I don't expect that the million will ever be won, simply because there is no confirming evidence for any paranormal claims to date.
James RandiRead
Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.
Interpretation
Science involves a systematic and logical approach to understanding the universe through evidence and is always open to revision.
In this quote, James Randi defines science as an organized effort to acquire knowledge about the universe based on rigorous examination and evidence. He emphasizes that science is a dynamic process, constantly evolving as new evidence emerges, contrasting it with magic, which he claims lacks the foundational basis of logical inquiry and does not yield reliable results.
In practice
In a scientific presentation, I might quote Randi to emphasize the importance of evidence-based conclusions.
I don't expect that the million will ever be won, simply because there is no confirming evidence for any paranormal claims to date.
[Psychics] use exactly the same gimmicks that we magicians do - the same physical methods, the same psychological methods - and they effectively and profoundly deceive millions of people around the earth, to their detriment.
Escapology has one thing going for it that probably made Harry Houdini such a superstar in his day and a legend in the present. Everyone wants to escape from something. Taxes, contracts, illness, work, the multitude of burdens that we chafe under are shadows from which we want to escape.
There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.
Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions.
The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
With any hallucinations, if you can do functional brain imagery while they're going on, you will find that the parts of the brain usually involved in seeing or hearing - in perception - have become super active by themselves. And this is an autonomous activity; this does not happen with imagination.
When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.
Science is but an image of the truth.
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