Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [38]
Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff of the Stanford Research Institute were the daring scientists who sponsored this exciting leap into outer space as part of their continuing quest for the unknown. It was done well in advance of the Mariner 10 spacecraft's trip past Mercury and the voyage of Pioneer 10 past Jupiter, and Targ and Puthoff found remarkable similarities between Swann's trip and another they babysat for, supposedly performed by Harold Sherman. Hynek was thrilled. Said he, "I was fascinated by the Jupiter findings of Pioneer 10 when I compared them with Mr. Swann's. His impressions of Jupiter, along with his experience with Mercury, most certainly point the way to more experimentation " That last statement deserves careful analysis. Hynek refers to Swann's drivel about Mercury as "his experience"—he apparently has no doubt that Swann actually went there. It's assumed that he did. And the "point the way" at the end is directed toward more funding of such nonsense, obviously.
And this is the report with which Targ and Puthoff were "very pleased"? Puthoff said there were "remarkable similarities between the two narrations," and it never dawned on him that during the long, rambling account given by Sherman, he admitted that Swann had visited him a few weeks before this epic adventure—to compare intentions, perhaps? If so, they blew it. The "similarities" they list are: crystals, golden glow, lots of colors, cloud cover, thick atmosphere, orange color, mountain peaks, red-hot surface, cold crystals, swirls, tremendous winds, water, layered atmosphere. Remarkable, isn't it, that two men who are good, cooperative friends could be wrong on so many of their "facts"? And note that Targ and Puthoff searched not for the truth of the claims made by the two performers but rather for similarities. If they were both wrong in making the same statements, is that significant? In the wonderful world of the parapsychologist, it probably is.
This is the "bullet-shaped" space vehicle Pioneer 10 that Sherman "saw." NASA
When I asked the scientist and writer Isaac Asimov his opinion of the claims resulting from these flights of fancy, he was understandably annoyed—not with the effort to clear up the mess, but with the vague claims that had been made. I thank him for having had the patience to plow through much written garbage on the subject. In summary, here is a breakdown of the revelations of "psychics" Swann and Sherman as they whirled through space to bring us the divinely divined wonders of the planet Jupiter:
Being as charitable as possible, and assuming the best concerning the paranormal powers of Swann and Sherman, we can assign them 24 out of 65, or 37 percent "hits." Their errors amount to at least 30 out of 65, or 46 percent. And this assessment deals only with the number of guesses, not with the quality of the information! Such gross errors as reporting that there are 30,000-foot-high mountain peaks on the Jovian landscape and also sandy, molten crust damn the results beyond redemption!
Or is that quite so? I don't know what Sherman has to say by way of retraction, but Swann has made himself quite clear recently. In conversation with Stewart Lamont, a producer for the BBC, Swann opined that he had not gone to Jupiter after all! Travel by astral means is so fast and giddy, said he, that he had probably shot off into another solar system, somewhere in another star's gravity field, and had described for the breathless Hynek, Targ, and Puthoff another planet, not Jupiter! Thus we have an explanation for the errors, and all