Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
letters: we are exhorted to 'THINK!'
The full text of The Teachings of Carlos was of course written by
Randi. He dashed it off on his laptop computer in a few hours.
The Australian media felt betrayed by one of their own. The
leading television programme in the country had gone out of its
way to expose shoddy standards of fact-checking and widespread
gullibility in institutions devoted to news and public affairs. Some
media analysts excused it on the grounds that it obviously wasn't
important; if it had been important, they would have checked it
out. There were few mea culpas. None who had been taken in
were willing to appear on a retrospective of the 'Carlos Affair'
scheduled for the following Sunday on Sixty Minutes.
Of course, there's nothing special about Australia in all of this.
Alvarez, Randi, and their co-conspirators could have chosen any
nation on Earth and it would have worked. Even those who gave
Carlos a national television audience knew enough to ask some
sceptical questions - but they couldn't resist inviting him to appear
in the first place. The internecine struggle within the media
dominated the headlines after Carlos's departure. Puzzled commentaries
were written about the expose. What was the point?
What was proved?
Alvarez and Randi proved how little it takes to tamper with our
beliefs, how readily we are led, how easy it is to fool the public
when people are lonely and starved for something to believe in. If
Carlos had stayed longer in Australia and concentrated more on
healing - by prayer, by believing in him, by wishing on his bottled
tears, by stroking his crystals - there's no doubt that people would
have reported being cured of many illnesses, especially psychogenic
ones. Even with nothing more fraudulent than his appearance,
sayings and ancillary products, some people would have
gotten better because of Carlos.
This, again, is the placebo effect found with almost every
faith-healer. We believe we're taking a potent medicine and the
pain goes away - for a time at least. And when we believe we've
received a potent spiritual cure, the disease sometimes also goes
away - for a time at least. Some people spontaneously announce
that they've been cured even when they haven't. Detailed followups
by Nolen, Randi and many others of those who have been told
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