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Randi is a sad little man who cannot get the world's attention, even with a million dollars (a million non-existent dollars, by the way).

So is this (PDF file) and this fake? From the Million Dollar Challenge FAQ:

• 3.1 I heard the prize money doesn't really exist and that it's all just a scam.
  • The short answer: The money is real.

    The medium-length answer: The money is held in the form of immediately negotiable bonds held by Goldman Sachs, a highly respected investment firm. Anyone can verify that the money exists by requesting the information in writing from the JREF. They will in turn forward you the most recent account statement from Goldman Sachs.

    The long answer: The JREF is a 'tax exempt' organization, so they are required by law to have a level of financial transparency. That means that the public can request things like an annual report and copies of JREF's 990 (the tax return non-profits file). Go to http://tfcny.fdncenter.org/990s/990search/esearch.php (search for Randi, 2005 is here.) to look up JREF's 990. Contained within these types of documents is enough information to verify that the organization does indeed have special assets in a reserved account to cover the prize, should it ever be won. The contract between the claimant and JREF is binding enough that the JREF must pay the prize if someone wins it. This is a published, legal obligation, not just a casual offer. We have no choice in the matter. As a savvy applicant, all you need to do is verify that the organization has the funds to cover the prize. Also, if JREF were not able to hold up its end of the bargain, the IRS would investigate and pull the JREF's tax exempt status. It would mean severe penalties for the JREF, and Randi himself would also be personally liable and subject to potential incarceration. Rest assured: The money is there.

    Long answer, continued: The JREF prize fund is maintained in a way that is similar to an endowment fund. Non-profits often create reserves of assets called endowments to build up enough money to take care of the organization in the case of bad financial times, or to save up money for a project down the road, like building a new facility or starting a large new program that would require a lot of capital. Endowment funds are held in a separate Goldman Sachs account designated, "James Randi Educational Foundation Prize Account." This prevents the JREF from accidentally spending the prize money. It is never a good idea to just let large sums of money sit in a savings account for years and years, so most non-profits invest their endowment funds. The way they invest it is really not important. JREF invests in bonds, which is fine. If a claimant wins the prize, it must be awarded within ten days, as per the Challenge rules and the legally binding contract entered into when the application was signed.

    I know you are going to ask, "What if the bonds cannot be easily liquidated?" If the JREF did not pay a winning claimant in a reasonable amount of time, we would be open to a lawsuit for breach of contract. The claimant will be paid. The JREF states that the funds are held in immediately negotiable bonds so that a claimant can feel at ease about the ability of the JREF to pay. The fact that the JREF will do so is going above and beyond the requirements of the law and the generally accepted practices of good, responsible non-profits. It is an enormous act of good faith on JREF's part. The million dollars exist. Arguments to the contrary are utterly pointless, and they will not be entertained by the JRE

Randi is a sad little man who cannot get the world's attention, even with a million dollars (a million non-existent dollars, by the way).

So is this (PDF file) and this fake? From the Million Dollar Challenge FAQ:

• 3.1 I heard the prize money doesn't really exist and that it's all just a scam.
  • The short answer: The money is real.

    The medium-length answer: The money is held in the form of immediately negotiable bonds held by Goldman Sachs, a highly respected investment firm. Anyone can verify that the money exists by requesting the information in writing from the JREF. They will in turn forward you the most recent account statement from Goldman Sachs.

    The long answer: The JREF is a 'tax exempt' organization, so they are required by law to have a level of financial transparency. That means that the public can request things like an annual report and copies of JREF's 990 (the tax return non-profits file). Go to http://tfcny.fdncenter.org/990s/990search/esearch.php (search for Randi, 2005 is here.) to look up JREF's 990. Contained within these types of documents is enough information to verify that the organization does indeed have special assets in a reserved account to cover the prize, should it ever be won. The contract between the claimant and JREF is binding enough that the JREF must pay the prize if someone wins it. This is a published, legal obligation, not just a casual offer. We have no choice in the matter. As a savvy applicant, all you need to do is verify that the organization has the funds to cover the prize. Also, if JREF were not able to hold up its end of the bargain, the IRS would investigate and pull the JREF's tax exempt status. It would mean severe penalties for the JREF, and Randi himself would also be personally liable and subject to potential incarceration. Rest assured: The money is there.

    Long answer, continued: The JREF prize fund is maintained in a way that is similar to an endowment fund. Non-profits often create reserves of assets called endowments to build up enough money to take care of the organization in the case of bad financial times, or to save up money for a project down the road, like building a new facility or starting a large new program that would require a lot of capital. Endowment funds are held in a separate Goldman Sachs account designated, "James Randi Educational Foundation Prize Account." This prevents the JREF from accidentally spending the prize money. It is never a good idea to just let large sums of money sit in a savings account for years and years, so most non-profits invest their endowment funds. The way they invest it is really not important. JREF invests in bonds, which is fine. If a claimant wins the prize, it must be awarded within ten days, as per the Challenge rules and the legally binding contract entered into when the application was signed.

    I know you are going to ask, "What if the bonds cannot be easily liquidated?" If the JREF did not pay a winning claimant in a reasonable amount of time, we would be open to a lawsuit for breach of contract. The claimant will be paid. The JREF states that the funds are held in immediately negotiable bonds so that a claimant can feel at ease about the ability of the JREF to pay. The fact that the JREF will do so is going above and beyond the requirements of the law and the generally accepted practices of good, responsible non-profits. It is an enormous act of good faith on JREF's part. The million dollars exist. Arguments to the contrary are utterly pointless, and they will not be entertained by the JRE

http://www.randi.org/

Go there, set up an appointment to test your ability to perform something that violates the laws of physics, or shows some sort of supernatural ability, and you'll become a millionaire, no questions asked. But you have to perform under controlled conditions.

I consider myself a skeptic in the traditional sense and find the 'gospel truth' a somewhat nauseating term when used in earnest. Specifically I subscribe to Carl Sagan's view of scientific skepticisim and I am a fan of James Randi.

Quoting Margret Mead.

http://www.randi.org/research/challenge.html You should definitely go and claim the cash. I mean, pockets full of dimes must be annoying.

There are actually scanned letters from Randi showing how he totally loses his cool and calls people names when they approach him about his challenge. One fellow claimed that he could stop eating for a year and wanted to take the challenge, but rather than Randi positing tests or asking questions as any reasonable person might be expected to do given that his challenge is supposedly designed to test exactly these kinds of claims, he instead wrote back calling the man a liar and then proceeded to tell him where to go in rather colorful language.

The Randi challenge is open to everyone, you know, so it's hard to argue with a straight face (and an undamaged brain) that somehow the real dowsers just mysteriously slipped through the cracks, and all the thousands of studies picked just the wrong ones.

Quoting the application:
"12. This offer is not open to any and all persons. Before being considered as an applicant, the person applying must satisfy two conditions: First, he/she must have a "media presence," which means having been published, written about, or known to the media in regard to his/her claimed abilities or powers. This can be established by producing articles, videos, books, or other published material that specifically addresses the person's abilities. Second, he/she must produce at least one signed document from an academic who has witnessed the powers or abilities of the person, and will validate that these powers or abilities have been verified." (my emphasis)

What in your opinion is causing these clearly detectable movements in the copper rods?

Ahh, I thought you'd never ask. :-)

http://www.randi.org/library/dowsing/index.html

The Ideomotor Effect
We are witnessing here a very powerful psychological phenomenon known as the "ideomotor effect." This is defined as, "an involuntary body movement evoked by an idea or thought process rather than by sensory stimulation." The dowser is unknowingly moving the device of choice, exerting a small shaking, tilt or pressure to it, enough to disturb its state of balance. This has been shown any number of times to be true, but the demonstration has meant nothing to the dowsers, who will persist in their delusion no matter how many times it is shown to them that dowsing does not work. The defensive reaction of most dowsers, following their failure, is to claim that they should not have submitted to any test, and will never do so again. And most will say that dowsing comes under special rules that deny that it can be tested, ever. The discouraging fact is that no dowser is ever convinced, as a result of proper double-blind testing, that they cannot dowse. Their need to believe is so strong and so ingrained, that they will refuse to accept any quality and/or quantity of good evidence. They have adopted a philosophy that shields them against reality.

I've played with dowsing rods and I am not personally sure they move by themselves. It seems my hands move slightly to make the rods go in or out so it may be subconscious.

I've seen demonstrations where somebody is given the rods and asked to wait outside, the instructor then puts a "mental portal" somewhere in the room (drawing the outline of it in the air with his hands), the person with the rods then comes in and finds the portal... wtf?

I tell you, there is something to this dowsing thing. It would be nice somebody takes the time to test these things using the scientific method and don't bother mentioning this hoax

I am very surprised that so many fellow slashdotters seem to believe in dowsing - but i think that's actually a good thing, because they at least try to explain how to do it, thus satisfying the requirement of fallibility of their theory. I'd really love to know how many of them would recant their beliefs when someone would put them to the test.

Well, anyhow: dowsing can be a very profitable art, it seems - Randi's 1,000,000 $ challenge seems to be open to dowsers, as well. So I'd recommend that one of you believers put their money where their mouth is, and take that challenge! But, i guess a lot of people have tried and failed, up to now: The Matter of Dowsing

If you take the time and read the challenge applications forum you will see that once Randi realizes an applicant has a minimum chance of beating the challenge he starts changing the protocols making them confusing and harder than necessary. If that doesn't work they start acting pissed off and try provoking the applicant into a flame war that result in terminating the application.

Great, insightful article! (I think the entry you meant to link to was this one: http://phineasgage.wordpress.com/2007/10/13/audiophiles-and-the-limitations-of-human-hearing/)

Great, insightful article! (I think the entry you meant to link to was this one: http://phineasgage.wordpress.com/2007/10/13/audiophiles-and-the-limitations-of-human-hearing/)

Why James Randi of course; because if you really believe in ghosts, you really believe you have a shot at that one million dollars.

Obviously, there's enough evidence out there that needs to be confirmed or debunked (depending on your point of view) that centers for paranormal research are justified.

Now there's nothing a good academic center likes more than funding - I think we can all agree on that. So, why haven't they taken Randi's One Million Dollars from him to buy more Aeron chairs?

Of all audio gear, speaker cables and power cables are probably the ones that have the least effect, if any, on sound quality. I'll grant right off the bat that any difference probably won't be audible. But before everyone gets all comfy in their religous prejudices, consider the history of absolutism - it usually fails in the long run.

We saw it with CD players. 25 years ago it was easy to find hordes and hordes of scientifically-minded folks who proclaimed that CD players were all identical and perfect. They reproduced as high a frequency as the ear could hear. They did so with perfect digital repeatability. They were perfect and identical. That was an unassailable scientific fact. It was even a marketing slogan for Phillips; "Perfect Sound Forever" was their first ad campaign for CDs.

Audiophiles said different. They said they heard differences. When challenged to do double blind, ABX testing, they often failed. They offered up only feeble excuses about how such tests are never structured properly, always being too short and normally using switchboxes that degraded sound. The skeptics and scientists had a field day exposing audiophiles as frauds and hucksters, as (at best) deluded simpletons.

Eventually, though, a funny thing happened. Research got done by audiophiles who were also engineers. They discovered various CD player problems (like jitter) that could be measured and fixed. When those problems were fixed, the audiophiles said the players sounded better. The audiophiles still failed ABX tests and still held to the same excuses, but changes were made, anyway.

Nowadays, anyone who knows what music sounds like (and, yes, that eliminates 98% of the populace right there) can easily tell the difference between a first-gen Sony CDP-101 and a current high-end CD player. There really are differences. Those people who absolutely knew that it was scientifically impossible for any difference to exist turned out to be painfully, embarrassingly wrong. (Nowadays, they tend to fall back on revisionist history: "Oh, we never really said you guys were wrong, just that testing didn't bear you out...etc., etc.")

My point is not to construct an elaborate straw man. My point is that keeping an open mind is a good thing. We have previously seen lots of folks loudly and authoritatively proclaim that a given phenomena does not exist and cannot possibly exist. They cite scientific reasoning (as they spout it) as unquestionable. But that is nothing more than a religous devotion to a position and I reject it.

Sure, the burden of proof is on the people who make claims that cable A sounds better than cable B. I doubt they'll ever succeed. But the vituperative, out-of-hand rejection of alternate views is more than just unseemly; it argues against (indeed, belittles) an inquisitive spirit.

Perhaps some Carl Sagan would be in order. His essay The Dragon in My Garage is right on point. When considering unverifiable and seemingly insane assertions, his advice is that: "...the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the ... hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion."

We've seen the mocking, "scientific" approach to audiophile claims turn out to be wrong in the past. We might do well to be a little less sure of ourselves when considering audiophile issues in the future.

Side note: Just to show that there's blame to go all around, note that the offer of the James Randi Educational Foundation folks is, as I have stated elsewhere, disingenuous as all hell. (See Rule 12, a proviso that makes it clear that the offer is only open to whoever they want to make it open to and gives the JREF multiple, too-easy excuses to reject any attempt to claim the reward.) The rules are set up so that the test will never happen. This is little more than a minor publicity stunt that's gotten picked up by too many 'net outlets and given far too much virtual ink, already.

Randi is a real character. If you don't know who he is, check out James Randi on Wikipedia or The James Randi Educational Foundation. One of his boosters is comedian and magician, Penn Jillette, whose TV show, Penn & Teller: Bullshit! he frequently appears on. He's ruffled quite a few feathers over the years by being the poster-boy for skepticism, especially with respect to "mystic" or "supernatural" claims, so don't expect there to be many objective takes on him out there.

So, the JREF Challenge has been upgraded to not jut paranormal psychic claims to ridiculous marketing claims? Well, he hasn't lost his money yet, so he's a pretty good gambler.

I love the concept, I just pray that it will change the marketing practices (Monster cables are HOW MUCH?... there isn't enough loss over 6' for me to not just buy some radio shack [also now overpriced, but not as much] cables instead)

Sadly, like the Music companies, I think ad-makers are set in their ways, and we won't see any change soon. I just hope it wakes people up to how much their ignorance can hurt their wallet.

Unless you happen to love debunking the falsely-claimed-paranormal, you're probably like me and had no idea who the hell James Randi is/was/will be. Here's his Wikipedia page, here is his standing $1,000,000 challenge for a demonstration of true paranormality, and here is his Education Foundation (on "the Paranormal, Pseudoscientific, and the Supernatural").

Also, here's a video of him in action.

Sorry to answer twice and don't take this the wrong way. I dismissed your post when I saw the name Singer but it struck me later that you may not be aware of what "the work" actually is.

The IPCC reports are here (the the attribution section of the 2007 SPM is a good place to start), also this site is run by some world class climatologists who contributed to the reports. A couple of names you might want to check out on wikipedia are James Hansen (Head of NOAA and IMHO a model of what a "public servant" should be) and James Lovelock ("The eccentric father of Earth Sciences"). Of course you could always watch the movie, politics to one side, Al Gore's movie is actually just a "slide show" of what the IPCC reports say. Hansen has a cameo in that too.

I'm an old fart and feel it's my duty to tell you a story....

I have followed this subject since I saw the imfamous "ice age" article in National Geographic back in the 70's, I thought it was BS and the story died a natural death, OTOH: I was about 16-17 and was firmly convinved that Uri Gellr could bend spoons if he frowned in the right way. In the early 80's a thin book about skepticisim written by a magicain taught me more about science than all my high school teachers put together (bless them, they tried). Sadly I don't remeber the title of Randi's book but Carl Sagan is a good read.

JREF Forum - Skeptical discussion.
mma.tv - Mixed martial arts.

http://www.randi.org/

Because in looking at Randi's rules for the $1M challenge (here), #12 states "This offer is not open to any and all persons. Before being considered as an applicant, the person applying must satisfy two conditions: First, he/she must have a "media presence," which means having been published, written about, or known to the media in regard to his/her claimed abilities or powers. This can be established by producing articles, videos, books, or other published material that specifically addresses the person's abilities. Second, he/she must produce at least one signed document from an academic who has witnessed the powers or abilities of the person, and will validate that these powers or abilities have been verified." (the rules have very recently -- as of just this past Sunday -- been revised, and I suspect this is one of the recent revisions.)

"... If this were for real, he'd be going though a university or trying to get published in respected journal directly."

Every conspiracy theorist uses the same logic. For example, compare and contrast:

"9/11 WUZ AN INSAID JOB!!! U"R DA ONE DAT'S DA CONSPIRACY THEORY! DIDN'T U EVER HERE OF OPARETION NORTHWOODS?!?! THE USS LIBERTY!??! DEY CAN'T BE TRUSTED!! GO BACK TO YOUR BILL O"REILY YOU SHEEPLE!!!1ONE!!ELEVEN!"

vs

"So I guess Enron didn't really cause rolling blackouts in California just to drive up the price of electricity? ..... I guess MCI/ Worldcom CEO Bernie Ebbers wasn't really convicted of conpsiracy to commit securities fraud in the $11 Billion Worldcom collapse. .... That type of head-in-the-sand attitude helps no one."

Now, granted, you sound a bit more reasonable than the 9/11 conspiracy nuts, but only on the surface. When we actually examine your reasoning, you use the exact same logical fallacy that every conspiracy theory makes use of, and the original post used several common logical fallacies, as well as many lies. Unfortunately, as they say "A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes". Debunking this type of nonsense takes way too much time. If you're interested in improving your critical thinking skills, and minimizing the chances of you being fooled again, check out the James Randi Educational Foundation. Otherwise, carry on believing whatever you want.

http://www.randi.org/research/index.html

Since you can read my mind, might as well win a million bucks.


-_-

Money speaks and dead people don't

Not according to charlatans like Sylvia Browne!

Randi has a copy of the full videos on his website

http://www.randi.org/uri/index.html

"Why isn't anyone doing this?"

Well obviously it's cheaper, easier and more accurate to just use dowsing rods http://www.randi.org/library/dowsing/

I don't think you're getting mine, RTFPost again. I used the word placebo and postulated alternate explanations such as hypnosis. I'm not saying that these incidents are easily repeatable or can be explained by their practitioners. I'm saying that even as one-off events, Ockham's razor isn't in evidence, attempts to explain them away lack data. There is, for instance, some very strange data about successful homeopathy, only partially repeated, but statistically significant. Adequate data, however, is lacking. Note that I'm a skeptic, I don't believe the claims of homeopathics etc. despite the evidence presented by my own experiences.

I have serious doubts about the claims of those who imply that Science has reached apotheosis and the current paradigms are adequate to explain everything. The naysayers about some of this stuff seem fervently religious in their lack of skepticism and unstudied confindence.

Randi's intentions may be noble but his methods, predictably, are more like a circus act. We need real science applied to some of these strange marginalia--but who would fund it? An example would be that weird red rain recently concentrated in Kerala. Samples were taken and tested, but the science was incredibly weak, given the potential of such an unknown.

Face it, we're just tiny little meat puppets barely out of the caves, we perceive a small amount of the available radiation and acoustic band, we're barely aware of most of our own thought processes (especially our own dogma), we can only observe

Congratulations, you just proved my point.

Next time you run into one of these "convincing dowsers" or miracle healers, tell 'em to head on over and claim James Randi's $1 million prize.

Shit. Or maybe I'm just as suggestible as everyone. I'm going to have to read up on this some more. (starting here)

Actually, the JREF is changing the challenge, and they're no longer accepting applications from random claimants "off the street" as it were. Applicants need a "media profile" -- in other words, they have to be famous. Sylvia Browne, Uri Geller, John Edward, the usual suspects. They're also actively going after these same famous types with legal guns too.

It's all here: http://www.randi.org/jr/2007-01/011207challenge.ht ml#i3

Personally, I think it's a mistake -- these folks are never going to take this challenge, and they certainly make far more off of flimflam than they could hope to win in such a challenge. Certainly they're not going to get into protocol negotiations when they're being antagonized (even if I support their being antagonized).

Randi claims that most applicants never agree to a "proper test protocol", and are never tested. But he also points out that both sides have to agree what that "proper test protocol" is. So either side can basically tank the process by being disagreeable. With a million dollars on the line (not to mention his reputation), you have to believe that Randi has a serious incentive to make sure that nobody passes the test. Apparently the easiest way to do so is to ensure that nobody (or only a very few people) actually gets to take the test.

The descriptions I've read of what he considers proper test protocols are quite reasonable. Do you have any actual evidence of them making unreasonable requirements to sink things? Or are you just engaging in FUD?

Looking at the forum on applicants, for example, things seem pretty above-board. In addition to the specifics, which seem fine, you can see that Randi often delegates the negotiations to skeptic groups. Are you suggesting they they are all in secret collusion with Randi to drive these people off?

ow if the criteria were set and judged by a neutral third party, then I might have a little more faith in the challenge. But I doubt that would ever happen because JREF would then face the chance (however minute) of actually losing the money and the bragging rights.

Then start your own prize. Don't have a million dollars? That doesn't matter. Randi didn't either. Back in the day, I and a lot of other people signed notes backing the prize. Now it sounds like he has cash in hand. If you put together a prize with criteria that are better than Randi's, you'll do even better. But make sure you include some experts in flimflammery as part of it. A good mix of scientists and magicians is what I'd like to see.

Come back when you've read the FAQ.

If they need more funding, I suppose they could always get the money from the JREF.

"Also, circling is the vulture of impossibility .. where a prize is offered to accomplish an impossible task .. resulting in complete waste of resources."

On the contrary, a prize is offered to accomplish an impossible task, can be of great educational value.

• Randi.org
• Popular Mechanics
• blog

Enthusiasm doesn't equate with truth. It might indicate a particular set of beliefs, but people have been and continue to be mistaken in their beliefs. See James Randi's website for numerous examples. If you don't like those, there's always Google.

I see the BBC's initiative to be useful in the same way that the JREF Million Dollar Challenge is useful: The next time some crackpot cries, "I'm brilliant, but I'm being suppressed by The Establishment", we can challenge him to make his case to the BBC.

Well, whatever it is, I hope things get fixed soon. In my fairly frequent science/evolution debates in my company's intranet forum, talkorigins is invariably what I link to after the JREF. The site is mind-bogglingly comprehensive, and I enjoy reading the post of the month section (even though a lot of the more detailed debates go well over my head).
Its sad to see a great resource like that hacked and delisted; I wish them a speedy recovery.

Cool! that talent can net you a million dollars. see: http://www.randi.org/research/index.html

We had neither the money, nor the cooling, nor the power supplies, nor the controls to run this small device steady-state, which is what we need to do, and what requires us to build the full-scale device.

...we are still trying to get the missing $ 2M restored and put into our existing but unfunded contract. IF this happens - which is improhable, given the politics of this election year, and the non-visionary people in Congress - we will redo WB-6 with an improved and better version (WB-7) which should give 5x more output, and run about 50 tests to quiet dissent. AND we will convene a review panel of very high-level and internationally distinguished people to spend about 6 weeks going over this to recommend for or against proceeding sith a full scale demo.

Why a full-scale demo? Because the system scales oddly: Fusion output goes as the 7th power of the size and Gain goes as the 5th power. Thus there is very little to be gained by building a half-size model;

So we did what we could and finally DID prove the physics and associated engineering physics constraints, scaling laws, etc, albeit at 1/8-1/10 scale. So what? Doubling the size will not tell us anything we don't already know. The next intelligent and logical step is to build a machine big enough to make net power. And THAT is the same 200 M we have quoted to the DoD since the beginning.

Here are two of Bussards posts, and the two patents he mentions:
http://www.randi.org/forumlive/showpost.php?s=e665 007961e36e93001813d66ec9a4ea&p=1722023
http://www.fusor.net/board/view.php?site=fusor&bn= fusor_announce&key=1143684406
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fs rchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5160695.PN.&OS=PN/51606 95&RS=PN/5160695
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fs rchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4826646.PN.&OS=PN/48266 46&RS=PN/4826646

Everything he says is consistent with what he has said elsewhere. Furthermore, all the details are correct to the extent of my knowledge (though this isn't the same branch of physics I specialised in).

The only thing I notice to be a little offsetting is: his disdain for government funding, oil companies, and his exaggeration of how great this will be for the world. But some folks are like that; this is perhaps the sort of thinking you should keep to yourself when trying to convince others of the veracity of your claims! All the same, it has no bearing on the rigour or ration of his work. (He even recognises that this sounds like "sour grapes", but that this isn't his intention.)

So I expect this to be on the up-and-up, though an insurmountable obstacle may well still pop up. That isn't the sort of thing I would expect to be mentioned to potential funders!

The Bussard Ramjet is one of the finest pieces of Pseudo scientific speculation ever dreamed of and integrated into Science Fiction works.

The Bussard Ramjet is not psuedo-scientific. It might not be viable as an engineering proposal given current technological restrictions and actual information about particle densities in our region of space (data collected, BTW, after Bussard made the proposal), but that doesn't mean the science involved is flawed.

I too like Mr. Bussard a great deal, and respect and admire his numerous contributions to our culture and to science fiction. However, it has become clear to me that Mr. Bussard no longer is the man he once was. He, most unfortunately, appears to have become senile, vindictive and single-minded to the point of blindness; read what he says, how he defends his project while attacking all other research constantly.

So he thinks that the current tokomak-oriented research is a dead end unlikely to produce useful results. He may be right; certainly there are quite a few fellow sceptics out there. I'm not qualified to judge his comments about his own project or others', but then I'm pretty certain you aren't either. And I haven't heard anything about this from anyone who is, either.

Mr. Bussard has never been able to reproduce any of his results in front of impartial peers, under controlled conditions. Read his letter on JREF, and see for yourself.

Yes, and he admits as much in this video, which you clearly haven't watched.

Mr. Bussard claims to have tested his device a few times and achieved success, but whenever he tried to test it under controlled conditions, it failed - and he blamed some obscure technical malfunction for this inability to achieve any measurable results.

Err... no. He doesn't claim that in either this video, or the post in the comment thread you appear to be talking about. He claims he had a working device, but that it was structurally damaged during testing and he no longer has the funding to recreate that experiment.

Then he says that only by having 200M$ can he show that his techniques work - he will not rebuild his original demonstration machine, nor allow anybody to do so.

1. In the Google video, he clearly states that he *will* rebuild the original demonstration machine, at a cost of $2M.
2. Can you point me to any evidence that he has attempted to prevent somebody else from doing so?

According to Mr. Bussard, it is easy to test for the proper operation of his machine, hence confirming that scaling the machine up in a 200M$ version would produce lots and lots of energy. However, he refuses to construct such a workable prototype and have it tested by independent experts.

Again, this isn't true. If you watch the video, you'll see him explain that a small part of the $200M is for creating an initial test device, a relatively minor improvement on the device he has already built, for the purposes of demonstration. He argues that building a 1/2 scale model would be inappropriate, because it would prove nothing that the 1/10th and 1/8th scale models he has already built and is proposing to recreate hasn't already shown. He plans to recreate a 1/8th model and then move straight to a full scale one. Reading between the lines, I suspect he feels this is a waste of time when not doing it could save a substantial amount of time (if not money) but accepts that he will need to do it to secure the funding.

You posted all this anonymously and didn't provide a single link and said nothing of where this detailed knowledge of yours comes from. Maybe you're right, but i'd like to see something more than just your words.

Here is a reply from Bussard on JREF (comment 27)
http://www.randi.org/forumlive/showthread.php?s=7e fdcf1d07a0afa89b47d310bd342e5a&p=1722023#post17220 23

He does seem like nutcase, but reading this it sounds like there is a chance this is legit research. If this does work, that 200 mil will be nothing in comparison to the acheivement.

Is there someone here who understands what he's trying to do?

Science and technology as presented on "science channels" can be about as informative as that presented in Popular Mechanics and such.

No no no, you are missing a great opportunity!

James Randi has a standing offer to give 1 Million Dollars to anyone who can do stuff similar to what you claim. For instance if you always guess the next card drawn at random from a deck of cards, always pick the where the ball will land in roulette, or always call a coin heads or tales correctly.

Here you apparently have the power to always 'win' at something declared a random selection.

I say when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Go get that million dollars! :)

James Randi has already dismissed many scientifically unexplainable feats. I saw him first in a horizon documentary where horizon tried to prove that homeopathy works, which would have showed that water has a memory of past diluted molecules. They used double blinded tests with statistics to prevent any mistakes and it failed.

If anyone can prove something not possible scientifically they get the $1 million jackpot.

http://www.randi.org/research/index.html