Licauco and James Randi Controversy
Licauco met his nemesis. James Randi (born August 7, 1928), stage name The Amazing Randi, is a stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge, in Toronto, Canada, Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). The Magician Randi debunked claims in Licauco's Philippine Daily Inquirer column entitled "INNER AWARENESS" (October 24, 2006). Randi, inter alia, challenged Licauco to apply for the JREF $ 1 million dollar prize, since the latter claimed that "he has paranormal abilities". With point-by-point reply ("Setting the record straight", Inquiret.net, January 15, 2007), Licauco forthwith answered Randi's attacks. Licauco denied having supernatural powers by saying "That’s a lie. I have never claimed to have any paranormal or psychic ability. I don’t know where Randi got that idea". Although he teaches, among other things, ESP and how to do remote viewing, and even boasted in a show that more than 80% of his students develop the skill.
He claims that "I don’t have to prove to Randi that ESP (extra sensory perception) ability (such as telepathy, clairvoyance and telekinesis) exists. This has been proven scientifically long ago." He also claims that Randi "participated in the cover-up of a botched scientific investigation of Michel Gauquelin’s conclusion that there was a significant statistical correlation between birth dates of athletes and the position of Mars in the heavens". Licauco further said that "Randi’s group denounced Gauquelin’s finding only to eat their words later. To save face, they went so far as to manipulate scientific data to conform to their preconceived notion that astrology was pure hogwash".
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