Debunking the psychic myth

You have as much to gain by showing that someone has paranormal powers. David [Marks] and I would win a Nobel Prize if we could prove that. We've nothing to gain by just refuting another case.

I learnt the Secret of the Universe in David Marks's office over a glass of sherry. "It's so simple it bores me to tears," he said. "Would you possibly bore yourself one more time and show me?" I asked.

"Sure." He crossed to the mantelpiece and picked up a teaspoon. He returned to his chair by the window and rubbed his finger above the handle, not actually touching the metal. Gradually, miraculously, it began to bend until the spoon and handle were at a perfect right angle.

"Amazing," I said. "Fantastic."

"Not really," said Dr Marks. "Actually, I bent it when you were looking over there. At the mantlepiece, or something."

"But what about the. .?"

"It was already bent by then. I was covering part of it up. Like this. You only saw what I wanted you to see. If you'd been a bit. sharper | was ready to use Dennis here as a distraction." The other man nodded.

"Maybe I'd ask him something," Dr Marks said. "But you made it easy for me. I didn't need to”

I've read about this spoon-bending act, but never imagined it to be so obvious. David Marks had first seen it 10 years ago at a Dunedin performance by Israeli born self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller.

He chased the Israeli all over the world trying to disprove the existence of psychic powers in his act.

Now he can duplicate Geller's entire ragbag of tricks.

The two fellows in the office were in Dunedin to speak at New Zealand's first annual sceptics conference, at the University of Otago.

Seven disbelievers had started the New Zealand Skeptics — officially the New Zealand Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal — earlier this year

David Marks, a psychology lecturer at Otago, and Dennis Dutton, a Christchurch academic philosopher, provided the initial impetus.

The others were Gordon Hewitt, a lecturer in zoology at Victoria University; Professor B

H Howard, head of biochemistry at Lincoln College; Ray Carr, an Auckland businessman; Jim Woolnough, a retired doctor from Auckland; and Kerry Chamberlain, a psychologist at Massey University.

They based themselves on theUS sceptics organisation, whose members include astronomer Carl Sagan, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, and escapologist-magician James (The Amazing) Randi.

The New Zealanders state their aim as investigating and scientifically testing claims of paranormal or psychic powers, and encouraging a more critical attitude from the public and news media to such claims.

The four sceptics organisations — in New Zealand, Australia,Britain and the US — have together put up $232,000 for any medium who can demonstrate communication with spirits under controlled conditions, and $160,000 for any proven case of extra-sensory perception (ESP). These amounts include $25,000 from David Marks's own pocket.

But the New Zealand Skeptics have so far had only one candidate, Auckland tarot card reader Cohn Amery. He failed.

The two-day conference attracted about 70 people, fewer than expected. Dr Marks also invited all psychics "by Telepathic message," but none turned up.

Dutton opened on the subject, "What Is Pseudoscience?" Apparently, it means "bogus beliefs held for political or religious purposes, but dressed up as science" — such as creationism and Nazi anthropology.

Dennis Dutton is a Californian. who came to New Zealand two years ago with his German wife for a change of scene. They both, love the country and plan to settle, here

He is perhaps the archetypal philosopher: effusive on any subject that takes his fancy (at the moment it's the Shroud of Turinee - he's writing a book on it),absent-minded in a Maxwell Smart way, and with a permanent twinkle in his eye.

He told me he was jolted into awareness of the dangers of clairvoyancy by the suicide of his studenthood friend, Jay, in SantaBarbara in the 1960s.

The two had gone to a medium,at first out of curiosity. Jay continued his visits for two years before becoming convinced that the spirits were calling him to the other side.

"Certainly he had suicidal tendencies and was very depressed at that time, but the medium pushedhim over the line. I realised then there was a very real possibility of other people dying, because many people who go to psychics are depressed, recently bereaved or extremely emotional.

"If I had had access to the in-formation I have now, I'd probably still have my friend."

Dr Dutton says he has no axe to grind these days. "You have as much to gain by showing that someone has paranormal powers.

David [Marks] and I would win a Nobel Prize if we could prove that. We've nothing to gain by just refuting another case.

"We want to find someone who's real. But you get increasingly sceptical."

He says that for him it is mostly "academic study, not chasing ghosts. Sure, it can be fun, but I think it can do some social good."

Gordon Hewitt, who has his own sceptics group in Wellington, talked on his pet subject of creationism. Armed with coloured slides of human skulls, scientific cartoons and a portrait of Darwin (“the arch-enemy"), the part-time marriage counsellor waged battle against all who dared refute the evolutionary process. Mark Plummer, a Melbourne lawyer and founding chairman of the Australian Skeptics, discussed the "Australia-New Zealand Stopover For International Psychics."

His delivery was breathless, like a schoolboy describing his first view of a naked female. Scepticism is principally "a lot of fun," he had told me as soon as we'd met.

Mark Plummer was Introduced to fraudulent claims by a journalist and encouraged by The Amazing Randi in the United States to set up an Australian watchdog body.

Like David Marks, he has ferreted out and can now reproduce many of the tricks favoured by "mentalists" — those performers who use sleight of hand, accomplices and illusions under the guise of psychic feats.

I watched him send a cigarette skidding across a table by power of concentration, mind-read conference members who had selected lines from a newspaper clipping, and straighten a bent spoon — Uri Geller in reverse.

These tricks are always good for a "line" at parties or winning drinks in the pub, he reckons.

Mark Plummer is concerned about the legal implications of psychic fraud. He wants to help people sue where they have suffered as a result of psychic advice, or to recover large sums of money spent on psychics.

Dunedin lawyer and sceptic Ricky Farr, who has just opened a street-level community-law con-cern, will represent similar cases in New Zealand.

David Marks's topic was "Psychics | Have Known," and he has encountered a few. His hunting of the big-name performers, the Gellers and Kreskins, is like assembling pieces of a jigsaw, he says. "You put them all together, and in the end you're compelled towards one solution."

Ironically, the quality that draws him to self-proclaimed psychics (he never says "psychic" or "clairvoyant" without the qualification) is their charisma — a term many people apply to Dr Marks himself '

"As a psychologist, I'm interested in the mind, in consciousness, problem-solving," he says. "If ESP exists, it would alter our whole way of thinking. So it's very important to us."

The fair-haired Englishman has been in New Zealand 17 years, but is shortly heading home to take up a job as head of psychology at the Middlesex Polytechnic in London. He has also been offered the chairmanship of the British Skeptics.

Other conference showpieces were a videotape of Colin Amery predicting a psychology student's future (the Aucklander turned down an invitation to give a live showing), and recordings of Radio 2ZB clairvoyant Mary Fry.

But the highlight for most of the audience was Denis Dutton presenting the do-it-yourself psychic kit, or layman's guide to telling fortunes.

This is "cold reading" — a technique widely used by counsel-lors, detectives, salesmen, bar-risters, psychiatrists and confidence tricksters.According to American psy-chologist Ra} Hyman, the cold reader can "persuade a client whom he has never before met that he knows all about the client's personality and problems."

He uses a stock spiel which can fit any individual in a general category, for example, young unmarried woman, senior citizen. Healso relies on a good memory and acute observation. \

Hyman has compiled 13 golden rules of cold reading:

1. Be confident.
2. Make creative use of the latest statistical abstracts, polls and surveys.
3. Set the stage: Be modest about your talents. Make no excessive claims. i
4. Gain the subject's co-operation in advance. Let them know they may have to reinterpret some messages in terms of their own vocabulary and life. (Ray Hyman says this is the most crucial rule: As well as ensuring a good flow of information from the subject, it will give the reader an alibi if the reading isn't accurate.)
5. Use a gimmick, such as a crystal ball, tarot cards, tealeaves.
6. Have a list of stock phrases at hand.
7. Keep your eyes open.
8. Fish for details.
9. Listen well.
10. Dramatise the reading.
11. Always make out you know more than you are saying.
12. Flatter your subject.
13. Tell your subject what they want to hear.

Cold reading is, in itself, no crime. Under Section 16 of the Summary Offences Act, 1981, a person can be fined up to $1000 for "acting as a spiritualistic medium with intent to deceive or using fraudulent devices to act as a Medium." There is no record of any convictions.

Under the old Police Offences Act, all fortune-telling was illegal. This was designed to protect the gullible, weak and bereaved. But few cases ever came to court, especially as fortune-telling came to assume more the role of entertainment. The last recorded prosecution was in 1974.

Though news stories and advertisements for other-worldly services are often seen, the Consumers Institute has had few complaints since the Filipino psychic surgery boom eight years ago. All of which suggests the mystic message business is alive and flourishing.

Since the sceptics conference, I have been expecting to hear that all psychics, mediums and pseudoscientists have banded together into a Committee for the Investigation of Anti-Paranormal Investigations. Then we'd see a battle-and-a-half.

Trouble is, I think the sceptics would enjoy it too much. They would probably encourage it, initiate it, even.

With people like sceptics, you never know what to believe.