(2017-08-31, 01:02 AM)Leuders Wrote: [ -> ]There is no reliable evidence Russell Targ was a practicing magician, apart from his own words in a biography. Joe Nickell says it is a fabrication. I am inclined to believe it is.
My problem is that I tend to be sceptical of any claim that's unsupported by evidence, regardless of what the claim is.
I find it difficult to imagine how Joe Nickell could be sure that Targ
didn't practise conjuring as a young man. Did you ask Nickell why he thought it was a fabrication?
(2017-08-30, 11:03 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]For the drawing experiments, there was a window (one-way mirror) between the room where Geller sat unobserved and the room where the drawings were produced. A bulletin board covered the window, and Marks and Kammann noted that a pinhole in the bulletin board would allow Geller to observe the production of the pictures (as well as listen to any conversation as an intercom was present between the rooms).
Having looked a bit more, I'm puzzled. Is this "pinhole" the same as the cable conduit which Randi thought Geller might have used? It doesn't sound like it. If they're different, do they both relate to the first shielded room of the Nature paper, or to different rooms? As Max says, the room with a window doesn't sound like the "double-walled steel room" described in the paper.
Randi's suggestion is criticised in this excerpt from Scott Rogo's "The Failure of Skepticism", on Geller's own website:
http://www.urigeller.com/psychic-breakthroughs-today/
(2017-08-31, 08:19 AM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]Randi's suggestion is criticised in this excerpt from Scott Rogo's "The Failure of Skepticism", on Geller's own website:
http://www.urigeller.com/psychic-breakthroughs-today/
That excerpt also challenges (I would say defeats) other claims made by the authors Linda relies on (emphasis mine):
(2017-08-30, 11:03 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]Marks and Kammann were the ones who discovered that the remote reading results were due to poor procedure on Targ and Puthoff's part when they presented the targets in the order they were visited to the judges, and left cues in the readings as to the order the sites were visited, making it easy to match readings to the sites. Taking the cues out and mixing up the order left the results unremarkable.
Scott Rogo in that excerpt writes of the emboldened quote:
Quote:Nor is it true that the transcripts and/or the sites for the critical series were given to the judge in chronological order. Some time after the publication of The Psychology of the Psychic, I personally spoke to the psychologist in charge of judging this series. He told me that everything was properly randomized when he received the materials from SRI.
He also addresses the other unemboldened claims made in that quote from Linda, but I won't quote that - it's easy enough to click on Chris's link and find it for yourself.
(2017-08-31, 08:19 AM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]Having looked a bit more, I'm puzzled. Is this "pinhole" the same as the cable conduit which Randi thought Geller might have used? It doesn't sound like it. If they're different, do they both relate to the first shielded room of the Nature paper, or to different rooms? As Max says, the room with a window doesn't sound like the "double-walled steel room" described in the paper.
To answer my own question, apparently these are two different holes and both relate to the same room. This is a "snippet" from an article in "The Zetetic" on Google Books:
"Perhaps just as important as the four-inch hole is the window between the "shielded" room and the anteroom. It appeared to be a one-way-vision screen (i.e., a reversible mirror) about two feet wide and 1.5 feet high. In November 1975 it was covered by a bulletin board screwed over it in the anteroom. Dr. Puthoff stated that it was even more thoroughly covered by a shield when Geller was being tested."
[Edited to add: I assume that snippet comes from David Marks and Richard Kammann, “The Nonpsychic Powers of Uri Geller,” Zetetic 1 (1977): 9−17.]
(2017-08-30, 11:15 PM)Pssst Wrote: [ -> ]Linda, is the tone of your post to mean that Geller is a fake, all the time?
My post is probably more about the judgement and representations of Targ and Puthoff, than it is about Geller. Whenever possible, I like to look at the primary material, rather than depend upon somebody's representation of that material. Unless I am given good reason to trust those representations.
The question is unanswerable, with respect to Geller, which makes it moot. If what I'm mostly interested in is what psi looks like, I'm pretty sure "the observer couldn't figure out how a trick was done" does not validly distinguish between psi and non-psi.
Linda
(2017-08-30, 11:52 PM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks. I had been assuming there must be a sceptical suggestion as to how this was done, and wondering what it was.
However, looking at Table 1 in the Nature paper linked to by Max, there were a number of different combinations of Geller's location and the target location. The commonest combination (Shielded room 1 for Geller and Adjacent room for the target) would account for only four of the ten trials in which Geller produced a drawing. That would leave the devil, the solar system, the camel and the three computer images. I'd say that of those six, five are reasonably clear hits, and the other one (the church) isn't a clear miss.
Did Marks and Kammann have another explanation for the other drawings?
Yes. I'm not at home, but going by memory - some involved the use of Geller's assistants signalling to him. One had the rooms switched, so that Geller could continue to use the one way window by turning off the lights in his room (from the lab notes, Geller got rid of his observer by going out for coffee, the observer followed, and Geller returned well ahead of the observer). Devil - Geller had a stack of drawings in his hand which were compared one by one with the drawing, allowing him to surreptitiously add the pitchforks to one of the drawings before handing it over.
Linda
(2017-08-31, 12:22 AM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]In the spirit of Chris's reply:
And the rest of the time?
Unknown. Targ and Puthoff wouldn't tell Marks and Kammann how often this was the case. And sometimes Geller passed, which could correspond to the times he was unable to get a peek.
Linda
(2017-08-31, 12:36 AM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]That would be in conflict with the paper... that's supposed to be an electrically shielded room, which says to me... metal sheets on all the walls, special door and no window. The paper also claims the intercom was one way... from the room outwards.
Yes. It is disconcerting to find that the description in the paper did not match what was found when the facility was visited.
Linda
Linda
Did something go wrong, or did you mean to post a blank reply above?
(2017-08-31, 08:19 AM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]Having looked a bit more, I'm puzzled. Is this "pinhole" the same as the cable conduit which Randi thought Geller might have used? It doesn't sound like it. If they're different, do they both relate to the first shielded room of the Nature paper, or to different rooms? As Max says, the room with a window doesn't sound like the "double-walled steel room" described in the paper.
The cable conduit was separate from the bulletin board over the window (both are described in the book). There was also a faraday cage used for some of the experiments, but that didn't have walls (someone in the cage could see someone standing outside the cage). I think that may have been the double-walled steel room (I would have to read that section again to be clear).
Linda