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From: davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india,net.religion,net.philosophy,net.physics
Subject: Re: Comment about Uri Geller
Message-ID: <440@oakhill.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Jun-85 06:57:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: oakhill.440
Posted: Tue Jun  4 06:57:32 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 08:09:03 EDT
References: <436@oakhill.UUCP> <3759@alice.UUCP>
Reply-To: davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel)
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In article <3759@alice.UUCP> ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) writes:
>James Randi has a standing offer of $10,000 to anyone who demonstrates
>a "psychic" phenomenon that Randi cannot duplicate by using good
>old-fashioned chicanery.
>
>If Uri Geller could actually do the things he claimed, don't you
>think he would have snarfed the ten grand by now?

I think the situation is a lot more complex than this.

First Uri claims not to exactly control what's going on.  He often has people
hold things in their hand while he holds his over theirs.  Most of the time
nothing happens.  But when something does it may be one of several things and
he seems not to know what  to expect.  Example:  several times he had my
friend Kathern hold various objects in her hand (this was at her and her
husband's apartment.)  For about and hour of this nothing happened at all.
Then her husband, Ray, noticed that one of the pieces of turquoise she held
earlier and had since laid down was an ugly shade of dark blue.  Notice that
this was seen after it had been put down and Uri (if he was a good magician)
could have possibly handled it without their realizing.  The question is
what could he have done to have caused the change?

The turquoise was Indian jewelry (a man's neck piece) positioned in silver
and quite expensive.  The two were quite upset when it dawned on them that
they just had an expensive item destroyed, although the circumstances would
be something unique to tell grandchildren.  Unlike the other events I gave
earlier concerning Uri, I know nothing about turquoise and there may be some
easy way that a chemical could cause discoloration and thus an easy fake to
be had.

So, the first problem is Uri's taking a test and failing would not necessarily
disprove anything unless a lengthy and drawn out series of experiments were to
be done - something I doubt either Randi or Uri would put up with.

The second problem is deciding what constitutes proof of a paranormal event.
If Uri cannot control exactly what happens how do you test for a range of
unexpected events and conclusively prove it was paranormal.  S.R.I tried
keeping a video camera on him for a long length of time but "things" only
happened when the camera was not pointing directly at them (such as objects
moving by themselves or seemingly teleported from one side of the room to
another.)

To Randi this is proof of fraud since the events, if real, should happen
regardless of where the camera is pointing.  But the shoe can be put on the
other foot.  I have yet to hear of Randi or any other magician making forks
and spoons bend the way Uri does.  It's one thing to claim that Uri is using
tricks for everything he does, but quite another to find that the bending
exhibited has yet to shown by a magician.  (Randi has many times shown metal
bent covertly but NEVER has shown metal objects given to him by someone else
[a non-plant in the audience of course] curling up and twisting the way Uri's
effects do.)

BTW a little sidetrack here on Randi.  Well known for his anti-paranormal
stance I was quite shocked 2 years ago to see him publish a book on "Testing
Your ESP."  It had the standard ESP card deck (circles, squares, e.t.c) and
had statistical information on how to evaluate card guessing as being
statistically significant.  I had heard he had found a child who seemed to
demonstrate ESP ability at predicting the cards in his presence and he was
weakly admitting that there may indeed something to all this ESP nonsense.
The book would tend to confirm this since why bother if there is no ESP to
start with.  (Interestingly he had holes in his test procedure.  For instance
I think one of his procedures would possibly allow the subject to see the
cards reflected in glasses if worn by the tester. This quite astonished me
that he would have such a glaring goof.)  Anyone know what his current
attitude is?

Dave Trissel  {seismo,ihnp4}!ut-sally!oakhill!davet
"Film at 10:00"  (We're on CDST)