Science
Geller and the gullible
Piernard Dixon For me, the most intriguing aspect °f the Geller affair — does Uri Geller „ ts,,se normal or paranormal means to °Len. d keys and discern hidden 901ects and pictures? — is the light it throws on the frame of reference scientists adopt in assessing the nunexPected. There has been much '-ontroversy over the past week or So about the scientific evidence for Geller's talents. Whatever the truth uf the matter, the debate has revealed once again the highly unsatisfactory attitude many ttap„... , " scientists display towards i-ue, ea paranormal, even when active1Y Investigating such phenomena. Ostensibly, there are distinct e3ctremes: the scoffers, and openTinded interested parties. In practI,Ce, however, both tend to exem,PlIfY the same deficiency: the rigid VUI restrictive outlook that comes 'run? a formal training in science. F.irst, the scoffers. They are LYPified by the famous scientist Wt II% some months ago, assured me i 1.11,t all of this scientific interest n 121 Geller's claims to bend cutlery !nth the mind was quite absurd, ii,ecaUse such things simply do not 15Pen. There are, of course, very roiig grounds indeed to justify a
priori scepticism about such claims. If Geller really does achieve any one of his effects by the means alleged — if, for example, he actually bends metal objects simply by stroking them and concentrating hard, without exerting the mechanical force that you or I would have to use — then the entire edifice of modern science collapses. There are no compromises here, no minor adjustments that would allow the scientific world-view to accommodate such phenomena. If metal can indeed be made to behave in this way, then our understanding of the structure of matter — upon which rests the whole of physics, chemistry and biology — must be radically revised. After centuries of the painstaking, self-corrective evolution of science (not to mention commonsense observation), the evidence for such wholesale revision would have to be enormously trustworthy, and certainly quite different from anything that has yet been produced in the case of Mr Geller.
It is just as true, however, that to insist from the outset that certain phenomena are impossible, is also indefensible. The history of science itself is uncomfortably crowded with authorities of their day who dismissed as absurd, scientific phenomena and ideas of the sort that are now familiar to every schoolchild. Scepticism is mandatory in science. But there is no place for the closed mind.
What interests me so much, is the fact that the closed mind is equally
common among those scientists sympathetic to claims of the paranormal, including_ active investigators in this field. I do not here mean active willingness to be deceived (though there is some of that in evidence too). I mean the tendency to have such a rigid view about how the world is, about how matter behaves, or how the mind works, that in a scientific context, contrary evidence is accepted more readily than in an everyday setting.
Take the question of conjuring. I went to a circus with my children recently and a (not particularly brilliant) magician came on carrying a black stick. He twirled it round in the air, and suddenly a dove appeared on the end. Whenever I see this trick, I am totally mystified. I have no idea how it can possibly be done. But I'm equally sure that it must be explicable without recourse to the paranormal.
Any scientist, watching a magician performing in a cabaret, would be similarly impressed, but not troubled. Transplant the same performance to the laboratory, however, and (assuming the scientist to be a sympathiser rather than a scoffer) he is likely to be disconcerted and puzzled by the same effect. Instead of being more critical than a non-scientist in this situation, he may well be less so, because of his fixed, preconceived ideas.
True, science also rests on trust, and scientists must assume that their fellow investigators and experimental subjects are honest: My point is more basic than that. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that scientists, by dint of their training in critical, rigorous analysis, are among the most gullible folk in the world.
Dr Bernard Dixon, who writes fortnightly in The Spectator, is editor of New Scientist
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