Sam Nicholls holds an MSc in Astrophysics from Leeds University.

Sam,

Your clash with James Randi at the Granada TV studios seems to have been erased from his memory!

I am not surprised when confronted by a scientist who has not started from the base that Sir William Crookes was nutter. He is very clever at taking on mediums who know nothing about subatomic physics, but it's a very different story when confronted by a scientist who has made a careful study of the life after death as a branch of physics - natural and normal forces in the universe.

I have the cutting in front of me from The Sun about this TV programme where you were not allowed to go up against Randi and balance his case that death is the end of everything.

"James Randi: Psychic Investigator, ITV Thursday 8, 1991"

The critic, Garry Bushell asks, "Why can't we hear from scientists who claim there is a rational case for belief in life after death? Why have their arguments been kept off TV? I hear the comments from astrophyscist Sam Nicholls were cut from the show on mediums. Why? Could it be that Randi is only interested in easy targets?"

All these are of course rhetorical questions. No qualified scientists are allowed on British television to put the secular scientific case for survival after death. There are far too many powerful "experts" with too much to lose when people eventually have access to the scientific case for a separate mind and brain.

However, after 24 years of fighting for a balance on media and educational outlets there are signs that things are starting to change. Professor Bernard Carr has asked me to send my article 'A Rational Scientific Explanation For So-called Psychic Phenomena' to the Editor of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research - Dr. Chris Roe. This was the article that I had prepared for the 23rd International Conference of the Society for Psychical Research in 1999. This was blocked by the committee on which sat Dr. Susan Blackmore! They also blocked the paper that Ronald Pearson had prepared.

Michael Roll

From: James Randi
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004

I've just been made aware of a tirade attributed to you back in November of 2002, in which some fanciful claims were made - such that I'm fabulously funded by some religious groups, for example. Also, I'm told, you detailed some fictitious event that happened at Granada TV where I ordered some TV cameras switched off.

I apologize if this is just hearsay, which I suspect it is. I don't believe you'd make such irresponsible statements. In any case, I thought that you should know that some strange statements are being attributed to you, and every now and then I get asked about them.

James Randi

JAMES RANDI: PSYCHIC INVESTIGATOR - Letter to Michael Roll from journalist Garry Bushell, written in 1991, and an article mentioning how James "The Amazing" Randi cut from his TV broadcast challenges made by astrophysicist Sam Nicholls

James "The Amazing" Randi - E-mail from Sam Nicholls to Michael Roll (September 4, 2002)

James Randi - His Amazing Role in the Great Psi Media Circus - an article by Sam Nicholls (1991)