Customer Reviews

Flim-Flam!

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

James Randi is well renowned as one of the world's most prominent skeptics, as well he should be. He has offered a million dollar prize to anyone who can prove in scientifically controlled tests that they possess some kind of paranormal power. Go figure, no one has ever been able to do so, and most self-proclaimed psychics, diviners etc have simply refused to be tested. A common excuse is that 'negative vibrations/energy' from non-believers interfers with their 'powers'. Translation: "I can prove I can do anything... as long as it's only to people who are already firmly convinced that I can."

This book's most interesting sections include accounts of some people who have tried to claim this prize, and often descriptions of the trickery they tried to pull. Famous scams and flim-flammery are also discussed. The perpetrators range from the honestly mistaken, to those manipulated by others (including children) to the deluded to the knowing liars. It's not a read that will lift your opinion of humanity, but it's well worth reading.

The book is not without its flaws. Randi is correctly portrayed as pissed off - and given the insistent idiocy he deals with, perhaps that's no surprise. The topics veer through a hodgepodge of the allegedly paranormal, making it read a little too episodic. At times, the prose gets dry. For example, the chapter on the Cottingly Faeries goes into technical details about cameras, which I had a tough time understanding.

Worth noting are some false claims that negative reviewers have made on Amazon. Randi does NOT maintain a dogmatic insistance that all paranormal claims are false. He bases his belief that such claims are hooey not on faith, but on evidence, having seen many (many, many) which are false, and none that have proven true. That's merely rational thinking. He does not claim "There are no paranormal powers and I can prove it." One cannot prove a negative like that. [Quick: can you play the tuba? Can you PROVE to me that you can't?] Moreover, the burden of proof does not lie with him. If I say I can fly like Superman, you say I can't... who do you think should be assumed correct barring evidence about my claim?

This book is a good one for those who value rational thinking. There are others that are better written (To name just a few: Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World", Robert Park's "Voodoo Science" and Randi's own, more focused "The Faith Healers") but I still give it high marks.

I formerly referred to another book available from Amazon.com as a great primer for those challenging New Age nonsense and other contemporary fads. A fellow skeptic challenged that claim saying this one is better. I agree!

Randi exposes more foolishness than any other of the texts I've read, from Arthur Conan Doyle and his taste for fairies, to the Maharishi to UFOs. And he's not subtle about his distaste for it. Granted, he does give credit to those who really believe in their craft. For instance, there are dousers and the like who really believe they're gifted with the talent for the bizarre. There are others, however, who are simply crooks who've lined up a gullible public with their credit cards. I actually appreciate Randi's powerful attitudes. Why get so "political" as to soft pedal crooks? He doesn't.

The book is a good primer because it covers so many subjects, and because it describes the reasoning process. Sure there'll be the people who dispute his findings. But one will convince them of nothing. At least the reasoning process illustrated by this volume will convince those capable of reason.

The ONLY reason I don't give it 5 stars is that some of the samples he gave would be better illustrated on a stage or a show; it was a bit difficult for me to follow them in writing.

Aside from that, I think this should probably be required reading for, say, high school seniors, those particularly prone to the charlatans of silly New Age fads and other quackery. But anyone wondering about such fads could gain a great deal from Randi's prose.

I saw a TV show about James Randi recently. In one scene, he visited a college classroom, posing as an expert astrologer. He had prepared, he told the class, detailed individual horoscopes based on each student's birthdate and birthplace. The students read these horoscopes, then rated their accuracy on a scale of 1-5. One student gave his horoscope a 4. Every other horoscope got a 5. The students were amazed: astrology worked! Randi then had them look at each other's horoscopes. Cries of outrage filled the room. All of the horoscopes were exactly the same. They had nothing whatsoever to do with birthdates, or birthplaces, or any particular student. This book is full of such examples. Randi uses them, and scientific data, and consistently careful analysis of facts, to show that such ideas as astrology, biorhythms, transcendental meditation, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, ESP, and psychic surgery are, quite simply, nonsense. In 1964, he offered $10,000 to anyone who could demonstrate a paranormal power under satisfactory observational conditions. As of the 1982 publication date, over 650 people had tried for the reward, none successfully. Some of the attempts are described in this book. Funny how psychics who have "demonstrated" the ability to bend metal rods by will power can't do it anymore when they are no longer allowed to wander out of the room with the rods during the experiment! A theme throughout the book is that people who want to believe something will accept the most absurd rationalizations in order to continue to believe it, in spite of overwhelming contradictory evidence. At the beginning of his chapter on psychic surgery, Randi quotes William Cowper: "To follow foolish precedents, and wink / With both our eyes, is easier than to think." A similar theme arises in Langdon Gilkey's "Shantung Compound", about Gilkey's experiences as a prisoner of war (see my review). Observing "moral" internees rationalize stealing food from each other, Gilkey concluded that the greatest power of the human brain is not to reason, but to rationalize doing whatever the brain's owner wants to do. For other examples of this phenomenon, read anything by a "Creation Scientist". Unfortunately, Randi is a professional magician, not a professional writer. His sentences are not always clear, and he does not always cite references where they would be appropriate. But his observations are insightful, and his writing is entertaining. James Randi is a compassionate man, fighting a good fight.

Come closer, dear reader. I, the amazing psychic Patriki, will tell you all about yourself. You are a skeptic. You do not believe in the claims of phony psychics (those unlike the great Patriki), spoonbenders or UFO researchers. You do not believe in the powers of the Bermuda Triangle. You are a rational person.

Good for you. James Randi's "Flim Flam!" is a fairly well-written and well-researched expose of some of this century's greatest con artists and their self-deceived cousins. Each chapter focuses on a different case, describing in detail the flim-flammer's case, then picking it apart claim by claim. And herein lies the problem. Randi is a methodical, detailed man, well versed in scientific method. He also seems to like the sound of his own typewriter, never using a single paragraph when five will do.

I underwent the same phenomenon during each chapter I read. At first, I was deeply interested. As I continued reading, I kept flipping to the end of the chapter to see how much more of Randi's grandstanding I had to put up with. "And then I did this!" "And then I did that!" Couple this with his penchant for melodrama and his tendency to address the subjects of his exposes by name ("Yes, Mr. Geller, it means exactly that!")and you have a pretty odd book. I understand his desire to be complete, but if you call your book "Flim Flam!" (with the exclamation point), one assumes you are writing a book to entertain first and inform second. Otherwise, you would call your book "An Investigation into the Validity of Paranormal Claims", so people would expect a book full of dry scientific lab notes.

In the end, of course, I cannot fault Randi for being thorough, as it is this quality that allows him to prove his point. And most of the book is extremely entertaining. It saddens me that the only people who will read it and get anything from it are people like you and I, who are already convinced.

As a professional magician, James Randi is the perfect person to see through the frauds and phonies who make a good living gulling the public. "Flim-Flam" deliciously exposes the flummeries of fakes like Uri Geller, Erich von Daniken, the Bermuda Triangle, psychic surgeons and meditation gurus - often with simple logic, facts and duplications of their "miracles." Compare Randi's homegrown picture of a levitator (really a teenager frozen in the middle of a trampoline bounce by a strobe flash) with the grainy and blurry "proof" of a TM levitation. You'll soon realize not only that Randi's shot is more expertly done, but how ridiculously easy it is to fake the "impossible."

After years of catching humbugs in the act, Randi gets caustic at times. But seeing the straightforward way he catches fakes is well worth the discomfort. People who claim to read blindfolded suddenly lose their abilities when Randi seals the crack in the blindfold with zinc oxide. Dowsers who swear they can find a steady flow of water flowing through a pipe six inches underground wander aimlessly and hilariously off the mark. Psychokinetic kids are caught on videotape using their hands to bend metal bars supposedly bent with brain power. The list of psychic gotchas goes on and on.

Randi exposes not only tricksters but also the fools who need to believe them. That includes scientists who think their awesome academic achievements make them impervious to deception. Reading "Flim Flam" is an education -- about people who go to not-so-great lengths to persuade others of their supposed powers, and more importantly, about the limits of human powers of perception. After all, without the flim-flammable, flim-flammers would soon go out of business. Rationality owes Randi a debt of gratitude for this book and for his life's work of exposing falsehood.

Flim-Flam! is a joy to read. James Randi's accounts are simply enthralling. Better than that, the book is intellectually edifying. How can it not be when it scrutinizes some of the most popularly known extraordinary claims around? One after another, Randi recounts audacious and weird claims and takes a no-nonsense approach to uncover their true nature, thus exposing the vacuity behind them; and at times, as a result, disabuses the innocent who honestly believe they have special paranormal powers.

Cutlery benders, water dowsers, psychics, levitation, magnet therapy, UFOs, sightings of fairies, table-tippings--he tackles them all, and more. Hailing from the Philippines, one of the sections that I read and reread is that on psychic surgery. I remember many years ago when I first heard of these "surgeons" I asked myself, "Could they be for real?" "How is that possible?" Today, of course I just laugh off such shenanigans (and scams). Randi has provided insights and info to dismiss such "operations" as plain hooey. He even provides several photos of how these tricks are performed, and tells us what those blood covered thingies purportedly pulled out of patients' innards really are. The real victims of these psychic healers, as Randi says, are the afflicted. Not only do they shell out not an insignificant amount of money for travel and lodging and various fees to avail of the services of these quacks, they risk endangering their lives by foregoing with the proper medical treatment by qualified medical doctors.

The skeptic in us all will love this work by the master of illusion. True to its title, it exposes hokum the world over. Believers in the paranormal and like phenomena will be wise to read this compendium in the hope that it will prod them to begin questioning their misplaced sympathies, to spark the necessary caution whenever any of us is faced with extraordinary claims. Before even being burned once Randi's indispensable contribution will--as it should--make us twice shy.

Flim Flam, as the subtitle says, is about other delusions, and how James Randi investigates and exposes the tricks, frauds and fakery in the field of Psychic "Research". This field is really the wrestling arena for the con-artists who live by hype - either by fooling scientists, or in collusion with the pseudoscientists who live by money conned from good Samaritans, us - the tax payers and consumers and scientists of the normal. The Bermuda Triangle, Biorhythm, photos of fairies, ghosts and kirlia, levitation, pyramid power, Mayan visitors from outer space, tele-what-nots, TM and Z-rays are some of the "other delusions" exposed in this book. We know that these are bunk. But how do we convince our friends that they are? Give them this book. Show them how any of those so called psychic phenomena cannot stand the test of any skeptic with scientific approach which does not preclude the possibility of fraud or delusion or both. James Randi is the hit man of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and in this book you get an idea of how hard it is pull those punches.

Besides hundreds of names of people, places and institutions associated with these frauds, details from correspondence, this book has photos and diagrams of the hoax-rooms where the paranormal fakers did hoodwink and unnerve the rationality of the respectable scientists. The charts that were designed to fool the custodians of money - to be wasted through the propagation of pseudoscience of para-psychology and pollute the minds of the future generations of Americans with pure non-sense, the money that has been lost by genuine scientific and medical research - such charts have also been included in this book.

Issac Asimov in his introduction to this book rightly says, "Folly and Fakery has never before been dangerous as it is now" and that we therefore more than ever be grateful to Randi who deserves our admiration for his courage, diligence, perseverance, and the k! een senses needed for exposing these "rascals and knaves".

Dr. Russell Targ and Dr. Harold Puthoff are the Laurel and Hardy of Psi as a chapter title appropriately describes them. Reading this chapter it becomes at once obvious that if two scientists decide to cheat other men of science, tons and tons of our money can go down the drain. The directors of monies have to come up with an explanation for the misdirected research when the skeptics expose them. Because an apology would mean personal disaster, half-truths, rationalization, lies, damned lies, and, to back them up, statistical charts, and so on and on, until the consumer and tax-payer believes that there must be some truth somewhere beyond his common-sense beliefs. The fact that the Stanford Research Institute has been humiliated by these clowns, is only the tip of the iceberg of harm done by hype.

The flood of betting, lotto, and related software in the market is but the natural outcome of the pseudo-science of psi sanctified by misguided scientists who cannot tell the "law" of chances of mathematics from the laws of the physical world and believe that it can somehow determine the outcome of the roll of the dice, and their shortcut to fortune. If one just remembers that the people who sell such wares did not make money by the techniques they sell, but only by perpetuating wishful thought of the gullible, one would not be in that category any longer. Since the year 1964, Randi's Challenge to offer to pay $10,000 to any person who can demonstrate that she has any kind of paranormal power under fraud proof conditions still remains open. In chapter 13 Randi gives the details of this challenge and the conditions. The conditions can be obtained from him by sending a self addressed stamped envelope. To quote Randi "In response to that challenge, over 650 persons have applied as claimant. Only 54 (as of this writing) ever made it past the preliminaries, and none of them ever got a nickel.

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.

(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.

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The tinkling noises you will hear as these pages are turned are the scales falling from many eyes. The groans are from the charlatans who are here exposed to the light of reason and simple truth. It is a light that pains them greatly.
- James Randi, Flim-Flam!
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"In this book, I will hit as hard as I can, as often as I can, and sometimes quite bluntly and even rudely." This quote in the early pages of Flim-Flam! by James Randi sets the tone for how he plans to disassemble the delusions that are maintained by not only those who claim to observe and participate in pseudoscience and paranormal activity, but the scientific authority who believe the claims at face value. In his book, Randi is not afraid to call people liars, cheaters, fakes, and sometimes just plain stupid to get his point across. Toss in the occasional sarcasm and Flim-Flam! becomes not only educational and eye opening but entertaining as well.

Randi begins his assault on delusion by debunking the story of the Cottingly Fairies from 1920. His style of debunking this delusion is to present the evidence as it was presented in 1920 then proceeds to analyze the holes in the story. Randi and I share dismay at how easily the experts were so quick to accept the photos provided by the girls as concrete proof of the existence of fairies. One of the "experts" was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Surely the creator of the best detective of all time is infallible, right? It turns out that Doyle's actions make him look more like Holmes' sidekick Watson.

Randi invents a good system for testing the legitimacy of any paranormal event by creating twenty questions that skeptics should ask themselves. He proves the effectiveness of his system by applying it back to the Cottingly Fairies story. In this way, Randi gives the average skeptic a good ruler to measure any kooky claim one may encounter.

Randi spends a lot of time shooting down philosophies that no one would believe if they were just a little more informed. One such philosophy is astrology which Randi claims is "[T]he oldest of the claptrap philosophies." It seems that he entertains himself by proving astrology wrong since he describes the truth how astrology says a person is born under certain signs at certain dates while the sun is actually always under a different sign. Randi says it best when he asks if there is something fishy besides Pisces. He has even given people the horoscope of a known serial killer and they say it matches them perfectly. I had my doubts about astrology before reading Flim-Flam! but the inconsistencies in astrology presented by Randi solidified my skepticism.

One of my favorite kooky stories in the book is about Ingo Swann, a man that claimed to have travelled to Jupiter before any probes had been able to float by. A similar story was told by Harold Sherman. The best part of the story is when two scientists from the Stanford Research Institute, Targ and Puthoff, believe the two cosmic travelers. Targ and Puthoff compared the claims with the results from probes and determined they were very similar. In response to Targ and Puthoff, Randi makes a two page list with each claim by the travelers next to the claim's accuracy (there are many misses). It quickly becomes clear that Targ and Puthoff had extreme cases of the will to believe and ultimately made themselves look foolish. Randi actually made me laugh out loud by comparing Targ and Puthoff to Laurel and Hardy later in the book. The best part of the whole "cosmic traveler" story is when Swann, presented with the facts about Jupiter and how he was wrong, suggests that he shot past Jupiter and went to a different planet! Well that explains it, doesn't it?

Randi likes to use sarcasm, one of my personal favorite tools, to put the cap on several of his points. After showing that Transcendental Meditation(TM) has no statistical effect on the crime rate and employment rate of the city in which it is practiced (a claim that TM makes), he announces "Let's hear it for the Maharishi Effect! It's is obviously a roaring success." He also says that it is comforting that a person using TM will not invisibly levitate through his bathroom floor.

Randi's anger is most apparent when he discusses the phenomenon of Psychic Surgery. Being a magician, Randi knows it is all B.S. He shows pictures of himself performing the fake surgery and reveals the tricks behind it, all the while damning those that pass it off as real.

Of course no book about the paranormal would be complete without a UFO section. An example of how Randi likes to make people look dumb is when he went on a radio show and described that he had seen a set of lights flying north. People started calling in and saying they had seen the lights too. Before it got too crazy, the hoax was revealed. I now see why Randi gets angry that people believe some of the crazy things that they do. After reading this book I too am angry at some of the crazy claims of the world.

I recommend Flim-Flam! to anyone with common sense and skepticism. It disproves many crazy things that people believe but it also gives the skeptic an extensive template for judging any paranormal claim's legitimacy.