  
  A great quote at the end of the book sums it all:
  "Throw away the Tarot deck and ignore the astrology column. They are products offered you by charlatans who think you are not the marvelous, capable, independent being you are."
• 
  Varina

  I really wanted to like this book a lot. Parts of it were great, but it all got a little bit pedantic, and I felt like rather than showing the reader how to out-think flim-flamery it was mostly about how great the author is at it. I think Carl Sagan's A Demon Haunted World is a much better choice for that. Also there were no unicorns.