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RE: His Amazing Randiness

What test are you talking about? The test Randi offered involved Pear Anjou speaker cables, and even Michael Fremer's article is quite clear that Pear backed out of the challenge. From a business point of view, I think they were wise to back out, because I don't think MF could have detected the differences.

Michael Fremer put forward his own offer, a test with some Tara Labs Omega speaker cables. In the end, Randi did not accept MF's challenge, and there is no reason why they should. Your throwing in that MF had persuaded the editorial staff of Scientific American to "organize and proctor the tests" presumes that they had the expertise to be able to do so. I see no reason to suppose they have any expertise in doing controlled audio double blind tests.

But actually, MF noted that they did not accept using his own cables because they could not be sure they were not altered in some way. That is actually a very good objection, no matter what spin MF tried to put on it.

"Why did Randi's advisors reject my offer? They told him that I might "do something" to my reference TARA cables, or put some kind of secret signal on them that only I could hear, and that would alert me to their being in the system. (I'm not making this up.) Why the advisors thought I couldn't also do that to the Pear or Transparent cables, he didn't explain."

Trying to ridicule this objection, or bringing up the advisors supposed attitude to Pear or Transparent cables (were they asked about them), does not affect the validity of the objection. I remember someone wanted to have Randi test something or other (a Machina Dynamic product?) but wanted to use CDs which were treated with something or other (a fluid?), and they told him the test would have to be done with identical, undamaged CDs, and that no, he could not modify the CDs in any way. He was upset. OK, so Michael Fremer was upset, too, but the objection was quite sound.

And, as bashpromt pointed out in a comment on MF's article, he doesn't need Randi to do a DBT. He could have one done at a university--or, for that matter, Tom Nousaine or Arny Krueger might agree to administer a DBT for him. But no, he just wrote a self-serving article.

As I mentioned in another post, MF is quite capable of calling names so he is not in much of a position to call out Randi's group for similar behavior.


-----
"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser

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