Uri Geller - What do you think?

Regarding Polish medium Stephan Ossowiecki, he was tested by ethnologist Stanislaw Poniatowski with negative results.


Kenneth L. Feder. (2010). Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum. p. 203

Did you answer Laird's question from another thread (I can't remember which right now) - are you the Leuders from RationalWiki?

Did you answer Laird's question from another thread (I can't remember which right now) - are you the Leuders from RationalWiki?

Would it bother you if I was? 

Would it bother you if I was? 

It would put your posts in context. Are you going to keep avoiding the question?

It would put your posts in context. Are you going to keep avoiding the question?

Leuders did say on another thread that he was involved with RationalWiki (or should it be called Wookipedia? )
http://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-13...ml#pid2011

[Ninshub]

Yes and I for one see no problem with it. His response to a reminder of the rules was very polite and agreeable.

Yes and I see no problem with it. His response to a reminder of the rules was very polite and agreeable.

I agree. I'm in favour of people being allowed to post in as many places as possible. Which is not to say that reading a page of RationalWiki isn't a severe test of my patience. As Leuders is here, I was toying with the idea of starting a thread on the topic of "Isn't RationalWiki shooting itself in the foot by failing to adopt a Wikipedia-style objective tone?"

Properly controlled experiments, that treat Geller as somebody who is trying to trick the researchers - because he's a magician.

What does that mean, exactly? How do you properly control an experiment like this? Like, I know you thought their approach of locking the drawings in a safe and requiring two signatures was silly. How would you go about properly controlling that kind of experiment? Would you not lock up the drawings? How would you ensure that they were not tampered with? Thanks!

[Laird]

Laird: please explain how he [Uri] evaded double-blind procedures to fool the researchers.

Leuders: Nobody knows how he did it for sure

Let's just stop right there. Are you sure you want to go with "how" rather than "that"? "How" implies that you have come to a conclusion: that Uri cheated. OK, so, let's keep going to see on what evidence this conclusion of yours is based:

but there have been suggestions of how he fooled those researchers in the skeptical literature.

Oh. I see. You're basing your conclusion on "suggestions". Leuders, you post to RationalWiki, so I presume you consider yourself to be a skeptic who proportions his belief to the evidence, yet here you are, forming conclusions based on mere "suggestions". How ironic, when a typical "skeptical" criticism is that proponents are too suggestible.

OK, tedious as it is, I am going to go through every point you raised, whether via a proxy whom you quoted, or personally:

First, you quoted Paul Kurtz:

Skeptics have criticized the test for lacking stringent controls.

I saw at least three double-blind experiments in the video of the experiments. If double-blind experiments aren't good enough for "skeptics", then I'm not sure there is anything that could satisfy you guys.

They have pointed out that the pictures drawn by Geller did not match what they were supposed to correspond to

You've watched the video, so you must know that this criticism has no legs.

but appeared, rather, to be responses to verbal cues.

There was no audio of the recorded experiments, so this claim is difficult to evaluate in general. Nevertheless, it is possible to dismiss it in this way: one of the drawing trials was double-blinded, and Uri did just as well as with all of the other trials (see from circa 6:44 in the video).

What constituted a “hit” is open to dispute.

Again, since you've seen the video, you must know that this claim, even if true in theory, is not applicable in practice due to the high level of accuracy of Uri's drawings.

The conditions under which the experiments were conducted were extremely loose, even chaotic at times.

I don't think this criticism is valid when a double-blind protocol is in place. Mere "chaos" can't reveal information which is unknown to anybody participating. Moreover, the "chaos" was mainly put in place to make Uri more comfortable, which helped him to generate the results that he did - so it's not as though it served no purpose.

[Leuders's bolding] The sealed room in which Uri was placed had an aperture from which he could have peeked out

This part of the experiment I have no familiarity with, so I can't comment. It certainly wasn't part of the video which we've both watched.

I can, though, quote Jonathan Margolis from his book, Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic? (2014 edition) [bolding mine]:

A massive wrangle, still being fought 26 years later on the Internet, for instance, concerned a tiny hole in the wall of a sealed 'cage' which had been built to shield Geller from electronic or other signals from outside which might help his psychic senses. The hole, a couple of inches from the floor, was there for wiring to pass through, but Geller was said by his critics to have got all his information through it in code, or by whispering (nobody actually explained how it could be done), courtesy of Shipi - who at 18 and in a foreign country where he barely spoke the language, was attributed with virtually superhuman power in his ability to outfox a lab full of PhDs, conjuring buffs and experienced assistants.

Re this, you (Leuders) write: "It is possible Uri peeked through a hole in the wall of the booth for one of the drawing experiments".

Obviously, this was not possible in the experiments shown in the video. I have no idea which experiment you are talking about, but it would seem to be irrelevant given his double-blind performance.

Returning to Paul Kurtz, you quote him as saying:

[Leuders's bolding] and his confederate Shipi was in and about the laboratory and could have conveyed signals to him.

Whatever signals Shipi could have conveyed in a double-blind experiment are, of course, irrelevant, since in that type of experiment, nobody (including Shipi) other than an isolated third party knows the target - and sometimes, due to randomisation, such as in the "10-can Russian roulette experiment", not even the isolated third party knows the target.

Other experiments than those highlighted in the video I can't comment on.

The same was true in another test of clairvoyance, where Geller passed twice but surprisingly guessed eight out of ten times the top face of a die that was placed in a closed metal box. The probability of this happening by chance alone was, we are told, one in a million. Critics maintained that the protocol of this experiment was, again, poorly designed, that Geller could have peeked into the box

The idea that Geller could have peeked into the box is laughable given the video evidence shared previously, in which he quite clearly did not, and had no opportunity to.

and that dozens of other tests from which there were no positive results were not reported.

Ah, the old skeptical standby: fraud. My response: prove it, and, furthermore, prove that your skeptical go-to authors are not themselves frauds.

Turning now to your own (Leuders's) comments:

I have no reason to believe the experiments were properly controlled or legit double-blind studies.

I see. So, are you "suggesting" that they were not?

His confederate Shipi was in the same laboratory, that invalidates everything.

Are you "suggesting" that Shipi had access to information that was not available to anybody else in the double-blind experiments? If so, you're making no sense, Leuders.

It is possible Uri peeked through a hole in the wall of the booth for one of the drawing experiments (I think it was James Randi who discovered this hole).

Again, I am not familiar with this aspect of the experiments, can only refer you to my comments above.

There are possible naturalistic explanations

This is so vague as to be useless.

possibilities of fraud and sensory leakage were not ruled out

By whom, and for which experiments?

Sounds like a magnet in his mouth.

Another helpful suggestion. I think it's useful to note that the experimenters themselves concluded that this experiment wasn't definitive. Does that not give you confidence in their rigour?

Also interesting to note Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ were not convinced about his metal bending

They weren't convinced that it had been scientifically proven in their experiments - an admirably cautious approach. Who knows what they thought (or had experienced) beyond their experiments?

Puthoff and Targ were not convinced by the compass experiment, they considered it 'unsatisfactory'.

Which, surely, gives one confidence in their objectivity?

Do you still believe these experiments were well controlled?

As yet, I have seen no evidence that they were not. The fact that the experimenters noted when objective conclusions could not be drawn gives me a lot of confidence that they (the experiments) were well-controlled.