 ESP Proof at Last? The following are items from the Waldorf Watch "news" page discussing the claimed discovery of solid evidence for the existence of extrasensory perception. This could change everything. If ESP is real, and if we equate it with clairvoyance, then... With a few exceptions, the items run in chronological order, oldest first, newest last. I have done some light editing when moving the items here. (Because these news items appeared on different days, there is a certain amount of overlap and repetition among them. Please be forbearing — or leap ahead when a repetition tries your patience.) — Roger Rawlings
 I.
• ◊ • Waldorf Watch Response: It will be interesting to follow this story. From time to time, one researcher or another has claimed to find firm evidence for the existence of ESP, clairvoyance, or some other psychic power. Great excitement developed, for instance, when a researcher at Duke University insisted — over a sustained period of time, and on the basis of many experiments — that he had proof for the existence of various psychic powers. But in that case and all others, the evidence eventually crumbled — the findings could not be confirmed and, in many instances, they were clearly disproved. [See "Clairvoyance".] Sometimes erroneous claims about psychic powers result from intentional fraud. In other instances, well-meaning researchers have run poorly designed experiments that were overturned when more rigorous trials were made. Perhaps now, for the first time, verifiable evidence for ESP has been produced. The odds are against it, however. If Dr. Bem has found anything, it is at most a latent psychic capacity. This may open the possibility that psychic powers could be developed to produce the refined capacity — “exact clairvoyance” — that Rudolf Steiner claimed to possess. But a chasm yawns between Bem’s supposed results and Steiner’s claim. The best the volunteers in Bem’s study could attain was 53% accuracy (that is, out of 100 trials, they got 53 right). Thus, they were wrong nearly as often as they were right — and the results hover close to pure chance (50%). Steiner claimed to achieve virtually 100% accuracy — his clairvoyance was “exact,” he said [see “Exactly”]. But there is no evidence that such accuracy is possible, and indeed Steiner’s own record was demonstrably poor. He made many blatant errors; he was fell far short of his own standard. [See, e.g., “Steiner’s Blunders”, “Steiner’s ‘Science’”, “Millennium”, and “Steiner’s Illogic”.] All of this is relevant to Waldorf schools because Rudolf Steiner’s teachings depend on his claimed power of clairvoyance, and Waldorf education is built upon Steiner's teachings. If clairvoyance does not exist, there is no basis for Steiner’s teachings. In that case, Anthroposophy goes up in smoke, taking with it the rationale for Waldorf schooling. So stay tuned. This story may take years to play out (examining evidence, analyzing conclusions, and running tests that confirm or disprove Bem's findings will probably be time-consuming), but in the end the truth will be established. II. Here is the first of what will probably be a long series of follow-up reports concerning the claim that strong evidence for the existence of ESP (extrasensory perception) has been found. • ◊ •
III.
• ◊ • Waldorf Watch Response: ◊ The connection between eroticism and ESP may startle mystics. Bem tried to heighten the motivation of his participants by having his computer display pinups. Eager for this cheesecake, the participants seem to have done better than if they had merely guessed which screen would display a neutral image. But linking psychic powers to sexual excitement is not at all the sort of thing Rudolf Steiner would have endorsed or considered a true use of clairvoyance. Thus, it is certainly questionable whether Bem's work supports Steiner's. ◊ Dr. Bem relied on a computer to randomly decide which screen would display the cheesecake. Having done some computer programming myself (at a very low level, I hasten to add), I think I can confidently say that computers cannot produce truly random results — or, at least, producing such results is extremely difficult and rare. [2] Every computer follows the logic of its circuitry and the logic of the program it runs. A typical “randomizing” program will produce results that are very nearly random — so nearly random that we would be very hard-pressed to correctly deduce its results. [3] But that’s the point. If the results are not truly random, then a highly motivated individual might be able to rapidly, unconsciously, logically deduce the results. If the choice is between just two possibilities (the exciting picture will appear on screen A or screen B), the task is greatly simplified. Thus, I suspect that perfectly ordinary mental processes — making quick logical leaps — could lead to the 53% success rate reported by Bem. ESP would not be required. IV. The results of experiments Dr. Bem conducted have yet to be confirmed or disproved by other scientists — the necessary step for the scientific method to play out. At least two scientists, Richard Wiseman and Stuart Ritchie, have announced their intention to repeat Bem's experiments. As is necessary, they are on the alert for possible errors in Bem's approach, and they think they may have already found one. (To the probable disappointment of some readers and to the relief of others, the following — written by Richard Wiseman — refers to a different experiment than the one involving pinups.) • ◊ •
V. An article in THE NEW YORK TIMES indicates that several attempts have been made to reproduce Bem's results, and they have failed to do so. • ◊ •
• ◊ • Waldorf Watch Response: On the other hand, the failure to replicate and thus confirm Bem's findings is a serious matter. Unless other scientists are able to confirm the work done by Bem — getting the same or even more dramatic results — Bem's claims will ultimately be dismissed. A scientific hypothesis is accepted only if substantial, reproducible evidence is accumulated to support it. So far, this has not happened in this case. VI. & VII. • ◊ •
• ◊ • Waldorf Watch Response: Discussions of such things as statistical analysis can be awfully boring. But in a case like this, they may be crucial. Bem's critics are charging that his methods were flawed and thus his results are meaningless. This is a crucial (if highly technical) concern. ◊ VIII. The following fleshes out some details of Bem's work. This article raises the possibility that Bem may have been measuring something we should label as clairvoyance, and it indicates that one group of volunteers attained greater accuracy than the 53% reported previously. On the other hand, this article removes the results farther from the sphere Rudolf Steiner would have affirmed: The images identified as pinups in some earlier reports are described here as far more sexually explicit. The article also adds to the list of potential flaws in Bem's work. • ◊ •
IX.
• ◊ • Waldorf Watch Response: A columnist at THE HUFFINGTON POST wants to start a discussion of ESP. This is relevant to Waldorf education, because Rudolf Steiner claimed to be clairvoyant, virtually all his teachings are based on this claimed power, and Waldorf teachers such as Eugene Schwartz assert that all Waldorf teachers should use clairvoyance (and indeed they use this “power” in getting to “know” their students). This discussion may be interesting, but real information about the existence or nonexistence of ESP will come from other quarters — i.e., investigators scrupulously applying the scientific method. Believers in the occult usually dismiss such investigators. They often claim that ESP, etc., can only be discovered when scientists and indeed cool rationality are absent from the room. This in itself tells us a lot. (Note, by the way, that Rudolf Steiner claimed to be a scientist, and he said that ordinary science would validate his "spiritual science," so this sort of objection becomes dicey for his followers. This doesn't stop them from resorting to it, however.) As always, watch for slippery non-logic used by true-believers. For instance, do we really have no proof for the existence of love? I'd say, using a round number, that we have about umpteen zillion proofs of love each day. X.
• ◊ • Unfortunately, the full text of this article in SCIENCE is available only to subscribers. The chief conclusions will appear elsewhere sooner or later, however, and I will report such conclusions here. XI.
• ◊ • Waldorf Watch Response: Actually, 53% doesn’t just look small, it is small. Consider. You would like to go skydiving, but you are scared. So you consult a clairvoyant who can see the future. He tells you sure, jump out of an airplane. “You can trust me,” he says. “I’m right 53% of the time.” I imagine you’d prefer a seer whose average is a bit better — 99%, perhaps, or higher still. Steiner claimed to be such a seer. He said he used “exact” clairvoyance, by which he presumably meant he attained something like 100% accuracy. Fortunately for him, much of what he claimed to “see” is unverifiable — we simply have to take his word (or not) on such matters as the existence of invisible bodies or the spiritual beings who knocked about on Old Saturn. But concerning some matters — statements Steiner made about observable conditions in the real universe — we are actually able to check, and Steiner’s record is quite poor. [See, e.g., “Steiner’s Blunders”.] The moral of this story? Keep your seat belt on. XII. Here are extended extracts from ‘Back to the Future: Parapsychology and the Bem Affair”, by James E. Alcock, SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, March/April 2011, pp. 31-39. Alcock is a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, Canada. Alcock goes into great detail. To some, his remarks will seem like nitpicking. But in fact he is doing what rational people must do — using his brain and the tools of logic and science to think things through. We must look closely and carefully, and analyze closely, if we are to comprehend the world around us. And the more remarkable any set of phenomena seems, the more we need to focus in, examining and analyzing scrupulously. As Carl Sagan once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." We might add that when "extraordinary evidence" is offered to us, we must check it out to be sure that it really is what it may initially seem to be. Is it truly extraordinary? And does it prove the extraordinary? Or have serious errors been made? Mystics will contend that both Bem and Alcock are off track, using laboratory procedures and cold logic in an effort to investigate the transcendent and magical. Surely the soft, hazy atmosphere of a seance, or an occult confab, or a Waldorf classroom, is more suited to such mysteries as ESP. But in fact the greatest magic humanity can employ is the power of our brains to penetrate appearances to discover the truth. With rational thought, we can pierce through illusions and fantasies, freeing ourselves from self-inflicted error. This "magic" is our greatest possession. We must cherish it, respect it, and use it with care. So please consider the following in as much detail as you can bear. But if you get bogged down, jump to the "Overall Evaluation" of the first experiment, and then leap to Alcock's final conclusions for all of the nine experiments, beginning with the words "Overall then...." (Then use the link I have provided to read Alcock's entire report when time and circumstances permit.) • ◊ •
 [R. R., 2011.] Psychic powers are supposed to penetrate the fog, maya, the veil of material illusion. But what if such powers are the very stuff of illusion? Dreams. Fantasies. Delusions. What if psychic powers are the product of our self-deception, feeding back into our self-deception, leading us ever deeper into falsehood?  [Paranormal Zone X.] • ◊ •
 [R. R., 2010.] Steiner claimed to possess "exact clairvoyance." [See "Exactly".] He described the higher spirit worlds, mankind's distant past, mankind's distant future — he made "clairvoyant" reports about any and all matters, reports taken as virtually unquestionable truth by his followers. Their faith is remarkable. Later. More from the "news" page:  XIII.
• ◊ • Waldorf Watch Response: Human knowledge is limited. The universe still holds many mysteries. Science is a process of discovery, not a set of final, unquestionable conclusions. As ignorant as the ancients seem to us today, we will appear fully as ignorant to our great-great-great-great grandchildren. Does ESP exist? No. At least, we have no firm evidence for its existence. Lots of people believe in it. The US government has spent wads of money trying to develop and use it for espionage. Cops call on psychics for help in murder investigations. People check their horoscopes in the newspaper. We kiss rabbits’ feet, look for four-leaf clovers, wear our lucky underpants... But what has come of such efforts? Nothing. Or, if not nothing, then next-to-nothing. (The US government stopped wasting its money on this stuff some time ago. At least, so I’ve read — and I have a hunch that it is true.) Hunches. We all have hunches. Are these reliable? How many people do you know who have hit the jackpot in a lottery playing hunches?* Some hunches work, or seem to work. If we accept the stories about hunches that worked, and disregard the zillions of stories about hunches that proved false, we might be impressed. Is there such a thing as ESP? Is there such a thing as clairvoyance? No one has yet proven it, and in fact the overwhelming weight of evidence is that, no, these things do not exist. Still, the universe is mysterious. Perhaps, someday... Why am I wasting our time here at Waldorf Watch on such ponderings? Because the entire Waldorf system is built on the assumption that clairvoyance exists and can be made reliable. Rudolf Steiner claimed to be clairvoyant, and so do many Waldorf teachers working today. Are they correct? Do at least some Waldorf teachers have astonishing psychic powers? If you send your children to a Waldorf school, you are gambling that the answer is yes. As of today (May 9, 2011), we have little or no reason to think that clairvoyance exists, that “exact” clairvoyance is possible, or that Steiner’s visions are true. Maybe this will change. But here are two suggestions: 1) Don’t hold your breath. 2) Don’t send you child to a Waldorf school unless you are firmly convinced that Steiner’s visions are true. [See “Clairvoyance”, “Exactly”, "The Waldorf Teacher's Consciousness", and “ESP”.] ◊ * What do we mean by “hunch”? Is a hunch a mysterious perception gained through psychic powers beyond the reach of science? Or is it a guess, a conclusion we leap to because our brains are wired to do so? We often have to make important decisions without waiting to gather evidence and carefully analyzing our findings. And it helps if we are sure that we have the right answer — i.e., we firmly "feel" or "intuit" it — without being paralyzed by indecision. In the wild, when being eyed by a hungry lion, several courses of action are possible, but you better decide quickly. For instance, you might have this intuition: "I bet I'll improve my life expectancy if I leave the immediate vicinity pretty soon." Being a hunch, this would pass through your brain in a millisecond — and your legs would already be pumping. Waiting to reason things out ("Hm. I see the lion is twitching her tail. What does that mean? Is she a friendly lion? Would she let me pet her?") is not the best policy under such circumstances. Reasoning things out is an important activity, but sometimes unconsidered certainty serves us better. Our brains are capable of reasoning and they are capable of hunches, and often we feel more sure of our hunches than of our logic. None of this proves anything supernatural. It merely proves that the tendency to have hunches has been built into us by our evolutionary history. XIV. A researcher not long ago published findings to gladden the hearts of Rudolf Steiner's followers and all other believers in clairvoyance. [See “The Waldorf Teachers’ Consciousness”.] Laboratory proof of ESP had been found! But, almost immediately, the researcher’s results began to collapse. Here is a follow-up, from the LOS ANGELES TIMES:
XV. Rudolf Steiner claimed to be clairvoyant. All of his occult teachings, summarized as the doctrines of Anthroposophy, derive from his claimed use of clairvoyance. If there is no such thing as real clairvoyance, then Anthroposophy has no validity. Waldorf education is rooted in Anthroposophy. The purpose of Waldorf education, as explained by Steiner, is to apply to children the fruits of Anthroposophical knowledge of human nature. [See, e.g., "Schools as Churches".] If there is no such thing as real clairvoyance, then there is no valid basis for Waldorf education. There is no such thing as real clairvoyance. At least, no real evidence for the existence of clairvoyance has ever been produced. [See "Clairvoyance".] From time to time, one researcher or another has come forward with supposed evidence for the existence of clairvoyance, but the evidence has always proven to be spurious. The real result has always been reconfirmation of the conclusion that there is no basis for belief in clairvoyance. This pattern is now repeating itself. In 2011, a respected researcher at Cornell University (New York, USA), Daryl Bem, reported experimental results indicating the existence of clairvoyance or extrasensory perception (ESP). If true, these results would bring joy to the hearts of Anthroposophists and advocates of Waldorf education. "See? Clairvoyance is real! Steiner's clairvoyance is plausible; it is proven! Anthroposophy is true! Waldorf education is valid!" But Bem's results were almost immediately shown to be extremely doubtful. His experiments seemed flawed and his results seemed false. [See "ESP".] As time has passed, the doubts about Bem's research have deepened and solidified. A consensus has grown that his work is essentially worthless. Now, the journal that published his research has published what amounts to a retraction. Bem did not produce any real evidence for the existence of psychic abilties. The following is from SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, Vol. 37 No. 2, March/April 2013:
• ◊ • In sum, once again, we have discovered that clairvoyance, or ESP, or precognition, or — more generally — psychic powers are a fantasy, nothing more. The implications for Anthroposophy and Waldorf education are devastating. Rudolf Steiner was not clairvoyant. No one is clairvoyant. Hence, there is no basis for Anthroposophy or for Waldorf education. MASSAGING THE MESSAGE As it turns out, Daryl Bem's positive results may have been bogus all along. Dem's use of math to buttress his claims was always sloppy, not to say fraudulent. To understand the following, you need to know that "p-hacking" is statistical hanky-panky. The term refers to manipulation of data to make results seem far stronger than they really are. "P" is probability; p-hacking is fudging math so that the results of an experiment seem to be probably, statistically speaking, true.
Not all massaging of results is fraudulent. Working through one's math, finding correct interpretations, is basic scientific practice. So where to draw the line between ethical and unethical math interpretation is a tricky business. But Daryl Bem seems to have gone over the line, by his own admission. The results of his ESP work may have been unreliable from the start.
Thomas Gilovich's book, HOW WE KNOW WHAT ISN'T SO (Free Press, 1993) rings true. Consider the chapter "Belief in ESP". Here is a summary. Gilovich gives several examples of the typical pattern that develops in parapsychological research: A researcher or team of researchers announces startling findings that seem to prove the existence of one or more psychic powers ("psi") such as clairvoyance. There is substantial media coverage, many people eager to believe in psi embrace the new findings, while skeptics scratch their heads and begin poring over the trumpeted proof. And gradually, the skeptics begin to find significant flaws in the research. Sometimes outright fraud is detected (e.g., G. S. Soal was found faking test results). More often, honest but significant errors are discovered — errors in methodology. The experiments turn out to have been done poorly, without adequate controls; bias was built into the experiments; the researchers fooled themselves (e.g., Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ unintentionally included tiny but crucial pointers in their experiments). The experiments wind up being debunked, the claimed proof evaporates, and paranormal phenomena retreat again into the realm of pure speculation. The very claim that parapsychology is a real discipline, a genuine science, is weak.
Parapsychology fails a fundamental scientific requirement, which is that results produced by one researcher must be confirmed by other researchers. This rarely happens in parapsychology. The results of psi experiments tend to be highly unreliable; often only the original researchers can produce them; and even those researchers may have great difficulty reproducing their own results. Parapsychologists often recognize the gravity of this problem for their "discipline": Adrian Parker, for instance, has said
And Irving Child has said
If psi phenomena are real, then experiments concerning them should be easy to confirm. But they aren't. Why? One defense offered by some self-described psychics is that the mere presence of a skeptic can cause psychic powers to shut down. If skeptical scientists try to confirm psi results, they inevitably fail, because their skepticism undermines their work. A skeptic produces bad vibes, s/he emits a negative spirit that destroys the ambiance needed for psychic phenomena. There is — just barely — a trace of plausibility in this defense, but it creates additional problems. Parapsychology cannot be a genuine science if it rules out skeptical inquiry. And the failure of a psi experiment when a skeptic is present does not prove that the experiment works when all skeptics are barred. Much more likely, such an experiment "works" only when a believer manipulates things just so, either consciously or unconsciously rigging the test. If psi researchers must have an uncritical attitude — perhaps even a reverent attitude, as Steiner prescribed — they may easily fail to exercise adequate intelligence and care, and they may fall victim to autosuggestion, believing what they want to believe, not seeing what actually occurs before their eyes. Despite the virtually complete lack of reliable evidence supporting the existence of any form of psychic power, large segments of the general population believe in clairvoyance and other forms of psi. "Seers" such as Sylvia Brown sell millions of books and make a very nice living, essentially battening on people's credulity. Gilovich says one reason so many people accept claims of psi is that the news media give extensive coverage to startling claims but then turn their attention elsewhere when the claims are disproved. He tells the story of Lee Fried, who staged an amazing demonstration of precognition. Fried gave the president of Duke University a sealed envelope that he said contained a prediction of a major news event that would occur within one week. A few days later, two 747 airliners collided, killing 583 people — and when the envelope was opened, it was found to contain an accurate description of this calamity. There was widespread press coverage of the amazing prediction, but generally the news media omitted one important fact.
Many newspapers that covered Fried's "prediction" omitted the detail that it was a trick, nothing more.
Gilovich suggests that the media are simply giving people what they want: tales of the strange and miraculous. The real question, he says, is why so many people have such a strong yearning for such things. Gilovich offers several reasons.
Belief in psi offers the possibility of breaking out of the limitations of our lives. Most people cling to various of superstitions that, consciously or otherwise, they hope may ease their passage through the world. Maybe buying a lottery ticket with your lucky number on it will bring you wealth; maybe you can ward off evil by repeating some special words or making certain gestures; maybe you can assure your health and longevity by swallowing a certain herb... We know that none of these measures is likely to work, but Gilovich argues that simultaneously many of us "know" that they do work or quite possibly may work. Many of us actually "find" evidence in our lives or the lives of our friends that psi is real. We fool ourselves, satisfying our desire to break free. "Strange" and "miraculous" things happen all the time.
Such events can have great emotional power — we are powerfully inclined to think that more than simple chance is involved. And yet, Gilovich points out, coincidences are far more common than people normally expect, and our typical overreaction to them may stem mainly from mathematical innocence.
We generally do not have a good, instinctive feel for statistics or for calculating odds. Most people are amazed to learn, for instance, than in a group as small as 23 people, there is a 50% chance that at least two people will have the same birthday; and if the group is expanded to 35 people, the odds rise to 85%. The "amazing" events in life are often quite ordinary occurrences that we haven't thought about enough. Strangers who discover they have the same birthday have learned nothing karmic; they share no mystic, supernatural bond; they have merely stumbled into a statistical commonplace. Some events are truly surprising, of course — as when you dial a wrong number and discover that you have reached a long-lost childhood friend whose current phone number is unknown to you. The odds against doing this are astronomical — but the event is not impossible, and its occurrence is not necessarily anything other than a very, very unlikely coincidence. Gilovich extends his analysis to other "miraculous" events that people tend to consider proof of psi. You have a dream about a car crash, and the next day your best friend dies in a car crash. Most people would be strongly inclined to call this a case of precognition. But is it? It may be just another coincidence — dreadful, tragic, terrible, but perhaps not so very mysterious. How many times have you dreamed of a car crash, and then — nothing; no one you know has a subsequent crash? If you take the first dream and the terrible death of your friend as proof of psi, shouldn't you consider all your other dreams as tending to disprove psi? At a minimum, you may be applying very different standards of judgment, being readily persuaded in one case but quite dismissive in a great number of other cases. Gilovich points out, also, that some seemingly amazing events have simple explanations that people tend to overlook. If you and your husband both begin thinking about a past occurrence that you had both forgotten for many years, couldn't there be an easy explanation — some reminder that popped up in a newspaper, or on TV, or in song heard over the radio? Both of you were reminded, perhaps without quite realizing it at the time, and later the memory of the distant, forgotten event surfaced for both of you. No miracle occurred; it was just the ordinary operation of memory, just normal cause and effect. Gilovich argues that we are inclined to believe in the supernatural, the psychic, the amazing, but this inclination may often lead us badly astray. Not everything that happens in life is easy to explain, but the lack of a clear explanation does not necessarily mean that a supernatural power or being is at work. Our very inclination to believe in the supernatural probably should be a warning to us, a reminder to slow down and think. Many "amazing" events can be explained fairly readily; some cannot; some may be so unlikely that they truly stun us. But such events provide little if any real evidence for the existence of psi phenomena. The jury is still out, and it may always be. The existence of psi phenomena cannot be absolutely ruled out — all that would be needed to prove the existence of at least some psi phenomena would be a single, clear, demonstrably true psychic occurrence. But so far, no parapsychological experiment has produced evidence strong enough to stand up to careful, rational scrutiny. We like for things to make sense. Our brains automatically try to sort out phenomena, discovering patterns in them — or imposing patterns on them. A world in which strange, random coincidences occur is distasteful to us. It is even frightening to us, violating our sense of what is proper. Large, strange coincidences do not make sense to us. But psi phenomena do not offer us a genuine solution — they, themselves, do not make real sense. Disliking a world of strange coincidences, we create for ourselves world of mystical wonders that, as far as anyone can honestly say, are figments of our imagination, constructs of our wishes. This is the antithesis of making clear-eyed, clear-minded sense. Acceptance of clairvoyance and other psi phenomena requires, in the end, faith. We believe, we do not know. Here is a message I posted at a discussion site Moreover, he stressed the need for gurus.
Here's how it works. You find a guru — oh, let's say, Rudolf Steiner. Strictly relying on him, you learn what you are supposed to believe. Then, using faith, you convince yourself to believe it. Then, using your "clairvoyance" (i.e., self-deception), you "perceive" the things that you believe in (thanks to your faith and your strict reliance on your guru). The above is not precisely the scientific method. But it is the Anthroposophical method. Anthroposophy is a religion (or, if you prefer, a faith). It is not a science.
AN ASIDE Many erroneous demonstrations of psychic powers result from innocent mistakes — researchers sincerely believe the results they report, and "seers" truly believe their amazing visions. But in many other cases, fraud is involved. Many "psychics" are impostors or magicians; they trick us for ulterior motives or simply for fun, for entertainment. Sometimes the line between conscious deceit and unconscious deceit becomes blurred. Some psychics deceive themselves as much as they deceive us. The Waldorf school I attended was taken over, briefly, by a "clairvoyant" who earned the allegiance of a large portion of the faculty. During one faculty meeting, he "demonstrated" his clairvoyance, evidently to everyone's satisfaction. [See "The Waldorf Scandal".] The obvious problem, however, is that magicians and tricksters demonstrate their amazing powers all the time. Usually, we cannot figure out how they perform their wonders. But this may merely mean that they are very, very good at their fakery. A true demonstration of clairvoyance needs to be far more convincing than an ordinary magic act, but so far none has been confirmed anywhere at anytime. Some pretenders never come clean, but some confess, sooner or later. The Amazing Kreskin straddled the line, pretending that some of his performances were genuinely occult, but admitting that many others were mere sleight of hand or the use of perfectly ordinary senses sharpened a bit above normal. And the Amazing Randi openly acknowledges that all of his stunts are merely magic tricks, even though they fully replicate the "true" psychic performances of various "real" psychics. We want to believe; we enjoy being fooled; we fool ourselves. This is the basis on which all magicians work, and it is the basis on which psychics and seers and mediums and clairvoyants work, consciously or not. They know how easily we can be fooled; they know how much, as some level, we even want to be fooled. When the "clairvoyant" demonstrated his powers to the teachers at my old Waldorf school, he was playing to an audience that wanted to believe. So they believed. Before falling for a "demonstration" of psychic powers, you might want to acquaint yourself with the mental processes that mystics and magicians manipulate to trick us, and the devices they use in their acts. See, for example, such books as Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinz-Condo, SLEIGHTS OF MIND — What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions (Henry Holt and Co., 2010). James Randi, FLIM-FLAM! — Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and Other Delusions (Prometheus Books, 1982). The Amazing Kreskin, HOW TO BE (a fake) KRESKIN — Mental Marvels, Feats and Stunts that You Can Do, from the World's Greatest Mentalist (St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1996). Marc Lemezma, MIND MAGIC — Extraordinary Tricks to Mystify, Baffle and Entertain (New Holland Publishers, 2003). Robert Mandelberg, EASY MIND-READING TRICKS (Puzzle Wright Press, 2005). Stephen Law, BELIEVING BULLSHIT — How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (Prometheus Books, 2011). Dr. Bem presumably would never fall for any of the tricks or deceptions revealed in such volumes. I do not accuse him of anything of the sort. But the rest of us need to rise a level of at least minimal sophistication. We should stop falling for what Steven Law, lecturer at the University of London, so elegantly terms bullshit. The excitement over Dr. Bem's work came and went during the early months of 2011. I am now reviewing this page late in the autumn of 2012. Dr. Bem seems to have fallen out of the news. If I am able, I will try to stay abreast of the story if it develops further in the future. Probably no one came closer to establishing the reality of psychic powers — such as ESP, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis — than Joseph Banks Rhine, who for many years ran a parapsychological laboratory at prestigious Duke University. Rhine published numerous books and articles in which he seemed to demonstrate quite clearly that psychic powers truly do exist. Unfortunately, most of Rhine's work was later debunked when critics found numerous errors in the procedures he and his colleagues employed. Indeed, there were charges of intentional deceit, although more generous critics suggested that Rhine was simply an unskilled scientist who allowed his wishes to override good sense. Rhine wanted to believe in psychic powers, so he did. He grasped at any shreds of evidence he could find — he made much of the occasional experiments that seemed to give positive results while ignoring all the experiments that gave clearly negative results. He fooled himself, in other words, while some members of his staff cheated and fudged the results they reported to him. Today, the work of Rhine’s lab is largely discredited, although believers in the occult sometimes still cite it. Here are some descriptions and analyses of Rhine and the excitement he briefly created:
From a supplementary note:
Reports of "real" psychic phenomena almost always end in the same way. The following is from December 17, 2015 (Vol. LXII, No. 20): She Was Houdini’s Greatest Challenge THE WITCH OF LIME STREET: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World by David Jaher Crown, 436 pp., $28.00 What is the greatest competition in American history? In boxing, you might single out Muhammad Ali against Joe Frazier, or perhaps Jack Dempsey against Gene Tunney. In chess, it has to be Bobby Fischer against Boris Spassky. In politics, it might be John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon, or perhaps Abraham Lincoln against Stephen Douglas. But for sheer human drama, there is a strong argument that all of these were topped by the pitched battle, both personal and intellectual, between Harry Houdini, the great debunker of self-proclaimed psychics, and Mina Crandon, the most successful psychic of the twentieth century. Featured repeatedly on the front pages of the nation’s leading newspapers, Crandon was Houdini’s hardest case and his greatest nemesis. And as it happens, the two were intensely attracted to each other. David Jaher’s stunning and brilliantly written account of the battle between the Great Houdini and the blond Witch of Lime Street illuminates a lost period in American history. Improbably, it also offers significant lessons about the formation of people’s beliefs and the sources of social divisions—scientific, political, or otherwise. Jaher helps to explain how and why the most highly educated people can diverge on fundamental matters, even when the evidence is altogether clear. In the 1920s, some of the world’s greatest thinkers were convinced that people could speak to the dead. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, the canonical detective, who could always see through fakery and artifice. Having lost a son to influenza at the very end of the Great War, Doyle was also a “convinced Spiritualist” who thought death “rather an unnecessary thing.” In his popular 1918 book, The New Revelation, he argued vigorously on behalf of spiritualism. His dedication: “To all the brave men and women, humble or learned, who have the moral courage during seventy years to face ridicule or worldly disadvantage in order to testify to an all-important truth.” Between 1919 and 1930, Doyle wrote twelve more books on the same subject. One of Doyle’s allies was the eminent British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, who did important work on the discharge of electricity, X rays, and radio signals. Lodge contended that he was in touch with Raymond, his dead son; he wrote a book about their communication and the science that explained it. President of the British Society for Psychical Research (originally led by Cambridge’s Henry Sidgwick, probably the greatest philosopher of the time), Lodge sought to make a serious study of the subject. Charles Richet, a professor at the Collège de France who had won the Nobel Prize in physiology, coined the term “ectoplasm” for the matter from which ghostly apparitions formed. Thomas Edison was no spiritualist, but he announced his intention to work on a mechanism to communicate with people who had crossed over.  Harry Houdini, about to be padlocked into a packing car and lowered into New York Harbor, 1914 [Granger Collection] The era’s most influential skeptic? Harry Houdini. Born Erich Weiss in Budapest, Houdini is now known as an escape artist, but he began his career as a magician and a medium. To make a living in hard times, he worked as “the celebrated Psychometric Clairvoyant,” with the power to communicate with “the Other Side.” While he proved a pretty convincing psychic, he discovered that he had a unique talent, even a kind of genius: escaping the apparently inescapable. Jaher writes:
Houdini’s talent had a lot to do with his extraordinary physical abilities. He was extremely strong, and he trained himself to use his toes the way most people use their fingers. But he also had a Sherlock Holmes–like capacity to engage in detective work. Caught in a trap, he had an ability to see, almost at a glance, the multiple steps that would enable him to find his way out. As Houdini’s fame grew, he maintained a skeptical but keen interest in spirit communication, intensified by his devastation at the death of his beloved mother (the love of his life). He and Doyle were good friends, and they had many discussions of the topic, with Houdini acknowledging his desire to be convinced that Doyle was right. But every medium he encountered was a fraud, and he became the world’s leading expert “on the tricks of phony psychics,” debunking some of the hardest cases. Edison, for example, believed that one famous “mentalist,” named Bert Reiss, was in fact clairvoyant. Houdini easily demonstrated that he was a fake. In the 1920s, as now, Scientific American was a highly respected publication, dedicated to the dissemination of research findings. In 1922, Doyle challenged the magazine and its editor-in-chief, Orson Munn, to undertake a serious investigation of psychic phenomena. James Malcolm Bird, an editor there (and previously a mathematics professor at Columbia University), was intrigued. In November the magazine established a highly publicized contest, with a prize of $5,000 for anyone who could produce “conclusive” evidence of “manifestations” of psychic powers—as, for example, making objects fly around the room. The magazine soberly announced that as of yet, it was “unable to reach a definite conclusion as to the validity of psychic claims.” Five judges were chosen. The most eminent was William McDougall, chairman of the Harvard Psychology Department and president of the American Society for Psychical Research. (William James had been his predecessor in both positions.) Daniel Frost Comstock, a respected physicist and engineer, had taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and later introduced Technicolor to film). Walter Franklin Prince, a Ph.D. from Yale, had explored a number of purportedly supernatural events; he had always been able to offer natural explanations. Hereward Carrington, a prolific writer and onetime magician, specialized in exposing fakes. Rounding out the committee, the magazine added Houdini, author of a forthcoming book on unmasking psychics. The contest captured the public’s imagination. The New York Times called it “the Acid Test of Spiritualism.” All of the initial candidates failed that test; the committee saw through them. In the meantime, a woman named Mina Crandon was getting attention in Boston. Her husband—wealthy, handsome, and significantly older—was a prominent Harvard-trained gynecologist, married twice before. In the early 1920s, Dr. Crandon attended one of Sir Oliver Lodge’s lectures on spiritualism, and the two spoke at length that night. Crandon was intrigued: “I couldn’t understand it. It did not fit into any pattern I had previously known about scientists.” He became obsessed. According to a friend, “he had taken to the psychical research movement like a Jew to Marxism.” His wife was witty, warm, and fun-loving. One friend, speaking for many, described her as a “very very beautiful girl” and “probably the most utterly charming woman I have ever known.” Mrs. Crandon initially disparaged her husband’s interest in spiritualism, joking that as a gynecologist, “naturally he was interested in exploring the netherworld.” Nonetheless, she thought that “a séance sounded like great fun,” and so she decided on a lark to attend one. The medium, a local minister, claimed to contact the spirit of Mina’s brother, Walter, who had died in a tragic railroad accident at the age of twenty-eight. The minister also told her that “she had rare powers and soon all would know it.” Not long thereafter, the Crandons hosted an unusual party at their home on Lime Street. The purpose of the party? To find a ghost. Mrs. Crandon found it all absurd: “They were all so solemn about it that I couldn’t help laughing.” But as the participants linked hands in a circle on a table, it started to vibrate, eventually crashing to the floor. To see which member of the circle was a medium, each took turns leaving the room. When Mrs. Crandon departed, the vibrations stopped; her friends applauded when she reentered. With the same group and a few others, the Crandons continued their experiments. Everyone who was there attested to some remarkable events, including rapping noises and movements of the table. Six days later, Mrs. Crandon appeared to be possessed by the spirit of her brother Walter, who spoke in “a guttural voice unrecognizable as her own,” and who was funny and immensely lively, even delightful (and engagingly coarse and profane). As her fame began to spread in Boston, members of the Harvard community tried to debunk her. An acquaintance of Dr. Crandon, a Harvard psychologist named Dr. Roback, suspected “spirit humbug,” but could find no explanation for what he observed. He enlisted McDougall to help solve the mystery. Attending Mina’s séances, both psychologists were baffled. Another visitor at the time said that he “was present many times when Walter’s voice was as clear as that of any person in the circle,” and also “close to my ear, whispering some very personal comment about me or my family.” In December, Crandon and his wife traveled to Paris and London to demonstrate her abilities. She was a sensation. In London, she performed in front of several investigators, appearing to make a table rise and float. The Crandons became friendly with Doyle, who swore to “the truth and range of her powers.” Lodge told colleagues that when they visited the United States, there were just two things that they must see: Niagara Falls and Mrs. Crandon. Intrigued by the publicity, Bird, the Scientific American editor, decided to visit the Crandons in Boston. He was immediately struck by her apparent sincerity, her elegance, and her keen sense of humor, which he described as “wicked.” He was also amazed by what he saw in the séances, which included flashes of light, raps, whistles, and cool breezes. He told Orson Munn that “there had been a war between the Crandons and the Harvard scientists.” Munn asked: Who won? The medium won, Bird answered. He invited her to enter the magazine’s contest. Accepting the challenge, she performed repeatedly in front of Bird and various committee members, moving objects, producing noises in various places, and channeling Walter. In the spring and summer of 1924, Bird himself visited Lime Street nearly sixty times. He was convinced that Mrs. Crandon was genuine. Comstock, who attended fifty-six séances, could find nothing amiss. McDougall tried for months to discover fraud, and he repeatedly accused her of fakery to her face. But he lacked any evidence of tricks, and “she responded to his incredulity with wit.” Carrington initially found the reports far-fetched, but after over forty visits, he could not explain what he saw. It looked as if McDougall, Comstock, and Carrington would endorse her. Though skeptical by nature, Prince also seemed moved. In the July 1924 issue of Scientific American, Bird wrote about her, protecting her privacy with the name “Margery.” He said that “the initial probability of genuineness [is] much greater than in any previous case which the Committee has handled.” Bird’s article was widely discussed. A headline in The New York Times read, “Margery Passes All Psychic Tests.” The Boston Herald exclaimed, “Four of Five Men Chosen to Bestow Award Sure She Is 100 P.C. Genuine.” Reading all this, Houdini, who had not had an opportunity to see the famous Margery in action, exploded. Traveling immediately to New York, he asked Bird if she was going to receive the prize. Bird replied, “Most decidedly.” Houdini insisted that it would be unfair to give her the award unless he had had his own opportunity to investigate her claims. Bird agreed, and Dr. Crandon was not pleased. Writing to Doyle before the meeting, he said, “My deep regret is that this low-minded Jew has any claim on the word American”; he described the coming encounter as “war to the finish.” Mrs. Crandon’s reaction was far more positive. Houdini had been a star since she was a child, and she was proud to receive him. She found him polite, curious, dignified, even enchanting. On the night of his arrival, she put on one of her standard performances, apparently impressing everyone with a table that suddenly fell over, a bell box that seemed to ring of its own accord, a moving cabinet, and a slowed and stopped Victrola. As Bird drove Munn and Houdini back to their hotel, Munn asked Houdini what he thought. He replied immediately: “All fraud—every bit of it.” Notwithstanding that judgment, he and Mrs. Crandon remained on excellent terms. He appeared to be charmed by her beauty. Jaher singles out a photograph taken the next day, which Mrs. Crandon had asked Houdini to keep private. As Jaher remarks, Houdini was generally formal with women, but in this picture, he is leaning very close; the two look like lovers. “He holds her hand and smiles at her affectionately—while she has turned to him as if expecting a kiss.” In the aftermath of his visit, they enjoyed a warm correspondence. “I am glad to be able to say I know ‘The Great Houdini,’” she wrote him. Observing her closely on several occasions, Houdini began to figure out, and to specify, exactly how she produced some of her most impressive effects. With evident admiration, he reported, Mrs. Crandon had produced “the ‘slickest’ ruse I have ever detected, and it has converted all skeptics.” He added, “It has taken my thirty years of experience to detect her in her various moves.” In November 1924 he wrote a lengthy pamphlet, complete with highly detailed drawings of the séances, with which he specified exactly how Mrs. Crandon was able, in the dark, to maneuver her legs, head, feet, arms, shoulders, and head to produce the various effects. For example, he showed how she surreptitiously maneuvered her leg to tap the top of the bell box (thus producing a ring), and how she was able to bend her head under the table to push it up and over. “As she is unusually strong and has an athletic body,” he wrote, “she can press her wrists so firmly on the arms of the chair that she can move her body and sway it at will.” Embarking on a kind of no-holds-barred campaign against her, he insisted that Mrs. Crandon is “a shrewd, cunning woman” and “resourceful to the extreme.” In his own public performances, he was able to replicate many (though far from all) of her effects. Mrs. Crandon’s numerous defenders were unconvinced. They portrayed Houdini as implacably close-minded, himself a cheat. Doyle denounced Houdini as prejudiced and dishonest; the denunciation destroyed their friendship. (Even years later, Doyle proclaimed that the incident “was never an exposure of Margery, but it was a very real exposure of Houdini.”) From Scientific American, the official verdict came on February 12, 1925: Houdini was correct. Prince and McDougall captured the consensus with these words: “We have observed no phenomena of which we can assert that they could not have been produced by normal means.” The sole dissenter, Carrington, stated that he had been “convinced that genuine phenomena have occurred here.”  Mina Stinson Crandon and Harry Houdini in a Pennsylvania newspaper, 1925 For Margery, however, that was hardly the end. Bird promptly rose to her defense, saying Houdini had made up his mind in advance and characterizing him as a liar and an ignoramus. (Jaher suggests that Houdini was jealous of Margery’s spectacular success.) She continued to hold séances, joking that 150 years before, she would have been executed as a witch, but “now they send committees of professors from Harvard to study me. That represents some progress, doesn’t it?” Even Houdini was unable to explain some of her new feats, conceding that “the lady is subtle.” Life magazine said that she was “almost as hard to bury as the League of Nations.” But as the months and years went by, her act seemed less and less credible. A new group of Harvard researchers undertook a six-month investigation and found strong evidence of trickery. In 1930, the ever-loyal Bird, who worked very hard to discredit the Harvard study, confessed that to fool Houdini, Margery had solicited his help in producing some of her effects. While continuing to believe that she was genuine, Bird conceded that when put “in a situation where she thought she might have to choose between fraud and a blank séance,” she “was willing to choose fraud.” Most damningly, researchers exposed one of her most bizarre effects, in which “Walter” seemed to make his own fingerprint appear on wax. The print turned out to be identical to that of Mrs. Crandon’s dentist. As it happens, a lot was going on at 10 Lime Street in the mid-1920s. Late in her life, Mrs. Crandon spoke fondly of her affair with Carrington, her only loyalist on the committee. (Perhaps he enjoyed attesting that “genuine phenomena have occurred here.”) Bird also claimed to have had a romance, though that might have been his imagination; she described him as “disgusting.” Both McDougall and Prince reported that she attempted to seduce them. Houdini said the same, adding, “When I walked into the seance room and saw that beautiful blonde, her applesauce meant nothing to me. I have been through apple orchards.” But all the while, she spoke of him with admiration: “I respect Houdini more than any of the bunch. He has both feet on the ground all the time.” And she expressed genuine sorrow at his death, singling out his virility, his determination, and his courage. One of Jaher’s great achievements is to build real suspense in a tale whose conclusion is foreordained. But a deep mystery remains: What led Mrs. Crandon to do what she did? Here’s a guess. Jaher suggests that by 1923, her marriage was troubled. Dr. Crandon was depressive, intensely hardworking, and obsessed by spiritualism. Playful, resourceful, and competitive, his wife was initially willing to have some fun with the topic. But as she learned, she was also exceptionally talented, full of charisma, a natural magician—and her talent could be put to use in precisely the matters that most interested her husband. As she became well known, things began to get out of hand. What started as a kind of game, essentially with friends, turned into international news. And when that happened, she enlisted her husband, Carrington, Bird, and undoubtedly others as accomplices. Importantly, her role as Margery also created a kind of marital glue. She was stuck in it. There is another mystery. How could so many people believe that Margery was genuine? Were they irrational? Not necessarily. At the time, a lot of people thought that it might be possible to contact the dead. True, many people were skeptical—but how likely was it that a young Boston housewife, without any training or financial motives, would have the desire, and the extraordinary skill and strength, to do what Mrs. Crandon did? To equal and in some ways surpass Houdini himself? To find a way to move tables and other objects, to make rapping noises, to ring bells in closed boxes, and to produce an apparently male voice, altogether different from her own, and displaying a wholly distinct personality? As improbable as contact with “the other side” might have seemed, the complexity, sophistication, and evident credibility of the performance might have made fraud appear less probable still. Jaher’s story is captivating and unforgettable, but it can easily be dismissed as a historical curiosity of an era when highly educated citizens of a barely recognizable United States were willing to believe in crazy things. But any such dismissal would be a big mistake. According to a recent poll, 45 percent of Americans believe in ghosts, or think that the spirits of dead people can sometimes come back. Throughout the world, people continue to believe in magic, miracles, psychics, and spirits, and a lot of them are highly educated. Many people scoff at science, or at least distrust the scientific consensus. They do not believe the experts and their supposed evidence. They believe the people they trust (the behavioral phenomenon of “social proof”). They think what they like to think (the behavioral phenomenon of “motivated reasoning”). They like to see a little magic, or perhaps a lot. They are moved by their own Margerys, who may have an extraordinary talent, the defining skill of magicians, which is to direct their audience’s attention exactly and only where they want it. (The most effective marketers have the same skill; so do the best politicians.) Consider a little tale from one of Margery’s investigators, the Princeton psychologist Henry McComas, who described her supernatural feats to Houdini with great wonder, insisting that he saw every one of them with his own eyes. McComas reported that for the rest of his life, he would not forget the scorn with which Houdini greeted those words. “You say, you saw. Why you didn’t see anything. What do you see now?” At that point, Houdini slapped a half-dollar between his palms, and it promptly disappeared. His great adversary never confessed. In her very last days, a researcher suggested to a failing Mrs. Crandon, widowed for two years, that she would die happier if she finally did so, and let the world know about her methods. To his surprise, her old twinkle of merriment returned to her eyes. She laughed softly and offered her answer: “Why don’t you guess?” — David Jaher The formatting at Waldorf Watch aims for visual variety, seeking to ease the process of reading lengthy texts on a computer screen. To visit other pages in this section of Waldorf Watch, use the underlined links, below. ◊◊◊ 10. CLAIRVOYANCE AND DELUSION ◊◊◊
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ENDNOTES [1] The computer made its decision only after a participant selected a screen. Thus, the participant was predicting a future event — the decision the computer would make in the next few moments. [2] Highly sophisticated computer processes may come very near to producing genuinely random results. Learning how sophisticated Dr. Bem’s program is may tell us a lot. Meanwhile, allow me to quote Wikipedia — a source that is often unreliable but that Anthroposophists sometimes like to consult:
[3] Let's say you want to generate random passwords. Many (all?) programming languages include a command that produces pseudo-random results. Using this command, you could have the computer produce a "string" that is X characters long. (A "string" is simply a concatenation of letters, numbers, and symbols, such as "P7$w".) For example, if you want an 8-character password (X=8), the computer would yield a password consisting of 8 "random" letters, numerals, and symbols — something like "Eq7&^5jP". This looks random, even if it really isn't; it would be a fine password for most purposes (if you could remember it). To take things up a notch, you could have the computer produce each character of the string separately. Thus, you could tell the computer to decide how long your password will be, within limits that you specify — such as 6 to 12 characters long. (To disrupt the replicable logic of the computer, type in different, arbitrary lower and upper limits for each run.) Then you could have the computer choose a number between, say, 1 and 100 (type in different limits for each run). Perhaps the computer "randomly" chooses 78. The next line of your program could tell the computer to select the first character of the string by making 78 successive choices of letters, numbers, and symbols, accepting the 78th choice (e.g., "z" or "8" or "%"). The computer could then repeat this process — selecting a new "random" number, and running through that many choices — for each subsequent character. Of course, it is possible to be far more sophisticated about all this. The question is how sophisticated Dr. Bem was. Did he use a program that produces results that the human brain could not possibly anticipate, or didn't he? Remember, he had participants choose between just two computer screens, so the matter was far simpler than what I have described. Dr. Bem's program would produce only two possible results, 1 or 2, and the human participant would only have to anticipate which of these two was likely to be correct in order to ogle the next pinup. [4] The null hypothesis is a central concept in statistics. Essentially, it says that to test your results, you need to consider — and eliminate — the possibility that your results arose entirely by chance and do not provide solid evidence of anything. In other words, you should consider your results meaningless or null unless you can prove that they are not. See, e.g., Null Hypothesis - The Journal of Unlikely Science [http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science//item/what_is_a_null_hypothesis]  |
