Spoon bending and fraudulent Geller

I suppose Geller is relevant because no-one was talking about spoon-bending until he appeared on the scene. Nowadays I regard him as an entertainer but I don't think that is all he has ever been. It is a long time ago that he was in his heyday - perhaps even before he became widely known he was active on a small scale.

It's really hard to get to the bottom of what he was doing in every field, certainly he was investigated for psychokinesis and telepathy or clairvoyance as part of the Stargate Project, apparently with some success. In that context I don't think he was an entertainer. There was some rigour in the test protocols which was very different to a stage performance.

IIRC Braude felt there were some demonstrations of Psi by Geller and others who were also known to commit fraud that we might include in our data-sets because the controls were arguably tight enough to prevent any fraud...but I just think this puts proponents on shaky ground.




This recalls those mega-church faith healers and their fraudulent tricks when they try to say they are using the power of God - whatever that is - to heal...If proponents allow known frauds to be included in data sets I think parapsychology would be seen as religion more than serious science.