Quote #113

Paranormal phenomena have a habit of going away whenever they are tested under rigorous conditions. This is why the ?740,000 reward of James Randi, offered to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal effect under proper scientific controls, is safe. Why don't the television editors insist on some equivalently rigorous test? Could it be that they believe the alleged paranormal powers would evaporate and bang go the ratings?

More from Richard Dawkins

  1. Yet scientists are required to back up their claims not with private feelings but with publicly checkable evidence. Their experiments must …
  2. Consider this. If a paranormalist could really give an unequivocal demonstration of telepathy (precognition, psychokinesis, reincarnation, …
  3. Scorpio could go retrograde up Uranus and it wouldn't make any difference.
  4. Yet the final indictment against the television decision-makers is more profound and more serious. Their recent splurge of paranormalism de…
  5. Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It chea…
  6. If it's really true, that the museum at Liberty University has dinosaur fossils which are labelled as being 3000 years old, then that is an…
  7. The shape of a constellation, moreover, is ephemeral. A million years ago our Homo erectus ancestors gazed out nightly at a set of very dif…
  8. It's obvious that in an intelligent educated audience such as this university, I stress this university. Who saw fit to give them accredita…

All Richard Dawkins quotes