Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

In another instance, Tenhaeff claimed (1980, cited in Hoebens 1981–82b) that Croiset identified an arsonist who had been setting fires in a Dutch city. Tenhaeff stated that Croiset described the arsonist as someone who “sometimes wore a uniform,” “lived in an apartment building,” and had “something to do with toy airplanes”; further, the “toy” airplanes could be “model” airplanes. The arsonist turned out to be a policeman who worked with model airplanes—an impressive hit for Croiset, especially since Tenhaeff claimed that his statements had been made to State Police Commander Eekhof and had been videotaped and that a transcript of the videotape had been made, verified, and signed by Commander Eekhof.

Hoebens (1981–82a) interviewed Commander Eekhof and found that the truth was much different. Croiset had never mentioned a uniform. That detail had been added later by Tenhaeff, after the arsonist had been caught. Nor had Croiset mentioned “toy airplanes.” He had spoken of “‘airplanes’—‘sitting in airplanes,’ ‘airfields,’ and ‘airplane construction. ’ When asked by Commander Eekhof whether it could be model airplanes, Croiset first said yes, maybe, but then retracted and said, ‘No, these are big airplanes’” (p. 36). So, once again, vague statements become—after the fact—precise predictions, and statements that were never made are credited to the psychic to show his amazing powers.

Hansel (1966, 1980) has debunked another Croiset claim. In this instance, Croiset is said to have solved an assault on a young woman. But the police involved reported that, while Croiset did make comments on the case, his comments were useless.

Reiser, Ludwig, Saxe, and Wagner (1979) have studied whether, in a controlled situation, psychics can provide any information about a crime. They examined twelve psychics: eight professionals who make all or part of their living from selling psychic services and four amateur psychics. Physical evidence from four crimes, two solved and two unsolved, were presented to the psychics, who were to give their impressions of the crimes. The psychics were told nothing else about the crimes. The psychics, both individually and as a group, scored no better than chance on any of the four crimes. They showed very poor consistency in their impressions of the same crime and made flagrant errors. The most common error was to believe that the crimes had something to do with the “Hillside Strangler” murders which were taking place at the time in Los Angeles, where the study was conducted. In fact, none of the cases had anything to do with the “Strangler” series of killings.

As Randi (1996) notes, psychics can fool the police with the same tricks they use to fool others. Posner (1997) has shown that the claims of great accuracy by Florida “psychic detective” Noreen Renier are way off base. Nickell’s (1994) book contains eleven chapters examining carefully the claims of numerous police psychics. These claims do not hold up well to close scrutiny.

Ted Serios, another phony psychic, caused quite a stir in parapsychological circles when he claimed, in the 1960s, to be able to project a picture onto film in a Polaroid camera through psychic powers (Eisenbud 1967). This feat was accomplished by the use of a little sleight of hand and a fairly clever gimmick. Usually, Serios would use what he called a “gizmo,” a tube of paper placed against the camera lens. He said this helped him to focus his mental energy and direct it toward the film. He also used something he didn’t tell anyone about—a tiny tube about one inch long and one-half inch in diameter. This tube had a tiny magnifying lens at one end. In the other end one could insert a piece cut from a standard 35mm slide. Lined up properly, this device projected the image on the cut piece of transparency onto the film of the Polaroid camera. The device was small enough to be concealed in the palm of the hand, so it could be used even when the larger paper “gizmo” wasn’t around to conceal it. Serios’s method of producing his pictures was revealed in Reynolds (1967), Eisendrath (1967), and Randi (1980) after a magician working with Reynolds and Eisendrath spotted Serios’s device.

The media’s response to Serios was sadly typical. Life magazine, in spite of knowledge that Serios was a fake (Randi 1980), published a story (Welch 1967) that supported his claims. All mention of Serios’s use of sleight of hand was edited out of the story.

As might be expected, given the technique Serios used, his pictures were not of the highest quality. They were frequently fuzzy and out of focus. If Serios really had the ability to project his thoughts onto film, it would be reasonable to expect that, if asked to think about, say, a dog, he could obtain a recognizable picture of a dog. That’s not the way it worked, however. The pictures usually bore little or no resemblance to the object that Serios was asked to project onto film—unless, of course, one was allowed to “interpret” the resulting image. Dr. Jule Eisenbud (1967), a strong supporter of Serios’s claim, unwittingly gives a lovely example of how believers will support their preconceived beliefs with the most tortuous “interpretations.” Serios was asked to produce a picture of the sunken nuclear submarine Thresher. Instead, he produced a picture that looked very much like Queen Elizabeth II. How did Eisenbud explain that one? The queen’s name in Latin is Elizabeth Regina , and the last two letters of Elizabeth and the first two of Regina are thre , the first four letters of Thresher . Further, the sea is symbolically mother of life and Queen Elizabeth is a mother figure. It also seems that Serios is very fond of his mother, whose name is Esther. Take the t out of Esther and drop the first e, and you’re left with sher , Adding that to thre from the name of the Queen, gives Thresher , which was what Serios was asked to produce a photo of in the first place. As Randi (1980) comments, “Isn’t parapsychology just grand, folks?” (p. 222) The reader should remember that this sort of reasoning is often taken very seriously in parapsychology, as we will see in chapter 4.

Many people become convinced of the reality of psychic phenomena because of some seemingly psychic personal experience they have had. Going to a psychic who does a good cold reading can also be very convincing, as mentioned earlier in this chapter. Having what seems to be a prophetic dream is especially convincing. Many people can relate dreams that they, a friend, or a relative, have had that later “came true.” In some rare instances, the dream contains detailed information about the event that later took place, information that the dreamer really had no way of knowing. Take a hypothetical example: Late one night John is awakened by a nightmare in which his beloved great-aunt Petunia is driving a brand-new shocking pink Porsche down the San Diego Freeway. Suddenly, the engine of a 747 flying over the freeway to make a landing at San Diego airport falls off and crushes the Porsche, killing Aunt Petunia instantly. Shaken by the dream, John writes it down and then goes back to sleep. He is stunned to learn later that day that, in fact, Aunt Petunia was killed in just the way he had dreamed a few hours after he had had his dream.

Is such a dream not compelling evidence that, at least sometimes, dreams can psychically foretell the future? Most people would answer yes to that question. But I will argue that such dreams are simply coincidences. That argument may sound quite implausible at first, simply because most people are unaware of the vast number of dreams that take place. Sleep and dreaming have been the target of a great deal of research over the past forty years (see Hobson 1999, for a good review). Much has been learned about dreaming from this research. What is relevant here is that dreaming does not occur throughout the night, but only during periods of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. There are five such REM periods in a normal night’s sleep. Each REM period lasts about fifteen to twenty minutes in adults. In a single REM period, there are upwards of fifty dream “themes”—snippets of a more or less (often less) coherent “story.” Thus, a normal individual will have at least 250 (five REM periods times fifty dream themes per period) dream themes per night. That may not sound like many, but multiply that figure by the approximately 280 million people in the United States, as of the 2000 census. This means that there are 70,000,000,000 dream themes dreamed every night in the United States. In one year there are 25,550,000,000,000 dream themes dreamed in the United States alone. The world population is about 6 billion. Using that number, there turn out to be 547,500,000,000,000 dream themes dreamed around the world each year. That is an unimaginably vast number. The mathematical Law of Large Numbers states, in essence, that if an event is given enough opportunities to occur, sooner or later it will occur. Thus, if you flip a coin long enough, sooner or later you will have a run of twenty heads, even though the probability of that event is tiny. Similarly, with the huge number of opportunities for dreams to come true afforded by the vast number of dream themes that occur each year, some will turn out to be impressively “prophetic” by chance alone.