Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

Bending spoons takes a bit more preparation if the trick is to have maximum effect. One has to prepare the spoon beforehand. Let us assume that you are going to a party and wish to amaze those present with your psychic powers. When you arrive, go to the kitchen and borrow an all-metal spoon. (The trick doesn’t work with plastic or nonmetal spoons.) Prepare the trick by bending the spoon back and forth at the point where the stem and bowl meet. At first, bend only a small bit, then gradually increase the angle of the bend. It’s best to do this under running water, as the spoon becomes quite hot from the friction that occurs during the bending. You’ll have to practice with many spoons before you’ll be skilled enough to know when the spoon is just about ready to break at the junction between stem and bowl. There will be almost no visible sign on the top of the spoon that anything is amiss, although there will be a small crack on the underside. Now mark the spoon in some way so you can distinguish it from the others in the cutlery drawer (a small scratch will do fine) and return it to the drawer. Then, mention casually in conversation that you have psychic powers. Don’t be too loud about it—act modest and perhaps a little embarrassed. Usually, someone will take the bait and ask you to demonstrate. At this point, hedge—say the powers come and go, you’re not sure, and so forth. Finally, allow yourself to be talked into giving a performance.

As you start, emphasize one point: your powers aren’t 100 percent reliable. They depend not only on you, but on those around you. Say something to the effect that everyone has such powers, and the audience has to help. That way, if you fail, whose fault is it? Not yours—the audience didn’t help, or didn’t believe.

Don’t start off with the spoon-bending act. Instead, do a little mind reading, like the cold readings described in chapter 2, to warm up the group and convince them there is really something to your claim. Then trot out the spoon trick. But—and the importance of this point can’t be overemphasized—fail at it the first time you try. That may seem strange, but as Randi has frequently pointed out, it is very important for psychics to fail some of the time when attempting a trick. After all, if the psychic were a magician doing tricks, the trick would always work. Therefore, if the trick fails, the person must be a real psychic. This way, psychics get “credit” both when the trick works and when it doesn’t.

After the mind reading, say you’re going to try something really difficult—bending a piece of silverware. Ask someone to bring the drawer with the silverware or, better yet, go into the kitchen yourself, ask where the drawer is (even though you already know), open it, and “randomly” select the spoon you’ve previously worked on and marked. Ask another person to hold the spoon at points 1 and 2 (Fig. 6A). Tell the audience to concentrate on seeing the spoon bend. Have them chant “bend, bend, bend” if you think they’ll go for it. Sweat will pop out on your forehead as you concentrate, focusing all your psychic powers on the spoon. Exclaim that you feel the spoon getting warm. Does the person holding it feel the same thing? (Of course it’s getting warm, with one person holding it and you stroking it!) But, try as you will, the spoon doesn’t bend; you’ve failed. Explain that your powers are weak tonight, or that the mind reading drained you, and say you’ll try to bend the spoon again later. Then, carefully and in view of everyone, put the spoon in some prominent place and state that no one should touch the spoon until you try to bend it again. This is to forestall “any question of faking.” Of course, you don’t have to go near the spoon before your second attempt to bend it. The work has already been done. The audience doesn’t know that, however, and it’s an effective ploy.

When, about fifteen minutes later, you feel that your powers have recovered, it’s time to try again to bend the spoon. Pick another person to hold the spoon at points 1 and 3 (Fig. 6B). This tiny difference in your method will go entirely unnoticed, but it is crucial. Now, stroke the spoon as before, between points 1 and 2. At first put no pressure on the spoon stem. You don’t want it to bend right away. Strain some, and have the group chant “bend, bend, bend” again. After a half minute or so, apply gentle pressure to the stem as you stroke it. The spoon will start to bend! It will continue to bend until, if you’ve worked it enough, the stem will fall off. The audience will be utterly amazed. Even people who already believe in psychic powers will be astonished at having seen such a powerful demonstration with their own eyes.

What makes this trick so very convincing is that the following three facts about what the audience sees are all true:

1. You failed to bend the spoon on the first attempt.

2. No one went near the spoon between the first and second attempts to bend it.

3. The spoon did bend on the second attempt.

The conclusion that almost everyone will draw is that your powers returned to full strength between the two attempts. Few will catch on to the trick. It’s a simple trick, but it proved very effective for Uri Geller.

After your performance is over, you are ethically bound to tell people that what you did was just a trick. You are not, however, bound to tell them how it was done. Some will not believe that it was a trick. Randi, who has not only duplicated all of Geller’s tricks, but performed tricks that are far beyond Geller’s rather limited abilities as a magician, has from time to time been accused by Geller’s supporters of being a real psychic himself. They claim that Randi is a powerful psychic trying to convince the world that such powers don’t exist so he can take the lead role in the psychic world.

Geller’s well-publicized feats made psychic metal bending a popular addition to the repertoire of the would-be psychic. Even psychic children got into the act. Mathematics professor John Taylor of Kings College, University of London, was very impressed by one of Geller’s performances and began investigating such psychic phenomena. He discovered that children have an amazing ability to bend metal psychically. It turned out, however, that children can’t perform while anyone is watching them. But if you give one a spoon and turn away for a bit, when you look back, the spoon is bent. Taylor would even send pieces of silverware and other bits of metal home with the children, where they could use their psychic powers at their leisure. Oddly enough, objects sealed in containers were never bent. Taylor was later shocked to discover that his young subjects had been fooling him. Two other investigators placed some supposedly psychic children alone in a room with metal objects that were to be bent. Unknown to the children, they were being videotaped. They promptly proceeded to bend the objects with their hands or by placing them against the edges of tables (Randi 1980).

At one point, Kent State University metallurgist Wilbur Franklin stated that a scanning electron microscope analysis of a ring Geller had broken, allegedly paranormally, showed that the break had not occurred by any normal, physical means (Franklin 1976). Later, Franklin (1977) reported that this was incorrect and that a more complete analysis showed evidence of metal fatigue of the type caused by repeated bending. In other words, Geller had simply “put in the work” on the ring.

Another of Geller’s feats that was allegedly confirmed scientifically also involved bending metal. This time the metal in question was an alloy of titanium and nickel called nitinol. When heated, a wire of nitinol can be bent into a particular shape. When cool, the shape can be changed. When the wire is heated again, it assumes the previous shape. Eldon Byrd (1976) has claimed that Geller paranormally altered the structure of some nitinol wire. However, Gardner (1977/1981a) has revealed that the conditions under which these nitinol “experiments” with Geller were conducted had looser controls than would be suspected from reading the description in Byrd’s (1976) paper. In fact, the experimental conditions were chaotic and allowed Geller ample opportunity to engage in sleight of hand. In one case, Geller was actually given some nitinol wire to take home with him; the wire came back altered.