Do we have to fix it? That’s far and away the funniest typo I’ve seen on these boards.
And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy… 
thanks guys. esp. bbeaty, Quercus and ianzin.
My ignorance has been fought.
Now, to learn about “cuntless other layers of editors” 
that typo cracked me up 
No doubt that happened a lot, and obviously it’s easily explained, just as the sleight-of-hand illusions are easily explained. Unfortunately you need to explain the strong evidence, not the weak evidence. (Well, “evidence” is probably too strong a word for these eyewitness accounts, but note that the accounts are not coming from total idiots.) It’s not the “almost all cases” which are relevant.
For example, did you bother to read Crichton’s article? Here’s a quote:
To explain the stories from people who slightly bent the weakest part of a spoon, while ignoring accounts where the bowl of the spoon turned into soft putty, that’s a version of “straw man” argument.
Houck says that out of 12,000 attendees, ~10,000 could warp the spoon handles, but a further ~2,200 could soften the bowls (as Crichton describes.) That’s no “elastic definition of bending.” That’s doing something which is clearly impossible.
Since mentally-softened metal is impossible, there MUST be some other explanation, no? (Unfortunately that’s assuming what we wish to prove.)
Crichton goes on…
You know what the real problem is? If people can mentally soften metal, then it calls into question our dismissal of almost every other “superstition”, and threatens the very foundations of modern science. N.B., I’m not talking about anti-science propaganda or something. I’m talking about a reported phenomenon which, if it turns out to be genuine, would have extremely wide-ranging political repercussions. After WWII the physical sciences gained immense support because of the success with the a-bomb and nuke plants. If spoon-bending was proved true, I think it would have the opposite effect. Yes, physics would expand to include psychokinetic effects. But the scientific would never live it down. What we’re talking about here is taking away the funding from particle accelerators and giving it to parapsycholgists. If spoon bending is real, then many thousands of careers are threatened. With that kind of pressure, there’s no way that a normal scientific investigation of spoon bending could proceed.
Or maybe Crichton and Houck are simply lying, and 2K+ people didn’t soften any spoon bowls.
(Now if I myself had ever seen cutlery get soft, I’d be presenting much stronger arguments than the above.)
DOH!
Sorry about the wide post above. I just wanted a different typeface than with QUOTE. I thought the lines would still wrap.
Chrichton is, AFAIK, a writer of fictous literature. Maybe that is the answer?
bbeaty,
have a look at:
The James Randi foundation offers $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers, including spoonbending.
You don’t have to explain your power, or teach it - just demonstrate it under supervised conditions.
So far the number of spoonbenders who have succeeded stands at … zero.
Two possibilities spring to mind.
-
All spoonbenders are rich and don’t need the money.
-
Spoonbending is a magic trick, involving misdirection and/ or preparation.
Incidentally I don’t agree with your theory that there is some sort of scientific conspiracy to suppress this knowledge. Science reacts to observations from experiments. If people can really bend spoons, then that extends the boundaries of science.
Considering that Crichton wrote several Jurassic Park novels with some really bad science (and got bleepin’ rich in the process), I’d vote for “liar.”
(You wanna clone a dinosaur from the DNA trapped in amber? Okay, but first you have to reassemble it into dinosaur DNA. Hope you have a free millenium…)
Wow. Two dozen responses, and nobody ever tried searching the archive? The OP question has been answered by the Master himself. What more need be said?
Regarding the scientific validity of claims of psychic powers, this column by SDStaff David makes some important points toward the end …
SPOOOOOOOOOON!!!
-The Tick
Thanks for your perspective, bbeaty. I know that neither I nor anyone else has all the answers, and who knows… maybe one day the phenomenon will be properly validated. The sceptics will say “Ah, but we were correct to doubt until the good evidence came in”, but they’ll still feel a bit silly.
Look, if x thousand people manifested this ability for real, then there’s a puzzle. If any ONE of them managed to give a good demonstration under well-validated lab conditions, preferably with videos running and a good investigative and scepical panel present, then they could have fame, fortune or prestige (or all three, as they prefer) for life. After all, even the great Mr Geller has never managed this (I know all his famed tests at SRI; there were no conclusions drawn about his metal-bending).
So it’s interesting that not ONE of these peope has ever managed to do this. One is left to conclude that either my previous post is substantially correct, or that this kind of metal-bending ability is genuibe, but just never manifests under controlled scientific conditions. If the latter, this either tells us something about metal-bending or about scientific experiments.
Incidentally, magicians have no problem causing metal things to apparently bend while the spectator holds them for herself. It’s standard repertoire. If you want to learn how to do it, find out who Banachek is and track down his video, which is for sale from magic shops. It’s called Psychokinetic Silverware.
BTW, I went to a talk by Randi a few months ago and he bent spoons in front of us. He even gave the spoons to the audience to test them. Then he’d hold the spoon just where the handle starts with a thumb and his index finger (I think) and shook the spoon up and down so it went like a see-saw. Then it looked like it was bending, but that was just an illusion because of the see-sawing. He stopped and showed that the spoon was still stiff. Then he shook it a bit more and within a couple seconds the sides of the spoon feel down like melted metal.
He said that he heard that schoolboys in Israel were doing the trick a lot but they got in trouble for bending so many spoons. I’m not sure if Randi said he learnt it from them or he worked it out himself though.
According to himself Randi learnt how to bend spoons from the backside of a corn flakes packet when he was a boy. Geller promptly sued him and wanted him to show that particular packet (and lost the lawsuit).
This is almost right, but not quite. I’ve met Randi several times and I know a fair amount, but not everything, about the history of Randi v Geller lawsuits.
As far as my understanding goes, in an interview, Randi made some remark to the effect that spoon-bending could be likenend to the sorts of magic tricks he saw on the backs of cereal packets when he was a kid. During a subsequent lawsuit, the ‘cereal packet’ reference was merely one point of dispute among many and not the central point of the case. Geller’s team may have challenged Randi to produce an example of any such packet featuring spoon-bending, but Randi maintains he only referred to “those sorts of magic tricks” and not spoon-bending in particular. So this particular legal point went nowhere. I’m fairly sure that there is no cereal packet dating from any time which could be considered within Randi’s childhood which features any trick similar to Geller-style spoon-bending.
By all means refer to Randi if you think I have my facts substantially wrong, but I think you’ll find this account is closer to the facts than Floater’s summary.
OR, there could be a third possibilty:
There were some successful spoon benders, but unfortunately, the contest was put out by anti-PK people, and none of the benders were ever seen again.
Careful, don’t change “suppression” into “conspiracy theory.”
Suppression is common in science, since misguided research is SUPPOSED to be suppressed by peer review of grant applications and rejection by journal editors. And even if some questionable research does gets funded and published, the results can also be “suppressed” when the scientific community simply ignores them.
The question isn’t whether suppression occurs (it does.) The question is whether PK metal-softening is fake or not. If it is fake, then wide-ranging disbelief and maybe even ridicule is the proper response.
Here’s another take. All through history there have been scientific revolutions which have been resisted by scientists. Short list: Chladni insisting that hot rocks fall from the sky, Semmelwies and surgeons refusing to wash hands, Wright Bros having to move to Europe to find open minds, Weltner and plate tektonics, McClintlock fighting decades for “jumping genes,” Gold and deep hot bacteria. Wouldn’t scientists acceptance of mentally-softened metal be a much larger revolution? We’d expect to find much fiercer resistance against “psychic powers” than against the existence of meteorites or flying machines.
Trouble is, it’s hard to tell the difference between strong suppression of major, genuine discoveries, versus bad discoveries which are rightly remaining unfunded and ignored. In both cases there is very little funded research and hence very little trustworthy evidence. Before biologists finally accepted that genes could move about on chromosomes, it would be hard to tell if McClintlock’s work was revolutionary or just pathological science like Polywater. A lone voice in the wilderness cannot be trusted very much, but in order for lots of replications to occur, the voice must be trusted. To do research into spoon-bending, a scientist would have to suspend judgement, and then risk rejection by peers. How many are so openminded and courageous?
On the other hand, if many thousands of people softened a fork handle, and several thousand people melted the bowl of a spoon, you’d think that a few would have tried the Randi challange by now.
I wonder if many have tried and failed, or none have tried at all? That would be an interesting datum.
PS, the Houck page mentions that the effect doesn’t work when the group is smaller than around 13-15 people. I don’t know if that’s a rigid restraint, or if a spoon-melter can still melt spoons once he/she has figured it out the first time.
When a fiction writer writes an autobiography, they suddenly turn into lying scum? Do you have any evidence to support such an assertion? More importantly, HAVE YOU READ THE BOOK IN QUESTION? If not, I’d say that to harshly judge a book one has never seen speaks far more about character of the judge than about author. “Confirmation bias” is when those who support your views seem trustworthy, while those who oppose them are probably dishonest.
If you want to call Crichton a liar, I strongly suggest that you first read the book in question
TRAVELS ($8.99 paperback, $2.50 used.)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345359321/
Nitpick: Wegener and plate tectonics. I did a search with Weltner and tectonics to see if I could figure out who you were thinking about, and one of the three hits I got was your own page. Just FYI.
Well I did a search on Randi’s site and I eventually found some stuff about it…
Bending Cutlery for Fun and Profit
Randi’s description is good as far as it goes, and suffices for a brief, top-line description of one very common approach. But it’s not the whole story by any means.
Like most magical illusions, there are x different methods and approaches. There are also many different but related effects which get lumped together under the title ‘spoon bending’. Randi’s description does not explain, for example, effects wherein the item bends while held in the spectator’s hands, or without being touched, or visibly while the audience watch closely. These are all well within the contemporary magicians’ repertoire, and I’ve used them all often. Note that coins and keys and paper knives and other items can all be bent using similar kinds of trickery. But TRICKS is what they are.
Crichton’s bibliography works for me. The guy’s good for disengage-brain-and-curl-up-for-some-fun reading, but he’s certainly no Asimov-style dispenser of factual knowledge.
What’s that got to do with anything? Do I have to watch Miss Cleo’s show to pronounce her a fake, too?
More importantly, bbeaty, are you here to fight ignorance, or not? I haven’t seen you do much of anything in this thread other than repeatedly defend Crichton’s claim – despite the evidence and arguments presented that claim telekinesis doesn’t exist.