Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [163]
We had rejected the excessive instrumentation and the very delicate measurements previously applied to Girard's performance, since films and tapes had shown the protocol to be very relaxed and not sufficient to the task. Instead, scientifically correct, simple, direct tests of a claimed miracle-worker had been used. Girard failed. Then why did he try at all? He had professed total disinterest in my offer of $10,000 for one simple demonstration of a paranormal nature. I find this difficult to believe. However, he was very much interested in having my endorsement and that of the CSICOP. He got neither, since he is a common conjurer who must establish his conditions—understandably—to perform.
After my return to the United States, I received letters from Crussard announcing that Pechiney no longer felt bound by its promise to supply me—in return for my participation in the Girard tests—with the videotape and film material I had viewed. It was reminiscent of the situation at Stanford Research Institute, where thousands of feet of film and videotape, used to record experiments there, hold the solution to the tricks. But we may never see these well-guarded records that announce the New Age of Miracles. They are far too secret for ordinary mortals to view.
Piero Angela is a TV journalist who works for the Italian Radio and Television service (RAI). When he produced in 1978 a series of five one-hour special programs about his investigations of the paranormal, he brought down upon his head a hail of threats, denials, and complaints that he found hard to believe. Individuals and groups both within and outside Italy, dependent on the lack of definitive investigation of their claims, felt very strongly his interference with their comfortable situation, and both he and RAI were assaulted with telegrams and letters demanding that he withdraw his statements, which had blasted the parapsychologists and the whole psi industry. Angela would not, and as if to reaffirm his findings he published an account of his investigations, Viaggio nel mondo del paranormale (A Journey into the World of the Paranormal), subtitled An Investigation into Parapsychology. The objections redoubled.
I first met Piero Angela via telephone. He had arrived in the United States to visit various centers of psi work and called to ask my advice concerning individuals he might question. I suggested, of course, the crown princes of psi, Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff. Charles Honorton of Maimonides Hospital, with his Viewmaster slide dream telepathy game, was included for variety, and Charles Tart of Learning-to-Use-ESP fame was suggested for light entertainment. One now-prominent investigator, Helmut Schmidt, was at that time a mystery to me, but was on the list as well. I warned Angela that if his experience was anything like mine, he would extract very little from these funambulists unless they were convinced that he was a believer. A few weeks later, when he called me from California to tell me that they seemed unable to answer simple questions without heroic, evasive declarations and hedging, I suggested that he consult Ray Hyman, Martin Gardner, and me to get a firmer grip on his slippery subject. He did just that, and the result was his devastating series on RAI in Italy.
If Piero had not been the excellent journalist that he is, he could have easily accepted the honeyed words offered him by the semantic wizards of psi. A favorable story would go down easily back home, and a negative one would be hard to make acceptable. But Angela was accustomed to flying in the face of convention.