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From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.philosophy,net.physics
Subject: Re: Comment about Uri Geller
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Date: Tue, 4-Jun-85 08:27:11 EDT
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Posted: Tue Jun  4 08:27:11 1985
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> Dave Trissel states:
> 
> > Uri Geller has been known to fake things quite often.  However, I would
> > love to see a professional magician do what some friends of mine have seem
> > him do.
> 
> 
> Professional magicians can do what Geller did easily.  I know this because

Thanks to Tim for an excellent presentation.  I only want to add, as an
amateur magician (and not a very good one, although I used to be paid
for my performances when I was in practice), I have always been amazed
at the ease with which simple chicanery can fool even sophisticated
observers.  Believe me, if you have never done this sort of thing, you 
have no idea of the wealth of absolutely simple, yet effective methods that
are available.  Professional integrity prevents my going into them here :-).
By the way, speaking of professional integrity, most professional
magicians consider that Uri's use of well-known stage techniques to
fake "psychic" powers is a breach of professional ethics.

...

> > Uri has bent some metal in a lab and the bend-point was examined with an
> > electron microscope revealing a fracture which cannot normally be created.
> > Of course scientist can be as fooled as anyone else.  But a EM is a little
> > harder to fool.  I'll give more details if there is interest.
> 
> As I recall, these experiments were done by Targ and Puthoff.  Enough said.

Not quite enough.  One should point out that Targ and Puthoff are notorious
for their inadequate controls in "Psychic Research".  I also want to mention
that natural scientists, in general, are among the easiest "marks" for a
good magician.  They may be expert in understanding natural phenomena, but
their training doesn't prepare them for understanding magic tricks, which
(as Tim pointed out) are based primarily on applied psychology.  I
personally would not trust the results of any laboratory experiments on
psychic phenomena unless they had been done in the presence of a good
magician.  Few scientists have that background (one who does is the
statistician Persei Diaconis.  I believe he is at Berkeley).

-- 
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from
	religious conviction."  -- Blaise Pascal

	Bill Jefferys  8-%
	Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712   (USnail)
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