Whoa, am I psychic?

baron said:
The purpose of the SWIFT editorial was purely to criticise those who had spoken out against Randi, nothing more.
Click to expand...
Randi may have been hesitant to apologize and less than forthcoming, but I hardly think it was "purely to criticise".
 
Another thing that concerns me about this whole affair is this: What happens if one day I make a post that is exactly what Randi is thinking and it turns up - without credit to me - on a Swift. Then let's suppose this witty and insightful piece of prose gets bandied about the fora here and maybe (who knows) mentioned on CNN or whatever. Everybody is saying ,"Randi says blah de blah. Isn't that insightful?" And I say, in my little 200post-voice, "oh, that was me who said that first. Randi is quoting me." I'd be told to buzz off and wouldn't be welcome within a lightyear of the board.

Perhaps Hawkeye could see that possibility looming and cleverly highlighted his own post before CNN could sign Randi up on the back of it.
 
Okay, we have all aired our views on this.
The question is are we happy to leave it at that and be left with unanswered questions which will niggle away at us and our view of Randi.


Personally, I would like Randi to explain what he means by the following:

1) I inadvertently failed to credit a correspondent, Chris...

Did he cut and paste Hawkeye's words, come back later on, forget they were Hawkeye's, edit them and then post them in his commentary as his own, forgetting they were not (as Darat suggests)? Or did he cut and paste and edit Hawkeye's words so that it looked like his own, intend to acknowlege the source but forgot.

2) I could have changed the wording...

Well, of course he did change the wording. So what, exactly, he meant here remains a mystery to me. Unless he meant to change them so completely that the original source would no longer be recognisable. That, of course, could conflict with his answer to (1).
Another possibility is that he was actually acknowledging that he did change the wording (ie saying the opposite of what he appears to be saying). On the other hand, he says it was part of "corner-cutting", so leaving the words as they are takes less time than altering them. Puzzling.

3) I straightened out the grammar and form of Chris' text and various other sins...

I am guessing he means he changed a few words like "awful" and "ability", padded it out a bit with some additional words and changed third person to first person. It is this last feature that niggles at me. Why not just quote. Except for those two words above, Hawkeye's words were fine.


Anyway, unless Randi has something further to say, and I very much doubt he will, I'm probably opting out of this thread as well.
Not pretty though.
 
Of course, if this had been Brown, Geller, Edwards, van Praagh, the Prayer Study signers, Hwang Woo-Suk, or any number of other public individuals, they simply would have ignored claims of plagiarism or error completely and moved ever forward.

I doubt any real skeptic assigns some form of super-human accuracy to Mr. Randi. He has admitted to making a mistake, and doesn't feel the need to get down on his hands and knees and beg everyone on the forums to forgive him for such a terrible sin. Indeed, he should not. The only person in the world to whom Mr. Randi needs answer for this error is Hawkeye, and Hawkeye appears to be perfectly fine with the situation.

And to those who continue to make claims about "journalistic" and "scientific integrity," I should not need to remind you that Mr. Randi is neither a scientist nor a journalist. If he was, he would be plagiarising material on an hourly basis - the number of similar (and unaccredited) articles on a simple search of Google News is proof of that.
 
Can you guys give Randi a bit of a break he is in his 80s isn’t he? This involves the internet, I mean come on. If he were a younger person I too would be a slightly bothered about this. For someone who over 80 though it shouldn't matter: anything concerning the internet. If he was writing a book or something I could see the anger at plagiarism but for this I see it as minor; this issue is being blown out of proportion…
 
I agree with posts 148, 149 and 150 above.

As for "barking watchdogs" that is a lot better than "sleeping watchdogs." I have no idea whether Randi meant it in a positive, negative or a throwaway line, but I am taking it as a complement as he is acknowledging that we are awake to any errors he or others make.

(see post 143) If the future Randi copies one of my posts without acknowledgement and it is used to further Randi's career I would consider it a huge boost to my ego. I do not earn money by publishing my opinions. The fact that one person was able to do so proves that I do have certain skills I never knew I had. I could even use it to my advantage by offering my services to Randi or others. Proving that I wrote the piece would be easy. Just do what Hawkeye did.
(But in reality I do not see this as happening to anyone on this board.)
 
Reno said:
Darat, so far, you are the only person that has posted on this thread, to my knowledge, who thinks that 'barking forum watchdogs' is a compliment.
Click to expand...

I think it is a complement,too. It means we are vigilant. The comment also fits Randi's personality.
 
The Vampire said:
<snip>
I'm hoping this melt-down is entertaining passing woos.
Click to expand...

I doubt if most of them would even understand it. Of course their leaders may quote us out of context but then all they need to do is go to politics and there are plenty of quotes there.

For the minority that do understand it I would hope it is educating them. I would like to see any sort of similar discussion on any woo board.
 
The Vampire said:
I'm hoping this melt-down is entertaining passing woos.
Click to expand...
Really? Really? That's going to be your mentality? Don't voice your concern, lest you give the woo victory? You're with us or you're against us?

Who died and made you McCarthy?
 
rjh01 said:
(see post 143) If the future Randi copies one of my posts without acknowledgement and it is used to further Randi's career I would consider it a huge boost to my ego. I do not earn money by publishing my opinions. The fact that one person was able to do so proves that I do have certain skills I never knew I had. I could even use it to my advantage by offering my services to Randi or others. Proving that I wrote the piece would be easy. Just do what Hawkeye did.
(But in reality I do not see this as happening to anyone on this board.)
Click to expand...

Slight derail, but related to the above and the Reno's comment that you're referring to.......

Well, if this happens to you, you might feel different. In the 60's I traveled in circles within circles on the edges of the performing arts. A girl I was living with for a couple of years wound up in LA working in movies and living with a rather famous director for about six years. She may not even recall telling him, but the entire credit sequence of one of the most talked about films of the 70's is from a story board that I had worked out in my head. It was probably ten times better than I would've done it but I had exactly that Hawkeye moment when I saw the opening reel of the film. "Whoa, that was my idea that I told Sandi about."
I also had the rare "pleasure" of having Steve Martin use one of my signature one-liners in a film. I never met Martin, but I knew writers from SNL who knew Martin, and I'm sure it was passed along. (Had it been Robin Williams or Jerry Lewis or Johnny Carson, I would have opted for coincidence, but the circles were too tight in this case.)
In both instances, I no longer discuss them because, as Reno said, I wound up being "that old bulls****er talking to the bartender".

Back on topic.....

I'm in the camp that feels that a simple "I'm sorry" would have been appropriate. I don't think Randi's comment about juggling lots of material is an indication that he's ever done this intentionally before - rather that he pulls a lot of items together from myriad sources every week. I do, however, think the comment about barking watchdogs is properly taken as insulting. I'm an American and I know that when the term "global policeman" is used, it's used to tell the USG to stop trying to poke around in things which shouldn't concern them. I respect the work of the police, but ....

If I was to say "Darat, you're tap-dancing around the issue, here..." would that be compliment because Gene Kelly was just so awesome in movies?

Even if he wanted to make a humorous jab at the forumites, he still could have said something like, .... "And as usual, my favorite pitbulls on the forum here caught this and are evidently concerned. Down boys! It was a mistake, not intentional, and I'm sorry for it."
 
Solus said:
Can you guys give Randi a bit of a break he is in his 80s isn’t he? This involves the internet, I mean come on. If he were a younger person I too would be a slightly bothered about this.
Click to expand...
So Randi is just a senile, incompetent old man too far behind the times to actually be held accountable for his actions? That's not a valid excuse for a man speaking for us in front of millions of people, and it's an insult to James Randi.

If he was having trouble with technology, he could simply admit that was what happened.
 
delphi_ote said:
Really? Really? That's going to be your mentality? Don't voice your concern, lest you give the woo victory? You're with us or you're against us?

Who died and made you McCarthy?
Click to expand...

Calm down sweetie. You may pop a vessel with that tone.

I didn't imply that, so don't put words in my mouth. I don't know where they have been.

I still think this is a non-issue and many are getting their bowels in a uproar over nothing.
 
Here's how I see it. Mr. Randi was unethical in this case. No two ways about it and his apology, well, it's something to be desired.

But he did own up to what he had done-as crotchety as he may have been about it-which is more than many people are willing to do when they are in the wrong. And I believe a lot of weight has to be given to the fact Hawkeye-the person who was wronged-does not seem to want more from Mr. Randi than has been given. I do hope Mr. Randi doesn't make a habit of being unethical in the future, especially in light of the important work he is doing.

Unfortunately, I see the same blind worship here as in many of the antithesis sites, but I also see people who admire Mr. Randi questioning his actions on this one. Willing to say straight out they feel someone they look up to is in the wrong. It's refreshing to see people who live their values AND have their heads on straight.
 
Just to clarify, I'm not defending Randi because I worship the ground he walks on. I'm really not defending him at all. Randi is flawed but also human. I think Carl Sagan describes him best in Demon Haunted World.

That said, I think too much has been made over a minor issue. It's hair splitting to the nth. Randi made a mistake, he said so, and moved on. So the beef is he didn't apologize to everyone's notion. So what? The world doesn't spin to my notion either, but even if I huff and puff, it's not going to change things. No matter how much posters beat this topic to death, Randi's still not going to say anything else. And good for him for doing that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom