Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [6]
I have witnessed many so-called spiritualistic séances, mind-reading demonstrations, and various other apparent miracles. I have tried to be objective in my observations and subsequent conclusions. At the same time, I have also cast a healthily jaundiced eye upon any activity during these performances that tended to indicate conjuring methods or just plain chicanery. My eye has had quite a workout.
I have been introduced to soothsayers in Thailand who brazenly attempted to bamboozle me with a paper-switching trick that has been used by conjurers in the West for a century. Denmark produced a mountebank who tried to fiddle me with a glowing horoscope describing a paragon of virtue and steadfastness; the chart was, unknown to him, drawn from the birth date, birth hour, and birthplace of a convicted and hanged rapist who had to his additional credit a string of misdeeds ranging from philandering to assault. England produced some fascinating quacks, France abounded with pendulum swingers, and the United States and Canada provided their share of frauds as well.
Certainly, doubts have been cast upon the existence of paranormal powers since antiquity. Many "natural philosophers"—who would eventually be known as scientists when more organized systems of thought came into existence—disproved such claims many centuries ago. In 1692 a French dowser named Jacques Aymar was hired by authorities to discover a murderer by swinging a pendulum. Apparently, it was believed that guilt was detectable by this means. Aymar is said to have led the officials to a nineteen-year-old hunchback who subsequently was "broken on the wheel"—a particularly unpleasant death much favored as punishment for unpopular people like hunchbacks. Whether Aymar's success lay in the same tendency of police officials today to supply a list of suspects and then credit the "psychic" with the identification of the murderer, we will never know. But we do know that when Jacques Aymar submitted to tests administered in Paris by the Prince de Conde, he failed them all. Aymar could hardly have avoided the tests, since he had become a national celebrity and is still touted among the faithful as a powerful operator. One wonders what the executed youth thought of Aymar's reputed powers. Aymar remained respectable for a time after his spectacular failure, but soon was driven from business by further scandal. If he were plying his trade today, he doubtless could survive easily, especially if certain befuddled scientists undertook to test him.
The use of "psychic powers" in a court of law is not confined to medieval France. The city of Watkins Glen, near Binghamton, New York, apparently believes in such powers and encourages their use in the courtroom. A conjurer named Philip Jordan, whose claim to fame is that he performs the table-tipping trick and several other stunts right out of the catalog, has been retained by the police force and the Public Defender's Office to work for them in that city. He actually sits at the right hand of the Public Defender and, by measuring the "aura" around each prospective juror, decides whether that person is suitable to serve on the jury. Incredible? The trial judge saw nothing wrong with it. Apparently the New York judicial system accepts supernatural powers as genuine and allows them to be used in the courtroom process of determining the guilt or innocence of a defendant! The Dark Ages have not quite ended in Watkins Glen.
Yes, the judge accepted this preposterous travesty of reason, and so did the New York Bar Association and the Tioga County Bar Association. Notified of this idiocy, both organizations defended the right of the defense