NEW YORK - Scientists at the Stanford Research Institute who conducted experiments with a number of persons, including Uri Geller, the magician and purported psychic, report that Geller, and probably most people, have an ability to send and receive information by some "as yet unidentified perceptual modality."
Despite all the publicity that has been given Geller's contention that he has the ability to bend melal or move objects by mental power alone, the researchers said in the generally conservative journal Nature that they were unable to confirm the authenticity of such feats under conditions that eliminated the possibility of deception.
Although several professional magicians have duplicated many of Geller's feats by using sleight-of-hand techniques, the S.R.I. scientists said in a telephone interview that their current report is based on experiments in which trickery would seein to be unlikely.
THE SCIENTISTS said they consulted professional magicians in designing their experiments to be as "cheatproof" as possible. Geller was sealed inside a room with metal walls capable of insulating it from external sights, sounds and radio waves, the scientists said.
Outside that room, the researchers opened a dictionary at random, looked down the list of entries for the first work that could be depicted graphically and then drew a picture corresponding to the word.
Geller's task was to draw a similar picture. The researchers said he was never told who would select the picture or how it would be done.
In nine such experiments, Geller produced seven drawings or sets of drawings. All of Geller's responses, which were published in the Nature article alongside the researchers' drawings, showed some degree of correspondence to the target pictures. Most showed remarkable similarity.
IN THE two instances In which Geller did not produce a drawing, he had been fitted with brain wave recording electrodes that, he said, interfered with his ability.
In a 10th experiment the drawing was placed in the sealed room before Geller's arrival. Later, when asked to reproduce the drawing, he was unable to do so. In three additional experiments, Images that could be displayed by computer were stored in the machine's memory, known only to the programmer. Geller, in the sealed room during the selection and programming of the image, produced drawings that all bore some degree of similarity.
From these experiments among others the scientists, Russell Targ and Dr. Harold Puthoff, concluded that Geller did indeed possess telephathlc ability.
PUBIICATTON of the report by the British scientific magazine Nature, one of the most respected international science journals, represents something of a first for parapsychology. Research in the field is almost always reported only in journals that circulate within the specialty.
Aware of the controversy the article might arouse, the editors of Nature published a lengthy editorial explaining why they chose to print the article in spite of the objections of some article "referees."
According to the editorial, consultants said that the report was "weak in design and presentation" and that details of precautions against conscious or unconscious fraud were "uncomfortably vague."
Nonetheless, the editors said, the report represented a legitimate attempt by bona fide scientists to verity the existence of a purported phenomenon that scientists frequently debated privately.
"Perhaps the most important issue, raised by the circumstances surrounding the
publication of this paper is whether science has yet developed the competence to confront claims of the paranormal," the editorial said.
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