In response to today’s Commentary:
http://www.randi.org/jr/102601.html
I sent this email.
(Note, for those who don’t want to read the commentary, it discusses the so-called “Sheep and Goats Effect” which is the name of the effect, according to psychic researchers, that prevents psychic powers from functioning optimally when there are skeptics present, due to ‘negative vibrations’. It also mentions David Copperfield performing a psychic feat in which he was revealed to have chosen the winning numbers in a lottery after they had been selected, and how he can’t use this power for himself, or else it will fail to function.
The letter:
Mr. Randi,
How unprofessional of you to dismiss the Sheep and Goats effect. This is not any claptrap, this is genuine phenomena. It is a scientifically determined fact that lack of belief inhibits reactions. If you have twenty skeptics in a room during a psychic demonstration, the demonstration is likely to go awry. If you have twenty skeptics in a room with water cooled to 32 degrees Fahrenheit in it, the water won’t freeze, due to the negative vibrations. Light, as you know, fails to travel at 186,000 mps in a vacuum if enough people believe it won’t.
Psychic abilities follow the exact same laws of nature as any other natural, scientifically explorable phenomenon. This is why, if enough people in the room believe otherwise, salt will not be composed of Sodium and Chlorine, and a hydrogen atom will fail to have one electron. Like psychics and winning lottery numbers, it’s a fact that a chemist is unable to concoct any type of pharmaceutical mixture that he personally will benefit from. (In fact, for optimum chemistry, the mixture should be prepared, hidden until it is no longer needed, and only then revealed to be the ideal solution.)
You and other skeptics constantly slam the so-called unprofessionalism of psychics while failing to point out how often articles in Nature read like this: “I’m seeing a compound…there’s definitely a Carbon molecule in it…what does ‘N’ mean to you? I see a covalent bond - do you understand?”
Psychic phenomenon is a natural phenomenon and as such follows the exact same behavior as other natural phenomenon. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be subject to the exact same Sheep and Goats Effect that plagues all other scientific research. You need to stop holding it to a different standard.
I’m so damn clever!