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Randi the fraudster?

idunno said:
Hi I watched today on Channel Odissey Maichael Palin travelling to the Philipines where he met two Psychic surgeons.Unlike Randi,in his TV demonstration of the tricks of PS, they dont hide their hands in a cloth like Randi did. You can actually thiose peoples hands digging in the persons belly. So much for Randi`s performance:mad: :mad:
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OK, you have corrected the cloth part, so enough about that, but your main point is still wrong. Randi does not commit fraud, because he does not claim to perform surgery. He claims to do, and does, fake psycic surgery, so he is indeed completely honest.

You may have the opinion that his performance is of inferiour quality, but that doesn't make him a fraudster.

Hans
 
Victor Meldrew said:
Fake thumb? So that's how it's done (excuse my innocence....)

Any more revelations guys? On how other tricks are performed?
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The compass deflection trick is done with a MAGNET!

But don't tell anyone!
 
Dark Jaguar said:
Personally this psychic surgory illusion never seemed all that illusionary to me.
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I concur with Elizabeth; I saw Randi do it live, and it was quite compelling. The trick is not at all obvious when done by a skilled practitioner.

(BTW I'm pretty sure Randi did not use a fake thumb)
 
Yahzi said:
(BTW I'm pretty sure Randi did not use a fake thumb)
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There are various ways of doing it, so he may have used another method when you saw him.

But if you watch the YouTube video above, note how he puts the thumb of his right hand (on our left) underneath his left hand, and then rotates it back and forth before slowly pulling his "blood"-soaked thumb out from under his left hand. The rotating was to pull the thumb out from the fake thumb.

By the way, I am giving nothing away here. If memory serves, Randi himself has shown this to audiences.
 
Ladewig said:
I consider psychic surgeons to be the lowest form of con artist. They take money form the people who are already broke and they provide nothing in return. Let the punishment fit the crime: I would seriously consider imprisoning them for life and witholding all medical treatment from them - let them psychically operate on each other.
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I agree completely. I also think "the girl with the x ray eyes" from Saransk fits into this category very nicely indeed. A vulture.
 
RSLancastr said:
There are various ways of doing it, so he may have used another method when you saw him.

But if you watch the YouTube video above, note how he puts the thumb of his right hand (on our left) underneath his left hand, and then rotates it back and forth before slowly pulling his "blood"-soaked thumb out from under his left hand. The rotating was to pull the thumb out from the fake thumb.

By the way, I am giving nothing away here. If memory serves, Randi himself has shown this to audiences.
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The fake thumb and other details are given in Randi's book "Flim-Flam!". There are some photos of 'real' psychic surgeons wearing fake thumbs. There's another video out there where Randi shows off the fake thumb he uses for his surgery demos, but in the book, he lists enough methods to get by without the thumb. In fact, he could be using one or two of them in the Tonight Show video. Out of respect for Randi, I won't list them here. If you really want to know how to perform psychic surgery and commit many other types of fraud, buy the book!
 
Dark Jaguar said:
Personally this psychic surgory illusion never seemed all that illusionary to me. Frankly it's disturbing that anyone could watch it and not immediatly think "maybe they are just tucking their fingers into their palms".
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In my defense, I was rather young at the time, but it took me awhile to figure out how exactly he had done it. 'tucking his fingers in his palm' actually didn't occur to me for a few days after I originally saw this.

pretend to sever his thumb and reattach it?
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Ok, so I was a gullible kid! So sue me! Of course, now that I know how it's done, I am soooo looking forward to doing this to the BorgMonkey!

Marc
 
RSLancastr said:
Magicians frequently have multiple methods for performing a given illusion. That way, if something happens which causes a problem for one method, they simply switch over to one of the other methods.

Perhaps, the other time you saw it, something happened which made the "fake thumb" method unworkable (unexpected camera angles, for instance), so Mr. Randi switched over to another method which required the cloth.
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Or somebody stole his magician's thumb?

This has happened before: when he was asked to recreate a 'mind-reading' demonstration on television once, the stage crew was paid off by the psychic to steal his equipment (a special notepad that records previous drawings). To Randi's credit, he invented another technique on the spot, and the trick went off without a hitch.

This probably shocked the host and psychic guest much more than it would have impressed the audience.
 
idunno said:
Hi I watched today on Channel Odissey Maichael Palin travelling to the Philipines where he met two Psychic surgeons.Unlike Randi,in his TV demonstration of the tricks of PS, they dont hide their hands in a cloth like Randi did. You can actually thiose peoples hands digging in the persons belly. So much for Randi`s performance:mad: :mad:
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Did Michael Palin point out that the "psychic surgery" was a well-known and oft-repeated fraud?

If not, I'll be bloody annoyed! A bit of a laugh at the ignorant natives and their witchdoctory is one thing, but this stuff is dangerous.
 
The Atheist said:
Did Michael Palin point out that the "psychic surgery" was a well-known and oft-repeated fraud?
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He didn't seem to know too much about it, aside from what he saw. However, in the commentary that he did at the end of the series, he said he was pretty convinced that it was a hoax.
 
The Mad Hatter said:
He didn't seem to know too much about it, aside from what he saw. However, in the commentary that he did at the end of the series, he said he was pretty convinced that it was a hoax.
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Ok, cheers. I quite like Michael Palin and didn't want to have revise my opinion. Fair enough if he wasn't entirely familiar with it and put it like that - after all, he's doing travel, not sceptic shows, but no excuses would be acceptable for not pointing out that it's BS.

I've watched numerous magicians perform the stunt - I'm pretty confident I could do a reasonable copy of it myself. Bacon fat, I believe is the key ingredient for the "diseased flesh".
 
I vaguely remember this from one of Randi's Tonight Show appearances: he explained that psychic surgeons will frequently use animal organs to simulate tumors or diseased tissues that they pull out of their victims--er patients.

In fact, do you know what the number one use in the U.S. for sheeps' hearts is?

Anyone?
 
As a matter of fact, Randis "psychical surgery" doesn't prove that philipinians are frauds. What it does prove is that it's possible to do "surgery" with pure sleight of hand and maybe some preparation, etc.

On other hand, it's not Randi who must prove something. Psychic healers must prove they are not faking.
 
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