I’ve always had mixed feelings about James Randi. On the one hand I applaud the fact that he has debunked many “psychics” and so in the process saved a lot of gullible people from themselves. On the other hand he’s a committed atheist and I believe he’s hostile to religion.
Still if I had to choose a world with or without James Randi in it I would still wish him to be here.
He can also be wrong. Like other professional skeptics, he HAS to be right EVERY time or the basis for his position collapses.
I watched him monitor an Australian dowsing competition some years ago (he was a non-believer). The field was set up in two parts - one for water and one for precious metals. The guys dowsing for water had something like a 70% hit ratio while the metals boys bombed at around 10-20%. Instead of saying that perhaps there WAS something to water dowsing he lumped the two percentages together and said the low-hit ratio (35=45%) proved dowsing was a fraud.