Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

The publication of Mrs. Albert’s charge heightened suspicion regarding the Shackleton studies. Medhurst (1971) examined a small portion of the data from Soal’s sessions with Shackleton and found that there was an excess of hits when the target was a 4 or a 5. Scott and Haskell (1973, 1974) examined all the data, using a computer, and showed that not only were hits much more likely to occur than chance would predict when the target was a 4 or 5, but that there were far fewer l’s as target when a 4 or 5 was guessed than would be expected by chance. These results showed how Soal had been cheating. He filled the target digit sequence with extra l’s. When Shackleton guessed a 4 or 5 on a trial when the target was one of these supernumerary l’s, the target was changed to a 4 or 5, whichever was correct. This inflated the hit rate to above-chance levels. Markwick (1978, 1985) discovered that Soal (who died in 1975) had cheated in a second way. He had left blanks in the target column and had later filled in the digit corresponding to whatever design Shackleton guessed.

The discoveries of how Soal had faked his results destroyed the credibility of his work in the eyes of skeptics and most parapsychologists. One parapsychologist, J. C. Pratt, who had worked with the Rhines at Duke, proposed an astonishing defense of Soal. According to Pratt (1978), Soal had powers of precognition and had inserted the extra digits in the target columns guided by his precognition. The desire to believe knows no bounds.

The Rhines had pioneered the study of parapsychology using card-guessing experiments. As the years passed, many became dissatisfied with this approach. It was dull for all involved, including the readers of the final papers. Worst of all, it failed to produce convincing evidence for ESP or other paranormal abilities. By the 1970s, then, the stage was set for something new to burst upon the scene. This turned out to be an Israeli psychic named Uri Geller. Starting with his arrival in the United States, Geller quickly became the parapsychological sensation of the decade. Many parapsychologists became convinced that in Geller they finally had positive proof that psychic powers were real and that they could be demonstrated more or less on demand. Geller also became a darling of the media, appearing on talk show after talk show, where his powers were amply demonstrated and declared genuine. He convinced millions that he was, at last, the real thing.

Geller’s alleged powers were truly amazing. He could bend solid metal objects with his mind alone. He could read minds. He could see inside sealed envelopes and boxes and tell what was in them. These powers were apparently verified when Geller was studied by physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff at California’s prestigious Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Targ and Puthoff (1974) published a paper in Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals, in which they declared they had demonstrated that Geller’s powers were real.

Unfortunately for Geller and his supporters, it soon became obvious that the truth about Geller was very different from his claims. Geller turned out to be nothing more than a magician using sleight of hand and considerable personal charm to fool his admirers. The tests at SRI turned out to have been run under conditions that can best be described as chaotic. Few limits were placed on Geller’s behavior, and he was more or less in control of the procedures used to test him. Further, the results of the tests were incorrectly reported in Targ and Puthoff’s Nature paper. For details the reader is referred to magician James Randi’s The Truth About Uri Geller (1982), which is the definitive expose of this alleged modern psychic. Marks’s The Psychology of the Psychic (2000) also contains excellent material on Geller.

Geller was caught blatantly using sleight of hand on many occasions (Randi 1982; Marks 2000). In early 1973 Time magazine was considering doing a story on Geller, and he was invited to give a demonstration of his powers for members of Time’s staff. Unknown to Geller, magician Randi (The Amazing Randi) was present, posing as a Time employee. Strangely, for all Geller’s professed powers, he failed to detect the presence of a trained professional magician and went on to give what Randi called “the saddest, most transparent act I’ve ever seen” (p. 93). From then on Geller never performed if there was a trained magician watching. They give off “bad vibes” that make his powers go away.

It will be of interest here to describe how Geller does a few of his better-known tricks. In his stage show, which convinced millions of paying customers that he was truly psychic, he did a simple mind-reading act (Marks and Kammann 1980; Hyman, personal communication 2002). He asked members of the audience to think of one geometric figure inside another, often saying something like “don’t think of a square—that’s too easy for me.” After a few moments, he says that he has received the mental impression of a circle inside a triangle, and asks how many in the audience were thinking of that design. Many amazed hands go up. He then typically says that he initially was going to say a triangle inside a circle, but changed his mind. How many in the audience were thinking of that combination? More hands go up in amazement until, perhaps, well over half the audience members have their hands up. Simple as it is, this can be an impressive gimmick in the excitement of a live performance. The trick is simple—after you’ve excluded the square, there really are only two “simple” geometric figures left, the circle and the triangle. There aren’t going to be many geometric whizzes in the house who think of a dodecahedron inside a rhombus.

In another favorite trick of Geller’s, the audience is asked to think of an odd two-digit number less than fifty, with the restriction that the two digits can’t be the same. With much fanfare, Geller announces that he has received the number 37. Typically, about one-third of the audience will have picked this number. Geller may then say he first was going to say 35, but changed his mind. How many were thinking of 35? More hands go up. While it may appear at first blush that there are lots of numbers to choose from, the restrictions placed on the choice narrows the number of possible choices down to just eighteen. And the specification to pick an odd number tends to steer people away from picking a number like 27, which is odd but has an even first digit. When such numbers are taken out, there are only eight numbers left to pick from. It has been shown that about 56 percent of a group of people will pick either 35 or 37 when given these instructions (Marks 2000). These response patterns are called population stereotypes, and the magician or phony psychic can make good use of them to convince people that their minds really are being read.

Geller’s most famous trick was bending metal objects, supposedly by psychic energy. The bent objects were usually keys or spoons. Both are surprisingly easy to bend when you know how. Keys are easiest—all one needs to do is distract the audience for a moment and slip the key into some slot or press it on a solid surface and give it a good push. The audience, of course, won’t have seen this, since their attention has been distracted. Another way of bending a key is to use a second key that has a large enough hole in the top (Fig. 5) to insert the end of the key you want to bend. You do so and, while the audience is distracted, apply pressure. Geller, always a master of distraction, would perform such simple tricks on various television shows to amaze his hosts. Randi (1982) reports that one could see him palm keys and bend them physically when one carefully viewed a videotape of the program later.