The thoughtographer

Twice a year, a nearby town has a Friends of the Library used book sale that has become justly famous all over the region.  It features a quarter of a million books, runs for three weeks, and raises tens of thousands of dollars.  On the first day -- when the true rarities and collectibles are available -- the line to enter starts to form four hours before the doors open, and stretches all the way around the block.

I'm not quite such a fanatic, but it is still one of the high points of my year.  I've picked up some real gems there.  This year's take included the "cult bestseller" (says so right on the cover), Ghosts: True Encounters With the World Beyond by Hans Holzer, which is massive both in popularity and in actual weight.

If you're at all familiar with the field of parapsychology, you've probably heard of Holzer.  He was one of the principal investigators into the famous Amityville Horror (alleged) haunting.  He wrote over a hundred books, mostly on the supernatural and the occult, and for years taught courses in parapsychology at the New York Institute of Technology.  Throughout his life -- and it was a long one, he died in 2009 at age 89 -- he was a vociferous believer in the paranormal, and equally strident denouncer of skeptics and scoffers.

Still, given my interest in beliefs in the supernatural, picking up a copy of this book for a couple of bucks was irresistible.  I'm glad to say it does not disappoint.  Besides containing hundreds of "true tales of ghosts and hauntings," he's not shy about saying what he thinks about the doubters:

To the materialist and the professional skeptic -- that is to say, people who do not wish their belief that death is the end of life as we know it to be disturbed -- the notion of ghosts is unacceptable.  No matter how much evidence is presented to support the reality of the phenomena, these people will argue against it and ascribe it to any of several "natural" causes.  Delusion or hallucination must be the explanation, or perhaps a mirage, if not outright trickery.  Entire professional groups that deal in the manufacturing of illusions have taken it upon themselves to label anything that defies their ability to reproduce it artificially through trickery or manipulation as false or nonexistent.  Especially among photographers and magicians, the notion that ghosts exist has never been popular.

There's a reason for that last bit, of course.  Photographers and magicians know how easy it is to fool people and create effects that look absolutely real.  It's not a coincidence that perhaps the most famous debunker, James Randi, was a professional stage magician before he dedicated his life to going after people like Sylvia Browne, Peter Popoff, and Uri Geller.

This paragraph (and the many others like it scattered throughout the book) shows that Holzer didn't really understand the definition of the word "skeptic."  Skeptics have the highest regard for evidence; in fact, it's the only thing that really convinces us.  But once it does, that's that.  Skeptics are able to say, "Well, I guess I was wrong, then," and turn on a dime if presented with reliable evidence.  However, that word "reliable" is usually the sticking point.  Holzer's compendium is chock-full of what he considers evidence, but which are either anecdotal accounts by people like "Mary G." and "John S.", or else demonstrations of the supernatural which are clearly explainable from the "natural causes" Holzer scoffs at.

The result is that he uncritically fell for people who were clearly frauds, and afterward staunchly stood by his assessment, a practice that was criticized by an article in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research as "cast(ing) considerable doubt on the objectivity and reliability of his work as a whole."  One of the most egregious examples is his endorsement of the alleged abilities of the man who became known as "The Thoughtographer," Ted Serios.

Serios claimed to be able to use an ordinary camera outfitted with something he called a "gizmo" -- effectively, nothing more than a cardboard tube -- which was then aimed at his forehead.  He then (he said) sent his "thought energy" into the camera, and when the film was developed, it would have an image of what he was thinking about.

Ted Serios in 1967 [Image was released into the Public Domain by photographer Jule Eisenbud]

First, let's see what Holzer has to say about Serios:

A few years ago, Dr. Jules [sic] Eisenbud of the University of Colorado at Denver startled the world with his disclosures of the peculiar talents of a certain Ted Serios, a Chicago bellhop gifted with psychic photography talents.  This man could project images into a camera or television tube, some of which were from the so-called future.  Others were from distant places Mr. Serios had never been to.  The experiments were undertaken under the most rigid test conditions.  They were repeated, which was something the old-line scientists in parapsychology stressed over and over again.  Despite the abundant amount of evidence, produced in the glaring limelight of public attention and under strictest scientific test conditions, some of Dr. Eisenbud's colleagues at the University of Colorado turned away from him whenever he asked them to witness the experiments he was conducting.  So great was the prejudice against anything Eisenbud and his colleagues might find that might oppose existing concepts that men of scientists couldn't bear to find out for themselves.  They were afraid they would have to unlearn a great deal.

What Holzer conveniently fails to mention is that there was a second "gizmo" that Serios required -- a second, smaller tube with a lens at one end.  The other end contained a piece of an old 35-mm film slide, and when the flash went off, the image from the slide was projected right into the camera aperture.  It was small enough to be concealed in the palm of Serios's hand.

A magic trick, in other words.  Sleight-of-hand.

Serios's claims came to the attention of none other than the aforementioned James Randi, who invited Jule Eisenbud, Serios himself, and any other interested parties to come watch him up on stage -- where he replicated Serios's trick flawlessly.  Eisenbud afterward said he was "flabbergasted;" Serios gave a "wan smile" and wouldn't comment.

No mention of that in Holzer's book, either.

Look, I don't really blame Eisenbud for getting suckered; it's not like I wouldn't have been taken in, either.  We've all watched talented stage magicians do their thing and said, in bafflement, "How in the hell...?"  What I do blame Eisenbud for, though, is not pursuing it further -- telling Serios, "Okay, you need a 'gizmo'?  Tell me how it's made, and I'll make one for you -- show me you can do your trick without any props of your own construction."  Now, I also have to admit that working with Serios can't have been easy.  He was clearly mentally ill.  In Nile Root's book Thoughtography, about the Serios case, the author writes: 

Ted Serios exhibits a behavior pathology with many character disorders.  He does not abide by the laws and customs of our society.  He ignores social amenities and has been arrested many times.  His psychopathic and sociopathic personality manifests itself in many other ways.  He does not exhibit self-control and will blubber, wail and bang his head on the floor when things are not going his way.

He exhibits strong hostility toward figures of authority, such as policemen and scientists.  He is an alcoholic and in psychic experiments he has been encouraged toward the excessive use of alcohol.  He has demonstrated the symptoms of a manic-depressive with manic episodes.  In one hypermaniacal period he acted like a violent madman and could not be restrained.

He often becomes profane and raging, completely reckless.  While depressed he ignores other people, has a far-away look and is disenchanted with everything.  He is always bored with talk unless it is about him. He often imagines himself a hero, and sometimes identifies with a violent known personality.  He also exhibits sadistic behavior, for example by embarrassing Dr. Eisenbud once, giving as his own Dr. Eisenbud's name and his profession (a psychiatrist) when arrested.

In spite of the questionable research methods and the personality quirks of Serios, a number of Denver professional men believed Ted Serios was a psychic, with a unique power to record his thoughts with a Polaroid camera.

So I can see that it wouldn't have been any fun to try and force Serios to conform to adequate scientific control protocols.  Not that this excuses Eisenbud, though; he made the claim, so saying "Serios is impossible to control" doesn't obviate his duty to observe proper experimental procedure prior to publishing any results.

Holzer, though?  He ignored the overwhelming evidence that Serios was a fraud, claiming instead that there was "abundant amount of evidence, produced in the glaring limelight of public attention and under strictest scientific test conditions."  Which is not so much a dodge as it is a flat-out falsehood.  And that, to me, is inexcusable.

And another thing -- Holzer mischaracterizes skeptics and scientists in another way, one that shows that he didn't understand the scientific process at all.  He describes scientists as clinging to their preconceived notions, even in the face of evidence, as if the entire scientific edifice was threatened by new data, and the researchers themselves determined to sit back and keeping the same understanding of the universe they'd had all along.  The truth is, science depends on finding new and puzzling information; that's how science progresses.  Now, scientists are humans, and you can find many examples of people clutching their favorite model with both hands even when the contradictory evidence comes rolling in.  (A good example is how long it took the plate tectonics/continental drift model to be accepted.)  But then it's beholden upon the scientist making the extraordinary claim to produce such incontrovertible evidence that the opposition has no choice but to acquiesce -- which is exactly what happened when Drummond Matthews and Frederick Vine proved seafloor spreading and plate movement beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The truth is that finding new evidence that modifies or overturns a previous model is how careers are made in science.  As astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson put it, "Journalists are always writing articles with headlines that say, 'Scientists have to go back to the drawing board.'  As if we scientists are sitting in our offices, our feet up on the desk, masters of the universe, then suddenly... oops!  Somebody discovered something!  No, we're always back at the drawing board.  If you're not at the drawing board, you're not making discoveries.  You're not doing science."

In my own case, I'm certainly a skeptic, even if I'm not a scientist but only a humble layperson.  And I can say without any hesitation that I would love it if there was hard evidence for the paranormal, and of life after death in particular.  Can you imagine how that would change our understanding of the world, and of ourselves?  Plus the added benefit of knowing that death wasn't the end of us.  Me, I'm not particularly fond of the idea of nonexistence; an afterlife would be awesome, especially if it involved a tropical climate, hammocks, and drinks with little umbrellas.

But be that as it may.  I still find Holzer's book entertaining, at least the parts with the actual ghost stories.  The diatribes about the evil skeptics and narrow-minded scientists, not so much.  It'd be nice to see more of the collaborative efforts to investigate paranormal claims, such as the ones done by the Society of Psychical Research.

But just saying "science is ignoring the evidence," and then presenting evidence that is clearly spurious, is not helping the parapsychologists' claims at all.

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Should've seen that coming

Self-proclaimed psychics hated James Randi, the venerable debunker of all things paranormal, who died in October 2020 at the honorable age of 92.  On one hand, it's obvious why; he loathed charlatans, especially those who in plying their trade rip off the gullible to the tune of thousands of dollars.  But honestly, there's a way in which Randi shouldn't have been so detested by the psychics.  After all, he wasn't saying, "Your claim is false and you're lying," he said, "Show me under controlled conditions that you can do what you say you can do."  Which you'd think is fair enough.  Given how many people out there claim to have paranormal abilities, it seems like at least one or two of them would have made a credible case (especially since the James Randi Foundation was offering a million dollar prize for the first person who could succeed).

But no.  Not one single person ever met the minimum criteria for scientifically-admissible evidence; in fact, very few psychics even took the bait.  A few of them said they wouldn't put themselves in the situation of having to demonstrate their ability in a situation where Randi's "atmosphere of suspicion and distrust" would interfere with the psychic resonant energy fields (or whatever), but most of them wisely decided to stay silent on the matter and ignore the challenge completely.

And it worked.  Being a psychic is as lucrative as ever.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gunnshots (Don), Psychic reading, CC BY-SA 2.0]

Of course, since what the psychics do is make predictions, we don't even need Randi's method to check and see if there's anything to their claims; we can merely look back at the yearly predictions, and see what percentage of them were correct -- and if that hit rate exceeds what we'd expect from pure chance.

Which is exactly what a group of skeptics in Australia did.  The Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project, which just announced their results last week, analyzed 3,800 predictions made in the past twenty years by 207 self-styled psychics, and put each into one of five categories:

• Expected (such as Simon Turnbull's prediction in 2000 that "one area that is going to do fantastic stuff is the internet, specifically areas like shopping.")
• Too vague to call (such as Sarah Yip's statement in October 2020, "Who will win the U.S. election? … the numerology shows that both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden have a chance of winning the next U.S. presidential election.  It is still up to the people to decide.")
• Unknown/unverifiable (the smallest category, comprising only a little over two percent of the candidate claims)
• Correct
• Flat-out wrong (my favorite of those is Sarah Kulkens's 2007 claim that "Using anti-gravity to lift heavy objects will become a reality instead of a dream.")

The results are interesting, to say the least.  The "flat-out wrong" category amounted to 53% of the total, which doesn't seem too bad until you look only at the claims that were either verifiable and correct, or verifiable and wrong -- at which point the "wrong" category balloons to 83%.

Not a very impressive showing.

This gets even worse when you consider the major world events that every one of the 207 psychics involved in the study missed entirely.  These included:

• the 9/11 attacks
• the 2003 burn-up on reentry of the space shuttle Columbia
• the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed over 200,000 people
• the 2011 Fukushima earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster
• Notre Dame Cathedral burning down in 2019
• the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic

You'd think that events of this magnitude would have caused at least a small disturbance in The Force, or whatever the hell they claim is happening, but no.  The psychics were as caught off guard as the rest of us.

I'm all for keeping an open mind about things, but at some point you have to conclude that a complete absence of hard evidence means there's nothing there to see.  On one hand, I understand why people want psychic abilities to be real; it gives some kind of plan or pattern to what seems otherwise like a chaos-riddled reality.  But as my grandma used to tell me, "Wishin' don't make it so."  I've never found that the universe is under any obligation to conform to what I'd like to be true.

Or, as science writer and novelist Ann Druyan said, much more eloquently:

[Science] is a never-ending lesson in humility.  The vastness of the universe—and love, the thing that makes the vastness bearable—is out of reach to the arrogant.  This cosmos only fully admits those who listen carefully for the inner voice reminding us to remember we might be wrong.  What’s real must matter more to us than what we wish to believe.  But how do we tell the difference?

I know a way to part the curtains of darkness that prevent us from having a complete experience of nature.  Here it is, the basic rules of the road for science: Test ideas by experiment and observation.  Build on those ideas that pass the test.  Reject the ones that fail.  Follow the evidence wherever it leads.  And question everything, including authority.

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You are a magnet, and I am steel

Yesterday one of my Critical Thinking students brought to my attention one Miroslaw Magola, the Polish man who claims that metal objects spontaneously stick to his body.

Magola attributes this phenomenon to psychokinesis and his ability to "load his body with energy;" others have tried to explain it by saying that he is able to "concentrate and focus a magnetic field."

Upon doing a bit of research, I found that Magola is not alone in making such claims.  There's also Liew Thow Lin of Malaysia, who not only says that metal objects stick to his body (and there are photos on the website showing him, lo, with metal objects stuck to his body) but that it's evidently genetic, because his son has the same ability.

All of this makes me wonder how these men would manage to walk through, for example, the kitchenware section of an Ikea.  You'd think that they would become the center of a whirlwind of flying kitchen implements, rather like when Wile E. Coyote tried to catch the Road Runner with an Acme Giant Magnet, and would end up with paring knives and cheese graters and vegetable peelers protruding from their bodies.

James Randi, the venerable debunker of all things psychic, has investigated Magola, and apparently put paid to his animal magnetism by the simple expedient of sprinkling talcum powder on the metal object he was trying to adhere himself to.   After such a treatment, his power mysteriously vanished. Randi has stated that his conclusion is that Magola either is making use of the natural stickiness of skin oils, or (more likely) has coated his skin with a thin layer of adhesive.

You'd think that'd be case closed, but some people are not to be discouraged by a simple thing like a controlled experiment.  Magola, apparently undaunted by his failure, responded by making a YouTube video "debunking Randi," in which he is shown, sitting in front of a variety of metal objects, and he sprinkles talcum powder on one, and proceeds to make it stick to his hand.

Well, that's all well and good, but I find myself highly suspicious when an alleged psychic can't demonstrate his/her powers under controlled conditions -- it fails in Randi's lab, but when he's by himself, his ability miraculously reappears.  I'm reminded of the dreadfully uncomfortable experience of watching Uri Geller having his clocks cleaned on the Johnny Carson Show -- Geller, the Israeli psychic spoon-bender, couldn't so much as bend a piece of Reynolds Wrap when he wasn't allowed to provide his own props.  He attributed his failure to "the atmosphere of suspicion and pressure" that Carson had created, and followed it up by saying that he "wasn't feeling strong tonight."  That didn't wash with Carson (who had spent time as a professional magician, and knew how easy it was to bamboozle people), and it doesn't wash with me, either -- not in Geller's case, and not in Magola's.  I don't know about you, but I think it's a little puzzling that Magola can only do his funny stuff on his own terms.

All of this brings up one of my biggest criticisms of psychics of all stripes; the fact that they explain away their failures by blaming the skeptics.  "Your disbelief is interfering with the phenomenon," is something you hear all too often from Camp Woo-Woo.  My question is, "why would it?"  If whatever psychic phenomenon you pick -- let's say, telekinesis, since that's what Magola, Lin, and Geller all claimed they could do -- only works when no one suspicious is present, then all I can say is, that's mighty convenient.   It reminds me of the character of Invisible Boy on the movie Mystery Men who is capable of becoming invisible, but only when no one is looking.

And, of course, I always am looking for a mechanism.  If you think you're magnetic, I want you to explain to me how it works without resorting to jargon-laden bullshit like "focusing the frequency of psychic energy fields."  If you say you can move objects with your mind, I want you to do it while undergoing a brain scan, and see what's happening in your brain that the rest of us slobs don't seem to be able to manage to get ours to do.

I find myself in complete agreement with a character from a book by, of all people, C. S. Lewis.  His skeptical scientist MacPhee, in That Hideous Strength, says, "If anything wants Andrew MacPhee to believe in its existence, I'll be obliged if it will present itself in full daylight, with a sufficient number of witnesses present, and not get shy if you hold up a camera or a thermometer."

To which I can only say; amen.

The return of the faith healer

Following hard on the heels of my post suggesting that caveat emptor is all well and good, but there should be a way to stop swindlers from rooking gullible people, I ran across a story that pushes me squarely in the opposite direction.

There are people who are so gullible that no amount of rationality will persuade them, and honestly, these people probably deserve everything they get.

The story came to my attention via Sharon Hill's wonderful site Doubtful News, and concerns veteran snake oil salesman and purported faith healer Peter Popoff.  Popoff goes back a long way; over thirty years ago, he had a nationally-broadcast faith healing show, during which he would call up audience members for a "laying on of hands" and would scream, "I heal you by the power of Jesus!"  He claimed to make paralyzed people walk, cured sufferers of cancer and chronic pain, and attracted standing-room-only crowds, many of whom paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket to attend.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The whole house of cards came crashing down around Popoff after an investigation by James Randi and his associate Steve Shaw.  Some of the dreadfully ill audience members that Popoff healed, it was found, were perfectly healthy people that Popoff and his crew had planted in the audience to give the appearance of miracles.  His knowledge of people's medical conditions ahead of time turned out to be messages delivered not by the voice of god, as Popoff claimed, but by the voice of his wife Elizabeth, who was scanning audience information cards submitted upon arrival and sending the details to Popoff via a wireless earpiece.  (Amongst the not-so-divine messages Popoff got caught receiving was a reference to an African American audience member by a racial slur, followed by the warning, "keep your hands off her tits... I'm watching you.")

After these revelations, the donations dried up, the audiences stopped showing up, and in 1987 Popoff declared bankruptcy, leaving over 790 creditors unpaid.

And that, you would think, would be that.

But no.  After a humiliating takedown that would leave most of us unwilling to go outside ever again without wearing a paper bag over our heads, Popoff has restarted his "healing ministries," this time in the UK.  According to a piece over at the site Good Thinking, we find out that he's once again raking in the cash:

Over the last six months, we have been investigating ‘faith healer’ Peter Popoff and his highly-lucrative current business of promising to heal sickness and cancel debts in exchange for ‘seed faith’, in other words: cash donations.  In May of this year we attended Popoff’s event at The Troxy Theatre, London, to covertly record his miraculous claims and supposed acts of faith healing, and to witness thousands of people donating large amounts of cash to his ministry.

The Daily Mirror did a story a couple of days ago about the investigation, and called it correctly:

Is the old charlatan “Reverend” Peter Popoff returning to his wicked ways? 

The American snake oil salesman has been in the UK, churning out begging letters and holding a rally to heal the sick. 

Among those “cured” at the latest London gathering was a woman who said her body was wracked with pain. 

Popoff laid his hands on her and yelled “Back to the pits of hell,” apparently with remarkable results. But was it all it seemed? 

Among the audience members was Michael Marshall of the Good Thinking Society, a charity that promotes rational debate. 

“The woman he ‘healed’ had a convulsive fit when he touched her on the head,” said Michael. 

“But she seemed to be part of his team, she was handing out pens and a questionnaire at the start, which leads us to believe that it is possible she was a plant. 

“If she was part of their team, they should have been open about this, but just before the ‘healing’ she came out of a row of seats in the auditorium as if she was just another member of the audience, and left soon afterwards.”

In other words: Popoff is once again rooking audiences, using exactly the same techniques as he did before.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could fall for his schtick, after the events of thirty years ago.  Did god forgive him for his earlier transgressions, and now he's actually healing people through divine power?  Or was James Randi persecuting an innocent man, leading us to the uncomfortable conclusion that god told Popoff "keep your hands off her tits?"

Or is he a cheater and a fraud who was so successful the first time that he is banking on people having short memories and more money than sense?

I'm pretty much certain it's the latter.

So we're looking at a situation where a proven swindler has returned to swindling, and people are once again falling for it.  Which returns me to my original point; if you are taken in by people like Popoff, as harsh as it sounds, you are so foolish that you deserve everything you get.

Ghosts of Christmas present

Ouija boards are back in the news again, perhaps because of the recent release of the movie Ouija, which has people stirred up despite getting a 7% rating over at the site Rotten Tomatoes and reviews such as, "... strikingly like High School Musical, only with screaming."

Be that as it may, there is something about Ouija boards that really scares people.  Tales abound of people getting freaked out by messages from demons or evil spirits, even though the stories are usually of the "I heard it from my best friend's uncle's barber's daughter" type.  When you try it yourself, you quickly find that any "messages" that come through are banal at best, and easily explained through the ideomotor effect.  (For a really cool experiment that demonstrates this conclusively, go here.)

Further, there was a test run by none other than James Randi, where people who believed in the powers of Ouija boards were blindfolded and then asked their spirit friends to deliver messages anyhow.  The spirits all of a sudden seemed unable to see, themselves, and what they put out was gibberish, unless there's a language in the spirit world where "GHISKNNDPSBPLG" means something.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But still, the risks from demons and ghosts is ever-present for some people, and there are many warnings to "stay away from those things," even though you'd think Hasbro wouldn't sell many of 'em if every kid who used them ended up possessed.

This fact evidently has escaped some of the devout, who are alarmed by the hype that the movie has caused.  Ouija boards are expected to be a sellout this Christmas, which has freaked out the powers-that-be enough that a priest in Ireland made a public statement -- although under conditions of anonymity.  Maybe he didn't want the demons and evil spirits to find out he's been trash-talking them, assuming the demons and evil spirits read The Independent, which is where the story was covered.

"It's easy to open up evil spirits but it's very hard to get rid of them," the priest said in an interview.  "People, especially young people and teenagers who are likely to experiment with Ouija boards on a whim, can be very naive in thinking that they are only contacting the departed souls of loved-ones when they attempt to communicate with the dead using the boards.  It's like going to some parts of Africa and saying I'm personally immune to Ebola.  But it does leave people open to all kinds of spiritual dangers.  People don't intend any spiritual harm by it, but we live in a spiritual realm and you have no way to control what may impinge on you."

Yes, it's just like saying you're immune to Ebola, except that Ebola actually exists.  

The anonymous priest wasn't the only one to make a public statement.  Church of England vicar Peter Irwin-Clark is equally appalled by the surge in popularity of the toy, and told a reporter for The Daily Mail, "It is absolutely appalling.  I would very strongly advise parents not to buy Ouija boards for children.  It’s like opening a shutter in one’s soul and letting in the supernatural.  There are spiritual realities out there and they can be very negative.  I would hugely recommend people not to have anything to do with the occult.  People find they are having strange dreams, strange things happening to them, even poltergeist activity."

I wonder if that's what's wrong with my wife, who two nights ago dreamed she was participating in a chicken rodeo.

So anyway.  Predictably I'm siding with James Randi et al., who think that the Ouija board is just a silly toy.  I'd invite anyone who is looking for a Christmas present for me, though, to get me one, and it will occupy an honored spot next to my decks of Tarot cards.  I'm assuming that this will be a more economical choice than the other thing I want, which is a "haunted sword" that appeared over at Craigslist a couple of days ago, with a price-tag of $150.  You can get a Ouija board over at Target for around $20, which I think you have to admit is quite a savings.

Science, rigor, and hostility

One of the things I find hard to understand about woo-woos is their hostility toward the people who want to test their beliefs.

Not the actual charlatans, mind you.  I get why they're hostile; we skeptics are trying to ruin their con game.  But the true believers, the ones who honestly think they're in touch with Great and Powerful Other Ways of Knowing -- shouldn't they be thrilled that finally, there are scientists who will submit their claims to rigorous investigation?

Of course, they aren't, for the most part.  They hate skeptics.  Take, for example, the outright fury that James Randi's Million-Dollar Challenge evokes.  This site even goes so far as to call Randi a cheat, and states that he and prominent skeptic Michael Shermer (author of the wonderful book Why People Believe Weird Things) are "not real skeptics."  Then there's the piece "The Relentless Hypocrisy of James Randi," by Michael Goodspeed, which ends thusly:

I must again remark on the irony of self-described magicians trying so desperately to debunk paranormal phenomena. After all, Magic in its purest form is an embracing of the Unknown, and these people run from it every chance they get.

I must point out, in the sake of honesty, that the Goodspeed article appeared at Rense.com -- the website owned by Jeff Rense, who is a wingnut of fairly significant proportions.  RationalWiki says about Rense that he is an anti-Semite, Holocaust denier, conspiracy theorist, and alt-med peddler who is "the poor man's Alex Jones."

So.  Yeah.  Randi and Shermer make people angry, but most of their objections seem to be just whinging complaints about "not playing fair" and denying specific requests (Goodspeed, for example, takes Randi to task for not even considering the claim of Rico Kolodzey, who claimed to be a "breatharian" -- that he could live on nothing but air and water.  Me, I would not only have refused to consider Kolodzey's claim, I would have laughed right in his face.  Maybe I'm "not a real skeptic," either.)  You rarely hear anyone explain why the woo-woos think that the scientists' methods are wrong.  Most of the attacks are just that -- free-floating ad hominems.  Other than the occasional, Uri-Geller-style "your atmosphere of disbelief is interfering with the psychic energies," no one seems to have a very cogent explanation of why we shouldn't turn the hard, cold lens of science on these people's claims.

Except, of course, that none of them seem, under laboratory conditions, to be able to do what they claim to do.  When pressed, or even when subjected to a simple set of controls, all of the claims fall apart.  Of course, some of them even fall apart before that:

And it's not that we skeptics don't give them plenty of chances.  Take, for example, last week's challenge by an Australian skeptics' group, the Borderline Skeptics, to anyone who thinks they can successfully "dowse" for water.  Dowsing, for those of you unfamiliar with this claim, is the alleged ability to use vibrations in a forked stick to find water (or lost objects, or buried treasure, or a variety of other things).  Dowsing has failed all previous tests -- most of the vibrations and pulls allegedly felt by practitioners are almost certainly due to the ideomotor effect.  Still, dowsers are common, and vehement in their claims that their abilities are real.  So the Borderline Skeptics have organized a challenge in which supposed dowsers have to try to locate buried bottles of water.  The event is scheduled for March 10, and any winners will be candidates for a $100,000 cash prize.

And instead of being happy about this, dowsers are pissed.  They've already started to claim that the game is rigged, that the Borderline Skeptics are a bunch of cheats, and that they wouldn't stoop to the "carnival sideshow atmosphere" that such a test would inevitably generate.  "I will not debase myself," one alleged medium wrote about the James Randi challenge, "to have these cranks take pot shots at my God-given abilities."

Thou shalt not put thy woo-woos to the test, apparently.

You have to wonder, though, how anyone from the outside doesn't see this for what it is -- special pleading, with a nice dose of name calling and shifting of the ground whenever they're challenged.  So I suppose I do get why the woo-woos themselves don't want to play; at the best, it would require them to reevaluate their claims, and at the worst, admit that they've been defrauding the public.  But how anyone considering hiring these people, giving them good money, can't see what's going on -- that is beyond me.

Which brings me to my last news story -- just yesterday, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that a Delray Beach psychic center was robbed by an armed man, who burst in brandishing a gun, made the three women and one child who were present at the time lie on the floor, and took all the money in the place.

You'd think they'd have seen this one coming, wouldn't you?

Final exams for the psychics

Regular readers of Skeptophilia may remember my writing a few months ago about a challenge issued a while back by the Merseyside Skeptics Society to "Britain's Favorite Medium," Psychic Sally Morgan, to prove her alleged abilities under controlled conditions.  The whole thing happened because Psychic Sally had been accused of hoodwinking her audiences; the claim was that she was not picking up communiqués from the Other World, she was receiving information about her subjects from assistants via wireless earphones.  Psychic Sally, of course, heatedly denied the allegations, and in fact sued the reporter who broke the story for libel.  (The outcome of this case is yet to be decided.)

Psychic Sally and the others of her profession recently received a second chance to prove that they're telling the truth.  The MSS has just announced that they have arranged for a controlled test of two supposed psychics who have volunteered to have their abilities examined by skeptical scientists, including psychologist Chris French and noted skeptic and atheist writer Simon Singh.  They have issued invitations to Britains top five psychics -- Sally Morgan, Colin Fry, Gordon Smith, Derek Acorah, and T. J. Higgs -- to participate, or at least to attend.  Thus far, all five have refused.  However, two unnamed psychics have agreed to participate, and the results of the test -- scheduled to be performed tomorrow -- will be released on Halloween.

I find two things interesting about this.  First, I am rather impressed that they found any psychics who were willing to undergo rigorous testing.  Every time there's been a close look taken at psychics by people who understand how easy it is to dupe the layperson with sleight-of-hand and misdirection, the psychics have turned out to be cheating.  (Consider, for example, the remarkable failure of famed spoon-bender Uri Geller to bend so much as a paperclip on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson, and James Randi's public exposure of James Hydrick as a fraud.  Note that both Carson and Randi were professional magicians, and knew how to fool an audience -- so they were quick to figure out how Geller and Hydrick were cheating.  And if you haven't seen these clips, they're well worth watching.)

So anyway, it's fascinating that there are people out there who are either (1) so cocky that they think they'll be able to game French & Singh, or (2) are really convinced that they are, in fact, psychic.  Either way, it should be interesting to see what happens.

Equally interesting -- or damning, depending on how you look at it -- is the failure of any of the top-grossing psychics in the UK to agree to participate in the study.  The first time Psychic Sally was asked, she responded, "I have better things to do with my time."  You'd think -- if she really does believe she's psychic -- that there would be no better thing to do with her time than to prove, under controlled conditions, that she really can do what she says she can.  I can only imagine the boost in attendance at her shows if two respected scientists publicly stated, "Yup.  Psychic Sally is the real deal.  She really can get in touch with the spirit of Grandma Betty."  Hell, I'd attend in a heartbeat.  I'd love to talk my Aunt Florence again, for example, if for no other reason to get her chocolate-almond fudge recipe, which I have tried repeatedly to replicate without success.

Of course, the most likely reason that Psychic Sally et al. are refusing to attend is that they know that they won't be able to perform.  And that, of course, would be another nail in the coffin for their reputations, which have already come under enough fire lately.  So I suppose a refusal is less of a blow to her business than an outright failure would be.

But of course, as Michael Marshall, vice-president of the MSS states, there is always the chance that some people really do have psychic abilities.  As skeptics, we are required to keep our minds open to that possibility.  And if so -- if such things do exist -- there is no reason why they should not be accessible to, and analyzable by, the methods of science.  So whatever the outcome tomorrow, it's gonna be interesting.