Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [73]
Note, too, that Targ and Puthoff automatically assume that when "the frequency of the output doubled" it was because the magnetic field within had undergone a change. That's a little like writing a check for one million dollars and assuming it means the money is in your account. What actually occurred was that—for one of many reasons, and as had happened before in that lab—the chart recorder showed a double trace. That's all. And it did not happen as Swann "placed his attention" on the task; it happened ten or fifteen minutes later. This distortion arises because when Targ and Puthoff say "at which time... the output doubled" we assume they mean "immediately." They don't. They credit Swann with causing a second increase in the trace while his attention was off the task, but Hebard tells us that in actual fact the change took place while Swann was across the room, and they asked Swann if he did it! It is a small jump from what actually happened to the eventual version manufactured by Targ and Puthoff. Small, that is, for parapsychology, but unforgivably large for any other discipline.
The biggest laugh, however, is due the last statement they make about Ingo Swann's feat. "At our request he stopped, and the observation was terminated." In other words, when the machine was operating normally, it was due to Swann's not using his terrible powers.
(This last reminds me of Gerard Croiset's most ingenious claim. Croiset, a Dutch "psychic," attended a parapsychology seminar and competed with an East German "psychic." During the encounter, the German concentrated on withering a flower, while Croiset concentrated on saving it. The flower survived, and Croiset crowed victory, saying that his powers were stronger. Of course, since they were parapsychologists, the scientists in attendance never bothered to see if the German could wither a flower.)
In May 1979, journalist Brian Inglis, writing in the London Evening Standard, provided further erroneous information in connection with Swann's non-miracle. Said he, in a gushing account, "The physicist in charge was horrified because... the construction of the magnetometer [quark detector] had been kept a secret, so that it could be patented, and he had got it right." Told of this, Hebard said he was anything but "horrified." The machine was an improved version of one made at Harvard, and drawings of it were posted everywhere. It was no secret at all; he had given a description of its principle and operation to Swann. There was absolutely no intention of patenting the device, and Swann was simply wrong in his attempt to describe the thing.
Inglis wrongly described the Swann episode altogether. He ended with, "They had to dig the wretched machine up at fearful expense to examine it for some fault, which might explain its unnatural behaviour; but no fault could be found." Wrong. It was never dug up at all—it wasn't even buried. And there was no reason to open it, since nothing unexpected had happened. Inglis even refers to "instructions that no more experiments of that kind would be permitted," another fabrication in an account that Hebard calls "really absurd—outright lies from a sensationalist."
Couple all this evasive and deceptive reporting with Targ and Puthoff's closing comment that tests were done the following day that were witnessed "by numerous other scientists" and their failure to mention that Swann did nothing at all. In a letter to Scientific