Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [84]
But Sherman Stein, a mathematician at the University of California at Los Angeles where the tests were done, in examining the raw data on which the book was based, came upon an anomaly. It seems that though Tart had checked out his random-number generator and found it gave a good distribution of digits, it did not repeat digits as it should. In 5,000 digits produced by the machine, there should have been close to 500 "twins." If, for example...comes up, there is exactly 1 chance in 10 that another 3 will be produced next. There were only 193 twins—39 percent of the number expected. Since a subject in such tests has a tendency not to repeat a digit just used, this bias of the machine fits in nicely with the results observed. *(2)
Stein suggested to Tart that he repeat the tests using a proper randomizer, and offered to assist. Tart agreed, and they parted. Months later Stein and Tart met again. Stein asked when the tests would be redone, and Tart brightly replied that he had already repeated the tests. What were the results? Negative, but that was understandable, answered Tart. He had not had the same gifted subjects as before. Catch-22 again.
Speaking of gifted subjects, it is well to note that in Tart's first set of tests one subject had scored very high. Her score was two and a half times what could be expected by chance. But she took much longer to make her decisions, said Tart, and she often started the run with her hand already on the correct number! Who was she? Who was her partner? May we speak with her? Well, that's a problem. He can't give out the names, and besides, she has moved away. Too bad.
Adding an outrageous comment to all this, Tart says, "The level of scoring in the first test was so high, it would be absurd to argue that... the results... were a mere statistical fluke." No one ever claimed that! The results were due to bad design and implementation!
But what about the book Learning to Use Extrasensory Perception? Since it is based on improper experimental procedures and a repetition of those experiments proved negative, shouldn't the book be recalled? Apparently not. It is still printed, still sold, and still tells its fairy story.
Charles Tart, asked by a reporter whether my criticisms of parapsychology are valid, replied, "No, of course not. Randi just makes it up as he goes along." Even I, with my vivid imagination, could not invent the Never-Never Land that parapsychologists so comfortably inhabit. Tart has also said, in a letter to a journal that had carried one of my articles, "Randi never sees the other side of the coin." Not so, Charles. I have seen the other side of your coin. It is blank—and the coin itself is a counterfeit.
As with all schemes that depend on individuals keeping quiet, the Uri Geller myth had to eventually collapse. Although Geller managed to survive an exposé in Israel when Hannah Shtrang, the sister of his main accomplice, Shipi, revealed what she knew to the press, the publication of my book and Confessions of a Psychic (by Uriah Fuller—a thinly disguised Martin Gardner) seemed to write the last chapter of his meteoric career. But Geller's habit of using up people and discarding them really caught up with him when Yasha Katz, his former manager now in Israel, decided to tell all. Such other "used-up" people as Puharich, Targ, Puthoff, Mitchell, and Franklin, no matter how much they suspected that Geller had taken advantage of them, were not in a position to admit it. Katz was different.
He had tried to reach me through my publisher, and his letters had been sitting around for months before I finally received them. In my book, I had referred to Katz as a victim rather than a victimizer. All the evidence I had at hand indicated that he was a true believer who had been swept up into the Geller entourage willy-nilly, leaving everything behind in Israel and joining Geller in his conquest of