Double Blind, Satan’s UFO, Failed Prophecies
How to Conduct a Double Blind Experiment
At the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) we have had several requests from potential prize applicants who believe that they have the power to dowse, and who need general guidelines on how to conduct a double-blind test before they actually make application. We recognize that not everyone will know what a double-blind test is, so here is a general description.
The term “double-blind” refers to the condition under which neither the subject of the experiment—in this case, the dowser—nor the experimenter, knows the answer that is being sought. As one example, we tested a very enthusiastic dowser named Mike Guska at the JREF headquarters in Fort Lauderdale. He claimed that he could detect gold. When we suggested that the gold sample he had brought with him—a genuine gold nugget—should be concealed in one of ten opaque, numbered, and sealed Styrofoam cups, he agreed that that would be an adequate test.
Before we began, I had him “scan” the entire floor space of our library, where the test was to take place. This was to allow him to determine whether or not there were any distractions present that might mislead him or give him a false reading. Indeed, he found two spots where he said there were anomalies, and these were plainly marked off as not suitable to be included in the test area. (It is of interest to note that other dowsers, given the same opportunity, have also determined such spots, but significantly, no two dowsers have ever located the same spots!) We then placed the Styrofoam cups, uncovered, at various points in the room. By randomly selecting a numbered ball from an opaque bag, we arrived at a number between one and ten, and openly placed the gold nugget he had brought with him, into that cup. He was then asked to scan the area with his dowsing stick to determine if it would be attracted to the gold sample. It apparently was, to his satisfaction. We repeated this “baseline” demonstration 10 times, changing the cups and it was always successful.
We had now determined that his dowsing method should work under the circumstances established.
Now we were ready to perform the double-blind test. Both the dowser (the subject) and I (the experimenter) stepped out of the room while another person, who was continuously videotaped, went through the randomization process, placed the gold sample in the selected cup, and sealed it with a lid. Then she left the room and called out to us to proceed.
Both of us (subject and experimenter) reentered the room, and the subject walked about with his dowsing rod, finally selecting the one in which he believed the gold had been enclosed. We entered that guess on a list, and both signed the entry. Then we left the room together and called out to the third party to reenter the room and repeat the process.
The actual result was what we predicted assuming the null hypothesis … he obtained two correct results out of the 20 tries, exactly what would be expected by chance alone.
The only person who knew the location of the “target” was the person who had randomly placed it in position, and that person left the room and was unseen during the proceedure. That constitutes a “double-blind” test.
This particular protocol resulted in 20 guesses being made, each guess being recorded and signed. The dowser was then asked to estimate what his success rate had been. He thought that his results would show him at least 90% correct. The actual result was what we predicted assuming the null hypothesis (that the effect is not real unless proven otherwise): he obtained two correct results out of the 20 tries, exactly what would be expected by chance alone.
We recommended that dowsers (and anyone else who believes that they have paranormal or supernatural powers) should always use a double-blind procedure, to determine if they actually can do what they believe they can do. In almost every single case, they have replied that they “don’t need to do that,” because they’re absolutely convinced that they have the power. In the one case where the dowser said that he had performed a double-blind procedure in advance, he admitted later that he had not. It is for this reason, among others, that we strongly urge potential applicants for the million-dollar prize to apply double-blind procedures before applying.
Epilogue: Mr. Guska brought with him several coins he believed to be gold and demonstrated that his dowsing rod reacted to them quite strongly. In actuality, these were U.S. Sacajawea dollar coins, which are made of manganese brass and contain not a trace of gold. As a further indication of how naïve dowsers can be, Mr. Guska also complained that his dowsing rod had been distracted by the gold stamping and gold edges of a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica we have on a library shelf at JREF. We pointed out to him that this had not affected his “open” trials, but only the “blinded” trials, and that this was also not real gold. Yet he insisted that there was probably some gold hidden behind the library walls. We did not pursue this possibility.
UFOs and Satan
Last November a Laurinburg, NC, clergyman reported a UFO sighting in the area. The unnamed man said he might have ascribed it to an active imagination—if it had happened to someone else—and said that he hesitates to talk about the incident lest someone call him a “nut.”
On Sunday, November 8, 2008, at about 6:15 p.m., the pastor and his wife were driving when they saw a startlingly bright light on the horizon. His wife suggested that it was the moon behind the clouds, but then she saw the moon in another corner of the sky. What they both described as a rectangular-shaped UFO continued to float slowly, giving off a bright yellowish color, then it began to change.
Within 30 seconds, they said, it split and divided into individual round bright lights, and one of the lights was moving back and forth, “casually.” Said the man: “It was definitely nothing like anything that is possible from our military. I have seen lights just like these in UFO television programs before, and there is no way they are airplanes, or anything else like that.”
Now, what authority this anonymous clergyman invoked to decide that the U.S. military is thus constrained, I cannot tell. Also, assuming that TV programs speak undiluted sooth, is not the way to go, sir.
The couple continued to drive as they noticed the objects move rapidly toward the direction of East Laurinburg. “Then they just disappeared,” he said. Now, the Laurinburg and Scotland County authorities received no calls over the weekend reporting any unusual sightings, but the pastor did have one possible explanation:
Being a minister, and having read the Bible, I feel like it’s something demonic. (According to the Bible) Satan is the prince of, and has power over the air, and in my estimation it is related to that in a spiritual way. It is likely Satan trying to show his power.
Well, the Laurinburg Exchange, the newspaper where this provocative story appeared, received a few letters to the editor. Someone named “derr” offered this comment:
if you go online and google the words “new jersey ufo” or “derr ufo” you will see increased signs of alien activity bringing forth to this world changes we must prepare for and understand … Is it invasion? Who knows?
But there were somewhat more sober citizens commenting, as well. “BAB” wrote:
I figured it wouldn’t take long for someone to report a ufo. What they saw was the Golden Knight’s pyrotechnic display at the airport. It was at around 6:15 Sunday evening. They had pyrotechnic “cables” attached to the skydivers and even to the aircraft. Funny the event was reported by the paper, but they didn’t pick up on what it was.
Yes, the announcement of the observed event appeared in the Laurinburg Exchange, but no one on the staff connected it with this poor chap’s Satanic Invasion! Newspaper reader “Bruce B” wrote:
The UFO was the Golden Knights pyrotechnics exhibition at the Laurinburg/Maxton airbase. Not Satan. This story made my day! I’m still laughing!
Hold on, please. We have to understand that the pastor believes in devils and demons, he’s absolutely convinced they’re real, and he grew up believing in Satan. That explanation he gave makes sense … to him. But when I looked into the details of this event myself, I discovered that the U. S. Army Parachute team, The Golden Knights, use the Laurinburg-Maxton Airport as their main training facility! They’re there all the time! Pastor, rather than jumping into a woo-woo cauldron, ask for some advice. Your local paper won’t be much help, it seems, but there have to be wiser folks available to you.
More Failed Prophecies
From a mass of books, videos, and publicity material dealing with “psychic” Anthony Carr—all recently received at the JREF Isaac Asimov Library—I selected one volume and was leafing through the pages when I discovered an astounding fact: this man Carr—who says he’s “The World’s Most Documented Psychic”—might want to lay off further documentation; he’s been quite, quite, wrong. You see, two years and four months after he posted their imminent deaths, Lauren Bacall, Margaret Thatcher, Jack Klugman, Jimmy Carter, Ernest Borgnine, Sidney Poitier, and Mohammed Ali are still alive. True, Gerald Ford, Richard Widmark, and Oscar Peterson are deceased, but the first two of them were 93 and 94 years of age, and Peterson, just 82, was in failing health and not expected to live long at the time that Carr made his stunning prophecies.
Specifically, for 2005, Carr prophesied that Osama bin Laden would be brought to New York, the John Hancock Tower in Chicago would crumble, a “biological or nuclear mishap” would happen in the USA and in Canada, Premier Dalton McGuinty would be assassinated, whales would attack fishing boats, two trains on the Toronto Sheppard Avenue Line would collide, swarms of rabid bats (originating in Montreal!) would infest Toronto, and the city of Edmonton would “get a shot at the Stanley Cup.” Of course, he didn’t say whether Edmonton would win or not, but they didn’t even get in the playoffs, so that’s moot, anyway.
For 2006, Carr tried once again to get lucky on predicting the demise of Lauren Bacall, Mohammed Ali, and Jimmy Carter, but they insisted on surviving. Also in 2006 he confidently predicted that Ricardo Montalban and Billy Graham would die, and they didn’t. How this man Carr can persist in the face of such a miserable—and very well documented!—performance, is a matter to ponder over.