In February 2006, internet hackers linked to James Randi's forum shut down the whole site Criticando Kardec/Criticando o Ceticismo/Criticizing Skepticism. They did this after having soon before twice deleted this page below that fully exposes the unthinkable vices of this Randi forum. Such actions demonstrate beyond any doubt the need to fight pseudoskepticism for the mentally unhealthy religion that it is.
Click Above to Listen to JREF forum's Anthem.
"Old MacRandi had a forum |
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This page was been deleted three times by internet hackers surely connected to the JREF's forum. It is clear that I am making them very upset... No matter how many times they try to suppress other people's views, I will keep putting this page back online, so that people can know what this alleged skeptic forum really is.
JREF Forum: a Pigsty Run by The Rats...
..........Poor old James Randi does get bugged sometimes. In certain occasions, due to his own excesses (this link). In other occasions, due to his fellows'... On January 6, 2006, I joined the James Randi Educational Foundation Forum (JREF forum - this link for the page where I made my first post, in the thread The Girl with "X-ray" vision). I manged to stay there for almost three full weeks. My main concern was to fight the misinformation that was being conveyed by pseudoskeptic and photographer Andrew Skolnick (surprisingly enough, executive director of the CSMMH...).
After this so nice stay, the moderator twisted the membership rules to ban me... ............... 
How come this unthinkable action happened? Such brute offense to the human rights! 
..To understand this, we have to borrow from Natasha Demkina a little bit of her powers, and perform a deep "X-ray" analysis of this most weird "skeptic" forum.
X-Ray of the JREF forum
In George Orwell 1946 classic book, " Animal Farm", we see a decayed caricature of the human society in the form of a farm that is run by pigs. Randi's forum managed to descend one step further below. It is a pigsty run by rats... Is that too acid a viewpoint? Let's see.
Perhaps what surprised me most in the JREF forum was the poor standards of many of its members regarding their knowledge and amount of information about parapsychology specifically and about science as a whole. I have been to some skeptic internet forums, and never before had I come across such, putting it mildly, "intelectual feebleness". In Brazil, in forums in the Portuguese language, I have been to three skeptic forums, plus a parapsychology forum that has a rather skeptic attitude too. People's knowlege and amount of information in these forums ranges (IMHO) from fairly good to excellent. In the English language, I have been to three skeptic forums (one of them physicist and CSICOP's fellow Victor Stenger's forum: AVOID-L). Again, the same standards that I had found in Brazil. Randi's forum, however, is quite of a failure...
A few examples are highly representative of the situation there. First: talking about human organs, and about some structures in our body that grow and others that do not, I commented that some tiny (microscopical actually) structures of the intestine do grow, such as microvilosities. And I added that even molecules grow. Then I received a reply from a forum member saying that no such thing existed... Surprisingly enough, Andrew Skolnick (who received, God knows how, a MS title from Columbia University!... MS stands for Magister Scientiae... and Skolnick calls himself a medical journalist) joined the oink-doubting, and expressed, too, his utter disbelief. I kept saying for days long that some molecules do grow, and no one there got the hint for the answer. Then I got this question posted in one of the Brazilian forums that I belonged to. The answer came correctly in just three hours! And they used the very one word that I was thinking about using in the JREF forum to name the process by which some molecules grow: polymerization (DNA, proteins, etc) . After five long and intelectually dry days, I posted this one-word answer in the JREF. Utter silence from then on regarding this issue... Second: hardly ever did any forum member bother to check what Andrew Skolnick said, even when I provided information highly indicative of his lying. This extreme lack of interest to check things further and to go after sources seems very widespread in JREF forum. The most striking example was in the now historical lie that Skolnick presents about the test with Natasha. He claims that Natasha did not complain of the two test conditions (resected esophagus and missing appendix) before the test, but well after the test had already begun. I proved that he was completely wrong in this (most likely he was lying; but the hypothesis of faulty memory cannot be completely discarded), and I even offered to send, by email, a copy of that little part of the documentary in a wmv file (audio + video !) so that anyone could check the version that I have with Skolnick's version. No one cared... Third: complete lack of attention to very basic things are also commonplace in JREF forum. For example, it had been many days already that I was in the forum, and some very active members still did not understand that I do not support the claim that Natasha has "X-ray" vision. Also, other active forum members still believed that I had said the researchers wanted to stress Natasha at the beginning of the test, even though I myself fight this wrong information in my online articles about this issue. Fourth: the one there (Andrew Skolnick) at the thread who should be considered the best authority about this medical test with Natasha (actually it was HE who designed the test), and the legitimate representative of CSICOP and CSMMH (this last institution being a medical "commission"!), simply did not know (...???!!!) that the search engine that medical professionals use worlwide to look for articles and to look for good medical journals is the pubmed engine. Skolnick used the New York Times search engine instead... It seems that no one in the thread was aware of it either.
Sometimes the behaviour of the members of the forum would get really bizarre. After learning that I had called Richard Wiseman a bastard and a crook (I did this in one email, in private email exchanges in Portuguese between me, a friend, and an ex-friend, and they knew very well that I did not really mean to say that all of Wiseman's work is trash; all I meant was that most of his works analyzing the paranormal is trash. My ex-friend decided, with my approval but not with my support, to inform Skolnick, Hyman and Wiseman about this; and Skolnick decided to reveal this to the whole world. Let the truth be known, then ), and after my acknowledgement that it was indeed true that I had said it, but that I objected to the translation "bastard" because the term that I used in Portuguese did not have any offense to the family embeded in it, the forum members started to look for the best adjective that would properly qualify poor Mr. Richard Wiseman... Simply pathetic.
It is true that there are some nice and well informed guys there, like Tai Chi and Hypnopsi. Also Diogenes (who I read years ago in another thread). But they seem to be the exception.
The most devastating vice in JREF forum, however, is its feeble (or corrupt) moderation. Moderators simply either fear Skolnick or side with him completely in his dishonest conduct. Skolnick is allowed to offend, to lie at will, and he was even allowed to disrespect my family relationships (This Link for good info about this...) suggesting that I may sexually abuse my own son and daughter. All this without proper counter-action from the moderator, named Darat (Quite appropriately pronounced "The Rat", i.e. stress on the last syllable. Unconsciously trying to hide from himself his submissive condition, he uses as "avatar" the little photo of a cat, the one that appears in the beginning of this page. But here, I made it to fully reveal its hidden side...). When I protested that Skolnick was being offensive, Skolnick in turn even mocked the moderation (This link). Of course I started to press Darat for a more honorable position from him. The more I demanded from him his duty, the more rat-like he became. He even said (following Skolnick), in the absence of any evidence, that I had a two-faced behaviour. Surprisingly (and sadly) enough, I had already fully explained the issue that Darat was referring to, and I had done it just some pages before, in that very same thread! Even other moderators joined in the unfair, silly attack. One named Paul said I was lying. When challenged by me to present what the lie was, he simply fled...
In the end, Darat, the Barbarian, just had no way but to rewrite the forum-membership agreement rules to suspend me for three days (this link - alternative link) without any reason whatsoever, however allowing Skolnick to do real bad things all the while. Darat didn't even want to receive my private messages complaining about these repeated offenses from Skolnick, and threatened to take out the private-message resource from my JREF account if I sent any further private message to him. Then, I complained to other moderators, sending a copy to him so that he could openly know right away of my action. He got really uncivilized, and took out the private-message resource from my account. Fed up of this shameless behaviour from this mockery of a human being (that thus far I had treated with full respect, contrary to Skolnick who repeatedly disrespected Darat), I sent an email to JREF itself and to many other people as well. I was not surprised to see that they just decided to ban me. Fortunately, Skolnick in his hasty temper posted my last complaining emails on the forum. Since he is the only one there that is really untouchable (even Darat and friend-moderators seem very coward-like regarding facing Skolnick), he did me a great favour by posting my email (this link - alternative link). For this, I shall be enormously indebted to Skolnick for ever .
After I left the forum, Skolnick even said that all parapsychologists are incompetent, deluded, frauds, or willfully stupid (this link - alternative link). So curious. Even James Randi claims to have friends who are parapsychologists, and that he respects these friends (namely: Stanley Krippner). Weird World this world of ours...
Darat ended up saying a few words about my banishment. He said, this link (alternative link) that: "Julio Siqueira has been banned from this forum for (amongst other reasons) being abusive toward other members, the Mod Team and the JREF. Therefore he no longer has the privilege of participating in the discussions on this forum."
What da Rat means by "being abusive toward other members" is: Julio was almost as offensive to other members as they were to him. What he means by "being offensive to the Mod Team" is: Julio sent one email to the Mod Team complaining of Darat. What Darat means by "being offensive to the JREF" is: Julio sent one email to JREF complaining of Darat. As to the "privilege" that I no longer have, I dearly hope that one day, preferably as soon as possible, I will indeed consider it a privilege to take part in the JREF forum.
Thus far, however, the bottom line at JREF forum is an alleged skeptic forum which actually is less intelectually robust than most credulous religion groups in the World. It must be very sad for the poor Old Man, that has given us so much with so many dangerous quacks that he has managed to debunk, to see this chickened-out feebleness in his own back yard...
Almost all groups have one feature that singles them out. In this case, the feature is the one below:
In most Skeptic forums, we raise questions. ..In JREFf, they raise cowards...
Julio Siqueira
Microbiologist
juliocbsiqueira@terra.com.br