Stage magicians routinely manage to do close-up or mentalist magic without anybody catching them out. That they can do so is pretty much the entire point of what they’re doing.
Then there’s the issue of the Gotcha! tape. This was a regular item on the (mercifully now defunct) BBC light entertainment programme Noel’s House Party in which celebrities were caught in a practical joke while being filmed with hidden cameras. In Geller’s case, he was filmed doing his usual things - guessing a drawing and spoon bending - to a woman (actually an actress) in a restaurent. Many people concluded from the footage that Geller was cheating. You’d probably like a link to the footage, but, for whatever reasons, it appears that all websites that have carried it have ceased to do so after hearing from Geller’s lawyers. There’s a certain amount of disconnected discussion about it on Usenet, but the nearest I can find to a website covering it is this Broadcasting Complaints Commission ruling which is partially to do with his objections to the reuse of the footage in a documentary. To quote
And here we see the standard tactic of someone who has nothing useful to say. After your arguments have been soundly refuted, act like you don’t care and walk away. Much like Pee Wee Herman after he gets thrown from his bike. “I meant to do that!”
I love this characterization. Poor Uri Geller just trying to make an honest [cough] living bending spoons, and those mean stage magicians are constantly picking on him. :rolleyes: Geller puts himself out there as having psychic powers. Not in giving a good show, but in actually having mystical abilities. It’s only fair to ask him to prove it. Now if he doesn’t want to prove it, that’s his choice, but then he really shouldn’t be able to complain when people choose to label him a fraud.
Unfortunately, Geller is very litigious. For instance, he has sued James Randi numerous times in numerous courts for various reasons. All but one suit were ruled in Randi’s favor, and no monetary judgments have been paid by Geller. One suit was awarded to Geller, with no monetary judgment.
That’s why people refuting Geller use such equivocal language, like Randi’s favorite, “If he’s using psychic powers, he’s doing it the hard way.” That’s called lawyer protection.
Oh please. Where does Cecil come down on magicians? He’s answering the question. He was asked how Geller does it, and answered “probably with his hands” (paraphrased). That’s hardly disparaging to magicians.
Well, it is rather difficult to give a precise explanation of an event that you only have a verbal description of after the fact by someone who believed the effect. Stage magicians can give convincing effects and fool whole audiences, even up close sleight of hand can fool crowds, yet that doesn’t mean they do have any special powers. They’re just good at the performance. So the fact that someone didn’t see how Geller did it doesn’t mean he didn’t cheat. As for the possible explanations offered that you reject out of hand, how are they less believable than psychic powers? The fact that the observer doesn’t report them as happening only means Geller was good at misdirection, that he didn’t remember seeing them, not that they didn’t happen that way. Sure, it’s speculation, but good speculation based on experience and inside knowledge of the craft. Witness testimony is notoriously unreliable in situations like this.
And I have a lot of fun discussing Star Wars with my friends.
Ha! He hasn’t gotten any money out of the lawsuits, (and also hasn’t paid the judgments against him), whereas the prize money is over 1 Million Dollars. But the only catch is he actually has to be psychic to collect.
First, most stage Mentalists admit they’re using trickery, and not psychic powers. It’s a matter of authenticity. Geller claims to have psychic powers, and claims to have demonstrated them scientifically. But in fact he has not demonstrated them scientifically. He doesn’t perform his tricks under controlled situations. For the SRI tests that are so lauded, he didn’t do any of them during the actual controlled situations, but then was wild with effects when not under controlled observation. That was good enough to fool the scientists.
Anyway, you said you wanted to get back to the point of your OP. That seems to be that Cecil was too heavy handed and said “Geller did his tricks this way”, not “Geller probably did his tricks this way”. Not having read the books cited, I can’t answer how well Randi and Harris observed Geller’s acts. I will point out, though, that if someone were to watch his performance and notice sleight of hand (by the characteristics of the movements, which conjurers become familiar with), then stating the probably qualifier is only lawyer protection.
For the car keys, if you don’t believe the sidewalk crack explanation, how about this? Geller keeps on his person somewhere (in his pockets, up his sleeves, whatever) a variety of broken car keys, from a variety of models. He’s broken them weeks earlier, in the privacy of his own home, so he can use whatever methods he likes, even something that’ll look weird in an electron micrograph. Then, if and only if he sees that his mark is driving a car similar to one he’s got a key for, he uses some standard sleight of hand to swap the intact key for a similar-looking broken one. This is also consistent with Geller looking over a variety of objects before deciding on one he likes: He needs to find something which he’s pre-broken.
You don’t say as much W, but I infer this: you think that “established” science has some vested interest against possible demonstrations of “psi” phenomena. Do you have any idea how wrong that is? Any scientist who demonstrated PK (or whatever effects) would expect to win a Nobel prize and have their name immortalized along with Newton, and Einstein et al.
Geller is a fake (but of course), and a bad fake at that, he is hardly worth the thread-space, BUT, his insistence on the reality of PK et al (and his assertion that he is living proof of such) is pernicious and destructive, it’s not even entertainment, just pure sickenining ignorance sold on a (bendy) stick.
And, wyldcard, your continual references to science not being qualified to comment on the non-existence of PK because they do not have instruments to measure PK is more than a little tiresome.
Science also has no instruments to count the number of angels on the head of the average pin, measure the breadth of the horn of the unicorn in my back garden, or taste the green cheese the moon is made out of.
Wyldcard’s Law: “anything proposed by anybody exists unless science can make an instrument to detect it and get a zero reading.”
Oh my gosh, I’m so embarrassed. [slaps own forehead] I just remembered. I do have a PK-o-meter! I built the damn thing a year or two ago then clean forgot about it!
Here it is! [produces with a drumroll a black box with a needle gauge and rotating knob on front, aerial on top and gold letters saying “PK-o-meter 2000” on top.]
Now I took this baby to several PK conventions, and a couple of Uri Geller performances and you know what? The needle never moved. Not even a bit. Not even with the dial turned up to “11” and the aerial fully extended. And I swear to you, straight out, this thing is a fully functioning PK detector. No, really. It is. I swear.
So there you have it. No PK is involved in Geller’s performances. It’s scientifically proven by my instrument here.
What’s that you say, wyldcard? There are alternate explanations such as that my PK-o-meter is not effective, and [harumph!] it may even be a fake, you say? I hope you’ve got good lawyers, buddy, you’ll be hearing from mine, for sure.
And besides which just because there is a mere possibility that something is fake doesn’t mean that it is. I mean, do you or for that matter the whole scientific community have a fake-PK-o-meter-meter to measure whether my PK-o-meter is working or not? No, I thought not.
The post by Irishman contains the salient point: when Geller has tried to perform under controlled conditions, he has failed, witness his unsuccessful appearance on the Johnny Carson Show where two magicians set up the test protocols. The SRI experiments were set up by scientists who were simply unaware of the variables needing attention. Just a you’d want a biologist to set up protocols for a biology experimernt, you need a skilled magician if you a possible set of variables includes stage magic. Ph.D.s are not immune from hubris.
Given that magicians can duplicate by physical means virtually everything Geller does under the conditions that he does them and that Geller cannot duplicate them under conditions where these variables are controlled leads one to the most probable and parsimonious conclusion: Geller performs these feats by utilization of one of the controlled variables.
Does it prove it? No–science doesn’t work that way. It only leads us to the most probable explanation and places the weight of evidence to the contrary on those who would invoke another mechanism.