It won't stop. At
www.alternativescience.com there's a chap named Kolodzey who wants to apply for the JREF prize because he claims that he can survive on nothing but water. I gave this dumbo a short, sharp, answer long ago, but he's still carrying on about this nonsense. A critic writes to me:
Although I VERY MUCH DOUBT that he can do any such thing, I do not think that you did yourself any favors by, in effect, telling him to go jump in a lake. YOU are the guy who puts up the proud $1 Million challenge to all comers. Should have tested him out Randi.
I couldn't resist trying to explain a few basic facts to this man. I thought that perhaps I could introduce him to a factor that he may have heard of, but has never considered: reality. I listed for him a few claims, asking that he read and consider them carefully:
1. I can fly by flapping my arms, but not when anyone is looking or observing or recording with video.
2. I am God.
3. I can survive for weeks without any nourishment besides water.
4. I can soften stone just by looking at it.
5. I can cure any disease, without exception, just by knowing the name of the patient.
6. I can make a meteorite hit any spot on Earth, on demand.
7. I can make it rain anywhere in the world, at any given time and date.
I added this:
Okay? Do you seriously think that we at the JREF should or would spend our valuable time and facilities investigating ANY of these juvenile notions? These claims are made by people who need and crave attention; we have no time to feed their egos. Often, they are only looking for their names to appear somewhere, and have no intention of ever doing what they have claimed. And, they will not agree to just do the stunt; they insist upon press and publicity to be brought in to glorify them. For example, when he was asked to have a meteorite hit my backyard the following Sunday as a simple indication of his powers, the claimant for #6, above, wanted us to issue a press release in advance, and take an ad in the paper. We of course refused, and he went away.
We are often criticized for going after only the silly people, the "easy" targets: dowsers, homeopaths, "applied kinesiology" practitioners, magnet gurus, etc. But these claims cost lives and tax dollars, so must be dealt with. How much more would we be criticized for going after the seven claims listed above? Yes, we've had all of those claims made, some many times over. We must ignore them, because they're just so juvenile. Testing any of them would take much time and labor, and at the end, we have exactly what we knew all along: the claim is an empty one. There's no satisfaction or reward in doing this.
We're a serious organization, not a circus, and we won't be drawn into stupid confrontations. Let them go to Gary Schwartz, at the University of Arizona, who will undoubtedly find them to be the real thing no matter what their claim is, simply because he doesn't know how to design and conduct a test.
