James Randi on scientists and their susceptibility to flimflammery

Hyperlipid, a radical nutrition blog* which I've been reading lately, features an interesting quotation today from the JREFtard-in-chief, from an article published in the journal Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences way back in the 80s:

"Scientists are very easily deceived. They think logically, extrapolate possibilities from evidence presented, assume (with a good probability of being right) certain aspects of the observed data and draw upon their past experience in coming to decisions. This is to say that they act very much as all humans do, struggling with sensory input to derive new facts from it. But scientists do this with a certain authority and certainty born of their training and discipline. They are thus excellent candidates for being flimflammed by a clever operator who is aware of the fact that scientists seldom bring the human element into account."

In addition to being Willie Rodriguez' former boss, Randi is, via his "educational forum" the grand poobah of debunkery. He made a career out of being a "magician" who debunked other magicians -- in other words, someone who amassed tremendous "critical thinker/iconoclast" cred and now uses it for... what?

As a commenter on Hyperlipid notes
If you see people acting funny, intelligent educated and abusing logic then chances are it is about money. If it is about money then the "F" word may be warranted, however improbable, even though it violates our personal ideas about integrity. If it is not about money then some more sinister far reaching conspiracy, which I doubt.

Another possibility is the human behavioral regression: some humans revert from nomadic-individualistic mindset to herd-like mentality where typical human traits such as creativity, adaptability, curiosity and logic may no longer seem important (to the regressors). They still are intelligent as the rest of us, except they do not use it the way we do, rather it becames a tool of social interaction exclusively.

*The "radical nutrition blogs" -- which is how I think of an informal network of writers focused on what it is about industrial food production that is making people sick and fat -- have something in common with 9/11 skepticism when it comes to bucking conventional wisdom and unscientific groupthink. The willingness to swim against the cognitive current seems to be shared by people who oppose the OCT about 9/11 and people who don't believe eating fat makes you fat and gives you heart disease, for instance.