For those interested, I’ve contributed a few comments in an ongoing discussion at Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy website regarding Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge. On Tuesday Phil gave an update on the Patricia Putt test (mentioned here on TDG last week), in particular her post-failure ‘rationalising’ of what went wrong. One of the commenters (#24) mentioned my 2008 article “The Myth of the Million Dollar Challenge“, which provoked a few predictable responses (e.g. “Holy crap, Occam, that link is an amazing source of stupidity!”). As such, I felt it my duty to discuss the MDC a little further (starting at #38). Some of the discussion is worth reading, other parts bring the usual skeptic hilarity to the table, but it’s all fairly entertaining and genial.
It bears mentioning that my participation in these discussions is not because I consider the modern skeptical movement as an ‘enemy’ to be combated. I confront them on a few issues primarily because they’re intelligent enough that they should know better (especially given their self-proclaimed critical thinking skills).
Also, to be clear, I’m not asking for participation – just passing on the link for those interested. In case you get tempted, it pays to visit this link first…
