Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [123]
Eisenbud, demonstrating perfectly the irrationality of his kind, issued a challenge to me following the NBC "Today" show on which we had appeared with Serios and TV personality Hugh Downs. It was his inane idea that I submit to a preposterous set of controls—this after it had become quite plain to all investigators that his Trilby had been allowed to operate under the loosest and most incredible circumstances. I was to allow myself to be searched—including "a thorough inspection of body orifices"—and then stripped, clad in a monkey suit, and sealed in a steel-walled, lead-lined, soundproof, windowless chamber." I had to be drunk as well. Then, I was to produce pictures. Why? Because Ted Serios operated under those conditions, said Eisenbud. Oh, yeah? When Reynolds, Eisendrath, and Diaconis were there, doctor, the security was so bad that not only was Serios allowed to wander in and out of the room, but Diaconis was able to switch a whole batch of film right under your nose, and you never even knew it! And I have all three witnesses (sober, and not in monkey suits).
If this great investigator and peerless observer required Serios to perform under the conditions he outlined for me, why didn't he mention it earlier? I refer the curious to the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research (JASPR). In that publication Eisenbud wrote thousands of words about his experiments with Serios, referring many times to tests wherein sealed rooms were used, lead glass was employed, and the camera was kept isolated from Serios. I would like to know where in these accounts is mentioned a test of the kind he claims to have performed. It simply does not exist. Also nonexistent are the powers of Serios and the objectivity of those who investigated him.
Dr. Eisenbud is at his best when he writes for the parapsychology journals. There he can throw around terminology that obfuscates the basic facts beautifully. In the July 1967 issue of the JASPR, Eisenbud and his associates damn themselves with their own pens. Here they discuss the "gismo" and mention that without it Serios obtains results "no different from the results he gets with its use." They then proceed to describe a "target" attempt in March 1965 in which Serios achieved wonderful things. All six "associates" suggested targets, and Dr. Johann R. Marx suggested a World War I aircraft. Serios and Dr. Marx had spent much time discussing early aircraft, a subject of great interest to both men, and I am not surprised to discover that Serios came along that evening, knowing that Marx would be there, equipped with an appropriately prepared gimmick for the occasion. Eisenbud carefully points out that Serios, during that session, sometimes used the gimmick and sometimes did not, and produced five prints, all bearing pictures of the same general object—part of a vintage plane.
Early in the JASPR piece Eisenbud compounds his naivete by saying of the "gismo" that "indeed, no other reason [than to aid in concentration] for its existence or use has yet been discovered." If Eisenbud had looked at his data carefully, as I did, he'd have seen that a use just might suggest itself, because Serios produced pictures only on trial numbers 15, 20, 22, 26, and 33—the only five during which he used the "gismo."
To this day, so I'm told, Eisenbud believes that a bellboy from Chicago could imprint pictures on film by miraculous means. His ego simply does not permit him to realize