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The unicorn is said to be a beast with then figuration of a horse and a long spiraled horn in the center of the forehead. Only a virgin, we are told, is able to approach a unicorn. For this and other reasons, no reliable reports exist to verify the reality of this animal.

So much for unicorns. Now for the other nonsense...

Flim-Flam!

And the crowd was stilled. One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence, turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said. Wide-eyed, the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no clothes! He is naked!"

—"The Emperor's New Clothes"

The last ten years have seen a great resurgence of interest in the paranormal. The recent proliferation of books, articles, and scientific papers about parapsychology (psi) and other supernatural phenomena surely must have set some sort of record, and the television and radio outlets have capitalized hugely on the general taste for the extraordinary by pandering shamelessly to that preference. Surveys have shown that many people strongly believe in such subjects as Kirlian photography, ESP, pyramid power, the Bermuda Triangle, and prophecy. The list is long.

Even a few otherwise responsible scientists have climbed aboard the flamboyant but rickety bandwagon as it careens noisily through this period of human history. Some, as we shall see, had to back away from their positions when the truth became evident; others still cling to their decisions and bolster them with feeble rationalizations. It is this turn of events which most fascinates me and impelled me to write this book.

I am not so much concerned with the perpetrators of the major hoaxes as I am with the strange and unexpected ways in which these hoaxes became accepted by this small minority of scientists. Such former wonder-workers as Uri Geller and Jean-Pierre Girard no longer seem to attract the attention of the academic world, though they are still of some small interest to a shrinking public. This book may extinguish that last spark.

It is evident to one who has spent thirty-five years, as I have, examining the purported wonders so well publicized in this decade, and the fallen wonders of previous periods, that there are certain traits and patterns characteristic of the breed. There is also a disturbing sameness to the "scientific" quackery used to support these claims of the supernatural—a sameness that is reflected in many scientific tragedies, some of which arose entirely in the minds of the self-deluded, and not as a result of some deft sleight of hand or psychological trickery practiced by a performer. The reader will see, I am sure, that self-deception is an important element in these matters.

As I travel around lecturing about so-called paranormal powers and events, I am often confronted with the remark that "scientists have looked into this subject and established its validity." To this I reply by quoting Leon Jaroff, a senior editor of Time magazine, who has said, "There has not been a single properly designed, properly conducted experiment that has proven the existence of any paranormal power." I endorse that statement fully, and I will present in this book some excellent examples of just how evident this is to anyone familiar with claims of the paranormal and with the requirements of scientific inquiry.

In May 1976 a group of twenty-five scientists, authors, and scholars—and one lone conjurer—met at a symposium sponsored by the American Humanist Association and devoted to an examination of "The New Irrationalism: Antiscience and Pseudoscience." We were determined to do something about the unfounded claims of miracles and magical powers that were being supported by a few scientists and were alleged to be real scientific discoveries. The result of this meeting was The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and its journal, The Skeptical Inquirer. Briefly stated, the purposes of the CSICOP are:

• To establish a network of people interested in examining claims