Approved For Release 2001/03/26. ;, CLAFRP.F96-0078ZR000200080018-5 


Spoom-bendimg science 


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Gellermania continues, albeit in a muted form, as British scientists continue to examine children who bend 
cutlery and a major French 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 
not even duplicate their earlier performances under looser 
conditions. ‘ 

The Bath test last month was in the lab of Harry Collins, 
the only person in the UK to have government money for 
research connected to parapsychology. Collins is perhaps 
best known for his letter to Nature (vol 257, p 8) in which 
he reported that through the use of one-way glass, he had 
caught five of the little “Uris” cheating. His £10 000 
Social Science Research Council grant is to look at the para- 
psychological researchers, But it also includes “participant 
observation”, which means watching children bend spoons. 
In this area, “we saw enough to encourage us to continue 
our experiments, but nothing that would convince a 
sceptic.” Since then, the conditions have been tightened 
and again nothing has happened. : 

The June test, at which I was one of the judges, was of 
15-year-old Julie Knowles. Her abilities have been well 
publicised (eg Reveille, 5 November, 1976) and she was 
taking up the $10000 challenge of US magician James 
Randi. He offered the money to anyone who can bend 
metal by paranormal means, but his money remains safe. 
Julie has been tested both by Collins and Professor John 
Hasted of Birbeck Colledge, London. Hasted is a strong 
believer in Julie's abilities, Although Collins has not seen 
her cheat, neither has she been able to perform under his 
tighter conditions. 

Of those British scientists who have looked closcly at 
metal bending, only Hasted appears to remain strongly 
- convinced. He recently published the results of his work 
with Uri Geller and three children in Journal of the Society 
for Psychical Research (vol 48, p 365). He is now looking 
at what he claims is the children’s ability to affect strain 
gauges embedded in pieces of metal without touching the 
metal. 

If spoon-bending is dropping from vogue, there appears 
to be an increase in other forms of academic parascience 
research. There are now at least eight post-graduate 
students in parascience, at least two of whom hope to get 
PhDs this year—probably the first British PhDs in para- 


psychology. . 
J Beloff (author of New Directions in Parapsycholo 
Elek Scien his research _with the aid of four 


postgraduMmp , 
possible “retro-psychokinetic effect”. In the last, signals 


‘er 


Jean Pierre Girard (left) with Chris Evans 


are put on to a tape randomly and a subject later tries to 
increase the strength of those signals—if this occurs, it 
would mean the subject had influenced the randomisation 
process which occurred some weeks before the experiment. 

At Surrey University, a philosophy chair was established 
for someone to do research “concerned with the philo- 
sophical implications of data accumulating in the border- 
lands of scientific inquiry, eg ESP.” Since its establishment, 
the chair has been occupied by Professor S. C. Thakur, who 
is developing a philosophy of parapsychology. Three post- 
graduate students are now working on telepathy and 
psychokinesis (PK) in the Surrey philosophy and 
psychology departments. 

At City University, Professor Arthur Ellison, president of 
the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), is now building 
up instrumentation to study physiological correlates—brain 
rhythms, electrical skin resistance, etc—of unusual mental 
states, particularly during “out of body experiences”. And 
at Kings College, London, Taylor is looking at electro- 
magnetic (EM) signals emitted by subjects during psychic 
healing and other apparently paranormal events. Some low 
level PK effects, such as moving a small object by passing 
a hand nearby, have been “very repeatable”, and Taylor 
now believes they can be explained by low level EM forces, 
charge distributions on the objects, etc. The more spec- 
tacular events, such as objects moving about the room, 
have never been repeated under controlled conditions so 
could not be studied. ; 

Money remains a particular problem in this research 
area. None of the post-graduate students is known to have 
studentships, although three are supported by the SPR. 
Taylor raised the money for his research from private 
sources; but even so, he had to beg and borrow equipment. 
That money has now run out, and Taylor’s assistant expects 
to have to leave this month. z 


Magic and the paranormal 
For Charles Crussard, research money is not a problem. 
He is research director of Péchiney, the metals and 
chemicals conglomerate which is the fifth largest private 
company in France. Crussard heads a series of labs employ- 


d: CIAHRDRIG-007 IF ROOG200C6800F8-Gearchers have 


been studying—with company approval—Jean Pierre 


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Girard. By all accounts, the Girard studies are on a 
much higher plane than the Geller circus. The most striking 
difference is that Girard openly admits to being a trained 
magician and to having a listing in a French magicians’ 
annual. Noting that Geller is also a trained magician, 
Crussard writes that this merely “proves that such people 
have an attraction toward illusionism” 
precautions must be taken. Crussard concludes that the 
metal bending effect is a combination of mind and body— 
psychic and magic—which is sometimes 100 per cent 
psychic but not always. “I believe that Geller has PK 
powers, but I also believe he gives too many public per- 
formances and uses his other powers too often.” 

In a paper submitted to Nature last year, Crussard 
reports on 116 cases of Girard bending metal. Some, he 
says, were under tight conditions. But in the paper he 
admits that “in some cases the experiment was confused 
and a trick may have been possible. But we never saw any 
tricks.” The events reported include many bent keys—in 
two cases, it is claimed that they were checked as flat 
before being put into an assistant’s hand and were bent 
before they were taken from his hand. A flat aluminium 
plate held by an assistant and stroked by Girard is said 
to have bent in two places; other plates were bent and 
Straightened during the same session. Twenty five round 
bars have also been deformed; in one case a stainless steel 
bar in a closed (but not sealed) tube was both bent and 
magnetised, Crussard reports. 


Flying to Grenoble 

The importance of Péchiney and the high standing of 
Crussard as a metallurgist inevitably forced Nature to take 
the paper more seriously than it might otherwise have 
done, although its anecdotal form and mix of controlled 
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. 

“T 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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sure that after a few tries he will be able to do it.” 

Crussard involved a magician at an early stage—the 
French illusionist Ranky has issued a public statement say- 
ing that in the tests he watched, he could not see how 
Girard could have used tricks. And his involvement more 
recently of Randi, probably the best spoon-bender in the 
magic business, continues to show that these experiments 
are on a much higher level. Chris Evans commented: “I was 
impressed by their honesty and their determination to do 
things properly. I feel very strongly that they are treating 
this in a proper scientific manner—quite different from 
any other so-called scientific studies of this that I have 
seen.” Evans remains a complete sceptic, but he admits that 
“Girard is quite the best I have ever seen. If this-was 
fraud, it was very clever—not the sort of thing Geller or 
I can do.” Evans also stressed the “staggering difference 
between Girard and Geller. Everything about Geller shouts 
fake at you. Girard seems quite different.’”’ Where Geller 
constantly runs around the lab and is always doing six 
different things, often unannounced, Girard just sits in a 
chair the whole time, stroking the bars and doing pre- 
cisely what he says he is going to do. 

The Randi visit has, however, sparked off a row between 
Randi and Crussard. Randi watched some of the video- 
tapes of Girard and says he caught Girard cheating several 
times: In one, for example, Girard holds a bar in his right 
hand and slowly rotates it with his fingers. It appears to 
bend, when in fact a bend hidden from the camera is 
simply rotated in view. Although he did not say so at the 
time, Crussard told me that the whole thing was a test 
of Randi, and that he knew that the film contained tricks 
as well as real psychic events. This explanation cuts little 
ice with the critics, however, who consider it may be little 
more than a cover-up. Crussard also told me that if he 


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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, Car] 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, 


Char] i j i hay 
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ulie Knowles (below) attempts to 


(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, indced, 
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.” : oO 


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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 
scientific material. 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 
_ Corliss from the 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... 
and a ball of fire was seen.” According to the same source, 
in 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 
Sheltering from 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 bali 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 


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engaged routaa iro 
accident, a uniqué, Stable e ectromagnetic 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 
scientific boat by referencing anomalous of ts_and arte- 


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