Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [79]
At the close of the film, the narrator refers to what Targ and Puthoff consider to be one of the most important and convincing segments in the film—a segment that is now known to be a restaged and specially created one. He offers a recap "to remind you of those experiments we feel were best controlled... including the double-blind die-in-the-box experiment."
I have examined the evidence and can only come to the conclusion that this is blatant misrepresentation. There is no other way to describe it properly. Pressman did not even know that Targ and Puthoff were issuing a statement, he did not sign it, and he did not give them permission to use his name. He knew nothing about most of what appeared under his name, and he disagreed with the part that he did know about.
We are told by SRI that some thirty-thousand feet of movie film about the Geller experiments was prepared. That's approximately fourteen hours of research data on film! May we see this film, gentlemen? Surely it must be astonishing stuff, and valuable as well. But no, we are offered instead only that which was released by Targ and Puthoff as the best of their data; not only is this amateur night at the movies but most of what is shown is admittedly not done under proper control!
The SRI film, shown to audiences all over the world, starts off with a typical blooper. As anyone with"any experience in the field now knows, Geller used the art of "pencil reading" whenever he could. This consists of watching the top of a pencil as someone is using it and determining what is being written by the motion of the pencil. When the selection is rather narrow—ten digits for example—such a feat is not difficult. And in the SRI film, the first trick is just that. Geller pretends to think of something, then "transmits" it to a member of his audience. He pretends to write, but writes nothing. He retains the pencil and paper, however. He asks the victim to guess his number and write it. It can be clearly seen in the film that the victim writes a "3," and sure enough, when Geller reveals the number he has now written it is exactly the same one! If Geller fooled them all with such a simple trick, he certainly could fool them with other material. In this case, the evidence was right there for them to see. But you know how it is leading horses to water.
Following their adventures with Uri Geller, Targ and Puthoff tried a new approach to their exciting work. In a book entitled Mind Reach, and in a paper printed in the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) on the subject of "remote viewing," they attempted to prove that humans can project their consciousness out of their bodies to far places. In the hands of the occultists, this has been known as "astral projection." When the parapsychologists latched on to it they called it "out-of-body experience," and it finally matured when physics adopted the illegitimate child as "remote viewing." Under any name, it is a silly notion. But it will go on and on, like the fifth act of Othello.
Targ and Puthoff made up a list of one hundred "target" locations in and around the Stanford University area. From these, nine were selected at random and visited singly by one of the researchers, while the "psychic" of the moment was watched at the lab. When the "sender" arrived at the location, he began transmitting his impressions of the place, and the