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From: ethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.philosophy,net.physics
Subject: Re: Comment about Uri Geller
Message-ID: <189@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Jun-85 10:53:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.189
Posted: Tue Jun  4 10:53:50 1985
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[]
N.B. I have deleted the Indian discussion group from the header.  I left
net.religion in because it is all too appropriate.  Tim Maroney and
Bill Jefferys have given fairly complete replies to earlier articles on
Geller.  I have just a brief comment.

> 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.)

Randi can make people believe that they have seen just what they *believe* they
have seen after watching Geller.  That seems sufficient.
> 
> 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?

The purpose of publishing the book was to show people how easy
it was to convince yourself of ESP *in the absence* of reasonable statistical
evaluation of a test.  I haven't heard of this business concerning the child
and am quite skeptical.  We've all heard such anecdotal evidence before, and
(if one makes the effort) heard the followup explanation of fraud.  Since
he is a member of CSICOP I would expect that he'll eventually publish a report
in the Skeptical Inquirer.
> 
> Dave Trissel  {seismo,ihnp4}!ut-sally!oakhill!davet
> "Film at 10:00"  (We're on CDST)

-- 

"Don't argue with a fool.      Ethan Vishniac
 Borrow his money."            {charm,ut-sally,ut-ngp,noao}!utastro!ethan
                               Department of Astronomy
                               University of Texas