Scientists and magic - Letters to the Editor

Your mention of Uri Geller in the January/February 2001 issue (James E. Alcock review of The Psychology of the Psychic) brought to mind two events that took place in the 1970s. At that rime, in an effort to gain recognition from the scientific community, Geller offered to present a demonstration of his supernatural powers to the senior technical staff of the well-regarded CBS Laboratories, known locally in Stamford, Connecticut, as The Labs.

I was a magic performer then, and happened to know the president of The Labs. He asked me to attend the Geller demonstration, which I agreed to do as long as I was not identified as a magician. Geller put on a mundane magic show to a dozen top scientists and engineers seated around a table. His audience was quite impressed with his performance.

After Geller left, I explained to some of the audience how Geller had done most of his tricks. For example, the elementary trick of divining the picture one of the scientists had just drawn with his hand covering the drawing seemed extrasensory to the subject. This supposed feat was accomplished simply by pencil reading; that is, observing the traverse of the eraser end of the pencil. The man who drew the picture felt disappointed when he learned my explanation because to him paranormal powers seemed, well, at least possible. (Geller's misdirection at the moment of spoon bending was superb.)

A few weeks later, I gave a short magic performance at a private party. One of my favorite tricks was a novel version of the ring-through-string effect, a trick so clever that another magician once offered me $50 to tell him how to do it. After the show, I overheard a lively discussion between two physicists and an engineer speculating on my method. They were fruitlessly fooling around with a ring and string. Words like topological inversion were bandied about. At no time did they recognize that the solution was outside the realm of the physical sciences.

My take on all this was that many scientists are no more likely to understand trickery or to hold truly skeptical beliefs than most folks.

Al Forman

Palm City, Florida

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