How do you do the spoon bending trick?

Factual Questions
41

Ah, you’re of the “condemn without needing evidence” persuasion then. How does that differ from prejudice? And yes, you can’t know anything at all about scams like “miss cleo” unless you actually LOOK at their scams first. Do you really believe otherwise? For example, Miss Cleo has no show as you said. She runs a “telephone psychic” con, and pays for numerous TV ads. (Also, it’s “biography”, not “bibliography.”)

And people who render judgement on books, yet insist that they don’t have to read them first? In my opinion that’s an attitude worthy of the truest of True Believer.

Well, I also repeatedly said that I won’t believe in spoon-bending until I do it myself. My goal is to promote fairness and a GENUINELY skeptical attitude. Prior disbelief in advance of inspecting evidence has nothing to do with Skepticism.

One form of “ignorance” is to pre-judge something and then to search for confirming evidence. Many people are infected with just this sort of ignorance, yet they call themselves “skeptics.” Yet a true skeptic is not a closed-minded disbeliever. A true skeptic starts out with an open mind, and their conclusions are based on constant inquiry and accumulating evidence.

At some time in the past were you open-minded about psychic phenomena?

Which evidence? You mean the stuff about stage magicians and sleight-of-hand? That doesn’t apply to the event that Crichton describes (or to the several hundred similar spoon-bending parties.) As I said, it’s a straw-man argument.

If spoon-benders haven’t gone after the Randi Challenge, that says nothing. (If they have tried it and failed, then certainly that’s evidence against spoon-bending.)

If there is a stage-magic procedure where large groups of people can simultaneously witness the softening of the cutlery they hold in their own hands, nobody has mentioned it yet. Which magician performs it? Do you know how it’s done? “Wood’s metal” is a possible method, but in that case the organizers would have to collect the spoons afterwards to prevent the trick from being quickly uncovered.

42

Frankly, if literally thousands of people learned to do this some quarter-century ago, and none of them have even tried to collect the prize offered by Randi (it existed even then, although it wasn’t a cool million that far back), then we have discovered a phenomenon even more unbelievable than mere psychokinesis, I think. :slight_smile:

I don’t think one needs to personally experience each and every incredible event to determine whether it’s true or false, possible or impossible. Scientists, in general, do a fine job (over a time fram of decades, rather than months or years) of sorting the wheat from the chaff and finding out what’s really going on in the world. Mistakes are made, bad assumptions contaminate the process, but in the long run the errors are dug out of their foxholes and put in the POW camps of history.

Spoon-bending hasn’t even gotten to the point of being the subject of any serious scientific enquiry. Someone would have to succeed at it in some kind of controlled environment, with good video records of exactly what happened, and be able to repeat it with at least occaisonal success-then it could be scientifically investigated. The kind of tests that James Randi wants to do would take the phenomenon out of the ‘parlor trick’ category and into the ‘something that warrants scientific investigation’ category. But nobody has come forward in the decades that the prize has been in existence to demonstrate that they really can do this. And if many, many people can and have been taught to apply their latent psychic powers in this way, then this is frankly unbelievable …

43

After reading Randi’s description I saw a skillful magician doing the trick. Knowing how it worked, I found it surprisingly easy to see what was going on.

When he said the spoon was bending, that was an illusions. He was actually moving it out of his hand in a way that looked like it was bending. When he stopped to show how much it had bent – that’s when he was actually bending it.

44

Oh REALLY? On what do you base this confident assertion?

If you searched for “spoon-bender” research on the web and didn’t find anything, that’s OK. However, I suspect that in reality you never performed any such search at all. I suspect that your above statement is based entirely on wishful thinking.

Is it?
Forgive me if I’m wrong about you, but in my experience both the “scoffers” and the True Believers have major problems with simple honesty, and they see nothing wrong with pulling confident statements out of thin air in order to defend their belief systems.

45

bbeaty, there are plenty of people to show you ways to bend spoons that are indistinguishable from the way people who claim psychic powers. While it doesn’t prove that they are not using psychic powers to bend spoons, it does mean that they are doing it the hard way.

Clearly, no one has been able to prove in a controlled environment that they can bend spoons, or any psychic powers. There are ample opportunities and significant rewards offered to do so. At this point, the ball’s in their court.

When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

46

DOH! Thanks, I confused the name with aerodynamicist Dr. Klaus Weltner. I think I fixed all the mistakes now.

Here are articles about the ridicule of Wegener:

http://www.pangaea.org/wegener.htm

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Wegener/

47

bbeaty is proof of why it’s taking Cecil longer than he thought. :rolleyes:

Anyway, to paraphrase Martin Gardner, “They [the people who say they have telekinetic powers] are making extraordinary claims; therefore, it is the responsibility of the scientific community to use extraordinary means to verify the claims.”

48

IMHO, doing a Google search on the words ‘spoon bending research’ would be a pretty pathetic means of finding if any serious scientific research is going on on this topic. I’m not hopping on this random topic because it caught my eye, as a matter of fact. Actually, I jumped in because I saw there were over two dozen responses, and I was surprised to see the discussion going that long on a topic already researched by Cecil, and on which so little positive evidence has ever been collected.

Definition: a scientific research program into this phenomenon would involve several scientists and one or (preferably) more psychokinetic subjects, who had clearly established their ability to consistently perform this feat over multiple controlled tests, and whose powers were being carefully tested and recorded to determine the character and limits of said powers with the aim of analysing and explaining how this ability works (whether within, as an extension of, or beyond conventional physics).

I’m fairly certain that no such program exists. If one does, please let me know, as I’d be very interested in following this no-doubt revolutionary research program.

49

Your first sentence above creates a potential problem. Assume ‘psychic spoonbending’ does exist, but it requires mental powers you don’t have, then you won’t be able to do it. So you won’t believe in it?!
I agree with your next two sentences.

Absolutely!

But we have a situation where:

  • there are several known mundane methods for spoonbending
  • people can earn money for using those methods (I like a magic show myself)
  • there is a $1,000,000 reward for ‘psychic spoonbending’, which is unclaimed
  • the only evidence for ‘psychic spoonbending’ is anecdotal, not scientific

On the basis of the above, I think it is a sound sceptical* approach to feel there is zero evidence for ‘psychic spoonbending’ (and indeed, on similar lines, dowsing, levitation, remote viewing and speaking with the dead.)
*I’m British :slight_smile:

50

OK, I went over to the Astrophysical Data Service’s Physics/Geophysics Archive, and searched for the word “spoon” in titles or abstracts. Since the ADS contains the full index of all of the major referreed physics journals, this would surely uncover any sppon-bending research, should it exist. Of the twelve hits I got (apparently, “spoon” isn’t a very common word in physics), the two closest were one on a “Percussive spoon instrument” in the The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, and one on “Hanging a spoon from the nose”, in The Physics Teacher.

Based on this, I conclude that SCSimmons is correct, and spoon-bending has not yet been the subject of scientific scrutiny.

51

You don’t understand. If a DISbeliever makes any sort of counterclaim, they suddenly fall under the same rule as the claimant: claims require evidence. It’s one thing to say “I won’t believe you without solid evidence.” It’s quite another thing to state that NO RESEARCH HAS BEEN DONE. I know differently, so I suspect that I’m dealing with someone who freely makes up facts out of thin air. I get to pounce and say “Oh, reeeeally?”

Here’s a Main Rule for fighting with “believers”: never make a counterclaim. Keep the requirements for evidence in the Believer’s lap, otherwise you can end up looking very foolish. Another rule: behave like a scientist, and QUALIFY EVERYTHING. Say that you personally have never heard of any such research. Don’t state flatly that it doesn’t exist. And for pete’s sake, don’t make up facts. You could be caught. More good advice can be found on Inquiring Skeptics of Upper New York (ISUNY) page, under THE MYTHS OF SKEPTICISM, http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/talk/talk.html

The whole “spoon-bending” affair is pretty infamous, and I followed it on and off. Some research was done by Dr. J. B. Hasted, a UK physicist. He did things that you’d expect: giving claimants metal rods sealed inside glass tubes, having people “bend” metal objects (keys, etc.) which were wired with strain gauges, giving them metals that human strength could not affect, giving them brittle specimins that would break from normal forces, letting claimants affect the annealing of shape-memory alloy samples, sending the affected objects to materials scientists for analyses afterwards, and videotaping incidents of metal-softening. He found plenty of anomalies. Were they all hoaxes? How was deception eliminated? Why was his research ignored? Ah, these are topics separate from the fact of the research performed by Hasted and others.

His book is mentioned in the bibliography on one of the links I supplied earlier: http://www.tcom.co.uk/hpnet/houck1.htm

I went and found it:

THE METAL-BENDERS
John Hasted
1981, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London
ISBN 0710005970

Ah, the overleaf says he wasn’t just a physicist. He was head of the physics department and Professor of Experimental Physics, Birkbeck College, U. of London, specializing in atomic/molecular physics. The book details his findings, and the bibliography shows that he mostly published this research in various parapsychology journals, plus couple of materials science journals.

A few chapter headings:

Techniques of validation when touch is allowed
The detection of metal-bending action
Simultaneous strains, “surface of action”
Extensions and contractions
Movement of the surface of action
Distance effects
Localizationof metal-bending action
Directional effects
Hardening, softening, and magnetization
Fractures and cleavage
The French research
Thermal Phenomena
EM phenomena
Structural phenomena…

A note: I think Birkbeck College physics dept is where David Bohm ended up, so I’m not suprised that minds there might be a little more open than normal.

52

I’m pretty sure James Randi has debunked Halsted, since of course all of the anomalies were indeed hoaxes. I’m confident Halsted is not a magician and didn’t have one present. Since we know all of the above can be done by a competent magician, it’s worthless research if you don’t prevent such trickery.

Another scientist who ‘investigated’ spoonbending was John Taylor, Professor of Mathematics at King’s College, London. He saw Uri Geller in action, and immediately decided it must be a psychic phenomenon. What happened next is on:
http://www.randi.org/jr/06-19-2000.html

And this quote from Randi may help as well:

Which reminds me: go to
www.hanklee.net/hankievision/index.html
and click on “The Bending Fork.” You’ll see the latest technological wonder that allows anyone (who can afford it, at $695!) to do cutlery-bending without any sleight-of-hand — or psychic forces! Of course I prefer the old-fashioned way that works with just any old fork or spoon, but it might be nice to have one of these, just to fool the occasional magician…

You still seem confused between having an open mind and being gullible.
I remind you that James Randi offers $1,000,000 for ANY demonstration of psychic power. You don’t have to explain it, just do it in front of trained observers. That’s open-mindedness - and ‘putting your money where your mouth is’.

Why would anyone ‘ignore research’ when there is a Nobel prize waiting for them? The real point is that they can’t reproduce the results under proper conditions, and that’s why we never hear any more from them.

53

Sounds just like what Dr. Hasted describes. Amazon.com lists the book used for $38 and $51, so if you’re interested your best bet would be Interlibrary Loan instead.

The book does NOT read like crackpot literature. A person who is already certain that PK does not exist will assume that Hasted was hoaxed in every instance. Unfortunately, it’s very bad practice to initially assume that which you wish to prove/disprove. If we start out by assuming that PK might exist, then Hasted’s book provides lots of good evidence. Not airtight evidence though. But Hasted constantly points out experimental weaknesses (as with the glass balls full of twisted paper clips, glass tubes that weren’t tested for small pores, etc.) He’s not gullible. Is he trickable? Well, if PK doesn’t exist, then the answer clearly is yes. But if PK might exist, then I don’t think we can give a confident answer. Maybe others will disagree after reading the book.

Contrary to the straw-man assertions of several people here, much of Hasteds testing did NOT involve someone holding a spoon and stroking its handle. It’s the non-contact effects and glass-tube effects which are far more convincing.

PS to glee: The hankievision spoon is clearly a nitinol shape-memory alloy device. $695 is really stupid. You can get a similar thing for much cheaper: $40 at Grand Illusions, http://www.grand-illusions.com/spoon/nitinol.htm

What I really want to see is a low-temp-alloy spoon (lead-tin-cadmium-bismuth) which gets soft at body temperature. That would be fun for the local “weird science” meetings. Eutectic alloys that melt at 115F are easily had, but I’ve only seen rumors of alloys which melt at 90F.

54

Sorry Bill, but Hasted’s work was seriously flawed and Gardener has shown itsd failures, Randi also devotes several pages to Hasted in his book Flim-Flam . It was noted that children were allowed to take samples home with them, and metal bending became much better when a hole was placed in the saeled globe. Furthermore, poor attitude by Hasted contributed to flaws (he once laughed at a researcher who caught one of the kids cheating). This was not science by any means.

I should also note that when SRI tested the “best” spoon bender (Geller) whith allegedly “scientific” protocols, they were careful to stay far away from his metal-bending abilities. They suspected they were being fooled in that regard.

BTW glee I beleive the Taylor has backed off his claims regarding Gellar and any telekinetic metal-bending.

55

Yes, that’s what my link was supposed to show - is it not working?

56

– from “Space Ghost Coast to Coast,” quoted by James Randi

57

Thank’s, I’ll check that out. Know where Gardner published his debunking? Hopefully they do a good job, rather than just “debunking” Hasted’s weakest evidence as others did (those glass balls with the hole.)

A quick search on hasted/randi turns up an exchange of letters-to-the-editor between Hasted and Martin Gardner on New York Review of Books website. No, no amount of shoe-scuffing by children can affect a grounded thermocouple.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7189
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7012

PS to glee: your link only mentions that Randi submitted tamper-evident sealed tubes for testing, then the claimant suddenly stopped answering Randi’s messages.

58

Well if Taylor had any evidence, he would have published it, wouldn’t he?
If instead he discovered he’d been hoaxed, he’d probably stay incommunicado.
I also don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Randi was using tamper-proof tubes. I confidently assume that Taylor had not been.

The link also contained this extract about Professor Taylor:

Yet only five years later, in his much more sober book, “Science and the Supernatural,” referring specifically to this same letter-scale experiment, Taylor says, “The first to be put under our scrutiny was Uri Geller himself . . . he did not succeed at all during that period.”

I appreciate this particular link only makes a few points.
But I think you’ll find the whole Randi site very revealing. :cool:

59

That’s speculation. Better to find out what Taylor actually says and does. Does he publish papers at all? In the various references I don’t see any PK-experiment papers published by Taylor, only popular books. They do say that he’s a mathematician rather than an experimentalist, while Hasted is an experimental physicist.

A proper scientist is unlike a member of the public in that scientists describe experimental weaknesses rather than trying to hide them. That doesn’t mean that Taylor DIDN’T hide embarassing mistakes of course, but it does mean that such behavior is quite unethical for a scientist, while non-scientists on both sides of the controversy think nothing of concealing errors.

Tamper-evident, not tamper-proof. Ingenious cheaters will think of all sorts of new ways to tamper, so it’s better to use hidden methods to catch them at it, rather than trying to out-think them.

I don’t have much info on Taylor, but if you assumed the same about Hasted’s tubes, you’d be wrong. (It always helps to read claims before judging them!) He describes the precautions he took. Randi did Hasted one better in using heat-detectors inside the tubes to tell if microwaves were used by cheaters to warp the metal samples. (Of course we’d first better verify that microwave beams have any effect on the metals being used.) Another good one from Hasted: giving kids special brittle alloy strips which would snap if bent by hand, but never telling the kids. Result: no snapped strips, which suggests that the kids weren’t cheating in the obvious way. But some strips were bent.

In all this stuff, I find the eyewitness accounts of “melted” spoon bowls to be the most convincing. It’s easy to bend a spoon handle or key while out of sight, therefore the “bending during stroking” reports are the weakest evidence and shouldn’t be central to skeptical arguments. And on the other side, the Randi challenge is the most convincing anti-evidence. If metal-melting is fairly easy to do, WHY NOT grab the prize (giving it to charity if you must)?

60

It’s nice to KNOW that PK doesn’t exist. In that case there’s no question that all the positive reports are hoaxes. But that’s called a-priori reasoning, and it’s a common enough fallacy that CSICOP put it into their Objectives list: 6. Does not reject claims on a priori grounds, antecedent to inquiry, but examines them objectively and carefully.

True skepticism requires work. We have to look at each instance, since some phenomena are not fakable no matter how skilled the magician. For example, if the claimant visibly softens the bowl of a steel spoon and mashes it like putty while I’m still holding it, and then I keep the distorted spoon afterwards so I can verify that it’s not eutectic alloy… then what? Have any stage magicians described such an illusion? The magicians’ descriptions I’ve seen involve bending a spoon-handle while it’s out of sight and the victim is distracted. Magicians don’t describe how to make a steel spoon-bowl appear to wilt, and then remain wilted after the trick is complete, but maybe I missed it.

Of course if PK doesn’t exist, then any eyewitnesses who claim differently HAD to be either hoaxed or lying about what actually occurred. (But again, that’s fallacious a-priori reasoning.)

My only evidence that the research is ignored is that papers were published, replications were announced, but then everything stopped. If the vast majority of professional scientists simply don’t believe the results, and they refuse to waste time replicating, then of course the research would stop dead. Nobel prizes have nothing to do with it if researchers a-priori “know” that PK doesn’t exist.

OK, you’ve made another claim here: that claimants have actually failed when controls were tight. I’m suspicious because extreme skeptics RARELY bother to perform experiments. Can you quote some instances of failed attempts to reproduce spoon-bending results under tight controls? Or are you freely making up facts out of thin air (in other words, LYING?)

See “Stupid Skeptic Tricks: #8 THE BIG LIE”, http://www.primenet.com/~lippard/stupid-skeptic-tricks.txt