The Truth About Uri Geller

by James Randi

  The major victory of his work in the U.S.A. was the series of “tests” he was put to at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in California. This was in late 1972. Though the cautious statement of the results hardly constituted a rave, and strong criticisms of the procedures were soon voiced, Geller claimed that he had been validated, and other labs in Europe and Britain (staffed by believers) hastened to test him.

  The rest is checkered history.

  This book is not a destructive one. I have been urged for the past two years to produce a manuscript that merely tells the truth behind what has come to be known as the Geller Effect; and in attempting to bring reason and objectiveness to the consideration of the strange events connected with Mr. Uri Geller, I stand the chance of being thought a renegade who is determined to put a fellow-performer out of business. This is hardly the case. When I first began to investigate Geller, in the offices of Time Magazine in New York City, I knew full well what I was up against. I knew that the other conjurors would raise a hue and cry against my statements, believing that Geller was “just another one of the boys,” who deserved to be defended by other legitimate entertainers. I was prepared to face the flood of crank letters and calls that were certain to follow and readied myself for the angry protests that the believers were bound to summon up against me.

  To be frank, as Charles Reynolds and I sat in the Time office posing as reporters for that magazine (details, Chapter 7) and watched the trivial performance that Geller produced, I felt that his star could hardly shine in any prominence on this side of the ocean, though he had arrived with some fair amount of fanfare from European triumphs. Reynolds and I were quick to admire his disarming manner and his total charm. But if what he did at that meeting was to be typical of his future efforts, we were certain Uri could not survive. We were wrong.

  One thing I must state in no uncertain terms: I am probably one of Uri Geller’s greatest fans. I totally respect his techniques and his quick mind. But I cannot condone his callous disregard for the personal friends and admirers who have given their total allegiance to him, nor can I forgive the damage he has done to respectable men of science and the press who chose to board his comet and who may well have to face, in the end, the ridicule of their colleagues. For it is not impossible that Geller may find the burden of maintaining such a Wizard-of-Oz facade too much for him. With only one or two people who can be admitted into the secret world of his deception, he lives on the brink of exposure every minute. And those who are “in” on the secrets are a Damoclean blade over his head that can not be eliminated until confession time. That time just might arrive, as it did with Margaret Fox, who, as the last surviving sister of the team who started the whole spiritualism thing going many years back, confessed all to a world who largely chose to ignore her when she finally told the truth.

  All the above is said with the assumption that Geller is not the psychic superstar he claims he is. This writer is convinced that Geller is a clever magician, nothing more—and certainly nothing less. This opinion is not the result of a previously set mind; it is, rather, a conclusion arrived at after two years of close observation and careful analysis. My first contact with Uri, at Time Magazine, showed me a perfectly transparent sleight-of-hand performance. Reynolds and I were watching a conjuror, and we knew it. But we were not ready to say that supernormal phenomena were not possible from him on other occasions. It took a lot of data, and much travel and work, to determine to my satisfaction that Uri’s pattern of deception was unmistakable. Clever, yes. Psychic, no.

  Magic, in one definition that I prefer, is “an attempt by Man to control Nature by means of spells and incantations.” By that definition, I am certainly not a magician. But I am a conjuror, “one who gives the impression of performing acts of magic by using deception.” And I’m proud of my profession. I am even jealous of it and resent any prostitution of the art. In my view, Geller brings disgrace to the craft I practice. Worse than that, he warps the thinking of a young generation of forming minds. And that is unforgivable.

  This book is partly in the form of an annotated anthology. Two reasons will become evident to the reader. First, the public view of Geller has been arrived at mainly from press and television accounts and demonstrations. To show the actual facts behind the stories and performances is to write off much of the so-called evidence for his super-powers. Second, since I have been reminded frequently by detractors that I have no academic or scientific standing from which I can properly attack Geller, I will allow those of much firmer grounding to relate their stories and attempt to demonstrate that most of their observations are useless when they are confronted with a clever performer who can beguile them into accepting his conditions and interpretations.

  I shall not concern myself very much with the vast amount of silly UFO-divine-origin-save-the-world verbiage which Dr. Andrija Puharich (who “discovered” Geller) throws about when asked for comments on any subject. I hardly think anyone takes Puharich seriously, or believes in the planet Hoova, the spacecraft Spectra, or the computer “Rhombus 4-D.” When Puharich gets into the story of his meeting with the Egyptian god Horus, the mind reels. What I am concerned with is the series of purported miracles that Geller has performed, from bending house keys to teleporting himself instantaneously to Brazil. A huge amount of evidence will be brought from behind the scenery that the superpsychic has set up. And I only ask that my readers will consider carefully the new picture that we will see develop here.

  There are a number of methods by which the world has allowed itself to be led down this particular garden path. Some of these are contrived by the perpetrators of the myth and others are simply facts of our way of life and business. For example, the press is inclined to ignore “non-stories.” By a “non-story” I mean an account which does not present a novel, exciting, or mysterious aspect to the reader. No editor in his right mind would run a story saying that Santa Claus does not exist. But every editor would buy a story proving that the old fellow is a real person. Similarly, when stories on Geller show up on editorial desks and are found to be negative toward the wonderful world of things-that-go bump-in-the-night, they are either quietly discarded or sent back for revision into a more palatable (and salable) form. My investigations have shown this to be very much the case. As an example:

  Stanford Research Institute (SRI) managed to talk themselves into some fancy money ($80,000) to build an “ESP Teaching Machine” which was designed to increase the ability of a “sensitive” to perform feats of telepathy. When the results of the experiments with the machine were recorded manually, they appeared to be successful; when, finally, a computerized system of recording was connected up, the results dropped back to chance. Once again, the law of averages was vindicated. But had this kind of “machine” experiment been thought of before? Yes, it had. In 1966, Dr. C. E. M. Hansel referred to it in the conclusion of his book ESP: A Scientific Evaluation:

  A great deal of time, effort and money has been expended but an acceptable demonstration of the existence of extrasensory perception has not been given. Critics have themselves been criticized for making the conditions of a satisfactory demonstration impossible to obtain. An acceptable model for future research with which the argument could rapidly be settled one way or the other has now been made available by the investigators at the United States Air Force Research laboratories. If 12 months’ research on VERITAC can establish the existence of ESP, the past research will not have been in vain. If ESP is not established, much further effort could be spared and the energies of many young scientists could be directed to more worthwhile research.

  The book was published before the VERITAC experiments had been run. Again, to most investigators’ expectation, the law of averages triumphed. But such tests are not too popular with parapsychologists. To them, the experiments “prove nothing,” and they set out once more to pursue the Grail of ESP.

  Incorrect accounts are responsible for a great deal of the misinformation that gets picked up and reprinted. A
t the urging of enthusiastic editors, reporters making small semantic changes and liberal applications of hyperbole will transform an account from an accurate description into an impossible enigma. Descriptions of conjuring performances, particularly, always fail to note that the performer did such innocent-appearing things as blowing his nose or perhaps leaving the room to attend a “call of nature.” These are too common to seem worth noting, but may be just what is necessary to accomplish the miracle subsequently described as having taken place under tight control circumstances. Observers and recorders cannot really be blamed for omitting these details; but they are at fault for assuming they have accurately reported everything that might bear upon the matter, having no expertise to support that assumption. One can imagine a person unfamiliar with surgical procedures describing carefully an operation and failing to note that the surgeon washed his hands and sterilized the instruments!

  Few of the Geller experiments, especially the famous tests at SRI in which Geller performed apparent miracles of ESP, include in their reports the fact that one Shipi Shtrang, once claimed by Geller as his cousin and his brother, was present. It is significant, you may agree, that when Geller performed the subsequent tests at SRI and failed to function clairvoyantly with their one hundred sealed envelopes (the tests were discontinued when the psychologists suspected foul play) Shipi was not present. But Shipi was present when the cable car stopped in Germany in 1971; and again, in 1972, when a full-grown Labrador retriever was “teleported” in the wink of an eye, Shipi was the only witness. But to the believer, such things are thought to be inconvenient coincidences—nothing more. I know better.

  Psychics, those who claim to be able to read minds, to move objects at a distance by “mind power,” and to do other “supernatural” things, seem to be more than just gifted people. They also have a very special set of rules by which they operate, and by which they insist on being judged. The “negative success” business is just one special rule. It means that when you win, you win; and when you lose, you win. It will be referred to in Chapter 10, when we discuss Edgar Mitchell. Psychics cannot function when nonbelievers are present, either. Even the presence of a skeptic dooms their experiments to failure, and causes them great distress. By means of such rules, I could safely claim to be the greatest conjuror in history, being able to change myself into an inkwell instantly. Of course, if skeptics were present—

  Thus, Geller will not operate with magicians around (except when he doesn’t divine that they are there, as in the Time Magazine matter and on several other occasions here and in England, or when he is satisfied they are incompetent), and he must be catered to carefully lest he refuse to try tests or throw a temper tantrum. Geller also has, to use his terminology, the option of “passing” on any test he doesn’t “feel for.” He insists that he be able to refuse any experiment or set of “rules.” I do wish that I had that rule written into my book. It would be most convenient.

  But the most important fact that I have been trying to get across is this:

  No matter how well-educated, alert, well-meaning, or astute men of science are, they are certainly no match for a competent magician—fooling people is his stock-in-trade. The only persons the conjuror has difficulty with are the feeble-minded, since they are incapable of following the carefully calculated sensory and psychological cues that make his deceptions possible. Wherever there is any possibility of human intervention, in the form of chicanery, being an element in any experimental process, an experienced conjuror must be called in. And not just any conjuror, but one whose specialty is just that particular brand of chicanery. A common error among laymen is that one who possesses some magical trick apparatus, or who knows a few sleights, is a magician. That is like saying that a man who owns a scalpel and knows where the brain is located is a neurosurgeon.

  But scientists are loath to consult magicians. When I called the offices of a science magazine while in London last year to offer my services to them as a consultant on the Geller matter, I was loftily informed that they did not accept papers from those without academic standing in the field concerned. If that is the case, I would suggest that they no longer accept any papers on parapsychology, since it is not a science. A science has a repeatable set of experiments to prove its hypotheses; in the business of parapsychology, there are no such experiments.

  Is it possible that, when magicians show up, purported miracles suddenly vanish in the dawn of revelation? Could it be that grant money and government funding are abruptly withdrawn when chicanery is exposed? I might point out that in a set of experiments some years back at a prominent parapsychology laboratory in New York, I injected myself into some proceedings involving a little girl who was able to see while wearing a blindfold, and within an hour the weeks of experimentation were terminated and the report to a scientific journal closed with the comment: “It was found useful to have a professional magician as a consultant.” I was asked to visit Maimonides Parapsychology Laboratory recently, to look over the experimental conditions for a Geller test series. And when Geller saw the final setup, he suddenly lost interest in being tested. Even while the Stanford Research Institute was involved in testing the Israeli Wonder, I wrote, offering my services, and have never received even the courtesy of a reply. Perhaps they heard about Maimonides.

  I opened this introductory chapter saying that this book is not a destructive one; it is not, despite the fact that it attempts to bring a myth to an end. I mean to be as constructive as I can be in suggesting that vast sums of money and countless man-hours can be saved by a careful consideration of the observations within these pages. Some of the revelations to be made are astonishing because they tell the layman what he suspected all along. Some facts are going to surprise with their deceptively simple patterns. The naiveté of learned men in all parts of the world may give you cause to wonder.

  As an illustration of the last statement, consider that one of the most facile brains in the field of literature was that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His masterpiece, Sherlock Holmes, will live forever as an example of a carefully constructed character who seemed to almost come to life because of his detailed delineation by Doyle. Yet this same author, knighted and otherwise honored many times over for his cerebral and imaginative creation, wrote these words in 1922: “I would warn the critic, however, not to be led away by the sophistry that because some professional trickster, apt at the game of deception, can produce a somewhat similar effect, therefore the originals were produced in the same way. There are few realities which cannot be imitated, and the ancient argument that because conjurors who on their own prepared plates or stages can produce certain results, therefore similar results obtained by untrained people under natural conditions are also false, is surely discounted by the intelligent public.”

  He was referring to photographs produced by two girls who told him there were fairies in their garden. And he believed them!

  It becomes increasingly obvious to me that there are many persons who, like Sir Arthur, wish very much to believe, and will go to such extreme lengths to support their belief that they deny all logic and common sense; they cannot reason any longer. They begin to invent all sorts of rationalizations for paradoxes they see before them. No fact is too persistent not to be ignored or ridiculed. No amount of failure or fraud is enough to cause them to halt their eager rush to acceptance of the irrational.

  We are taught in philosophy a principle known as Occam’s razor. Very briefly, it says that, if a question or a problem has two answers, one of which is exceedingly complex and requires us to rewrite all our carefully reasoned laws of logic, the other of which is simple, direct and to the point, the latter is probably the correct solution, as long as both answer the problem equally well. To accept Geller and his “miracles” requires just such a rejection of logic and science, while the explanation that I expound solves the question and has ample proof, as will be seen in these pages.

  Generations of exposure to the so-called “psychic marvels” of this worl
d have allowed us to be talked into certain beliefs that have become firm rules by which it is thought psychics must be judged. Why this should be so, I cannot fathom. But it has become part of the folklore to accept these four assumptions and apply them to psychics:

  1. No real psychic can produce phenomena upon command or on a regular basis. Thus the performer who can consistently turn out effects that defy explanation by ordinary means is considered a fraud, and the one who “hits and misses” or who has periods of impotency is judged to be the real goods.

  2. Cheating is a compulsion with the psychic, something that he feels he must do if given the opportunity. But he is to be forgiven for this, since he cannot resist the feeling.

  3. Unless the detractor is able to explain away all the phenomena exhibited by the psychic as done by ordinary means, he has failed to prove his case. Similarly, those who have been exposed as cheats or who have confessed are still assumed to have a margin of real powers that they have been unable to organize effectively.

  4. Psychics cannot be expected to produce results when persons of negative attitude are present, nor when controlled so as to inhibit their sense of trusting and being trusted.

  To summarize: Psychics exhibit spontaneous, unpredictable phenomena in addition to common tricks that they cannot help using. This small percentage of genuine events cannot be produced except under harmonious conditions and serves as proof of their powers.