Somebody ought to say a few words in defense of The Amazing Randi, I suppose. The practice of using stage magicians to investigate paranormal claims is well established. AFAIK it started with Harry Houdini. He wanted very badly to believe we can communicate with the dead. But every medium he investigated turned out to be a fraud. He wrote a book about it. Read it for yourself, if you're interested. Some very bright people were taken in by these frauds; some because they were credulous, some because they didn't know what to look for. Houdini, being a kind of professional fraud himself (Stage magic is a kind of fraud. We all know it's not real magic.) knew how to observe correctly. Randi merely carries on this tradition. The basic rationale is the principle of parsimony: if a thing can be done without using extraordinary gifts or means, then that's probably what's happening.

One reason for this kind of scrutiny is the notion that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. This might make more sense in another context. Such as "When you're facing the heavy weight champion of the world, it's not enough to knock him down, you've got to knock him out." Somebody said this about Ali, once. This testing isn't limited to paranormal claims. It applies to all testable claims.

Two Bears seems unimpressed by the scientific standard of evidence. What can one say? It's the standard that brought us all of modern technology. It works. Consistantly.