A Magician in the Laboratory
Shamelessly, I here offer readers an excerpt from the opening chapter of my next book, A Magician in the Laboratory. It’s shaping up—slowly—and I invite you to a preview of what The Amazing Curmudgeon will release to the bookstores within the next year or so …
Enormous harm has been done to science by emphasizing quantity over quality, and at the extremes, fraud and fakery over honesty and intellectual hard work. However, science has self-correcting mechanisms built in so that mistakes, and the occasional bit of fakery, are soon automatically eliminated. Left to itself, science has created and shaped much of the world in which we live, but constant vigilance can never be relaxed, or the woo-woos can and will move in.
Malignant science—a variety of which was dubbed “pathological science” by physicist Irving Langmuir to describe the “N-Rays” fiasco back in 1903, and the sort of phenomenon which we will encounter in these pages—results from carelessness, incompetence, overemphasis on authority rather than expertise, plain stupidity, the tantalizing Nobel-prize-on-the-horizon-syndrome and, often, just avarice. All but one of these are elements not unheard of in everyday life, and the layman can easily relate to them.
I’ve never failed to hold an audience—a lay group or a conference of academics—with detailed accounts of these investigations, which sound much like developing detective stories. The gathering of clues, the recourse to past experiences, forensic techniques, the chase and capture, all demonstrate the narrow-spectrum specialty in which I’m involved. Some of these inquiries have taken their places in history already, and are referred to in textbooks and scientific journals, but an in-detail account has never before been published; therein can be found the fascinating angles and facets of this difficult pursuit.
As an experienced conjuror and observer, I’ve been called in to advise on many claims of psychic powers, crackpot science and just plain swindles. I have extensive photos and documents on all these adventures, and I’ll supply references to those items as I go along.
Skeptics are folks who are cautious about drawing their conclusions but always willing to change their minds upon the presentation of new or better information.
Philosophically, I’m a skeptic, but just who and what are we skeptics? Skepticism means having good reasons for holding any belief. Skeptics are folks who are cautious about drawing their conclusions but always willing to change their minds upon the presentation of new or better information. Don’t equate us with cynics, who believe that people are basically bad, and that our world is an evil place. We believe—always with good reason—that most people tend to too-easily accept supernatural, paranormal, or irrational explanations of quite ordinary events and claims that can be explained otherwise by careful investigation. We skeptics come from all walks of life and may have very differing views about the world, but we share a commitment to careful and respectful discussion, and to respectfully examining the fads, claims, and assertions about supposedly supernatural events or processes. We recognize that an opinion does not always represent a fact, and we make judgments and draw logical conclusions, though on occasion—for sufficient reason—we will withhold that judgment pending the arrival of more data.
Skeptical thinking goes back in history to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and was validated when the scientific method fully emerged into general use in the 18th century. Many skeptics are scientists, since science encourages and nurtures the skeptical way of thinking. Determining the completeness and accuracy of information is an integral part of the scientific process.
We skeptics are often involved in examining extraordinary claims, and this has given us the reputation of “believing in nothing,” while in reality, we believe only the things that we’ve carefully considered for ourselves by rational examination. We use techniques of critical thinking, and encourage others to do so, as well. No subjects, ideas, or philosophies are unsuitable for the consideration and investigation of the true skeptic, and we look at religion in the same way we look at any system of belief, requiring evidence upon which to establish those claims, as well. When someone proclaims their ability to prove their beliefs, we skeptics apply the “evidence” test.
In his remarkable book of 1843, Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds, author Charles Mackay described in detail a variety of strange ideas and obsessions that had seized the people of his time. He began:
In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple, and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity.
For generations, Mackay’s readers have chortled at the naïveté of those who chose to accept so many bizarre notions, and who in many cases were very willing to invest money and trust in them—much to their subsequent sorrow. My book deals with somewhat similar subjects—claims, ideas, notions, reports, news items, and downright scams. Those who laughed at the dupes of long gone generations described by Mackay, will see here how a very modern populace can fall as easily and as hard for this sort of misinformation, even though we now have the Internet and other technical advantages that should keep us from falling headlong into irrational convictions.
There are swindlers out there who have a variety of reasons for wanting to deceive us. Some want to sell us spurious products or services. Others literally want to steal from us, by one means or another, and some want to gain access to our private lives. However, a great deal of misinformation is created and disseminated by pranksters, those who want to create some excitement so that they can stand back and be amused at those of us who should’ve been a little more alert in checking out sources. Today, more than ever, we find perpetual motion machines, “free energy” schemes, and strange little devices that we’re told to place at strategic spots around internal-combustion engines in order to obtain better performance and economy, sold via mail order and even through in-person public lectures. Sometimes we even get to see videos that appear to establish the validity of these claimed inventions, though you’d think we should be a bit smarter than to accept “special effects” that any teenager can now create on a computer screen by means of easily-available software programs. Apparently, we aren’t, as I’ll show you.
At our JREF office headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, we can show you a huge library that long ago overflowed its shelves and continued on into the hall outside. At least 80% of this collection represents sheer nonsense. Every sort of crackpot idea, every possible conspiracy theory, all sorts of “scientific” theories, are represented here. We maintain this library for reference purposes of students, researchers, the media, and just-curious people who want to have a better view of how easily we can be deceived—and how easily we deceive ourselves. Publishers adore what we call “woo-woo” books, because they know they can sell several printings of them, public taste being what it is. As soon as a would-be author shows up in an editor’s doorway and outlines a ridiculous, impossible, or illogical idea, you can almost hear the trees begin to fall in nearby forests in preparation for the paper that will be wasted—again—on yet another silly book. In this office, at least, we know the contents of our library and we warn readers well in advance that they should be very careful about accepting what they find on our shelves as true.
I recall that many years ago, during the time that I did my late-night radio show out of New York City, I was invited to attend the opening—on Broadway—of the “Believe It Or Not” museum containing many of the original artifacts that belonged to that cartoonist-turned-columnist, Robert Ripley, and upon which he based many of his highly-popular illustrated articles describing various wonders of nature and of humanity. Now, some of these were obviously spurious, and I suppose that we were expected to filter those out as amusements rather than actual discoveries. As with many of those who began with good intentions, Ripley tended, in his later articles, to rather over-exaggerate. This might have been due to a shortage of material, I can’t say. In any case, I was willing to tour the facility and form an opinion. I did. As I exited, I was met by a crowd of media people who were doubtless anxious to hear what the Super Skeptic might have to say. “So what did you think of the ‘Believe It Or Not exhibit,’ Mr. Randi?” asked a chap who stuck a microphone in my face. I put my hand to my chin in a contemplative mode, paused for a few seconds, and gave him a short quotation that evidently delighted him: “Not!”
The art, of course, lies in recognizing reality and carefully separating it from fiction.
There is always a place in our lives for fantasy, and no one enjoys that luxury more than I. After all, for half a century I made my living traveling the world as a professional magician, and a magician deals in that commodity every moment that he’s on stage. The art, of course, lies in recognizing reality and carefully separating it from fiction. Professionals, certainly, know how that’s done. Years ago, I toured the USA and several foreign markets as part of the Alice Cooper rock show—my job was to chop his head off with a guillotine every night without actually doing him any harm. It worked for three months, and during that period of time I had the opportunity of seeing a rather unique phenomenon. Alice and I were always the last to leave the dressing room to begin the show, because I had to equip him with two hand-held mechanisms that enabled him to throw long flames from his fingertips. These were semi-dangerous devices that he’d only take into his hands at the very last moment. When the stage manager would poke his head in the door and announce, “Two minutes!” I could watch Vincent Fournier—Coop’s original name—rapidly and magically change from a reasonably normal young man into the showbiz monster that his audience expected him to be. He adopted the character by simply putting it on like a pullover. His walk, his facial expression, his entire demeanor, changed—and a moment later as he would totter Frankenstein-Monster-like into the spotlight, Vincent would become Alice. Two hours later, when he retired from the stage dressed in white satin tails and top hat, he became Vincent as soon as he hit the lights of the dressing room. I always admired that in him, his ability to step into fantasy and then shed it so easily. It’s a talent we might all try to acquire.
We raptly watch Star Wars but we don’t really believe we’re seeing space-warriors firing ray-guns at one another. Gone With the Wind charms us, but we know we’re still in the 21st century and we didn’t watch Atlanta burning. Engrossed in Moby Dick, we can empathize with Ahab’s obsession, but we’re still aware that we’re reading fiction. Why, then, do so many of us suspend our judgment so that we can be scammed by people who would sell us felt insoles with embedded magnets, merchandisers who will prescribe a gel-stick with no active ingredients in it that we rub on our foreheads because we’re told that headaches can be thus relieved, or a guru who says that if we take his course, we’ll be able to fly just by thinking deeply about it? It’s time to come under the lights of the dressing room and return to the real world.
In summary: enjoy the fantasy, the fun, the stories—but make sure that there’s a clear, sharp, line drawn on the floor so that you can step back behind that mark and re-embrace reality. To do otherwise is to embrace madness.