The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  This is not the only such error; on page 98 he cites a series with 225 hits in 400 trials, 25 hits above chance, and he again claims this to be at chance level, which clearly it is not (p = .007, one-tailed). Ironically, in the paragraph immediately preceding this claim, Gardner cites an earlier Stepanek series with 400 hits out of 800 trials. He goes on to say that this “tends to cast suspicion on the reliability of the data” because the result was exactly at chance. He correctly gives the probability of obtaining exactly that score (p = .028). This is of marginal significance at best, and the value is much larger than those p-values he incorrectly claimed were at chance.

  This is not an isolated example, and throughout his book, Gardner voices suspicion of any score close to the expected mean and suggests that there may be some problem with the data. Of those instances I noticed, all those of which he was suspicious had associated probability values of .028 or greater and some as high as .09. There were hundreds of runs with Stepanek, the large majority not particularly close to the exact mean chance value. Gardner gives the reader no reason whatever to suspect that the number of scores very close to the expected mean was any greater than chance would allow. He could have made a calculation to address the matter, but he failed to do so. His complaints are simply examples of selective reporting, a well known statistical fallacy.

  Several places in the book Gardner admits that he had friends do calculations for him. Surprisingly, those were very simple computations that are typically taught the first few weeks of any introductory class in statistics. Ironically, back in 1979, Gardner was interviewed and asked about mathematics in parapsychology. He stated “I’m going to do a column that will discuss this whole aspect of contemporary parapsychology, and the need for a more sophisticated understanding of some of the statistics involved.”5 55

  Statistics is not the only area where Gardner is less capable than might be expected. His comments on more general scientific matters also reveal deficits. For instance, he asserted that “There is no way a skeptic can comment meaningfully on the Honorton and Schmidt experiments, because there is no way, now that the tests are completed, to know exactly what controls were in force.”56 In fact, since that statement was made, a number of skeptical psychologists have published assessments of both Honorton’s and Schmidt’s work. Similar evaluations are made in all other areas of science and have been for decades. Journal articles contain a great deal of information that allows assessment, and that is why the details are published. Reviewers frequently contact authors when additional information is required. This happens in all sciences. Gardner was amazingly uninformed about how scientific research is actually conducted, reported, and evaluated.57

  One should remember that Gardner has a strong background in philosophy, but he has not had the advantage of carrying out day-today scientific research. He has only a philosopher’s idealized conception of science, and his remarks must be interpreted in that light. In the last 25 years, sociologists have demonstrated that the process of science is rather different than philosophers thought, and that is particularly germane for skeptics of the paranormal. Trevor Pinch and Harry Collins, two prominent researchers in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), have shown that participating in scientific research changes one’s understanding of it. To illustrate their point, they investigated CSICOP and concluded that if the Committee wished to maintain its philosophical view of science it should not engage in research, and in fact, CSICOP established a policy against conducting research itself.58 Gardner is not oblivious to SSK and its ramifications, and he has been a critic of Collins and Pinch, particularly on the topic of relativism, but he has not addressed their findings on CSICOP.59

  Gardner is also sometimes beyond his ken when he discusses technical and theoretical issues of parapsychology. He has complained that PK effects in experiments typically rely upon statistical deviations for detection rather than direct movements of mechanical objects. That objection is laden with assumptions about how psi works. vast amounts of research demonstrate that psi does not act like a mechanical force, and several plausible theoretical explanations have been presented to explain that. Gardner seems totally unaware of them. Yet when parapsychologists respond to his uninformed remarks he replies offering gratuitous comments such as “I find it puzzling that Rao and Palmer cannot understand such simple reasoning.”

  Even in magic, his knowledge is spotty in some areas. For instance, he has asserted that “Conjurors are indeed the enemy [of psychic researchers].” Through his popular writings, Gardner has been largely responsible for the canard that magicians are generally skeptical of the existence of psychic phenomena. Perhaps his relative isolation keeps him away from a broad cross-section of magicians. In fact studies have shown that the majority of conjurors believe in the paranormal, and a number of eminent ones have participated in psychical , 62 research.

  The general style of his criticisms is unlike that found in scientific journals. His are often biting, derisive, personal, and peppered with words such as “laughable,” “ridiculous,” with allusions to “youthful indiscretions,” and references to parapsychologists as “Geller-gawkers.” He makes liberal use of innuendo. The prestige endowed by his long association with Scientific American, coupled with the low status of his targets, allow him tactics that otherwise would be considered reprehensible. He is aware of it, and he frankly acknowledged that he and his colleagues “felt that when pseudoscience is far enough out on the fringes of irrationalism, it is fair game for humor, and at times even ridicule.” Gardner popularized H. L. Mencken’s aphorism “one horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms,” using it as an epigraph for his Science: Good, Bad and Bogus, making it something of a motto for debunkers.

  His extensive sarcasm and ridicule should alert readers that something other than detached, dispassionate analysis is involved in his critiques. Even though he is skeptical, Gardner undeniably has a deep fascination with the paranormal. He has expended enormous intellectual effort, professional time, and personal energy on it. Paranormal claims enrage him and occasionally provoke his naive and emotional outbursts. This says something important about the phenomena. Even skeptics do not remain untouched by them. Gardner is a particularly important example because he directly confronts claims and deals with them in an extended fashion. As such, he has more immediate contact with the paranormal than those academics who simply dismiss it or comment on more abstracted issues such as belief in psychic abilities. Over seventy years ago, Walter Franklin Prince described the “enchanted boundary” and explained that when skeptics cross it they generally display a loosening of intellectual judgement and emotional restraint. Gardner is an example.

  Gardner is at least somewhat aware of the psychological factors affecting his views of parapsychology. In his essay “Science: Why I Am Not a Paranormalist” he explained that the idea of telepathy makes him uneasy: “I also value the privacy of my thoughts. I would not care to live in a world in which others had the telepathic power to know what I was secretly thinking, or the clairvoyant power to see what I was doing.” He also wrote that “PK opens up even more terrifying possibilities. I am not enthusiastic over the possibility that someone who dislikes me might have the power from a distance to cause me harm.”65 These statements raise a fundamental issue—paranoia. Though I am not suggesting that Gardner is paranoid, his concerns are paranoiac, and it is to his credit that he recognizes potentials of psi that most parapsychologists wish to ignore. Paranoia is an important issue, and it is intricately linked to mirrors and reflexivity. A later chapter is devoted to it.

  Gardner and Religion

  Many people are surprised to learn that Gardner is not an atheist. He believes in God and in prayer as can be seen in his The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener. But because so many have been amazed when I told them this, I suspect that some of them thought that I misinterpreted Gardner or somehow took him out of context. So I wrote to him, and he confirmed his belief in “a personal god, prayer, and life after d
eath” (letter to author, 16 Nov 96). The religious crisis of his youth led him to reject his Protestant fundamentalism, but he did not reject God.

  Gardner’s virulent attacks on the paranormal are not based solely on its frequent association with deceit. Nor is his antagonism founded only on the unpleasant ramifications of psi. Gardner’s antipathy has deeper roots. His essay “Prayer: Why I Do Not Think It Foolish” is revealing; for in it he says: “It is possible that paranormal forces not yet established may allow prayers to influence the material world, and I certainly am not saying this possibility should be ruled out a priori … As for empirical tests of the power of God to answer prayer, I am among those theists who, in the spirit of Jesus’ remark that only the faithless look for signs, consider such tests both futile and blasphemous … Let us not tempt God.”66

  Nor is the above quote an isolated example. He also objects to interpreting miracles in terms of parapsychological concepts. He goes on to say that “If I were an orthodox Jew or Christian, I would find such attempts to explain biblical miracles to be both preposterous and an insult to God.” Obviously he feels that attempts to explain the workings of God in scientific parapsychological terms diminish the concept of divinity. God is to be exalted, not tested.

  These statements cannot be ignored if one wishes to understand his views of parapsychology. The importance of them should not be underestimated, because he has stated that “Of my books, the one that I am most pleased to have written is my confessional, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, with my novel about Peter Fromm running second.” Obviously Gardner’s opposition is of a different order than most CSICOP followers, and I suspect that few of them appreciate this basis of his opinions. A rationalist debunker encountering the above passages might unconsciously skip over them, or perhaps think them to be in jest, because in the vast bulk of his writings on the paranormal Gardner gives no inkling of his underlying religious feelings. Despite his influence among debunkers, his Whys was not reviewed in the pages of the Skeptical Inquirer or the parapsychology journals. Perhaps they didn’t know quite what to make of it.

  Gardner’s position is profoundly contrary to those of rationalists and secular humanists, with whom he frequently allies himself. Most of them would assert that every topic is open for scientific scrutiny; full investigation and inquiry should be encouraged. Religious restrictions on science are regressive, irrational, and squelch the search for truth. A rationalist is likely to believe that the only inherent harm in researching God or the paranormal is wasted time and effort. Badly conducted psi research resulting in positive, though invalid, findings simply furthers delusion. That should be combatted, but research is not a threat simply because of the content. Gardner, however, opposes investigation of a topic on religious grounds purely because of the subject matter. This deserves exploration.

  Gardner’s position can be traced back to his teenage Protestant fundamentalism. Protestantism draws a sharp demarcation between God and man; Gardner wants to uphold that and does not want man to appropriate the role of God. The binary opposition is not to be blurred.

  Max Weber’s concept of rationalization helps illuminate this. Weber recognized the crucial differences between an immanent and a transcendent God. An immanent God can be found within the material world. The transcendent God is above and beyond it; He may intervene, but there is a clear distinction between the material and the divine. Weber pointed out that the immanent-transcendent dichotomy is reflected in the Catholic-Protestant split. The divine is closer to the human in Catholicism than in Protestantism. Catholicism is more mystical; it has monastic orders and a priesthood. With transubstantiation in Catholicism, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. Protestants see bread and wine as only symbols. In Protestantism, faith alone is required for salvation. That keeps it strictly mental; the divine is separated from the physical.

  Protestantism has an intellectual tradition that critiqued miracles and dismissed them, and Gardner can be considered to fall loosely within that tradition. Attacking miracles is a step in the disenchantment process. Gardner and the Protestants are not full rationalists; they don’t seek full disenchantment of the world. They leave room for mystery, and Gardner does not want to intrude upon it.

  Gardner’s attitude toward mysticism is ambivalent, but he does describe himself as “a mystic in the Platonic sense.” To his credit, he does not ignore the issue of paradox; he acknowledges it in at least some religious contexts. He recognizes the numinous, and in his The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener he discusses Kurt Godel and a few paragraphs later covers Rudolf Otto and the mysterium tremendum, directly mixing mathematics and religion. Of the numinous he says “It is the secret of the book of Job,” indicating an understanding that few have today. Yet he doesn’t fully explore the numinous either in his novel or essays, though in Otto’s formulation, the numinous is the source of supernatural phenomena. Gardner is clearly ambivalent toward miracles and mysticism; he does not completely disparage them. His fascination is evinced by the last chapter of The Flight of Peter

  Fromm, which has a generally favorable discussion of Francis of Assisi.71

  Reflexivity is pertinent to understanding Gardner’s religious beliefs. Gardner is known for his clear writing, and that is one of the keys to his professional success. He is able to take complex topics and explain them simply. His religious thought shows this same striving for clarity, but he perhaps does not fully appreciate its consequences. Clarity and precision have costs, and reflexivity is central to understanding that. Reflexivity subverts clarity, and it is no accident that the writings of the deconstructionists and ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel are so obscure. Gardner serves as a counterpoint to them.

  One of the most capable expositors on reflexivity and ambiguity is Bruno Latour, a prominent figure in the sociology of scientific knowledge, and his essay “The Politics of Explanation” discusses the issues at length. As will be explained in the chapter on literary theory, deconstructionism calls into question the correspondence between an object and its representation, between a text and its referent. Deconstructionists assert that there is no unambiguous connection between them, either in principle or in practice. Latour explains several aspects of reflexivity, and one “is based on the idea that the most deleterious effect of a text is to be naively believed by the reader as in some way relating to a referent out there. Reflexivity is supposed to counteract this effect by rendering the text unfit for normal consumption (which often means unreadable).”

  Latour specifically addressed the story of the empty tomb in the Gospel of St. Mark. He goes on to say that “The good reader of such a text is not the one who asks the silly question ‘What really happened there? Would I find traces of the empty tomb if I were to go to that place in Jerusalem and dig the ground?’” This is exactly the problem Gardner wrestled with in The Flight of Peter Fromm. Peter wondered what really happened with the resurrection, and whether Christ’s bones could be found. Gardner never fully shook the effects of his teenage Biblical literalism and as a result rejected Christianity. Yet he is too sophisticated to be a rationalist, and he is more philosophically astute than most deconstructionists.

  Paradox is one of the ramifications of reflexivity, and we encounter it here. Gardner chooses to embrace paradox rather than succumb to ambiguity. He believes in the power of prayer and life after death, yet he aggressively opposes scientific investigation of them. He allies himself with Paul Kurtz, a secular humanist and prominent publisher of atheist material. Gardner has even served as a co-chairman of a joint fundraising drive of CSICOP and CODESH (Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism). The religious man and atheist banded together to ward off the supernatural.

  Gardner seems to recognize that there are limits to what can be known and expressed about the world via rational means. He accepts some things on faith alone. But he has rejected the path of direct experience, which both mysticism and science can provide. Gardner is a mystic only in the intellectual sen
se, and he has never been a practicing scientist. He works in an abstracted world where text is primary. He vehemently opposes using science to empirically address religious issues. That would blur a major binary opposition. He is comfortable with CSICOP because it doesn’t really do science. Instead it ridicules attempts to study the paranormal scientifically.

  Gardner’s religious beliefs seem to have colored his relations with parapsychologists, and he has had a particularly strong antipathy toward J. B. Rhine. (Like Gardner, Rhine had an early formative interest in religion, and Rhine had planned to enter the ministry before switching to science. He later went to the University of Chicago.) In a conversation with me, Gardner referred to Mauskopf and McVaugh’s book The Elusive Science as a “hagiography.” This characterization is absolutely absurd, and I was puzzled by it. When I saw his remarks about tempting God, I recalled that Rhine had written of a potential role for psi in prayer and that he had even carried out a PK experiment pitting ministerial students against others who had a reputation for being good at shooting craps. This was dubbed the “Preachers versus Gamblers” study and was instigated by William Gatling, a Duke divinity student. Gardner may have construed that research as “testing God” and therefore blasphemous.

  Gardner’s religious concerns were overt in his attacks on parapsychological research at Stanford Research Institute. He was exceedingly incensed that some of those involved had a background in Scientology, and he wrote scathing denunciations, complaining about their religious affiliations, suggesting that they should not be trusted. His religious biases are apparent in other contexts as well. He argued that science writer Forrest Mims should not become a columnist for Scientific American because he was a creationist, even though his views would have no impact on his work for the magazine. Gardner perhaps recognized the bias resulting from his own religious convictions but projected it onto his opponents.