Approved For Relgpe 20^Vw0§/^q^J-^^6-007^R000200080018-5
Gellermania continues,
al beit in a muted form, as British scientists continue to examine children who bend
cutlery and a major Fre nch firm has launched an investigation of a metal-bending psychic and magician
Joseph Hanlon
On
a
rainy
June
night,
five
apparently
sane men
drove
100
miles to a lab in Bath to watch a
girl try—unsuccessfully
—to
bend
a
spoon
“paranormally”.
This
trek
provides
evidence that parascience, and metal bending in particular,
continues to attract the attention of serious scientists. But
it
also
illustrates the changes that have occurred
in the
nearly four years since Uri Geller burst upon the scene
and dozens of children appeared to have the same abilities.
As the scientists became more aware of the possibilities of
deception
and
tightened
their
conditions,
these
abilities
disappeared. Professor John Taylor just two years ago in
his book Superminds
(MacMillan)
declared:
“Taking
all
this evidence as a whole, only one conclusion seems to be
possible:
the
strange
metal
bending
phenomenon
is
genuine.” But last week he told New
Scientist that he
is
now much
less sure that there even
is a metal bending
effect.
In
his own
lab,
the powers
of the
children have
declined in direct relation to the tightening of conditions.
Not only can none of the children perform under what he
calls “100 per cent”
conditions, they now cannot or
will
Jean Pierre Girard (left) with Chris Evans
not even duplicate their earlier performances under looser
conditions.
are put on to a tape randomly and a subject later tries to
The Bath test last month was in the lab of Harry Collins,
increase the strength of those signals—if
this
occurs,
it
the only person in the UK to have government money for
would mean the subject had influenced the randomisation
research connected to parapsychology.
Collins
is perhaps
process which occurred some weeks before the experiment,
best known for his letter to Nature (vol 257, p 8) in which
At Surrey University, a philosophy chair was established
he reported that through the use of one-way glass, he had
for someone
to
do
research “concerned with the
philo-
caught
five
of
the
little
“Uris”
cheating.
His
£10 000
sophical implications of data accumulating m the border-
Social Science Research Council grant is to look at the para-
lands of scientific inquiry, eg ESP.” Since its establishment,
psychological researchers. But
it also includes “participant
the chair has been occupied by Professor S. C. Thakur, who
observation”, which means watching children bend spoons,
is developing a philosophy of parapsychology. Three post-
In this area, “we saw enough to encourage us to continue
graduate
students
are now
working
on
telepathy
and
our
experiments,
but
nothing
that
would
convince
a
psychokinesis
(PK)
in
the
Surrey
philosophy
and
sceptic.”
Since
then, the conditions have been tightened
psychology departments.
and again nothing has happened.
At City University, Professor Arthur Ellison, president of
The June test, at which I was one of the judges, was of
the Society for Psychical Research (SPR),
is now building
15-year-old
Julie
Knowles. Her
abilities
have been
well
up instrumentation to study physiological correlates—brain
publicised
(eg
Reveille,
5 November,
1976) and she was
rhythms, electrical skin resistance, etc—of unusual mental
taking up the
$10 000
challenge
of US
magician James
states, particularly during “out of body experiences
. And
Randi. He
offered
the money
to
anyone who
can bend
at
Kings
College,
London,
Taylor
is
looking
at
electro-
metal by paranormal means, but his money remains safe,
magnetic (EM) signals emitted by subjects during psychic
Julie has been tested both by Collins and Professor John
healing and other apparently paranormal events. Some low
Hasted
of Birkherk
College . London. Hasted
is a strong
level PK effects, such as moving a small object by passing
believer in Juhe‘s
abilities. Although Collins has not seen
a hand nearby, have been “very repeatable’
and Taylor
her cheat, neither has she been able to perform under his
now believes they can be explained by low level EM forces,
tighter conditions,
charge
distributions on
the
objects,
etc. The more
spec*
Of those
British
scientists who have looked
closely
at
tacular
events, such
as
objects moving about
the
room,
metal
bending,
only Hasted
appears
to remain
strongly
have never been repeated under controlled conditions so
convinced. He recently published the
results of
his work
could not be studied.
.
with Uri Geller and three children in Journal of the Society
Money
remains
a
particular problem
in
this
research
for Psychical Research (vol 48, p
365). He
is now looking
area. None of the post-graduate students
is known to have
at what he claims
is the children’s
ability to affect strain
studentships,
although
three
are
supported by the SPR.
gauges embedded in pieces of metal without touching the
Taylor
raised
the money
for
his
research from
private
sources; but even so, he had to beg and borrow equipment.
If spoon-bending
is dropping from vogue, there appears
That money has now run out, and Taylor s assistant expects
to be an increase in other forms of academic parascience
to have to leave this month,
research.
There
are
now
at
least
eight
post-graduate
.
.
students in parascience, at least two of whom hope to get
Magic and the paranormal
PhDs
this year—probably the
first
British PhDs
in
para-
For Charles Crussard, research money
is not a problem,
psychology.
He
is
research
director
of
Pechiney,
the
metals
and
.Tnhn Beloff (author of New Directions in Parapsychology,
chemicals conglomerate which
is the
fifth largest private
FipkSripnrp') rnntinnps his research
with.. Hi p aid of four
company in France. Crussard heads a series of labs employ-
^stgraduApp^weS
possible
“retro-psychokinetic
effect”.
In
the
last,
signals
been
studying—with
company
approval—Jean
Pierre
'
Approved For Rel^se 20(mim&*CmNDP96-007*aR0002000800^ 8-5
\
i
Girard.
By
all
accounts,
the
Girard
studies
are
on
a
sure that after a few tries he will be able to do it.”
much higher plane than the Geller circus. The most striking
Crussard
involved
a
magician
at
an
early
stage—the
difference
is that Girard openly admits to being a trained
French illusionist Ranky has issued a public statement say-
magician and
to having
a
listing
in
a French magicians’
ing that
in the
tests he watched, he could
not
see how
annual.
Noting
that
Geller
is
also
a
trained
magician,
Girard could have used
tricks. And his involvement more
Crussard writes that this merely “proves that such people
recently of Randi, probably the best spoon-bender
in the
have an
attraction toward
illusionism”
and
that
special
' magic business, continues to show that these experiments
precautions must be
taken.
Crussard concludes
that the
are on a much higher level. Chris Evans commented: “I was
metal bending effect is a combination of mind and body—
impressed by their honesty and their determination to do
psychic
and
magic—which
is
sometimes
100
per
cent
things properly.
I feel very strongly that they are treating
psychic
but
not
always.
“I
believe
that
Geller
has PK
this
in
a
proper
scientific manner—quite
different from
powers, but
I
also believe he gives too many public per-
any other
so-called
scientific
studies '"of
this
that
I have
formances and uses his other powers too often.”
seen.” Evans remains a complete sceptic, but he admits that
In
a
paper
submitted
to
Nature
last
year,
Crussard
“Girard
is
quite the
best
I have
ever
seen.
If
this “was
reports on 116
cases
of Girard bending metal. Some, he
fraud,
it was very clever—not the sort of thing Geller or
says, were under
tight
conditions.
But
in
the paper
he
I can do.” Evans
also stressed the “staggering difference
admits that “in some cases the experiment was confused
between Girard and Geller. Everything about Geller shouts
and a trick may have been possible. But we never saw any
fake at you. Girard seems quite
different.” Where Geller
tricks.” The events reported include many bent keys—in
constantly runs around the lab and
is always
doing
six
two
cases,
it
is
claimed
that they were checked
as
flat
different things; often unannounced, Girard
just
sits
in a
before being put into an
assistant’s hand and were bent
chair the whole
time,
stroking
the
bars and doing
pre-
before they were taken from his hand. A
flat aluminium
cisely what he says he is going to do.
plate held by an
assistant and stroked by Girard
is
said
The Randi visit has, however, sparked off a row between
to have bent
in two
places; other
plates were bent and
Randi and
Crussard.
Randi watched some
of the video-
straightened during the same
session. Twenty
five round
tapes of Girard and says he caught Girard cheating several
bars have also been deformed; in one case a stainless steel
times. In one, for example, Girard holds a bar in his right
bar in a closed (but not sealed) tube was both bent and
hand and slowly rotates
it with his fingers.
It appears to
magnetised, Crussard reports.
bend, when
in
fact
a bend hidden from
the camera
is
'
simply rotated in view. Although he did not say so at the
Flying to Grenoble
time,
Crussard
told me that the whole thing was
a
test
i.
The importance
of Pechiney and the high standing
of
of Randi, and that he knew that the film contained tricks
!
Crussard as a metallurgist inevitably forced Nature to take
as well as real psychic events. This explanation cuts
little
j
the paper more
seriously
than
it might
otherwise
have
ice with the critics, however, who consider it may be little
|
done, although
its anecdotal form and mix of controlled
more than
a
cover-up. Crussard
also
told me that
if he
and uncontrolled
tests would probably have made
it un-
|
publishable
in any
case. At Crussard’s
invitation, Nature
editor
David
Davies
and
noted
sceptic
Chris
Evans
(a
referee of the original Geller paper: Nature ,
vol
251, pp
559,
602)
flew
to Grenoble
in
early May. They watched
Girard
give an informal performance,
in which he bent
a
few
bars,
and saw
films
and
tapes
of
other
Girard
bendings.
It was
agreed that
the
conditions
still
did not
satisfy
those which have been developed in the past few years. In
particular,
it was felt that the bars were not well enough
controlled before the experiments and not labelled, making
it possible to bend a similar bar before the test and sub-
stitute
it for the test bar. Indeed, Girard had been invited
by
the
experimenters
to
take
identical
bars
home
to
practice with. Other problems included the fact that Girard
did not always keep the bar
in sight of the camera, and
that the protocol did not adequately exclude the possibility
that an experimenter might be involved in a fraud.
“I have always considered that my word was
sufficient.
In a scientific experiment,
if a scientist sees something, his
testimony
is sufficient,” Crussard comments. But last week
he told me that he accepts the Nature criticisms, and that
in this area of science much tighter rules must apply.
At an
early stage
in the experiments,
the
researchers
contacted James Randi and read his book The Magic of Uri
Geller (Ballantine) as well as several of his articles
in an
attempt to tighten the conditions. After the Nature
visit,
Randi was
invited
to go
to Grenoble
actually to
set the
conditions. Just three weeks
after their
first
visit, Evans
and Davies were back
in Grenoble—this time with Randi.
And this time the conditions were tight. Davies and Randi
coded
the
rods
and
Evans
controlled
them
before
and
during the experiment. After three hours, Girard gave up
•and abandoned the unsuccessful test. Crussard told me that
“the protocol Randi selected was very good” and
will be
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found during
a proper
scientific experiment that Girard
used a trick,
“it would be very disillusioning for me. But
I would certainly tell it—this must be published as well.”
Girard was
also tested a year ago by Taylor, who says
that
it
was
he who
told
Crussard
that
Girard
was
a
magician.
Although
Girard was
able
to
perform
under
Taylor’s tightest conditions at that time, Taylor also says they
were “not 100 per cent” and have been made considerably
tighter since then. Taylor refused
to say
if he had seen
Girard using
his
illusionist’s
skills, but he did admit that
he had taken
legal
advice on the
libel laws—perhaps
a
wise
decision,
as
one
researcher
recently
withdrew
an
already submitted
paper
reportedly
accusing an
alleged
psychic of fraud after the psychic threatened to sue.
Meanwhile, back
in
the US,
the parapsychology boom
continues. Two books were published
last year on Geller
( The Search for Superman by John Wilhelm, Pocket Books,
and
The
Geller
Papers
by
Charles
Penati,
Houghton
Mifflin).
This year, Russel Targ and Harold
Puthoff,
the
Stanford
Research
Institute
scientists
who
wrote
the
Nature paper on Geller, published a book on remote view-
ing experiments at SRI
( Mind-Reach
,
Delacorte).
The
critics are
also out
in
force. A Committee for the
Scientific Investigation
of Claims
of
the Paranormal
has
been
launched
with
well-known
critics
such
as
Randi,
Evans, Martin Gardner, and C.
E. M. Hansel, as well as a
few who are less closely related to the area such as B. F.
Skinner,
Carl
Sagan,
and
Isaac Asimov.
Their
bi-annual
journal The Zetetic has just published
its second edition.
Committee members also had a large section of the May-
June issue of The Humanist with a series of articles “The
psychics debunked”. And Committee members have been
called
in
to advise the US government on
its continued
funding of parapsychology research.
The Targ and Puthoff studies of Geller continue to take
a knocking. In his book, Wilhelm comes close to accusing
Targ and Puthoff of dishonesty. The major experiment in
the Targ and Puthoff paper is a series of picture drawings,
in which Geller was supposedly isolated from
one. of the
experimenters.
That
experimenter would
then make
or
select a drawing and attempt to transmit
it by telepathy to
Geller. “Following a period of
effort ranging from
a few
minutes to half an hour, Geller either passed (when he did
not feel confident) or indicated he was ready to submit a
drawing.” Geller passed in three of 13 attempts, they say.
Not
quite,
replies Wilhelm.
In three
cases, he
alleges,
Geller chose to pass but they included one of his drawings
anyway. In one of those cases, Geller passed, but Wilhelm
says: “apparently Targ and Puthoff themselves may have
helped select one of Uri’s many drawings that best
fit the
target.” This was a horse in response to a target of a camel.
Only the drawing of the horse
(but
not the
others) was
published in Nature. In another case, Geller asked Puthoff
whether the target was a geometric picture or an object, and
Puthoff told him. Was there any more such communication
not mentioned in the Nature report? Also not mentioned
is
that in one instance Geller left the room and drifted three
rooms away for
a cup
of
coffee during
the
experiment.
Wilhelm
notes
that
not
only was
Shipi
Strang
present
during the
tests, but
so was another
Geller supporter
Jean Mayo. Often more people were present. Geller’s “SRI
experiments tended to be more like full-blown stage per-
formances than private experiments.” In one case, Mayo’s
telephone number
appeared on
Geller’s
response
sheet.
She recalls she gave him the number during lunch, but how
did
it get on to the sheet? Paranormal, or was protocol
broken by Geller having the pad before or after the test?
Finally, one of the best
scientific validations of ESP
is
brought into question in an
article by Martin Gardner in
today’s (14 July) issue of The New York Review. Last year,
(University
of
Chicago).
In
the
book
he
describes
an
experiment in which a randomiser selects a number from
0-9
and
lights
a
corresponding
light on
a
console. The
sender
concentrates
on
the
light,
while
a
receiver
in
another room presses a button which he thinks corresponds
to the senders light. In a run of 5000 numbers, the receivers
were right 722 times instead of the expected 500. But three
mathematicians at Davis checked the machine, and wrote
to Gardner that
in fact
it was not random!
In a random
series,
there
is
a
10 per
cent chance
that
the machine,
having produced
a number X,
will immediately produce
X again. In Tart’s run of 5000 numbers, this occurred only
in
193
trials instead of the 500
expected. The mathema-
ticians tested the machine and found that
it
did, indeed,
avoid
twins
as
it
had
during
the
experiment.
People
apparently repeat a number in such tests much less than
10 per cent of the time, so this alone could have provided
many of Tart’s extra hits.
In a comment that must apply to most of the parascience
research done recently, the mathematicians say: “Until the
experiment
is done
again, we
are
in
the
position
of
a
chemist who
at the end of an experiment
discovers that
his
test tube was
dirty. Whether
it was only a
little con-
taminated or a lot doesn’t matter. The experiment has to
be executed with a clean test tube.”
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Julie Rmowles (below) attempts to bend one
Approved For Release 20ftTl&m®
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finding a home for stray fact
Was the
Miracle of Fatima” simply ball lightning? Are the strange dull sounds heard by George
Darwin 80 years ago related to those reported
in the British press last year?
Adrian Hope
Independent
American
journalist
I. F. Stone, with his famous weekly
newsletter,
routinely
embarrassed
politicians
and
public
figures by reminding them in print of official lies told years
ago. Apart from a prodigious memory, Stone relied mainly
on clippings continually gathered from other publications.
“Everything you need
is on the public record,” he would
tell students of investigative journalism.
In science there
is also in the public record a wealth of
hard fact reported first-hand, but consistently overlooked
for the simple reason that
it
fails
to
fit neatly into any
scientific pigeonhole, and thus remains unclassified. Some-
times this unclassified residuum of hard, scientific fact can
have
direct
bearing
on modern
scientific
puzzles.
For
example the recent reports
in the popular press
of com-
plaints from people living in London, Bournemouth, Cardiff,
Blackpool, Glasgow, and Ipswich of mysterious humming
noises which
are supposedly
“baffling
scientists”
bear
a
marked resemblance to those of sounds heard
a century
ago in iron steamers
off the coast of Greytown, USA.
In the US, William Corliss of Glen Arm, Maryland, has
embarked on the mammoth task of classifying 200 years
backlog of previously neglected but potentially interesting
xta^a
C matcr 'a l- A nuclear physicist who has worked for
NASA,
Corliss has
six
series
of source books
available,
each containing
classified and meticulously
cross-indexed
references
and
excerpts from
old
and new
papers
and
magazines.
Some sources are as obscure and unlikely as the material
culled from them. Catholic World (June 1949), for instance,
is quoted as citing a 1917 description by a Miss Gordon of
the famous “Miracle of Fatima”. During a rainstorm at the
Cova da Iria, the clouds were torn apart, a sun the colour
of
stainless steel appeared, and threw out colours
like
a
giant Catherine wheel.
Finally the sun, turning blood-red
in colour, came hurtling down over the heads of
all those
present.
Alongside
this
reference
is
another,
culled
by
ioJij
fr0?
. 1116 Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal of
1841, describing balls of fire witnessed near London in 1750.
“Dogs howled, fish jumped three feet out of the water
.
.
!
°f fire was seen ” According to the same source,
m 1795 the Rev Mr Gregory described how a ball of fire
passed over the town of Derby and several locals “felt some-
thing like an electrical shock.” According to Nature in 1971
something similar happened in Austria in September 1963.’
In the entrance hall of a restaurant, students on a field trip
from
Heidelberg
University
Geology
Department
were
S
-je^jr *n® ^rom a storm. “Suddenly, through the open out-
side doors, a whitish-yellow ball appeared, just above the
floor. It was slightly larger than a tennis ball and its speed
was that of a walking person.”
All
these,
and numerous
other
related
source
refer-
ences, are to be found under the heading “Ball, lightning”
reference section GLB of the Corliss Source Book Strange
Phenomena. Alone and isolated where originally published
they mean little. Together, they help build up a picture not
only of what forms ball lightning can take but how, under
some circumstances, this natural phenomenon can be mis-
taken for something supernatural or psychic.
In the same source book, Corliss quotes a dull description
from a 1964 issue of Undersea Technology of “an electro-
magnetic radiation pattern over the ocean” which may help
explain away some of the mysteries
still surrounding the
Bermuda Triangle. Scientists from the LTV Research Centre
accident, a unique; stable electromagnetic radiation pattern
over the ocean. Amplitude and spectral analysis of the low
and medium frequency radiation pattern
is documented at
length and the interesting point made as an aside that
it
“is found as variations in the signal from radio
stations”.
In
other words, whatever
is
causing
the
ocean
pattern
produced
unpredictable
interference
in
received
radio
signals. One explanation offered by the Navy, who supplied
the
aircraft, the crew, and the computer which analysed
the data,
is that the effect
is due to peculiarities of ocean
current temperature and salinity. Corliss, in a source book
footnote, suggests possible correlation with the Bermuda
Triangle.
Corliss readily acknowledges that by including fascinating,
but homeless, facts and
filtering the data included in
his’
source books only slightly,
it is inevitable that some hoaxes
and honest misinterpretations will have been included. His
unabashed philosophy
is to include material by virtue of
its strangeness and tendency to contradict current scientific
hypotheses.
It follows that either the “waifs” that he has
included are false, or as he puts
it, “science still has much
fundamental work to do”.
Healthy scepticism
Reassuringly
the
annotations
are
healthily
sceptical
where the waifs are in serious doubt. For instance, along-
side that hard fact report on radio disturbances over the
ocean
is an excerpt from an
1847 Report of
the
British
Association describing how two Liverpool residents in the
Great Park at Birkenhead saw in the clouds an erect image
of Edinburgh for a period of 40 minutes. Corliss reminds
the
source
book
reader
that
the
straight-line
distance
between Edinburgh and Liverpool
is about 170 miles, and
that as there was at that time a panoramic model of Edin-
burgh on display in the Zoological Gardens
at Liverpool,
“the coincidence of the mirage and the exhibition is hard to
swallow”. Corliss is even more openly sceptical when quot-
ing
in
his
Strange
Artefacts
a report from
the
English
Mechanic of 1892. Archdeacon Nouri,
it seems, climbed the
top" of Mount Ararat
and
there
discovered
Noah’s Ark
which he “walked round with five or six companions”. The
Ark, like the UFO, notes Corliss, is found frequently.
Although other entries may also at first appear to have a
touch
of humour about them, some dubious phenomena
have been independently reported so many times that
it
is
only a fool or a wise man who would discard them. In 1895
George Darwin, son of Charles, wrote to Nature describing
strange dull sounds heard in the delta of the Ganges. These,
he
explained,
are
locally
called
Barisal
guns,
apparently
similar sounds heard
off
the Belgian
coast
being
called
“mist pouffers”. Darwin believed that similar sounds were
heard in Dartmoor and parts of Scotland, and asked, “will
any of the numerous readers of Nature in various parts of
the world give us an account of their experiences
in this
matter?” There
then
followed
a
lengthy
corespondence
reporting guns or pouffers as far afield as Western Australia
and
Cardiganshire.
Corliss
is
able
to
cite
references
to
rumblings heard by Humboldt in Mexico, Moodus sounds in
Scotland and Buffalo, and Gouffre noises in Haiti.
Can
all
these
and
perhaps
those
heard
recently
in
England perhaps be
explained by the same cause? Who
knows? But that is the kind of question that Corliss’s source
books
leaves unanswered,
and
indeed
does
not
seek
to
answer. The
compiler’s avowed
intention
is
to
rock the
computerised data systems.
and
arte-
n modern