Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

As far as pain reduction is concerned, the placebo effect is now understood to be due to the release of endorphins, the same substances responsible for pain reduction caused by the physiological stress of excitement. The placebo effect for pain can be eliminated by giving subjects an injection of the drug naloxone (Gracely et al. 1983; Fields and Levine 1984). Naloxone blocks the analgesic effects of the endorphins (Watkins and Mayer 1982, 1986). It has also been shown that the release of endorphins in the placebo situation is a classically conditioned response that can be taught to rats (Watkins and Mayer 1982, 1986). This research demonstrates that the placebo effect is due to endorphin release. The placebo effect and the temporal variability of pain in any painful disease work together to produce a powerful illusion that a faith healer or a quack has effected a “cure.”

In addition to the temporary remissions and easing of symptoms seen in many diseases, in rare situations a disease may spontaneously disappear. This happens even in some types of cancer. Everson and Cole (1966) surveyed the world medical literature and found 170 well-documented cases of spontaneous regression or remission of cancer. Twenty-nine of the cases were of neuroblastoma, a malignant brain tumor, and nineteen were of malignant melanoma, a particularly lethal type of skin cancer.

Another factor that occasionally results in a seemingly miraculous cure of cancer is what is called cure by biopsy (Rose 1968). In a typical case the patient is suspected of having cancer on the basis of clinical tests and a biopsy is then taken to determine the exact type of cancer. When the clinical tests are later performed again, signs of the cancer are gone—the cancerous cells were totally removed by the biopsy procedure. This may sound unlikely, since the common image of a cancerous tumor is of a large lump. In reality, cancerous tumors start as tiny collections of cells. Nonetheless, these minute tumors are frequently detectable by various biochemical tests and can be totally removed during biopsy. Rose reports one case of a patient cured by biopsy who attributed his cure to a faith healer he had consulted following the initial diagnosis of cancer, which was based on the biopsy.

Most people who consult faith healers and quacks, as well as doctors, are not victims of terminal or chronic diseases. Instead, they have disorders of numerous types, from the flu to measles, that will disappear on their own, once the disease has run its course. The disease can either be sped on its way, or the unpleasant symptoms ameliorated, by proper treatment. But even if the doctor did nothing, about 75 percent of patients would get better on their own. Thus, most people with nonchronic and nonterminal diseases who go to faith healers and quacks will get better after their visit. This has nothing to do with the healer or quack, but is due to the time-limited nature of most diseases and the body’s own curative processes. The improvement, however, is often credited to the healer or quack.

Outright fraud and trickery are other tools of the faith healer. The last few decades have seen a rise in the number of popular healers who use a variety of tricks to con their audiences into believing that miracle cures are taking place right before the audience’s eyes and that the healer is in direct contact with God or Jesus.

Two notorious practitioners of this cruel con game are the Rev. W. V. Grant and the Rev. Peter Popoff. Both have been exposed as frauds (see Randi 1986a, 1986b, 1986c; and Kurtz 1986, for details). Randi’s book The Faith Healers is highly recommended for a detailed treatment of all aspects of faith healing.

Both Grant and Popoff, and other such healers, make use of a combination of cold reading, sleight of hand, and fraud in their performances. In May 1986 I played a small part in an investigation of faith healer W. V. Grant, spearheaded by magician James Randi. Grant gave a “service” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City and I, along with several others, went to see what we could find out. Randi had suggested that I volunteer when the call was made for volunteer ushers from the audience. I did so and, as an usher, had access to the backstage area and was able to wander about with considerable freedom during the performance.

We arrived at the Brooklyn Academy of Music well before the service was scheduled to start. During the healing portion of his services, Grant typically walked up to people in the audience, asked them to stand if they’re able, and announced their name, perhaps the name of their doctor, and what they were suffering from. How did Grant get this information? Our investigation confirmed what Randi (1986b) had reported earlier. Before the service started, members of Grant’s staff walked through the hall and chatted with those who arrived early. These people were actually being pumped for information, which is then reported to Grant. We saw, as did investigators at other Grant performances, that those who chatted with staff before the service started were quite likely to be called on to be “cured” later, during the service. When Grant was curing someone, he made a point of asking whether the person had ever spoken to him or to the individuals who assisted him during this part of the service. The person quite truthfully replied no. The response, although truthful, was misleading, as Grant knows, since the members of Grant’s staff that the person talked with were different from the assistants on stage with Grant when he did his healing. After attending one of Grant’s services in Florida, Randi found crib sheets listing information about people who were “cured” in the trash. It was also noted that one of Grant’s staff was using hand signals to let the reverend know what part of his victim’s body was afflicted.

Peter Popoff uses a much more sophisticated method for obtaining information about people in his audience. His staff pump people for information before the show; that information is relayed to him during the show by radio. He has a tiny radio receiver in his ear through which he receives messages from a transmitter in a truck outside the hall where the service is being held. Alec Jason, a communications specialist working with Randi, managed to pick up and record these broadcasts to Popoff during a California service in 1986 (see Randi 1986c, 1987, for details). Popoff’s wife was feeding him the information via the transmitter, while Popoff was claiming to be receiving knowledge from God. Popoff’s use of fraud was dramatically revealed on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show when Randi showed videotapes of Popoff performing a healing and simultaneously played a tape of the messages from Popoff’s wife. Popoff’s reaction was to deny everything and ask his followers to pray for him. His ministry then charged that NBC had hired an actress to imitate his wife’s voice and that the videotape shown on the program had been faked. Finally, Popoff admitted that he “occasionally” was given names over the radio. Randi (1986a, 1986c) notes, however, that during the service when the radio messages to Popoff were recorded, the names of all the people he called out were passed to him via radio.

At the Grant service I attended I was surprised to see how unsophisticated the healings were. Grant would frequently approach older people and announce that they had “the arthritis.” Since many of the older people had canes, this was not a bad guess—and even if it was wrong, Grant didn’t give people a chance to correct him. In one particularly sad case, Grant asked an old man with a cane to hobble out to the aisle. Grant then performed his usual healing routine—to the cheers of the audience—grabbed the man’s cane, broke it in two, and tossed it down onto the stage. A great cheer rose up. Another miracle had taken place—the old man no longer needed his cane. Grant immediately dashed off to another part of the theater, with all eyes following him—except mine. I watched as the old man, now without his cane, hobbled back to his seat, walking no better than he had before.