For more than 100 years now, scientists have been inviting psychics and mediums into their laboratories to submit their powers to care for testing. And it must be admitted that the results have been, on the whole, rather disappointing. It is not that the psychics have failed to produce the results. On the contrary, some of the phenomena have been spectacular: accordions played by invisible hands, tables rising off the floor in broad daylight, flowers are appearing out of the air — one medium apparently materialised a 6 foot golden lily, complete with plant pot. But the basic rule for a scientific experiment is that it should be repeatable. And the basic trouble with psychical phenomena is that they seem to be as temperamental as opera singers; they perform seemingly according to whim, and cannot be pinned down to a schedule. Again and again, individual investigators have "proved" the reality of telepathy, psychokinesis, second sight, and the power to foretell the future. And still nobody is absolutely convinced — least of all, the scientists themselves.
This is why psychical researchers rub their hands with delight whenever he really gifted psychic appears — someone who seems able to call upon his powers at will. In the whole history of psychical research, there have been fewer than a dozen such people. As soon as Puharich heard reports of Uri Geller's powers, he realized that this could be the breakthrough everyone had been seeking. Of course, it was just as likely that Geller was simply a clever trickster — more likely, in fact, because there are more con men in the world than miracle workers. Therefore, his first task was to check Geller — to the best of his own ability — and then to get him into a well equipped laboratory.
As we have seen, it took Puharich only 1 hour to decide that Geller's telepathy was genuine. Some of the "debunkers" have used this as evidence that Puharich was credulous and over trustful. But it is difficult to see how this charge can be sustained. Geller wrote something on a pad, placed it face downward on a table, then told Puharich to think three numbers. When Puharich picked up the pad, his three numbers had already been written on it. Few experiments would be harder to fake.
The same applies to Puharich's thermometer experiment, conducted the following day. It may sound easy enough for a stage magician to raise the temperature of a thermometer by trickery, particularly if he is allowed to handle it or breathe on it. But it is difficult to see how this could be done if thermometer was on the other side of the room, as Puharich alleges.
Puharich's next move was to speak to astronaut Ed Mitchell, the sixth man to land on the Moon. On his 1971 Moon flight Mitchell performed an experiment in telepathy, attempting to transmit a series of numbers to four friends on earth. The result was astonishing: not because the number of hits was high, but because it was incredibly low — far below what would have been expected by chance. You might compare this result to someone who overhears a conversation in a foreign language of which he knows to a few words, but gets a completely mistaken impression of what it is all about. But he could get such a mistaken impression only if he partly understood the language. Ed Mitchell's friends obviously " overheard" something, which they proceeded to get all wrong. This was intriguing enough to make Mitchell decide to persist in his investigations into the paranormal. When he left the army, he set up an Institute of Noetic Sciences — that is, studies relating to the intellect. Its aim was to try to investigate the ways in which people can use their psychic energies.
Geller arrived in the United States for the first time in August 1972; he stayed at Puharich's house in Ossining, New York. Ed Mitchell came, together with Dr. Gerald Feinberg of the the Physics Department of Columbia University, and a number of other scientists. Uri demonstrated his powers; he caused the hands of a watch to move, and broke a steel ring and a sewing needle. Both Mitchell and Feinberg were convinced. Mitchell was so impressed that he offered to put up the cash to pay for further investigation of Uri's powers at the Stanford Research Institute, at Menlo Park, California — an independent organisation, not connected with Stanford University.
Mitchell was eager to get the opinion of his friend Wernher Von Braun, the famous rocket scientist, who is a vice president of a large industrial cooperation in Germantown, Maryland. Von Braun's attitude, like that of most scientists, was distinctly skeptical, but Geller's demonstrations soon had him convinced. Von Braun held his wedding ring in his own hand, without allowing Geller to touch it. Geller held his own hand near Von Braun's — without touching it; the ring slowly bend into an oval shape. Later, as Geller and Puharich were about to leave, Von Braun discovered that his pocket electronic calculator was not operating, although it had had a new battery. Uri took it in his hands for a moment and concentrated. The battery them began to work, but the calculator itself seemed to have gone haywire. After another 30 seconds of hard concentrating, Uri succeeded in making it operate normally. Understandably, Von Braun was convinced that Geller's powers were genuine.
During all this time, according to his book Uri, Puharich was still in contact with his " extraterrestrial intelligences". Two days before the Von Braun demonstration, the tape recorder held a conversation with Puharich, in Uri's presence, in which it explained that the Space Beings were planning to land on the earth within the next year or two — they declined to specify exactly when — and told Puharich to write a comprehensive book on "the UFO experience." We also explained that a sudden petulant outburst from Uri the day before, on the subject of a documentary film script, had been inspired by them. Shortly after this, the tape recorder again talked to Puharich, explaining that he would soon be "on his own," and implying that they would shortly cease to communicate. A few days later, the same voice told Puharich that Uri was not to go to California for the Stanford research. Understandably, Puharich was bewildered and furious, and decided to ignore the voice. Uri himself became furious when Puharich told him that, whatever happened, the Stanford project had to go ahead, and he threw a sugar bowl at Puharich stop Puharich, in his own words, "cursed the gods," which apparently provoked an instant storm that rocked the house. During the storm a grandfather clock in the hall shot across the floor and virtually exploded.
This preposterous incident may seem to have no place in an account of the laboratory investigations of Uri's powers. In fact, it could well offer a vital clue. To begin with, the disembodied voice sounds highly knowledgeable about science and mathematics, although most of its communications seemed to be sheer gobbledygook. For example:
THE VOICE: " don't you see an ashtray and a key appeared right now?"
PUHARICH: " yes, I did."
THE VOICE: " to your own timeless situation, that means to you there is time. It looks like it happened right now, spontaneously, immediately, straightforward. But that is wrong. For us, that was planned hundreds, hundreds of light years ago, Andrija..."
Now, as anyone with even the most amateurishly interest in astronomy knows, the light year is not a measurement of time; it is the amount of space a beam of light could travel in a year. Interestingly, this is a mistake that Uri himself tends to make.
Again, the English of the voice is oddly colloquial and ungrammatical: " right now," " spontaneously, immediately, straightforward," as they are used in that fragment, suggest Uri's own idiosyncratic English. And the comment " to your own timeless situation, that means to you there is time" also sounds curiously like Uri.
Finally, there is the extraordinary nature of the communication itself: the suggestion that the whole Stanford project should be dropped. If the Space Beings really were eager to establish Uri as a messenger, they would surely want him to be tested by scientists. This sudden objection is a little too abrupt to make sense.
Yet we know, from what Puharich says, that Uri was doubtful about the scientific experiments from the beginning. Ed Mitchell noticed the same thing about him. And Uri's reaction when Puharich said they ought to go ahead anyway — hurling a sugar bowl at him — was uncharacteristically violent.
The obvious conclusion would seem to be that Uri planted the messages on the tape recorder, taking advantage of Puharich's belief in beings from outer space. But if that is so, how did the tape recorder reply to Puharich's questions? For it seems clear from Puharich's book that the conversation was reasonably spontaneous. And hounded Uri raise a storm and cause a grandfather clock to smash?
This last question is one that must be explored at length later on. All that may be said here is that if the freak storm and the smashing of the clock were not due to natural causes, they may have been engineered by Uri himself — perhaps unconsciously. In the field of psychical research, such manifestations are lumped together under the term " poltergeist activity". The word poltergeist, meaning "noisy ghost," covers a multitude of peculiar phenomena, seemingly caused by some mischievous spirit. It will throw things, move heavy objects, even cause fires. Most parapsychologists now agree that a poltergeist is not a real ghost, but some kind of unconscious manifestation of a living person, usually a disturbed child or adolescent. The person at the centre of the disturbance is seldom consciously aware that he or she is responsible.
Puharich's book makes it clear that all kinds of poltergeist activities took place in Uri's presence; objects would fall from the air or suddenly "demterialize" and appear in another place. So when we learn that Geller was extremely reluctant to go to Stanford, it becomes clear why the voice suddenly order Puharich to cancel the trip — and white Uri was so furious when Puharich declined.
As it happened, Uri's apprehension was groundless. During the next few months, he took part in two series of experiments at Stanford, under the supervision of two physicists, Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ. The results seem to prove conclusively that whatever the nature of Geller's powers, they were undoubtedly genuine.
What Puthoff and Targ thought about Uri is another matter. The first thing he told them, when they met at San Francisco Airport on November 11, 1972, was that his powers came from beings in outer space. Puharich was shocked and alarmed, because the voice had sworn them both to silence. Later, as they sat around a table, Uri asked for silence, explaining that he was waiting for a sign. The of an automatic test machine suddenly rang, although there was no reason for it to do so. A copper ring was compressed into the shape of a dumbbell, and then apparently fell through the table and onto the floor underneath. This convinced Puharich's that the Space Beings had no objections to Uri's Revelations about them. Uri asked for one more sign. He asked to look at a chain bracelet worn by Hal Puthoff, then asked Puthoff to hold it in his own hand. He concentrated for a moment; and Puthoff looked at the bracelet again, it was broken, and one link was missing.
On Monday, November 13, the series of laboratory experiments began. First of all, Targ and Puthoff tried an experiment with which another psychic, Ingo Swann, had been successful a few months earlier. A magnetometer — specifically a Bell gaussmetre — was protected by a superconducting shield, and Uri then attempted to deflect the needle by moving his hands near it. The shields function was to eliminate the possibility of Uri moving the needle by concealing magnets in his sleeve. The effort obviously exhausted him.
The next day's work was altogether less successful from the scientific point of view, but included some interesting effects. Uri concentrated on trying to bend a brass ring out of shape. Meanwhile he was being filmed, and an X ray of his hand was visible on a television monitor. When he concentrated, was a distortion of the picture on the monitor. Moreover, a computer on the floor below began to go wrong, and continued to malfunction as long as Uri was being tested. On the other hand, the brass ring showed only a slight change of shape. When Ed Mitchell, who was present, later reported on this first series of experiments, he omitted all mention of this one, suggesting that neither he nor the others were convinced by the metal bending, or least regarded it as scientifically unproved.
Tests in ESP, however, were spectacularly successful. A die was placed in a closed box, which was then vigorously shaken by Targ or Puthoff. The box was placed on a table, and Geller had to call out which side of the die he thought uppermost. The box was then opened to check his guess. Geller scored eight out of eight.
Eight aluminium film cans were placed in a row, and an assistant placed some small object inside one of them, choosing the container random. Then Geller was allowed to enter the room, together with the scientists. He was not allowed to touch the cans, but had to guess which were empty. As he pointed to the presumably empty cans these were removed, until finally he would indicate the can he believed to contain the hidden object. The experiment was tried 14 times, and Geller was correct 12 times. On the other two occasions, he declined to answer; in these trials the hidden objects were a paper wrapped ball bearing and a sugar cube. In the successful experiments, the hidden objects were unwrapped ball bearings, magnets, and cubs containing water. (that Geller claims that his power comes from metal and that it is easier for him to bend a spoon or fork if he can place it against a metal plate or radiator.)
In another experiment, a laboratory balance was placed under a bell jar, with a tiny weight — 1 gram — on one of its pans. Uri then concentrated on trying to depress the empty pan. The recording needle of the balance showed that some force had been applied to the empty pan — many times greater than could have been caused naturally by rocking the table or vibrating the bell jar.
But the experiments that impressed the scientists most were those demonstrating Uri's feats of mind reading. Some drawings had been made on cards before Uri arrived at Stanford. The scientists did not see the drawings — which were done by assistants — so it would be impossible for Uri to learn anything from them. The cards were sealed in double envelopes. Immediately before the experiment, the scientists would take an envelope from the safe, open it, then take the drawing into the next room, where Uri was waiting. The drawings that Uri made were almost exact reproductions of the "target" pictures.
The question that intrigued Targ and Puthoff was how far Geller was using telepathy (mind to mind communication), as opposed to clairvoyance (extra sensory perception of objects or events). Obviously, telepathy was out of the question in the die experiments, because nobody knew which way the die had fallen. But a drawing, though in itself an object, has been done by a person, who conceivably could transmit it telepathically link to the subject. In the second series of tests, conducted a few weeks later, the scientist deliberately made conditions more difficult. After Geller had successfully reproduced a number of drawings of the under the same conditions as before, the experimenters devised a method that would almost eliminate the possibility of telepathy. One hundred drawings were made by various people in the building and placed in a sealed envelopes. Twenty of these were selected at random, and Geller was asked to try to draw them, one after the other. This time he failed, saying that the pool one handed target drawings was too large and confusing. On each of three days he made a dozen drawings that he fell to be associated with the pool; only two out of the 12 looked at all like any of the day's 20 targets. He achieved moderate success only on the third day, when two of his drawings were close replicas of two of that day's targets. All this seems to suggest that, where the duplication of drawings is concerned, Geller relies on mind reading.
On the other hand, when drawings were made on the face of a cathode ray tube, or stored in a computer's memory, Geller's response was more accurate. This does not prove, of course, that he could read a computer's memory; but it suggests that he could read the minds of the scientists involved.
Two years later, on October 18, 1974, the results of this second set of experiments were finally published in Nature, the highly regarded scientific journal. Targ and Puthoff were determined to bring their research to the attention of the scientific community. The newspaper publicity that followed publication had a distinctly negative tone — the anti Geller reaction had been gaining force since his English triumph in 1973. The sceptics pointed out that Targ and Puthoff were significantly silent about Geller's metal bending activities. Few of them acknowledged the truly remarkable nature of the evidence for ESP, particularly telepathy. And as usual, the magician's alleged that the whole thing had been done by trickery.
Yet, by the time the Nature report appeared, a number of English scientists had become totally convinced of the reality of Geller's powers and had no hesitation about publishing their findings.
Ever since he had appeared on the Dimbleby TV programme with Geller, professor John Taylor of London University had been eager to test Uri in his laboratory. The first tests were conducted on February 2, 1974. Taylor knew enough about the Stanford research are to know that Puthoff and Targ had been unable to validate Geller's ability to bend metal. This was not because they had not tried. The trouble was that Uri could bend spoons only by stroking them with his finger, and Puthoff and Targ realized that this was far from scientifically fool proof. Taylor decided that this problem could be overcome. Among the objects he gathered for testing was an aluminium strip sealed into a glass tube — by melting the glass — so that there was no way of getting at the metal without breaking the tube. He also worked out a simple device there would actually measure the pressure Uri was applying to anything he stroked. Some pieces of metal also sealed into tubes made of wire mesh — perhaps in deference to Geller's belief that metal increases his power. Of course, a wire mesh tube can be bent by hand; but in that case it would show the marks of manual pressure.
The first test was a failure; Geller tried to bend a strip of metal without touching it, and failed completely. Another strip of metal lying on a nearby tray was found to be bent after the experiment; but that, of course, could hardly be admitted as evidence, because Geller could have bent it when he was not being observed.
Next, Taylor held a spoon by its bowl, what Geller stroke the stem. After only a few seconds, the thin part of the stem seemed to become soft; then he broke in two. The metal seemed to harden instantly. Taylor had been able to observe throughout that almost no pressure was being applied to the spoon by Uri.
The after two or three more inconclusive experiments, it was observed that one of the strips of metal in a wire mesh tube had been bent. The tube itself showed no sign of having been tampered with, and Taylor was convinced that Geller would have had no opportunity anyway.
The most impressive experiment in that session was with a Geiger counter, a device for measuring atomic radiation. By intense concentration, holding it in his hands, Uri succeeded in deflecting the needle. The characteristic " chatter" of the Geiger counter, amplified by a loudspeaker, rose to a kind of wail, suggesting the presence of dangerous radioactive material. As soon as Uri relaxed, the wail stopped. He did this three times, on one occasion causing the "chatter" to rise to a high pitched scream as a machine registered 1000 counts per second. The background radiation of an ordinary room is about two counts per second.
In a second series of experiments, in June 1974, Taylor measured exactly how much pressure was applied to a strip of metal to bend it. There a Brass trip was taped across a fine balance, so that any pressure on the stripped was measured on the dial. The Geller gently rubbed the strip, the pointer revealing that he never applied more than half an ounce of pressure; nevertheless, the strip was soon bend by ten degrees. What was rather more astonishing that was the pointer itself bend at an angle of seventy degrees, although Geller had not touch this at all.
The piece de resistance of Taylor's apparatus was a small metal cylinder that generated an electric current when its end was pressed, measuring the exact degree of pressure. This was embedded in an aluminium strip, and Uri was asked to bend the strip by rubbing it. After a few moments, the strip began to bend; but the especially constructed cylinder suddenly ceased to register. Taylor took it in his hand and peered at it. As he looked, the tiny hole appeared in the centre of the sensitive end, and then suddenly the end crumbled away. As Taylor remarked: " the Geller effect has been validated, but at the cost of £200 worth of apparatus." The metal strip continued to bend for the next 3 minutes.
The crystal inside a plastic container was broken as Geller held his hands over it; Taylor could see the gap between his hands and the container. And aluminium desk inside another plastic container was bent the same way, this time with Taylor Holding his hands between Geller's hands and the container.
An attempt to bend a copper strip without touching it was apparently unsuccessful, although the strip was found to bend some minutes later, when they were engaged in another experiment. And at this point, poltergeist phenomena began to occur. A piece of Brass on the other side of the laboratory bent of its own accord, then flew the length of the laboratory, falling near the door. The a piece of copper followed it. Then a plastic tube containing an iron rod jumped off a nearby table and struck a Taylor's legs; when they examined it, they discovered that the iron rod had been bent so that it touched both sides of the tube.
Finally, Geller influenced a compass, the making its needle move by moving his hands over it, a trick that most magicians accomplish by concealing a magnet in the sleeve. There that Geller allayed the suspicion by turning the force on and off at will but while his hands continued to move over the compass.
Is hardly surprising, then, that John Taylor allowed himself to be totally convinced of Geller's powers. But he was not the first British scientist to be convinced; that distinction should probably go to Cambridge mathematician Dr. Ted Bastin, who travelled to America in, 1973, before the Dimbleby Show, to observe Geller in Philadelphia. Bastin had then observed most of the "Geller effects" at first hand — although not under test conditions. But what impressed him most was the disappearance of a plastic box of screwdrivers from a table, there and its reappearance in another room, with all the screwdrivers broken. Bastin send the screwdrivers for testing to a metallurgist colleague, Dr. Chilton, at Cambridge. What he wanted to know, presumably, was whether the fractures had occurred through ordinary bending, for example, by pressing the screwdrivers against a table. Dr. Chilton examined the fractures under a microscope, and had to admit that he was puzzled; they were not of any type he had seen before, and were certainly not due to ordinary bending with finger and thumbs. There were, in fact, several different types of fracture, including an area that looked as if it had been subjected to intense heat.
On the 21st of June, 1974, soon after the second series of experiments in John Taylor's laboratory, Geller went along to the laboratory of the physics department at Birkbeck College, London, to confront a distinguished gathering that included the writer Arthur Koestler, professor John Hasted (professor of experimental physics at Birkbeck) Professor David (theoretical physics), Ted Bastin, Keith Birkinshaw, theoretical physicist Jack Sarfatt, and psychical researcher Brendan O'Regan. At this session Geller repeated feats he had already performed for John Taylor: he bent metal (in this case, door keys), caused a Geiger counter to chatter furiously, and bent an aluminium disc in a plastic container. In this experiment Sarfatt's hand was between Geller's and the container as Geller concentrated.
The following day, those present included Koestler, Arthur C. Clarke (the science fiction writer), A. V. Cleaver (former Rockets director of Rolls Royce), and the pianist Byron Janis. Geller duplicated a drawing made by Koestler, and again influenced the Geiger counter. This time, Koestler had an electrical sensation as Geller influenced the sounds from the Geiger counter.
They're one of the most impressive experiments, for scientific point of view, the took place with Hasted, Bohm, and Bastin on September 10 of the same year. A number of small objects, including two pieces of vanadium foil from an electron microscope, were sealed in plastic tubes about 1 cm long. One of the scientists covered the various objects loosely with his hand; Geller placed his own hand on top of this. One of the small capsules was seen to leap like a jumping been. When this capture was examined, they could see that part of the vanadium foil was missing. Subsequent examination indicated that Geller had demterialize a part of the foil while it was still inside the capsule.
It was also at this session that one of the scientists — the report does not specify which one — took the two halves of a broken spoon from Geller's hand, and discovered that the broken metal was still plastic and soft — a phenomenon that John Taylor had also observed. This seems to suggest that Geller's spoon Bending involves some kind of temporary softening of the metal, yet without the heat that would accompany melting. Hostile magicians had frequently suggested that Geller used some kind of chemical to cause the effect. But laboratory examination of the broken metal has proved conclusively on several occasions that no chemical change had taken place in the metal.
All these tests had taken place before the publication of the Stanford report in Nature so it might have seemed that Geller — and his defenders — were fighting on fairly secure ground. But in the field of research into the paranormal, things are never as simple as that. To begin with, Professor Taylor had complicated the issue by investigating in his laboratory a number of children who were reportedly able to bent metal by rubbing it. It was a reasonable thing for Taylor to do, because all Geller's demonstrations on radio or TV were followed by dozens of telephone calls from people who claimed that their spoons had bent or the that broken watches had started to work. The Taylor dismissed the idea that Geller might be indirectly responsible for these effects (assuming that they were genuine). It seemed an altogether more reasonable assumption that he somehow "triggered" the power in other people, giving them confidence that they could do it too.
Taylor therefore invited a number of young children to his laboratory, and asked them to bend strips of metal and plastic. The results, although not as spectacular as in Geller's case, were fairly startling. Taylor's book " Super Minds" (1975) has an interesting assortment of photographs of spoons, forks, and plastic strips bent by children.
But bent spoons and forks are, by their very nature, unconvincing, because even the least skeptical person is likely to suspect that only manual force was involved. This aspect of Taylor's work came in for strong criticism from scientists, particularly when Taylor admitted that some of the bending occurred while he was in the next room. Taylor defended himself by speaking of what he called "the shyness effect" — the fact that bending often occurs when skeptical observers are looking the other way — which provoked the inevitable sarcastic guffaws from his critics. It cannot be denied the Professor Taylor did his case more harm than good by trying to extend it to include other metal benders.
Immediately after Geller's original appearance on the Dimbleby TV show, "the New Scientist", the best of Britain's popular scientific journals, carried an editorial recommending that Geller should be studied by scientists. The same opinion was repeated periodically in its pages during the next six months or so. But on October 17, 1974, the day before Nature published the Stanford report, it became clear that the editor had experienced a change of heart, or at least a sensible desire to hedge his bets. No less than 16 pages were devoted to an investigation entitled " Uri Geller and science," most of it written by Dr. Joseph Hanlon, a physicist selected by "the New Scientist" to investigate Geller. Uri had originally agreed to be examined by a New Scientist panel that would have included Dr. Hanlon and Dr. Christopher Evans, both of whom were inclined to accept the word of British magicians that Geller was basically a clever conjurer and no more. Warned beforehand to expect skepticism, Geller withdrew his offer. And so, understandably, most of the material used by the " New Scientist" was secondhand. It was also totally damning.
Hanlon began his report with both fists swinging: " the whole phenomenon is dominated by Geller's own personality. He exudes sincerity and a childlike innocence and a desire to please which makes people really want to like and believe in him. This is reinforced by a high failure rate, which seems to be a constant fear that he will not be able to do what he is trying, and genuine pleasure when he does succeed. And he is a consummate showman, having been a male model and a stage performer in Israel. On the other hand, even supporters such as Puharich admit that his main goals in life are fame, money, and women, and that he can be childish, petulant, and extremely difficult to work with. It is these latter characteristics that caused ex astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell.... to fall out with Geller last year. Nevertheless, Mitchell and others who have experienced his whims believe he is one of the most important psychics of our time."
And after this skilful piece of character assassination, Dr. Hanlon proceeds with an analysis of The Magic Of Uri Geller the reads like an abbreviated version of Randi's book (which appeared the following year). In fact, his basic approach is identical to Randi's. Is it more likely that a paranormal event is a fraud or a miracle? Obviously the former. Therefore let us proceed to examine how Geller could have cheated his way through various tests. The argument sounds convincing, but as logic it is abysmal. It is merely saying that the chances are a million to one against a paranormal event happening, which is somewhat like trying to prove that there is no life on earth by arguing that the chances are a million to one against it.
Hanlon cites a number of people who claim to have seen Geller cheating, including a television camera technician who saw him bend a spoon by hand when no one was looking. He even quotes Russell Targ as saying: " I feel confident that Geller will cheat if given a chance." The Stanford experiments were conducted in an atmosphere of chaos — engineered by Geller stop but how could Geller had cheated when he got eight out of eight " hits" with with a die shaken in a box? How did he locate the film cans that contained ball bearings and similar objects? How did he get such a high score in duplicating drawings? Here Dr. Hanlon comes up with an ingenious hypothesis. It could have been done with the help of Puharich. How? Puharich is an expert in medical electronics, observes Hanlon. It would have been well within his competence to make a radio receiver there would have fitted into one of Uri's teeth, like a filling.
When the "New Scientist" attack appeared, the results of the experiments at Birkbeck College had still not been published. However, Hanlon had succeeded in getting hold of a copy of the Hasted and Bohm report, and although he was violating scientific ethics, he offered a half page summary of the report. Predictably, the key bending is dismissed very quickly. Hanlon reports that his own tests have shown that anybody can bend a key by holding it in both hands and pressing it against the edge of a chair; he also reports on a session in which Uri succeeded in bending a key, and also in tearing his own over tight jeans, presumably as he tried to lean forward very quickly to bend the key against some solid object. The bent an aluminium desk was probably a case of sleight of hand, and as to the Geiger counters extraordinary behaviour, "to me, this is more consistent with Uri or one of his supporters bumping the chart recorder or fiddling with a knob on the amplifier...."
Understandably, Hasted, Bohm, and Bastin were incensed. It is one thing to criticise a paper when it has been published — quite another to offer a highly accurate summary and then criticise that. Hasted and Bohm both wrote letters to the "New Scientist", pointing out that Geller could not have cheated in the way Hanlon suggested. the physicist would have to be particularly stupid not to know the difference between the " chattering" of a Geiger counter and the static noises made by bumping it or fiddling with the controls. And it would be very difficult to perform sleight of hand on a crystal in a sealed container.
And so the controversy dragged on, as it continues to drag on today, and as it no doubt will for the rest of Geller's life. One of the most sensible and useful comments on paranormal phenomena has come from the psychologist Stan Gooch. Gooch pointed out that the cerebrum — the thinking and willing part of the brain — is relatively new; the cerebellum is far older, and seems to be the source of instincts. Man has a double personality, according to Gooch: a conscious Ego and a darker side, associated with the cerebellum, that Gooch calls the Self. He suggests that so called psychical phenomena are expressions of the Self rather than The Ego, and that if scientists want to try to investigate the self, they must first recognise the possibility of its existence, and stop behaving as if man were entirely Ego.
Gooch's theory is hardly new; his Self sounds very much like the unconscious, and the Jungian psychologist John Layard had suggested years before that poltergeist phenomena were some form of unconscious activity, taking the form of psychokinesis. But at least Gooch was trying to suggest a fruitful and positive approach to the subject, instead of the drearily negative and barren approach of the sceptics. And his view underlines the basic problem associated with the Geller phenomena. No amount of scientific investigation could prove anything unless the scientist has a positive theory into which to fit his observations. Otherwise they are merely unexplained quirks of nature, and nobody can be blamed for ignoring them.
Geller has been investigated by many other scientists besides those in California and London. In 1974, he was investigated in Paris by a commission of scientists led by a cybernetician Albert Ducrocq. Geller bent a key, erased the program of the pocket computer, forecast correctly the fall of a die, and demonstrated telepathy; the commission concluded that he was genuine. So did another group of scientists at the Inserm telemetry laboratories at the Foch Hospital, Suresnes, France, the following April. In February 1974, the journal of the American Psychological Association (Monitor) produced a positive report on Geller's telepathy by Dr. Edward Kelty. In July 1974, physicists at Western Kentucky University observed Geller deflecting a compass, although he was unable on this occasion to influence a magnetometer. After Geller had left, spoons continued to bend in the house where he had eaten lunch. At Kent State University, in Ohio, Geller was successful in deflecting a magnetometer, and he also scored highly in experiments involving a die and film cans, similar to those conducted at the Stanford Institute. In front of television cameras in Toronto, Geller was subjected to various tests by scientists Dr. A. R. G. Owen and his wife Iris Owen; in an article in "New Horizons Journal" Dr. Owen describe the conditions as being as rigorous as in a laboratory. Both the Owens and the audience were totally convinced by the demonstrations.
But perhaps the most interesting and impressive of the scientific investigations was the one conducted on November 6, 1973 at the U.S. Navy Ordnance Laboratories. This experiment used a strange alloy called Nitinol. Rather like those paper flowers that unfold in water, Nitinol can be squashed completely out of shape, then made to resume its former shape by subjecting it to heat or cold. It has a kind of "molecular memory." Dr. E. Byrd held a piece of Nitinol wire stretched tight between both hands, what Geller stroked the wire. When Geller removed his hand, the wire had a kink in it. Byrd now dropped the wire into boiling water, which should have had the effect of making it snap back into its former shape (the shape in which was manufactured). In fact, the wire bent into a right angle. Geller had somehow affected its molecular memory. Even melting the wire in a furnace failed to remove the kink.
No one who reads straight through the various scientific reports on Uri Geller that have been gathered into a book called "The Geller Papers" can doubt that he is more than a mere conjurer with a new gimmick. Critical investigations such as those by Hanlon and Randi carry great weight, partly because most people today find it easier to believe in a fraud than in miracles. Also, the things Geller does seem to contradict our everyday experience of the world but then, as cybernetician Ducrocq has pointed out, the properties of X rays and radioactivity you also contradict an experience of the everyday world, yet they have become the basis of a new type of physics — quantum mechanics.
Let us admit that in a way Geller's powers are thoroughly boring, even if genuine. Bending spoons, repairing watches, and predicting the fall of dice are hardly world shaking accomplishments. They become important only if they point to something far bigger, to some unknown secret of the universe or of the human mind. Scientist such as Puharich, Mitchell, Bastin, Taylor, Hasted, and Bohm should be given full credit for recognizing this, and risking the inevitable charges of credulousness and naivete. But so far, none of them has produced even the most tentative outline of some new positive theory that will give us glimpse of the real significance of the Geller phenomenon.
Yet there are already many clues scattered throughout the history of psychical research. Geller is by no means a solitary phenomenon whether the scattered clues can be made to yield a fleeting glimpse of the secret that still eludes sceptics and believers alike.
