Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [170]
I was left with weighty matters to consider, however. Mrs. Del Re had informed me that her contact with Grandma elicited this information: I was born in New Jersey. Wrong; I was born in Canada. There was one toy, unidentified otherwise, to which I was particularly attached in my childhood. Who knows? A not uncommon circumstance, but I cannot remember. In my business, I was warned, there is a colleague whom I must not trust. A poor and very general attempt at psychic revelation, but if they considered themselves colleagues of mine, they were 100 percent right. I am personally ambitious, I was told. So was Brutus, but he was honorable. Finally, Grandma is angry with me. Not unlikely, though it is I who should be miffed at Grandma for fluffing all those simple questions. And now that I think of it, the table never "walked over to me" as promised, and we had shaken hands on that.
Five down, four to go. While all this nonsense was going on, with spoiled hamburger, faulty dreamers, and unstable tables everywhere, a small crew of men were at work thirty miles outside Rome in a little town called Formello. In accordance with careful plans I had drawn, they were building a network of plastic pipes that we would be using to test the water-dowsers who still clamored for the $10,000 prize. They arrived at the hotel, submitted themselves to our questionnaires, and settled down to await being summoned to the field of battle. They occupied their time by describing their wonderful accomplishments to one another, with appropriate gestures and, I'm sure, some exaggeration.
But all was not well at the site. The first engineer wanted 3 million lire to do the job, and I had to turn him down and change the pipe chart. Piero Angela's assistant obtained another man, who turned out to be an idiot. The 10-by-10-meter plot he laid out was a rhombus, and all had to be revised again. By the time the thing was ready, three days had passed and the dowsers' noses and divining rods were all twitching. On the appointed day I was awakened at 4 a.m. by peals of thunder and a hailstorm that stirred all Rome. By the afternoon we had gathered our wits enough to assemble the four aspirants in Formello, and there was time to test one of them. The problem was that he had to be shipped out of town right after the test so that he could not inform the others of the layout in the slightest detail. No results were to be announced until all the papers were ready and evaluated, so the findings would not be available until the next day.
Since these tests were, to my knowledge, the first really proper testing of dowsing claims, I will describe the procedure in some detail. Of primary importance to the long-range results, of course, was the removal of all possible Catch-22 conditions that might be employed after the tests to excuse failure. To that end, the questionnaire was extra-carefully designed to assure that everything was understood and accounted for in advance. The conditions were:
A 10-by-10-meter area, pipes 3 centimeters in diameter have been buried at a depth of 50 centimeters.
There are three different paths of three different lengths available, one to be chosen at random for each test.
Three tests will be performed with each person, and the same path may be used more than once, since the choice is random.
The chosen path may enter at any point on any side of the square and exit at any point on any side of the square.
First, the dowser must scan the area for any natural water or other distractions (metal or other objects) and mark these "natural" places.
Any secondary distractions will be outlined on the ground visibly.
Second, the dowser must demonstrate, on an exposed water pipe, while