Notes of a Psi-Watcher

Lessons of a Landmark PK Hoax

This is the first installment of a new eyes and a nose on someone's chin, column by Martin Gardner that we are then viewing the chin upside down. It pleased to announce will appear in was Wood who invented this whimsical each issue of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER illusion. from now on.—ED. In 1904 Wood made a trip to Nancy to observe N-ray research first The most significant recent event on hand. In one experiment he secretly the psi front was James Randi's Project removed from the apparatus an essen­ Alpha. Since Randi himself gives the tial prism. This had no effect on what details in this issue, I will make only the experimenters said they were ob­ general comments. serving. In another test Wood surrepti­ Was it unethical? 1 think not, but tiously substituted a piece of wood for before explaining why let's consider a a steel file that was supposed to be giv­ few past instances in which deception ing off N-rays. The imagined radiation was used to demonstrate the incompe­ continued to be reported by the Nancy tence of researchers. scientists. Wood told his hosts nothing Early this century Ren6 Blondlot, about either prank. Instead, he went a respected French physicist, announced home and wrote a devastating account his discovery of a new type of radia­ of his visit for the British magazine tion, which he called N-rays, after the Nature. It was a knockout blow to University of Nancy where he worked. N-rays everywhere except at Nancy. Dozens of papers on N-rays were soon The reaction of the Nancy group being published in France, but Amer­ to Wood's disclosures was well summed ican physicists were dubious. One up by Irving Klotz in his fine article skeptic, a physicist at Johns Hopkins "The N-ray Affair," Scientific Amer­ University, Robert W. Wood, enjoyed ican, May 1980: playing practical jokes, especially jokes on spirit mediums. His humorous book How to Tell the Birds from the According to Blondlot and his disciples, then, it was the sensitivity of the ob­ Flowers is still in print. Perhaps you server rather than the validity of the have seen on TV a little pinheaded, phenomena that was called into ques­ bald creature with a huge flexible tion by criticisms such as Wood's, a mouth that is produced by painting point of view that will not be unfamiliar

16 THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER to those who have followed more recent saw Levy repeatedly beef up the scores controversies concerning extrasensory by pulling a plug. Better yet, they perception. By 1905, when only French installed another set of instruments, scientists remained in the N-ray camp, without Levy's knowledge, that kept the argument began to acquire a some­ an accurate score. The untampered what chauvinistic aspect. Some propo­ record showed no evidence of PK. nents of N-rays maintained that only the Latin races possessed the sensitivities Levy confessed, and vanished from the (intellectual as well as sensory) neces­ psi scene. sary to detect manifestations of the To me the saddest aspect of this rays. It was alleged that Anglo-Saxon scandal was not Levy's deserved dis­ powers of perception were dulled by grace but the fact that it had never oc­ continual exposure to fog and Teutonic curred to Rhine to check on Levy's ones blunted by constant ingestion of honesty. Rhine himself was deeply beer. shaken by the revelations. If the trap had not been set, Levy's papers would When N-rays became a huge em­ still be cited as strong evidence for barrassment to French science, the animal-psi. journal Revue Scientifique proposed a There are two reasons why traps definitive test that would settle the to detect fraud are more essential in matter. "Permit me to decline totally," PK research than anywhere else. First, Blondlot responded, ". . . to cooperate the claims are far more extraordinary in this simplistic experiment. The phe­ and therefore require much stronger nomena are much too delicate for that. evidence. Second, the field has always Let each one form his own personal been soaked with fraud. In the days opinion about N-rays, either from his when eminent physicists were convinced own experiments or from those of of the reality of floating tables and others in whom he has confidence." glowing ectoplasm, an enormous ser­ Like Percival Lowell, the American vice to science was performed by Hou- astronomer who drew elaborate maps dini and others who were willing and of Martian canals, Blondlot could not capable of setting traps for the mediums. prevent his strong desires from strongly This brings us to the main moral biasing his observations. He lived an­ of Randi's hilarious hoax. Paranormal other quarter-century. If he had any metal-bending is so fantastic a viola­ doubts about N-rays, so far as I know tion of natural laws that the first task he never expressed them. of any competent experimenter is to Move ahead to 1974. J. B. Rhine determine whether a psychic who had appointed Walter J. Levy, 26, his bends spoons is cheating or not. In successor as director of his laboratory. England, when physicists John Taylor Levy was already famous in psi circles and John Hasted were convinced that for his "carefully controlled" investiga­ scads of children could twist cutlery tions of animal-psi. (One of them sug­ by PK, one would have expected the gested that embryos in chicken eggs two scientists to devise some elemen­ had psychokinetic [PK] powers.) Three tary traps, but they did not. The only older members of Rhine's staff were good trap was set by two sociologists at suspicious of Levy's string of successes. the University of Bath who did not What did they do? They set a cruel even mean to set it. Puzzled by the fact trap. While Levy was testing the PK that no one ever sees metal bend — ability of rats to alter a randomizer, Taylor called it the "shyness effect"— they watched through a peephole and they put some spoon-bending young-

Summer 1983 17 sters in a room, then filmed them said, "I cheat." It brought down the through a one-way mirror. The pur­ house. pose was not to embarrass the chil­ It is to Phillips's credit that he had dren, but to record the shyness effect. the courage to say (Washington Post, To their amazement, they saw the chil­ March 1, 1983), "I should have taken dren cheating. Taylor soon became dis­ Randi's advice." It is to the credit of enchanted, but such revelations had no Stanley Krippner, a true believer in PK effect on Hasted's mind-set. Some if ever there was one, that he called spoon benders cheat, so what? Not in Randi's project "a much-needed" exper­ his laboratory. You can read all about iment. It remained for former CSICOP- his naive experiments in his recently member and sociologist Truzzi to start published book, The Metal Benders. the hue and cry about entrapment. Hasted and Phillips typify psychic Truzzi had known about Randi's trap research at its shabbiest. In spite of almost from the beginning, but had many letters from Randi telling him carefully kept his own trap shut. that his two young subjects were "Randi is hurting the field with his frauds, Phillips made no effort to gross exaggeration," Truzzi told the check on their backgrounds. Not until New York Times (February 15, 1983). the very end, after Randi had severely "In no way will his project teach psy­ criticized his videotapes, did he start to chic researchers a lesson and make tighten controls. Of course the won­ them more likely to trust to magicians' ders ceased. On many occasions when advice. Quite the contrary. This out­ controls were unbelievably lax, the two side policeman thing sets up magicians "psychics" suspected a trap. It was as the enemy." never sprung. They overestimated the On this point Truzzi may be right. acumen of their monitors. I, too, would be surprised if psychic Think what the results might have researchers suddenly decided to study been had the boys decided to become conjuring or to seek the active help of professional psychics. They would knowledgeable magicians. Conjurors have left Phillips's lab complaining are indeed the enemy. Their bad vibes that excessive controls were inhibiting alone are enough to kill any PK powers their powers. Soon they would be ap­ just by being there as observers; per­ pearing on TV documentaries as won­ haps (as has actually been suggested by der workers whose powers had been the sociologists at Bath) even their validated by respected scientists. Uri reading about the experiments after­ Geller never tires of talking about how wards influences the outcome by back­ the Stanford Research Institute (now ward causality! But perhaps Randi's SRI International) validated his psy­ scam will have a salutary effect on chic abilities. Phillips's two young sub­ funding. After all, the half-million jects are even better than Geller. One bucks the McDonnell Foundation gave of them invented a way to make one to Washington University could have tine of a fork visibly and unshyly bend gone to worthwhile research instead of that is superior to any of Geller's crude down the drain to a group unqualified methods. When Steven Shaw demon­ to investigate metal bending. strated this lovely illusion at Randi's Am I saying that all psychic re­ Manhattan press conference, the entire searchers should be trained in magic, audience gasped. "Can you tell us how or seek the aid of magicians, before you did that?" a startled reporter they test miracle workers? That is asked. Shaw walked to the mike and exactly what I am saying. The most

18 THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER eminent scientist, untrained in magic, funding. That is the big lesson of is putty in the hands of a clever charla­ Randi's hoax. That is why it is likely to tan. Without the help of professional become a landmark in the history of deceivers — the conjurors — no testing PK research. of a superpsychic is worth ten cents of —Martin Gardner

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Summer 1983 19