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One of the people at the lecture, Gerald Feinberg of Columbia University, spoke with the man who actually, built the magnetometer and who had been present at Swann's demonstration. Feinberg remarked rather wistfully that both this man and the designer of the apparatus had "apparently paid no attention at all to this report. [They] shrugged it off." Yes, they did, and had good reason to do so because they knew the report was all wet. How do I know? Because I bothered to contact Dr. Arthur F. Hebard, the builder of the device, who was present and who has excellent recollections of what took place.

Hebard was taken aback when I told him he had been quoted by Targ and Puthoff in reference to this fiasco. Not being a reader of far-out literature, he had not known of their presumption and was very irritated that he'd been made use of in this manner. This was evident in his remarks when I contacted him while investigating the Targ-Puthoff evidence.

"I find it incredible that no one bothered to check with me, as you did," he told me. "Targ and Puthoff jumped to a lot of conclusions—they were overzealous... and made hasty connection between the general and the specific." Puthoff never asked Hebard—the builder of the machine—whether he had any explanations. In fact, he had plenty of them. "There were many things which could have caused what we saw," he said. "Backup in the helium line, which was used by many different people in both buildings there, could have done it. It had happened before. The fact that Mr. Swann was not able to reproduce the effect on subsequent attempts on a later date lends credence to the view that the initial event was 'accidental.'"

But hold on here! That paragon of factual reporting, Charles Panati, had said to Targ and Puthoff that "if [Swann] does it with the frequency and repeatability—with the accuracy you say... it would be sort of a sledge hammer blow." You see, Panati made the mistake of believing T&P when they said that "during this and the following day when similar data with Mr. Swann were taken, the experiment was observed by numerous other scientists." The implication was that Swann did repeat the experiment successfully under competent observation. Wrong. According to Hebard he failed to do so, but the implication remains. Furthermore, Swann did not even repeat the test once during the initial try! Fooled you again, didn't they? The truth is that the Swann effect was not repeated. When I asked Hebard, "You mean it was misrepresented?" he replied, "It's a lie. You can say it any way you want, but that's what I call a lie."

Swann had stood for "ten to fifteen minutes" staring at the equipment, reported Hebard, after Targ and Puthoff told him to "do something." At no time was he asked to "stop the field change." When the curve leveled out momentarily, for whatever reason, Targ and Puthoff decided it was what they wanted. Swann was not responding to instructions; whatever happened—by perfectly normal means—was interpreted as paranormal. In fact, said Hebard, when the curve "burped," Swann asked Targ and Puthoff, "Is that what I'm supposed to do?" and they happily agreed that it was, without any idea what had caused the trace to waver, and without asking anyone for a rational opinion about what had caused the variance.

Then, according to Hebard, Swann went across the room and turned his attention away from the chart recorder. Others watched it to see if the irregularity would show up again. It did, which seemed to indicate that there had been another venting change somewhere in the lab complex at the university. When Targ and Puthoff saw the jump, they shouted to Swann, "Did you do that, too?" and Swann agreed that he had, inadvertently. In reporting this, Targ and Puthoff told Gerald Feinberg that Swann had "made several attempts and got the same effect"!

The two scientists also reported that Swann described "with great accuracy" the inside of the Stanford "quark detector." Said Dr. Hebard in response to this