by James Randi
And note that the drawing had been kicking around for at least half an hour.
Geller then went through the usual heavy histrionics to develop the drawing, and Barbara did her best concentrating. When he finished, she declared it to be a “hit.” Applause.
Barbara: “And it’s not the easiest drawing. It’s in three envelopes, and we said nobody has touched this but I. [At this point, the original drawing is shown to the audience, with many oohs and aahs.] As I say, I don’t believe—
If it is a trick...It’s a fan—I—can’t possibly imagine—The envelope has not been touched, three envelopes in the book, I did the drawing in front of our executive producer, who is standing there, who is the only one who saw me do it and there it is...”
Uri: “I do this as well under very controlled conditions.”
Now we have three envelopes! Where did the third one come from? May I suggest that it was the idea of Geller or one of his cohorts (Shipi was there, too) to put the additional envelope into play? If so, it is an ideal opportunity to either switch the original out, or, if this has already been done, to switch it back in again. It begins to develop that no one really knows just what happened to the drawing in this period! And again Barbara has repeated that no one has touched it but herself!
I’m amused to hear Uri’s statement about “very controlled conditions.” Apparently he doesn’t consider these conditions to be very controlled...
To continue:
Barbara: “When you say that you’ve been tested under scientific scrutiny, how is that done?”
Uri: “Well, for instance, what I did with you, for instance, then, I’m not, for instance, I’m not at all at the Institute when they do the drawing.”
Barbara: “At Stanford Institute were you alone in a sealed room?”
Uri: “Exactly. Yes. And then they have a hundred drawings and they are all sealed up, and actually nobody knows which drawing they pick out. So the experimenter himself doesn’t know what’s in the envelope.”
Come on, Geller! You failed to mention a very important point here. When you did those tests at SRI, you failed them 100 percent—because they were designed and conducted by a real scientist, Dr. Charles Rebert!
Barbara mentioned Geller in her discussion on the next day’s program:
Barbara: “He said, ‘Look, I’m picking up certain things from you.’ And I will tell you what some of them are, and I will come back and tell you if any of these turns out. A long yellow dress—which I don’t own—a new house, something political—people talking about you politically, the number 27, the month April, and a man—and he described the man, and a lost ring. None of these has any meaning to me.”
No, they don’t, Ms. Walters. And if you were to come upon just one yellow dress, or a number 27, or anything unusual in April, you’d be apt to think Geller was a wonder. But as it is, he has made seven predictions. Are you liable to do another show on how none of these prognostications turned out to be true? Of course not—and Geller knows it.
My opportunity to convince Barbara Walters of Geller’s tricks came a few months later when I appeared on “Not for Women Only” in the excellent company of Doug Henning, star of Broadway’s “The Magic Show,” and Mark Wilson, prominent American magician. The program was on “Magic and Magicians.”
When it came time to test my powers of “telepathy,” Barbara made this statement: “Just before the program, I did a drawing. I put it in three envelopes in this book. We have not had this envelope out of our sight. Randi has in no way been close to it. The closest you’ve been to it, to my knowledge, is right now. Reproduce it.”
Randi: “Would you put it back in the book. I want to be sure it’s under control.”
Now Ms. Walters’s statement is totally true. There are no mistakes here. You have my word on it. I had to do it the hard way, but I produced a drawing of house with a little girl standing inside, a chimney, smoke coming therefrom, and a doorway. Miss Walters’s drawing was the same, except that her little girl was outside the house.
On the same program, I bent her key—on-camera, while she held it in her own hand—to precisely the same angle that Geller had bent another identical key. The two keys were compared carefully. And I also made her watch advance an hour as she held it.
After the show, Barbara expressed her surprise and disillusion. She said that she had based the whole past year of her life on the reality of Geller’s tricks. But one thing struck me very hard: Barbara Walters didn’t take insult from my performance, as many people have done.
She’s a real lady.
I noted that when Barbara interviewed Geller on the “Today Show” later, she was a mite cold—and Geller didn’t feel like bending or telepathizing. Isn’t that surprising!
GELLER IN ENGLAND
The six witnesses had given damning evidence against the defendant. It looked pretty bad for him; each had seen the crime committed. He stepped before the judge, outraged. “But your honor, how can you possibly believe these six rascals who saw me do it, when I can produce a hundred who didn’t?”
In November 1973, while Geller was very much in the news in England, columnist Richard Herd of the Daily Mail called conjuror Billy McComb and asked him to visit and assess the Geller performance disguised as a reporter. They paused at a pub across from Geller’s hotel; and, while Herd stayed behind sampling the local brew, Billy and a Mail photographer intruded upon an interview Geller was already involved in, in his room, with a woman reporter from the Daily Telegraph.
Billy professed total ignorance about the appropriate procedure, and Geller was quite annoyed with him. Commenting that no one had invited Billy, Geller tried his best to ignore him. But Billy was right in on the action.
“Geller rubbed and rubbed at a fork that I’d brought along from the pub,” McComb reports. “He rolled it about to make it appear as if it was getting soft, but nothing happened until the photographer began to reload film. Geller quickly brought the fork down beside him, and it was then lifted up under cover of his hand, and shown to be bent.” The preliminary photos had already been taken, and now those the photographer got showed the bend. “He seemed to make a ‘move’ every time the reporter looked down to write her notes.”
For Billy, Geller tried and tried with no success—until he suddenly stood up, at which time Billy saw him depress the fork on the arm of the chair.
Geller acted quite thrilled to discover the bend in the fork, and threw it on the bed, exclaiming, “Look! It’s still bending!”
Billy’s reply to this was a succinct “No, I don’t feel so,” sad thereafter Geller was less than cordial, so Billy took his leave.
McComb returned to the waiting reporter across the street and made his assessment. “The man’s a fake,” he said to Herd.
When David Berglas, the well-known British mentalist, first met Geller in London, Uri was all prepared for the encounter—or so he thought.
Geller walked up to Berglas, took his hand in his most sincere manner, and, looking into his eyes, soulfully declared, “David, you will find that I’m genuine. I don’t use a radio in my tooth, chemicals on my hands, laser beams, magnets, or special belt buckles to do these things.” Then he turned abruptly and walked away.
Berglas was nonplussed. Turning to those about him, he exclaimed, “Come to think of it, neither do I”
How Geller can assume that the top-flight professionals are unaware of his methods is hard to understand. Perhaps it is because so many of the amateurs in the field have fallen for his tricks. In Atlanta, Georgia, for example, a member of a prominent conjurors organization gave the Gellerites a two-page endorsement of his feats after being easily bamboozled in the dressing room after a television show. The parent body, as well as other prominent members of the society, were appalled at the member’s action.
Berglas also discovered an interesting addition to the act that Geller used in both Manchester and Birmingham. Feeling that he could get away with almost anything in England, in each
city Geller had performed a trick on television with a pile of “borrowed” watches. Shown in extreme television close-up, a watch was seen to be racing ahead visibly at hundreds of times a normal rate! Berglas investigated, and found that, in each case, after the program the super-watch was no longer to be found among the pile of watches used. When he told the producers that this watch had not been added to the pile, they admitted that this was certainly possible under the loose conditions that prevailed. From a professional standpoint, Geller left himself open to being caught outright in these cases, but evidently didn’t figure on David Berglas being present.
One episode in England had everyone guessing. When Don Coolican, feature reporter for the London Daily Express, looked ii.to the Geller matter, he thought he should pursue the possibility of a chemical being used to soften the keys and nails. To this end, he consulted Dr. Philip Carter and Ian Burgess of St. Dunstan’s College. These gentlemen helped him produce a chemical mixture that he presumed would soften metals; he claimed in an article in the Express that it did just that “in seconds.” So it seemed there was this possibility for the Israeli wonder’s metal-bending feats. A short time later, Coolican again appeared in print to retract his chemical explanation. He’d traveled to Copenhagen to test Geller, and Uri had performed after washing his hands! This disproved any chemical explanation.
The chemical explanation doesn’t need to be disproved. There is simply no compound that will work the way Coolican claimed, and I defy him to produce such a substance. Further, when Berglas questioned him in some puzzlement about his contradictions, Coolican told all.
After the publication of the first Coolican article, Yasha Katz, Uri’s manager, had approached the Express management threatening all kinds of actions if a retraction was not printed. The editor called Coolican, and instructed him to correct the situation. Coolican complied. So we have here an incorrect solution to a simple conjuring trick, followed by a forced retraction of the wrong conclusion. I trust the reader follows that.
David Berglas has a response to all this nonsense. He has offered the fine sum of £5,000 ($11,300 U.S.) to any psychic who can claim it. He will gladly outline his conditions upon request. His money has never been safer.
England had fallen so hard for the Geller farce in 1970 that the perpetrator was taking a lot of chances. On one occasion, he confidently predicted to Daniela Bravinsky, secretary to a popular English television personality, that she would have a baby girl in three days time. She had the baby, all right—a boy, a month later. Determining that the lady was expectant was all that Uri had done. And just about anyone can do that, at that stage! But what if he’d been right? The press would have trumpeted it to the world. As it was, no attention was directed to the prediction.
My visit to Britain in 1975 provided me with an opportunity to quench another Geller claim to authenticity.Geller has repeatedly ranted about how he has been “approved” by scientists. To quote him on a television appearance in the United States: “Look, if the magicians think they can do these things, let them go and do it for the scientists, in a laboratory! Just like I did!” Okay, Uri, abandon that as a valid argument. It’s been done.
On July 11,1 was privileged to do a demonstration before a group of prominent scientists at the Biophysical Laboratory of King’s College, London. One of their bright young men, Farooq Hussain, had been introduced to me by Dr. Joe Hanlon of New Scientist magazine, and Farooq had arranged to get together a committee that consisted of Dr. Maurice Wilkins, Nobel Prize winner for his work in discovering the DNA molecule structure; Dr. Christopher Evans, of the National Physical Laboratory and author of Cults of Unreason; David Davies, editor of Nature magazine; Roger Woodham, also of Nature magazine; Ted Richards, Ph.D.; and Farooq Hussain. These men, in fields ranging from biophysics to psychology, were all sober, intelligent observers of considerable prestige. Many more had wanted to attend, but the audience had to be kept down, due to limited space. They supplied a collection of cutlery, a pair of Geiger counters, and some keys. We gathered about the table and began the show.
I asked Dr. Wilkins to hold one of the spoons (which they had supplied) at each end, horizontally. I grasped it at the center, between my thumb and forefinger. I slowly and gently began rocking it up and down. There was a perceptible plasticity to the spoon as it began deforming. Inside of thirty seconds, it was bending up and down at about 45 degrees each way. Suddenly there was a grinding, crackling sound and the spoon parted into two pieces.
If only I’d had a camera there to register the expression on Dr. Wilkins’s face! Then he broke out in a wide smile.
I quickly followed this up with some key-bending, made the Geiger counter cluck like a mad thing as if I were radioactive in some way, and made a compass needle deflect by some 15 degrees while I stood six feet from it. All in all, it was a replication of some of the outstanding tests Geller did in British labs for far less critical audiences of scientific men.
A couple of the group were now called away to another meeting, to which they were already half an hour late. They promised to return, and meanwhile I mentioned the scientist J. C. F. Zollner and his tests (see Chapter 17) of a century ago, wherein Henry Slade, a medium, had caused knots to appear in a controlled length of cord.One of the committee found a piece of string and, searching in a desk drawer, a small glass tube. He poked the string inside and marked the tube with a secret design. Slowly I passed my hand over the tube. The man nearest then fished out the string. There was a knot in the middle of it. Some amazed looks were exchanged.
Later, in Dr. Wilkins’s office upstairs, I asked one member of the committee to choose any word from any page of a book he himself decided upon from the office shelf. He opened the book only after I was across the room, my back to the wall. After he decided on the word he wanted, he closed the book and held on to it. I took a piece of paper from the desk and, in his full view, wrote out a word. It was “intended”—the exact word he’d only looked at! Nothing had been written, sealed in an envelope, or any such other thing. He had selected the book from among hundreds on the shelves, and I had only just met the man an hour before.
To complete my gamut of Gellerisms, I caused a couple of borrowed watches to advance several hours while held in the hands of their owners; then bent several short, thick cabinet keys held by Professor Wilkins’s dazzled secretary.
I refer the reader to the Appendix at the back of this book. It contains a statement by the committee mentioned above that should put to rest once and for all the “authentication” that Geller claims from men of science. If I could perform his “miracles” for these men—who are sober, observant, well- educated, and intelligent—why couldn’t Geller?
We’re both good at chicanery.
One statement by Dr. Wilkins particularly interested me. He and the others had observed a series of phenomena for which they had no immediate logical solutions. Dr. Wilkins said to me: “I’m in a quandary. You’ve told us that what you did was accomplished by trickery. But I don’t know whether to believe you or to believe in you!” Of course he was speaking in jest, yet the message was clear: What he had just witnessed was outside his experience as a scientist, yet he did not jump to the conclusion that the committee had just seen supernatural occurrences. As he and the others have said in their letter (in the Appendix), such demonstrations must be attended by a qualified member of the conjuring profession or the value of them as tests is nil. What a refreshing attitude, in view of the outrageous conclusion-jumping done by other British scientists!
Certain prominent American scientists have said, concerning the criticisms of their acceptance of Geller, that their detractors are either calling them liars or fools. Neither is correct, so far as I personally am concerned. I call them simply “unqualified”—in this particular field—to pass judgment on such matters.
Of all the persons who have ever sat in judgment of a possibly “paranormal” event, Dr. Maurice Wilkins is certainly most prominent and qualified. As codiscoverer of o
ne of the most astonishing conceptions in science—the DNA molecule—Dr. Wilkins is outstanding in his field of biophysics. And biophysics is precisely the specialty that should be involved in attempting to prove whether there is anything to this psychokinesis matter. Persons whose callings range from mathematics to laser physics are, instead, studying the purported wonders.
While Geller and Shtrang laugh!
The Geller matter was well covered in Britain by one of the nation’s highly specialized newspapers, the weekly Psychic News. The main thrust of this paper at present is the support of spiritualism and psychic healing, and the advertisements that fill its pages every week are mainly concerned with weaning believers from one “church” to the other. In order to show how easily a conjuror could launch a career as a miracle-worker from appearing in such a publication, I set out to get a write-up as the real thing myself.
Dr. Joe Hanlon suggested that a Mr. Peter Jones1 would be most likely to interview me, and I felt that it would be necessary to prepare the ground a bit. To that end, I had Hanlon call Jones and suggest that I’d bent a few keys for him in a manner he could not fathom (I had) and that he was too busy with other matters at New Scientist magazine to cover the new wonder-worker. Jones was given my number and my other name, Zwinge.