From a mass of books, videos, and publicity material dealing with “psychic” Anthony Carr – just received at the JREF Isaac Asimov Library – I selected one volume and was leafing through the pages, when I discovered an astounding fact: that this man Carr – who says he’s “The World’s Most Documented Psychic” – might want to lay off further documentation; he’s been quite, quite, wrong. See this Swift for more .  You see, two years and four months after he posted their imminent deaths, Lauren Bacall, Margaret Thatcher, Jack Klugman, Jimmy Carter, Ernest Borgnine (91), Sidney Poitier, and Mohammed Ali are still alive. True, Gerald Ford, Richard Widmark, and Oscar Peterson, are deceased, but the first two of them were 93 and 94 years of age, and Peterson – just 82, was in failing health and not expected to live long, at the time that Carr made his stunning prophecies.

Note: This post is a modified version of an email I sent to someone who was concerned about the state of the skepticism movement. I think it should have a broader audience.

I am privileged to be the President of the JREF. I'm a skeptic, and I try to live my life that way (usually succeeding, I hope). Randi was one of the largest prime motivators for me to be a critical thinker, and my friendship and admiration for him go back many years.

Yet, as Randi himself has pointed out, he and I have very different backgrounds, both academically and in general. Randi comes into skepticism from his being a phenomenal conjurer, stage magician, and trickster. I come from the angle of being formally trained as a scientist, specifically an astronomer.

John’s cholesterol is high but he doesn’t like taking prescription drugs. Should he take red yeast as a “natural” alternative? Evidence shows that it is effective in lowering cholesterol.

In 1994, the Diet Supplement Health and Education Act was passed, allowing the fiction that “natural” medicines are really “foods” and need not be regulated the way prescription medicines are. Do we need to supplement our diet with red yeast? Do we suffer from a red yeast deficiency? Of course not. People are really taking it as a medicine, not as a supplement to their diet.