James Randi was a Canadian-American stage magician, author, and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from his foundation at 87.
The Skeptic's Dictionary is a collection of cross-referenced skeptical essays by Robert Todd Carroll, published on his website skepdic.com and in a printed book. The skepdic.com site was launched in 1994 and the book was published in 2003 with nearly 400 entries. As of January 2011 the website has over 700 entries. A comprehensive single-volume guides to skeptical information on pseudoscientific, paranormal, and occult topics, the bibliography contains some seven hundred references for more detailed information. According to the back cover of the book, the on-line version receives approximately 500,000 hits per month.
Cold reading is a set of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, and mediums. Without prior knowledge, a practiced cold-reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. during a line of questioning. Cold readings commonly employ high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on signals as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not. The reader then emphasizes and reinforces any accurate connections while quickly moving on from missed guesses. Psychologists believe that this appears to work because of the Barnum effect and due to confirmation biases within people.
Peter George Popoff is a German-born American televangelist, charlatan, debunked clairvoyant, and faith healer. He was exposed in 1986 by James Randi for using a concealed earpiece to receive radio messages from his wife, who gave him the names, addresses, and ailments of audience members during Popoff-led religious services. Popoff falsely claimed God revealed this information to him so that Popoff could cure them through faith healing.
Psychic surgery is a pseudoscientific medical fraud in which practitioners create the illusion of performing surgery with their bare hands and use sleight of hand, fake blood, and animal parts to convince the patient that diseased lesions have been removed and that the incision has spontaneously healed.
Skeptic, colloquially known as Skeptic magazine, is a quarterly science education and science advocacy magazine published internationally by The Skeptics Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting scientific skepticism and resisting the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. First published in 1992, the magazine had a circulation of over 40,000 subscribers in 2000.
The Faith Healers is a 1987 book by conjurer and skeptic James Randi. In this book, Randi documents his exploration of the world of faith healing, exposing the tricks that religious con artists use in their healing shows to fool the audience. Randi's expertise in performing stage magic and mentalism allowed him to easily identify the same techniques when used by con artists. Randi analyzes the methods used by A. A. Allen, Ernest Angley, Willard Fuller, WV Grant, Peter Popoff, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, Ralph DiOrio and others, exposing their tricks. Popoff was dramatically exposed as a fraud by Randi on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Randi expended considerable effort contacting people who were supposedly cured by these faith-healers. He found there was a lot of disappointment and not a single verifiable case of healing. Randi describes the "calling out trick," the "wheelchair trick," the "leg-stretching trick," the "how many fingers trick," the "shotgun technique," as well as methods used to gain personal information about potential victims in the audience. He also describes methods used, often by mail, to convince people to make large donations.
Clark Davis Adams was a prominent American freethought leader and activist.
Sally Morgan is a British television and stage artist, author and controversially, a self-proclaimed psychic medium.
Richard Saunders is an Australian scientific skeptic and podcaster. In 2001, he was awarded a life membership by Australian Skeptics and has twice served as their president. He has presented on skepticism, represented the Australian Skeptics on television and radio shows, and is the co-host of The Skeptic Zone podcast.
Robert Starrett Lancaster was an American computer programmer and skeptical activist who created the websites Stop Kaz and Stop Sylvia Browne.
Mark Edward was an American mentalist and author. He wrote books on mentalism and séance theory and production, including Psychic Blues (2009), where he discussed working for the Psychic Friends Network. Wilson made appearances on television as both primary consultant and on-air performer in programming such as ABC's The Con, A & E's Biography: "Houdini, the Great Escape", NBC's The Other Side, and Psychic Secrets Revealed, the Sci-Fi Channel's Mysteries, Magic and Miracles, Disney's Forces Beyond, as well as two episodes of the Learning Channel's Exploring the Unknown. His featured segment as a spirit medium on the pilot episode of Showtime's Penn & Teller's Bullshit! series, titled "Speaking with the Dead", helped secure an Emmy Award nomination for that episode in 2002. He coined the term "grief vampire" as a description of alleged psychic mediums who prey on vulnerable people. Edward was a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Nicolai or Nikolai Levashov was a Russian occultist and psychic healer who wrote several books on life in the universe, Slavic history, the origin of mankind on Earth and other topics. From 1991 to 2005 he was known in the United States for several causes célèbres involving his patients. One of his books is classified as antisemitic and extreme and banned in Russia. He was a leader of a public organisation "Renaissance. The Golden Age" which is considered a destructive cult by the Russian Orthodox Church.
James "Jim" Underdown has been the executive director of The Center for Inquiry (CFI) West in Los Angeles since 1999. The Center for Inquiry is a non-profit educational organization with headquarters in Amherst, New York, whose primary mission is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values. CFI West is the largest facility in the organization outside Amherst.
The Skeptic's Toolbox was a four-day workshop devoted to scientific skepticism. Founded by psychologist and now-retired University of Oregon professor Ray Hyman, it was sponsored by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Annual workshops focused on educating people to be better critical thinkers, and involved a central theme. The attendees formed small groups and were given tasks that to work on and whose results they then presented to the entire workshop on the final day.
Henry Gordon was a Canadian author, journalist, magician and skeptic. He was the founder of the Ontario Skeptics and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).
Barry Karr is an American skeptic and paranormal researcher, currently the executive director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He has been consulted by the media on the paranormal. Karr has been involved in many investigations including faith healing, UFOs, firewalking, ghosts and others. He is a published author in two anthology publications, and as an editor of two others. Karr is a proponent of scientific skepticism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
An Honest Liar is a 2014 biographical feature film documentary, directed and produced by Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom, written by Weinstein, Greg O'Toole and Measom, produced through Left Turn Films, Pure Mutt Productions and Part2 Filmworks, and distributed by Abramorama. The film documents the life of former magician, escape artist, and skeptical educator James Randi, in particular the investigations through which he publicly exposed psychics, faith healers, and con-artists. The film also focuses on Randi's relationship with his partner of 25 years, José Alvarez, who at the time of filming, had been discovered to be living under a false identity, calling into question "whether Randi was the deceiver or the deceived."
Thomas John Flanagan, known professionally as Thomas John, is an American psychic medium. He starred in the 2018 reality TV show, Seatbelt Psychic, and the CBS All Access series The Thomas John Experience beginning in June 2020. In January 2020, John began a live show at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, which was put on hiatus as of March 16, 2020.
