I thought this was Randi's weakest moment:
I think it was a tough spot and even with time to think about it I'm not sure how best to respond to something like this given that you've only got time for a few sentences. Unfortunately Randi went into the weeds with the horse racing analogy, I suspect.
I say "suspect" because even though most of knew what he was getting at immediately and agreed with him, I suspect that the analogy was not going to be grasped easily by many of the people who are Browne believers and it put Randi in the position of trying to make a point with an analogy that was going to take more time to explain than was available before some people were going to get what he was talking about.
His characterization of the retired FBI agent as "not knowing enough about his subject" followed by an awkward description of what Randi meant was more (IMHO) problematic than getting into the horse racing analogy. Once again, I think most of us knew what he was getting at but I wasn't sure that the average Sylvia Browne fan would. It also put Randi in the position of criticizing somebody he had never met and had no apparent basis for making negative comments about other than that the guy was being quoted as saying things about Browne that Randi disagreed with.
Of course, this is with the benefit of time to think about it, but I think a better response might have been something like this:
I realize, of course, that I had time to think about the answer for quite awhile before I wrote it down and perhaps even then many of you will still feel that it wasn't a very good way to deal with that kind of question.
Still, when confronted with an out of the blue story that one is completely unfamiliar with in a discussion it may lead to a less defensive appearance if one just admits that he doesn't have knowledge of the particular story that has just been foisted on him.
