The Targ/ Puthoff report was published as an extended letter.

All I wanted to say was that I still found Geller interesting. If you want to ascribe blind belief, dreaming, or fantasies to that attitude, have it your way. He’s just a small part of the larger enigma of psychic research that I find compelling. This is why I also mentioned Radin and Jahn in my exchange with you.

There is no such “data” to be found, so my logic still stands.

If you are referring to Geller, you may have a point, but other studies have demonstrated repeated mind-over-matter effects that are far above chance, such as those presented in Robert Jahn’s book Margins of Reality. To me, this indicates that there are effects to be studied, not “fantasies.”

I was joking about Takayama. Maybe I should have put an emoticon after the statement. It just seemed too silly to have to explain. I think that sometimes you seem to take things too literally.

My attitude is mainly one of curiosity. I try to make few conclusive judgments. The only thing I choose to believe with a fair amount of certainty is that so-called ESP or mind-over-matter effects have been demonstrated anecdotally over thousands of years, and experimentally in the last couple of hundred years.

What do you mean by published? Was it in a letter to the editor, a book review, or a main article? More importantly, let us fast forward to the present and see what NATURE has to say about Uri Geller today. I did a search in NATURE for Uri Geller (see http://www.nature.com/search/executeSearch?submit=go&exclude-collections=journals_palgrave%2Clab_animal&include-collections=journals_nature%2Ccrawled_content&pag-end=26&sp-a=sp1001702d&sp-c=25&sp-x-1=ujournal&sp-sfvl-field=subject|ujournal&sp-q=uri+geller&sp-m=0&sp-p=all&sp-s=date_descending&sp-p-1=phrase), and it returns 33 articles, all of them negative. What does that tell you about important they think Uri Geller and his psychic abilities is right now? I guess that earlier article must not have made much of an impression on the scientific community.

“Negating a hypothesis does not ‘add drama,’ it points up that a theory is unproven or false”

That is so true because all it takes is one relevant contradictory fact to disprove any theory. So why would you want to believe in something that has more than one relevant contradictory fact against it as Uri Geller and his psychic powers does?

“Data continues to come in which suggests that there are issues which remain to be investigated”

There is no such “data” to be found, so my logic still stands.

“Maybe Takayama is performing psychic feats and lying about it!”

That is neither a theory, hypothesis, or a logical extension of known facts, that is an escape. Maybe everybody is lying about everything, except those who say the things you wish to be true? You can prove/disprove anything in the world you want to using that kind of logic. There is no rational reason to suspect that Takayama is lying and there most certainly no reason to suspect the existence of psychic feats in the first place, so don’t go there.

This is all so simple. If Uri Geller has psychic powers, from a proper scientific point-of-view it would be very easy to prove/disprove. First we would randomly buy a few spoons. We would put the spoons in a vise in a corner of a room. We would put Uri Geller in the opposite corner and tell him to bend the spoon using mind powers alone. There would be no statistics to lie with, there would be no ambiguity if he could bend spoons with the power of his mind, and not even the scientific community would dare to refute it. So why isn’t that happening? Because no one wants to be the first to shatter someone else’s dreams or fantasies.

The Puthoff/ Targ experiments were not strictly conducted as normal research, as you point out. What made them significant is that they were one of the first instances of putting Geller in a clinical testing environment with individuals who were conversant with the scientific method. The fact that they were physicists does not necessarily preclude them from doing that sort of research. The editors of the refereed journal Nature seemed to think that it was important enough to publish the report in issue #5476.

they weren’t “negative” at all since *ALL* of them were convinced Geller had some kind of ability. The “negative” angle just adds drama.

No, some of the experiment reports contained in the book (which is what I was pointing out) were either inconclusive or negative, as I recall. The online reports (that Geller links to) are all positive. Negating a hypothesis does not “add drama,” it points up that a theory is unproven or false.

There is no need to explain something that has never been proven to exist in the first place.

In the logical scenario you present, this is true, however data continues to come in which suggests that there are issues which remain to be investigated. Are ALL UFO witnesses or people who report apparent “psychic phenomena” deluded or mistaken? I don’t think so. Perhaps I’m wrong, but if I’m not, it’s more interesting to me.

Why should Geller be treated by science any different from Cyril Takayama, other then Geller says he does what he does by paranormal powers and Takayama does what he does by magic?

Maybe Takayama is performing psychic feats and lying about it! In any case, there seems to be a backlog of information (anecdotal and otherwise) which calls for more testing under controlled conditions, such as that conducted by Dean Radin, Robert Jahn, etc.

“Dyson conjectures…”

Conjecture is neither a researched fact nor science. First one must demonstrate the existence of PSI before being able to conjecture anything about it.

Dyson conjectures that no one has produced empirical proof of psi because it occurs under conditions of “strong emotion and stress,” which are “inherently incompatible with controlled scientific procedures.”

Absolutely, I feel the same exact way…well, except for the Puthoff experiments. I will try to make a long story short so I will just list some of the faults for the Puthoff experiments: most of the experiments should have been conducted in the blind instead of just the one, there was no control group, no hypothesis testing was stated, and they didn’t do the math required to support their conclusions (ie — they just “reasonably” assumed he “passed”). Then there is the matter of a why a plasma physicist or laser physicist would be scientifically interested in examining paranormal abilities, ie — how does this relate to laser or plasma physics?

“These reports are contained in the Geller Papers book, but not in the online excerpts, since those link to Geller’s site, and why would he link negative reports?”

Because they weren’t “negative” at all since *ALL* of them were convinced Geller had some kind of ability. The “negative” angle just adds drama.

“An even better question is ‘If it cannot be explained as a magic trick, does that mean it is definitely a (novel) magic trick?’ Also, ‘If there is no explanation for it with current scientific theory, does that mean that it will never be scientifically verifiable, and is therefore false?’ In that case, I would say it is currently unproven, but some of the reported feats of Geller deserve to be tested by different groups of researchers, using the same protocols”

Both those questions are logical fallacies. John Hynek was a victim to that fallacy. So was Phil Klass. There is no need to explain something that has never been proven to exist in the first place. There is no need to explain the existence of invisible pink elephants if no one has ever demonstrated invisible pink elephants to exist in the first place.

I’ve seen some magicians do some incredible things and it makes me want to believe in magic, but I know better. It isn’t because I don’t believe what I do see, but because of what I don’t see. Look up Cyril Takayama in Google or YouTube. Cyril is very entertaining, most other magicians can’t reproduce what he does, and science cannot explain it. Why should Geller be treated by science any different from Cyril Takayama, other then Geller says he does what he does by paranormal powers and Takayama does what he does by magic?

I looked up Derren Brown. I will read his book. It may have some of the answers I’m looking for with regard to Geller, even though he seems a little evangelical with the rationalist podium-pounding.

“Brown is a former evangelical Christian; he states that he became an atheist in his 20s.”
Oh dear, the fury of the converted.

I don’t see how my argument “smacks of special pleading.” It’s simply a challenge to change my mind, at least I meant it that way.

Thanks. No swelled head, just a curious one.

I think he is reviled by fundie skpetics because of his thirst for attention, his evident popularity, and his success with something they consider bunk. I would tend to agree with them (minus the vitriol) but for the fact that he has apparently demonstrated unexplainable feats in controlled settings.

To me, the Targ/ Puthoff experiments look scientifically conducted and reported. What I am saying is that more or better work needs to be done to back up, suggest some experimental validity, or conclusively disprove the many anecdotal reports from scientifically trained observers who think that this subject deserves better research and not dogmatic rejection…or I need to find more examples or have someone point me to them.

Naturally all the scientists that Geller agreed to see would speak of him favorably because all the scientists that Geller didn’t agree to see didn’t ever have the chance to speak unfavorably of him.

You (and most likely most of the readers) are at a disadvantage because you probably don’t have a copy of the book. Not all of the scientists Geller saw were impressed that he was performing anything but magic tricks or at least they could not rule out fraud. These reports are contained in the Geller Papers book, but not in the online excerpts, since those link to Geller’s site, and why would he link negative reports?

A better question is, can magicians reproduce everything that every other magician has ever done? The answer is, absolutely not. So it is irrelevant and can prove nothing if other magicians cannot reproduce everything Geller had done because that is not a scientific or logical test.

Your point is well taken. An even better question is “If it cannot be explained as a magic trick, does that mean it is definitely a (novel) magic trick?” Also, “If there is no explanation for it with current scientific theory, does that mean that it will never be scientifically verifiable, and is therefore false?” In that case, I would say it is currently unproven, but some of the reported feats of Geller deserve to be tested by different groups of researchers, using the same protocols.

This is why I continue to leave the question open. Geller is not conclusively proven as a “psychic,” but still interesting to me.