I'm fairly sure that Randi would accept low power 2.4 Ghz wavelengths (aka, Wi-Fi) as being in the "paranormal" arena. Man cannot detect that directly by any known means.

See my other response: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1600484&cid=31674750

Good for you. If you need to fund some research into the phenomenon or pay for your meds, then I bet that million bucks sure would come in handy:
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

Fair enough, but the problem is that has way too many factors. There's a thousand different ways to tell where cops are, even if you can't see them.

I'm pretty good at "sensing" when there's a cop ahead myself. I don't claim to be able to sense radar, but I do have a pretty good subconscious idea of where they probably are. This comes from the layout of the roads, the behavior of the other drivers, the way people (and cops in particular) think, the time of the week/month, etc.

Not saying your friend was lying intentionally. He probably believed it entirely. Most people who take these sort of tests have total belief in their abilities. It's just that a proper test doesn't depend on other factors, it's testing for the specific claimed ability.

Being able to tell where cops most likely are, even to a great degree of accuracy, is not really a paranormal event. Being able to sense low power radar without any devices or assistance would be. The two are not really the same thing.

You don't have to be able to explain an effect to tell that it exists.

Your claim is untestable not because we don't have instruments to detect it, but because:

a) It's vague. What do you mean by "energy is moving"? That single statement is, basically, total nonsense. You have to actually show the existence of whatever it is you mean by "energy" before it can make any sense.

b) It doesn't affect the outside world. People can make themselves "feel" pretty much anything. Mind over body is pretty well-established, so the fact that you can make your fingers tingle is not a "supernatural" event. The sense of touch is all in the brain anyway, as feeling is simply nerve impulses conducted from your skin to your brain via the spinal column. I can feel like I'm flying when dreaming, and it feels completely realistic. But that doesn't mean I'm hovering in the air and defying the laws of gravity.

"Healing" on the other hand, can be demonstrated. However, it's a bit unethical to do so, as actual injury must take place first.

There's always a market in selling cheap things to stupid people for too much money.

PROTIP: Chicken wire blocks WiFi signals particularly well. Cover an area with it and you have a really good Faraday cage for WiFi.

Define "always be right". Is that actually true, or do you simply not remember when he was wrong?

Tossing out of negative or non-noteworthy results is one of the most common forms of selection bias. Basically, only the notable events (where he was right) get remembered, while the mundane stuff (where he was wrong) gets ignored or forgotten.

For example, this sort of bias is why many people are fooled by psychics. They only remember the hits, not the misses. And what can be a "hit" is very wide indeed.

True, however the 100 milliwatts coming out of your WiFi device isn't quite in the same league as an MRI machine.

Pedantic. I meant low power fields, other than the obvious ones like light and high powered radar and such, of course.

Wifi, for example, is well outside the threshold of human perception. As would be cell phone signals. An old TV set actually throws off more radiation than Wifi does.

Hell, I once had a refrigerator that would trigger an electrical circuit detector (the kind that you can hold near an outlet to see if it's live) from 5 feet away. The same detector needed to be within half an inch of an outlet to work.

EM signals are simply everywhere, if somebody were truly sensitive to this sort of thing, they'd probably simply be dead from overstimulation.

Being able to sense electromagnetic fields, using no devices or other assistance, in a double blind trial, would definitely be worthy of the $1,000,000 from JREF.

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

Anybody who claims to be sensitive to this sort of thing and who has not won the million bucks is basically a flat-out liar.

Errr... What? Swiping a card takes far less time than paying with cash. Seconds, really.

Also, credit cards don't have PINs. Most of the time these days, they don't even require you to sign a slip anymore. At my local gas station I've paid for up to $30 without having to sign a single thing. Takes 10 seconds, max.

Seeing somebody pay with cash followed by having the illiterate idiot behind the counter try to make change when she can't even count properly always makes everybody else in the line groan.

Having a doctorate in a field doesn't mean you know anything about that field.

Having known many PhD's, I'd say it's quite the reverse, in fact.

Perhaps you should try creating something notable. I've created dozens of articles on Wikipedia. None of them has been deleted.

Most ATMs I see these days don't have deposit capabilities.

Also, the only time I use cash is when I'm bar hopping. Who uses cash these days? Even drive through fast food joints have card swipers on them now.

Yes, seriously. No government can exist without the support (or apathy) of its own people. At least, it cannot exist for very long.