Uri Geller - What do you think?

I think this is the same video that I mentioned earlier in this thread having watched and finding persuasive. I say this after having watched (this time, and so far) only the first nine or so minutes out of over thirty:




Will be interested to know whether you find it as persuasive as I do, despite its low visual quality.

Yes, I do find this quite persuasive. Though part of me certainly thinks that the magician must have simply pulled off a trick in some way, I can't think of how it might have happened, save for an inside job.

err, no I think cheating did... why do we need to know about bollocks like drawings being put in a safe with a combination lock and two signatures being required to open it. These are not normal protocols, why introduce them?

Oh dear... this is so disappointing...

Magic, cheating? In this context they are the same thing. Why the lofty sigh? If it was cheating, suggest how. Otherwise you are just asking us to take your word for it because you are coming from some place of superior intellect. Sorry, but that kind of hand-waving dismissal has no explanatory powers.

Do you mean cheating as in he paid one or more of the scientists to rig the tests? Then say so and also whether you are guessing or have some evidence of that. FWIW, I also have problems with the fact that Geller couldn't help being the showman even during the experiments. The so-called dowsing was a little cringe making because it became clear that he could identify the tin without the faux drama. Also the elation at getting the right result. It seems clear to me that he was making a performance out of the tests.

But none of that explains how he did so under those conditions and I have yet to see a magician repeat those feats under the same conditions. If anyone can point me to a documented example of that, then I'll be satisfied and concede.

err, no I think cheating did... why do we need to know about bollocks like drawings being put in a safe with a combination lock and two signatures being required to open it. These are not normal protocols, why introduce them?

Oh dear... this is so disappointing...

I understand your point here, for sure...just curious what Geller (or anyone else) could do that would convince you?

Responding to Leuders's post in another thread:


All of that which you posted was cheap, and sometimes demonstrably false. For example, you quoted (in bold) Lawrence R. Samuel as saying: "Over the course of his six-week stint at SRI (for which he was paid 100$ a day and all expenses), Geller had not even been searched for magnets".

Watch the video I posted above. They swept him with a magnetometer on several occasions.

Re Joe Nickell's claims: if you think that Uri is a mere magician, then, again, watch the video above and please explain how he evaded double-blind procedures to fool the researchers.

Nobody knows how he did it for sure but there have been suggestions of how he fooled those researchers in the skeptical literature.

"Skeptics have criticized the test for lacking stringent controls. They have pointed out that the pictures drawn by Geller did not match what they were supposed to correspond to but appeared, rather, to be responses to verbal cues. What constituted a “hit” is open to dispute. The conditions under which the experiments were conducted were extremely loose, even chaotic at times.

The sealed room in which Uri was placed had an aperture from which he could have peeked out, and his confederate Shipi was in and about the laboratory and could have conveyed signals to him. 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, and that dozens of other tests from which there were no positive results were not reported."

Paul Kurtz. A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology. p. 213

I have no reason to believe the experiments were properly controlled or legit double-blind studies. His confederate Shipi was in the same laboratory, that invalidates everything. Who knows what went down?

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). There are possible naturalistic explanations, possibilities of fraud and sensory leakage were not ruled out etc so to me it is unlikely these experiments are evidence for psi.

Watch the video I posted above. They swept him with a magnetometer on several occasions.

James Randi has addressed this. Here is what he wrote:

"Geller is shown waving his hands about over a simple compass. We are solemnly assured that his hands have been carefully examined with a probe to be sure he has no magnets concealed. Nonetheless, the compass needle deflects!

But it moves, not in rhythm with his hand movements, but in time with his head, and only when his head approaches the device! Open wide Uri. What's this magnet doing in your mouth?"

James Randi. (1982). The Truth about Uri Geller. Prometheus Books. p. 37

Geller was not properly searched. Sounds like a magnet in his mouth.

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

"It has been widely reported that Geller has demonstrated the ability to bend mental by paranormal means. Although metal bending by Geller has been observed in our laboratory, we have not been able to combine such observations with adequately controlled experiments to obtain data sufficient to support the paranormal hypothesis."

Targ, Russell; Puthoff, Harold. (1974). Information Transmission Under Conditions of Sensory Shielding. Nature 251: 602-607.

They swept him with a magnetometer on several occasions.

Update

I just watched the entire video you posted.

In the video (24 mins in) it says:

"In this case, we found later that these types of deflections could be produced by a small piece of metal, so small in fact that they could not be detected by the magnetometer. Therefore, even though we had no evidence of this, we still considered the experiment inconclusive and an unsatisfactory type of experiment altogether."

Puthoff and Targ were not convinced by the compass experiment, they considered it 'unsatisfactory'. It is possible that a small piece of metal was used, that was so small it could not be detected by the magnetometer.

As Randi said, it was likely this magnet was in his mouth. Do you still believe this experiment was well controlled? The evidence is suggestive of fraud, not psychic powers. I will comment later on the other experiments.

I posted this in as a response in another thread but it probably has more relevance in this one. Anyhow, there is now a copy in each.

I think James was referring to Leonore Piper as his one white crow but, nevertheless, I'm interested to read more about Stephan Ossowiecki. For that matter, D. D. Home was the Geller of his day - perhaps even more so. Houdini was perhaps the Randi of his day too, claiming to have debunked Home (although there seems to be doubt that he ever did so successfully). Here's Michael Prescott's summary of the D. D. Home controversy (including comments about Randi's own attempts to debunk Home).

Oddly, although Houdini tasked himself to expose psychics, etc., he seems to have been a fervent believer in reincarnation. Go figure.

I posted this in as a response in another thread but it probably has more relevance in this one. Anyhow, there is now a copy in each.

I think James was referring to Leonore Piper as his one white crow but, nevertheless, I'm interested to read more about Stephan Ossowiecki. For that matter, D. D. Home was the Geller of his day - perhaps even more so. Houdini was perhaps the Randi of his day too, claiming to have debunked Home (although there seems to be doubt that he ever did so successfully). Here's Michael Prescott's summary of the D. D. Home controversy (including comments about Randi's own attempts to debunk Home).

Oddly, although Houdini tasked himself to expose psychics, etc., he seems to have been a fervent believer in reincarnation. Go figure.

Houdini believed in reincarnation, a creator God and life after death but he made it clear these were his beliefs, not scientific fact. A thread about his personal beliefs here and an interview with Houdini:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/for...p?t=307385

In the introduction to Houdini's book A Magician Among The Spirits (1924), he wrote:

I therefore want to make it clear that I am not a scoffer. I firmly believe in a Supreme Being and that there is a hereafter... My mind has always been open and receptive and ready to believe.

Houdini's book is online here: https://archive.org/details/AMagicianAmo...rryHoudini

I'm interested to read more about Stephan Ossowiecki.

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

"When confronted with stone tools, Ossowiecki tended to provide descriptions of their makers that sounded suspiciously like stereotypical Neanderthals, replete with sloping foreheads and large brow ridges. The problem here is that he was often provided with artefacts that had been made not by Neanderthals but by ancient, anatomically modern looking human beings (often called Cro Magnons for the cave site in France where the type of specimens were first defined). In other words, whereas the accuracy or legitimacy of most of Ossowiecki's pronouncements cannot possibly be assessed, where they can be, he was pretty consistently wrong."

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