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By Root 1032 0

I was claiming I could "disprove the existence of a phenomenon without even beginning to understand what it is." Wrong. I have never claimed to be able to prove a negative—an impossibility. The burden of proof is on Hasted, who must prove there is a phenomenon, not on me to show there is none. The "historic experience" described above is not sufficient. Hasted also charges that "Mr. Randi... demands that metal be bent in sealed perspex [acrylic plastic] tubes." Wrong again. I have never demanded any such thing. It is the wide-eyed nincompoops (nincompoop: a corruption of the Latin non compos—"not of sound mind") who investigate spoon-bending children, who claim the kids can do this. Hasted himself claimed, at the Royal Institution, that his kids could do it! All I'm asking is that they do it for me—and receive my $10,000 and an apology.

Says Hasted, "Dr. Wolkowski [says], 'Girard has bent a nail, a metal strip and a spring inside identified laboratory-sealed glass tubes without orifice.'" Are you sure, John? Wolkowski has also said that Professor John Taylor of King's College was a witness to such a miracle performed by Girard, but Taylor told me, "I am absolutely sure that at no time did [Girard] achieve or even attempt to do anything in my presence... I... hope that Wolkowski's memories of that situation become a little more precise." And Wolkowski refuses to answer a simple question I have repeatedly asked him: Where are these sealed tubes?

Julie Knowles was a young English girl who worked with John Hasted as a spoon-bender. According to Hasted she was a good worker, very strong and dependable. His description made her seem like just the one to walk away with my $10,000. Upon my arrival in England on other business, I received urgent phone calls and letters from Mrs. Hasted, begging me to come to Bath to watch tests of Julie in the lab there. I set aside time to do this and showed up in Bath in the company of colleagues to witness this wonder. We sat Julie in the lab and retreated behind a one-way mirror so as not to disturb her. Her mother, looking very fierce, stayed in a remote office, refusing to come anywhere near me except to collect the check. The girl sat there for two hours holding a spoon, the upper bowl of which was blackened with carbon to prevent her touching it without leaving evidence both on her hands and on the spoon that she had done so. Hasted sat nearby, saying constantly that he was seeing the spoon bend and nodding and smiling encouragingly. He had signed an agreement saying that our protocol was satisfactory, and he expected success. I knew damn well that as soon as Julie was discovered not to have any psychic powers working, he would rationalize like mad. I was right.

Julie Knowles seated before the clock-mirror-candle setup and holding the spoon. The blackened bowl of the spoon can be seen in the mirror.

Hasted later complained that the protocol was complicated (it was not), that I had said Julie was "highly touted" (she was, by both Hasted and his wife), and that I had failed to test the unbent spoon for such changes as "nominal strain, residual stress, dislocation loop density, micro-hardness, grain structure, electrical resistance, specimen dimensions, etc." He ignores the fact that, unlike certain poor experimenters, we who designed the protocol for testing Julie Knowles specified in advance that we were testing for gross bending of a simple teaspoon, a feat the girl was said to be able to do. We did not intend to search for obscure peripheral effects and decide after the fact that any discovery was significant. When Hasted goes to the races he is not allowed to collect at the betting window if a horse he bet on to win comes in sixth and sideways. He simply does not recognize an adequate and proper experiment when he sees one!

Professor John Hasted at the Knowles test at Bath University. Hasted remained aloof from the procedure, refusing to have anything to do with the controls and observations.

Hasted called my conditions for the experiment "crude." No, John, they