Debunking The Paranormal
Can all paranormal phenomena be explained by science?
When it comes to paranormal claims, I would argue that the vast majority can be explained in terms of conventional science, and typically in terms of psychological processes that we already, to a greater or lesser extent, understand. I don't think it would be fair to say that we can definitively explain away every single paranormal phenomenon. There are some that we quite definitely can. To give you but one example, we know that fire-walking doesn't involve any kind of mysterious mind over matter, it's a pure matter of physics, anybody can do it, you don't need to be in any kind of altered state of consciousness. On the other hand there are some claims within parapsychology and some paranormal phenomenon which we think we have reasonable explanations for, but we still need to gather more evidence to see whether the explanations we've got are actually definitely the right explanations. So I wouldn't say there is anything within parapsychology that there is not a non-paranormal or scientific explanation for. Sometimes we can be absolutely certain the non-paranormal explanation we have is correct, other times it probably is correct, but we still need to gather some more evidence to be sure.
What sort of fakes and hoaxes have you come across?
There is no question at all that most of the claims that people put forward as being evidence for the paranormal, they are sincere when they are making those claims. Having said that, the world of the paranormal is certainly rife with hoaxes and con artists, and again, that in itself makes it very, very interesting. Anything from faked UFOs to people who hoax poltergeist cases. One of the most interesting areas is the area of people who appear to have psychic ability; now obviously, conjurers can replicate a lot of the effects that people who claim to have genuine psychic ability. Now, most conjurers know at least 48 ways to bend a spoon and make it look as if they're doing it by using psycho kinesis.
How does a Ouija board work?
You know lots of people believe in paranormal because they think they have a direct personal experience of it and well have common report you got for those people who use Ouija boards. Ouija boards essentially involve the people taking part put in hand on an upturn glass with letters in a circle around it and used the word yes or no and is claimed that you can talk to the spirits this way. So, if someone would ask a question and everyone rest a finger lightly on the glass, the upturn glass. And it is move across the table and spell out to answer the question that time the spirit will tell what they're talking to. Now, there is almost certainly a non-paranormal explanation for this and that's in terms of what we called the ideomotor effect. Well, that's how we deal the situation where, although, no one is consciously aware of the fact that they are pushing the glass, that is in fact what they are doing. You cannot detest this very easily because spirits that would maybe in the glass. Then try to get blindfolded where somebody wear a blindfold and will hold your hands but the people will actually put their finger on the glass and blindfolded and can't see whether it lasted there. I guarantee you that you can't get any sensible messages or whatsoever.
How does a seance work?
In the Victorian era, séances were extremely popular and a whole range of strange, weird, and wonderful things were said to happen. Things were said to levitate including sometimes the medium, ghostly faces and hands would appear, disembodied voices would be heard, musical instruments would move around the room apparently playing themselves. Strange lights would move around the room, all kinds of things were said to happen. Now the mediums and the people who supported the mediums believed that all this was evidence of life beyond the grave, this was spirits returning and they were causing these things to happen. However, there were always sceptics around who said the whole thing was being done by trickery. In fact many of those sceptics could reproduce those effects and they held their own séances and they were just as convincing as the people who claimed that they were doing it for real. Now it was a very rare medium indeed who wasn't actually caught at sometime or other in his or her career actually actively engaged in trickery. I would say the evidence for séances is not at all convincing that anything paranormal is actually happening in those situations. The people who want to believe in it find them very convincing.
How does Uri Geller bend spoons?
Spoon bending and metal bending in general is an alleged paranormal feet that was popularized by Uri Geller, Uri Geller claims that when he bends a spoon he is using psychokinetic energy to bring about that chain so typically you will hold the spoon and gently rub it and the spoon will often bend and break. There are various ways in which this trick may actually appear but the result is it looks like an amazing ability to bend a metal. The problem is conjurer's can actually repeat this feet just as convincingly and conjurer's claim that there are several different methods - at least fifty to bend spoons, it depends on the different circumstances you find yourself in. I'll give you a few examples: one of them is just to actually have a go at bending the spoon, its doesn't seems to work you just distract people in some way, just for a split second sometimes; you bend the spoon manually but of course you cannot go immediately "oh look at that over there! hey!" that would not be very convincing. You have to be more subtle, you distract them so that they forget all about the spoon and you've already bent it. Then, subsequently, you get the spoon again and in such a way that people can't see it that its already bent and then you say "hey lets have another go with the spoon" you start appearing to bend it, the people assuming at this point the spoon in straight, then you gradually reveal the bending in such a way that it appears that the spoon is bending right in front of your very eyes. Another technique is to, if you got the chance, pre-stress the spoon. When you do this; the spoon is on the verge of actually breaking but not actually broken. It doesn't appear different in any way, you could pick the spoon from among a box you may have on the table and then very by gently rubbing it, it will lead the spoon to break - looking very convincing.
What about spoons that carry on bending after being put down?
One of the interesting things, with respect to spoon bending, and as I said there are dozens of techniques to achieve that, is that people often report that when they've seen a spoon or a key being bent in this way, that even after the psychic puts the key down, it carries on bending. Now clearly that can't be explained just in terms of the kind of techniques that I am talking about. Apparently you can now buy from conjuring shops spoons that will actually bend after you put them down on the table. But you don't actually need that. All you need is a verbal suggestion. We've done experiments of this. We know this is a reliable effect. If you say to people, after you bend the spoon by sleight of hand, you put it down on the table and say, "if you look you will see it is carrying on bending," then around about forty percent of the people around you, just in response to that simple verbal suggestion, will reply that yes, they can see it carry on bending. So, even very simple manipulations like that can be incredibly effective. And a skilled conjurer, or a fake psychic, knows that.
Have you met Uri Geller?
I only actually met Uri Geller in person once in my life, we did a radio show together and during the program we'd been arguing about the paranormal and I'd mentioned a lot of research that had been carried about a friend of mine, Richard Wiseman. Richard does lots and lots of TV programs, he's very media savvy, as we're walking down the steps in the broadcasting house after the interview, Uri turns to me and says “You know what I can't stand about that Richard Wiseman?!” And I said, “No, what's that Uri?” And he said “He's just such a publicity seeker!” This did actually make me smile, there's no trace of irony on Uri's face as he said this. I thought “Well yeah, the words pot, kettle and black do spring to mind”. True Story.
How do mediums channel the dead?
Well there are two different perspectives on how mediums channel the dead in various TV programs, or in theater all up and down the country, or even in private sessions. On the one hand there are those who believe that the mediums have some kind of special gift and that in some way they are able to open a channel to the afterlife and talk directly to the spirits and tell us what life's like in the afterlife. And so on, and so forth. There are also those people, and I'm afraid I come into this category, who believe that there are two kinds of mediums. On the one hand, you have those that are referred too as the Shyteyes. These are people who are sincere. Who really do think that they have some kind of gift, that they can bring back messages from beyond. But we think that they are actually fooling themselves, as well as their clients.
Does dowsing really work?
Now, what's going on with dowsing is an example of the idiomotory fact in the same way that the WEGE board works by none- conscious movements. So does dowsing appear to work on the same basis? Well, you will typically find and we carried out ourselves a test along these lines is that if the dowser knows where the reaction is supposed to occur. For example, we did a test where we ask dowsers if they could distinguish between a bottle of sand and a bottle of water. In the open test that we carried out where they could see the bottle of sand and see the bottle of water, we got the predicted the strong reaction over the water nothing with respect to the sand. We then put the bottles inside containers and full view of the dowser so they still knew where the sand was and where the water was and again we got strong reaction on the water, nothing over the sand. But the proper way to test this in the double blind condition where only now the dowser not know which container has the water but the people directly involved in that state of experiment do not know either so that they can unintentionally give Q's where the right answer is. We carried out that test, we have six containers, and one person would randomly select which container would contain the water or contain the bottle of sand and went away from the scene. The experiment is came in, the dowser choose where the container they thought have the water and those condition they perform exactly the chance left for. No evidence that a dowsing is an ability that cannot be explained in scientific term but quite convincing evidence for the idiomotory fact for none-conscious movements.
