Articles'The Ultimate Psychic Challenge' was filmed
in London recently by Fulcrum TV in 'London Television Studios.' Zwinge Randi,
the notorious closed minded skeptic, was caught cheating and trying to deceive
and con the public that he was a medium. His performance where he tried to duplicate
the results of genuine mediums by cheating was so bad, so embarrassing, the producers
had to stop the show. This segment was then edited out, otherwise the show would
be perceived as absolute rubbish. By intentional, clever editing, the evidence
of genuine psychics was completely cut out. And yet generous time was given to
willfully give more credence to closed minded skepticism. Why? Because highly
gifted psychics such as John Edward are DAILY showing that closed minded skepticism
is now out-dated and no longer necessary because the gifted psychics have proved
their case, not beyond reasonable doubt, but absolutely.
Zwinge Randi was
trying to do a John Edward, to show that what psychically gifted John Edward was
doing was 'cold reading.' What happened? Zwinge Randi, a professional deceiver
as a stage performer, was so bad, so disgustingly terrible, the producers, amongst
laughter from the audience, had to stop the show. Zwinge Randi miserably failed
to show that what gifted psychics do was cold reading - no wonder psi scientists
and empiricists do NOT take him seriously, they treat his antics as a joke. The
evidence in this filming clearly show these scientists and empiricist are deadly
correct. What the Fulcrum TV producers did, to fool the public, was to
give Zwinge Randi 40 or more minutes of fooling around while giving the invited
scientific expert on the investigation of mediumship, Montague Keen, a fraction
over one minute!!!!!!! The producers knowingly - to fool the public - and
to save the ass of Zwinge from being totally discredited also forbade Keen to
talk of a recent very credible case where a medium was able to help solve the
murder of Jacqui Poole with impressive posthumous messages from her. They deliberately
edited footage of a genuine medium to reduce all her evidential material. Then
the producers also knowingly edited the most important afterlife evidence of the
medium Keith Charles who 'described the detailed contents and design of a sealed
letter that bad been placed, unbeknown to anyone, in the coffin of his daughter
by her sister. Why was this spectacular 100% correct information by the gifted
Keith Charles omitted? It aided and abetted the materialists, the closed minded
skeptics and ultimately Zwinge Randi who would have otherwise looked like the
biggest fool since the fool in King Lear. Further, Keith Charles was not
given an opportunity to tell viewers why ZWINGE RANDI's ALLEGED PRIZE MONEY WAS
A FAKE, WAS MISLEADING AND WORTHLESS! This was clearly dirty and unfair
editing to protect skepticism and to protect the idiocy and the gross failure
of Zwinge Randi - intentional fraudulent conduct by omission for which, with absolute
certainty, the producers and Zwinge will one day pay a price for. But the
audience wasn't fooled. When Zwinge Randi mentioned his alleged $1m offer he was
booed, laughed at and members of the audience shouted, 'phoney' 'phoney'!!!! And
at the end of the program the percentage of the audience who were convinced of
the existence of the afterlife actually increased from 44% to 54%. And this without
having been given access to a fraction of the evidence! Now follows the
incisive writing of one of the world's most credible assessors on psychic phenomena,
Montague Keen of the British Society for Psychical Research, who gives in detail
among other things reasons why Zwinge Randi's challenge is a farce and puts the
record straight about this man Zwinge Randi who is rapidly becoming the world's
greatest conman in the history of psychic phenomena. Read more…
MONTAGUE
KEEN WRITES
A fraudulent insult
[As an aside,
and to illustrate Mr. Randi's dedication to objectivity, I must also provide a
more accurate account of the incident to which he devotes so much spleen on his
website: his encounter in the exit corridor with a "very obese, unattractive
woman" and his reaction to her "direct affront, a rude insult and an
uncalled-for accusation" who "stabbed her finger at me, her face red
and contorted with hatred" who called him a fake and a fraud, to which he
calmly retorted in his best Churchillian manner, "Madam, you are ugly, but
I can reform." I am sure this is how Mr. Randi would like to remember
the episode, but since I was alongside the lady at the time, and observed what
went on, as did Dr. Parker and Dr. Puhle who were immediately in front of me,
I should say that she takes (USA) size 10 clothes at Macy's, which is way down
the obesity scale, is regarded as attractive for her age, smiled at Mr. Randi
and said quite politely but firmly, with no finger stabbing, and to his obvious
astonishment, "Mr. Randi you're a fraud", whereupon he staggered back
and stammered, "And you, you, you, you're ugly," to which the lady responded
as he disappeared backwards through the double doors, "But at least I'm honest".
There was no Churchillian suffix. The classic Churchillian riposte, by the way,
occurred when Mrs Bessie Braddock, a Labour MP of vast dimensions, accused him
of being drunk; to which Churchill responded, "Yes, Madam, and you're ugly,
but I shall be sober in the morning." This sets the standard for Mr. Randi's
dedication to factual reality.] That $1million offer
Now for
the more serious bit: first, the $1million prize. Loyd Auerbach, a leading USA
psychologist and President of the Psychic Entertainers Association (some 80% of
the members of his Psychic Entertainers' Association believe in the paranormal,
according to Dr. Adrian Parker, who was on the programme, but given no opportunity
to reveal this) exposed some of the deficiencies in this challenge in an article
in Fate magazine. Under Article 3, the applicant allows all his test data
to be used by the Foundation in any way Mr. Randi may choose. That means that
Mr. Randi can pick and chose the data at will and decide what to do with it and
what verdict to pronounce on it. Under Article 7, the applicant surrenders all
rights to legal action against the Foundation, or Mr. Randi, no matter what emotional,
professional or financial injury he may consider he has sustained. Thus even if
Mr. Randi comes to a conclusion different from that reached by his judges and
publicly denounces the test, the applicant would have no redress. The Foundation
and Mr. Randi own all the data. Mr. Randi can claim that the judges were fooled.
The implicit accusation of fraud would leave the challenger devoid of remedy. These
rules, be it noted, are in stark contrast to Mr. Randi's frequent public assertions
that he wanted demonstrable proof of psychic powers. First, his rules are confined
to a single, live applicant. No matter how potent the published evidence, how
incontestable the facts or rigorous the precautions against fraud, the number,
qualifications or expertise of the witnesses and investigators, the duration,
thoroughness and frequency of their tests or (where statistical evaluation is
possible) the astronomical odds against a chance explanation: all must be ignored.
Mr. Randi thrusts every case into the bin labelled 'anecdotal' (which means not
written down), and thereby believes he may safely avoid any invitation to account
for them. Likewise, the production of a spanner bent by a force considerably
in excess of the capacity of the strongest man, created at the request and in
the presence of a group of mechanics gathered round a racing car at a pit stop
by Mr. Randi's long-time enemy, Uri Geller, would run foul of the small print,
which requires a certificate of a successful preliminary demonstration before
troubling Mr. Randi himself. A pity, because scientists at Imperial College have
tested the spanner, which its current possessor, the researcher and author Guy
Lyon Playfair, not unnaturally regards as a permanent paranormal object, and there
is a standing challenge to skeptics to explain its appearance. The Randi/Schwartz
episode
That these doubts about the genuineness of Mr. Randi's dedication
to objective research are far from theoretical may be concluded from the efforts
made by Professor Gary Schwartz of Arizona University in designing his multi-centre,
double-blind procedure for testing mediums. Schwartz was not interested in the
prize money: he merely sought to obtain Mr. Randi's approval for his protocol
for testing mediums - and he duly modified it to met Mr. Randi's suggestions.
Having falsely declared that the eminent parapsychologist Professor Stanley Krippner
had agreed to serve on his referee panel, Mr. Randi ensured that the other judges
would be his skeptical friends Drs Minsky, Sherman and Hyman, all well-known and
dedicated opponents of anything allegedly paranormal. As the ensuing Randi/Schwartz
correspondence (which Mr. Randi declined to print on his website) makes clear,
when the outcome of the experiment proved an overwhelming success, Mr. Randi subsequently
confused a binary (yes/no) analysis with the statistical method required to score
for accuracy each statement made by a medium, and falsely accused Dr Schwartz
and his colleagues of selecting only half the data for analysis. He then derided
the publication of Professor Schwartz's findings in the Journal of the Society
for Psychical Research, the world's oldest scientific peer-reviewed publication
devoted to the paranormal, and in which Mr. Randi himself has published contributions.
He criticised the fact that the Schwartz findings appeared in neither Nature nor
Science, although he must have been aware of the long-standing refusal of these
two leading scientific journals to publish anything touching on the paranormal.
He then reported that one of the gifted mediums, John Edward, could have seen
the sitter through a 2" curtain gap, regardless of the facts that the crack
was about quarter of an inch, was subsequently sealed from ceiling to floor, and
that readings were later done long distance. Mr. Randi declined an invitation
to see all the raw footage for himself, while protesting that he would never [be
allowed to] see it. Yet all the media representatives who visited the Arizona
laboratory saw the raw footage, as did magicians and visiting scientists. Mr Randi
specifically declined an invitation to be videoed viewing the data and commenting
on it. Equally, despite his confident assertions that cold reading can
produce results as impressive as any from a platform medium, he declined an offer
to prove it by comparing his performance with that of a genuine medium, surely
a crucial test. Similarly, Mr. Randi accused the experimenters of "blatant
data searching", i.e. remembering the hits and forgetting the misses. This
was false, and could readily have been shown to be so . He thereafter publicly
declined to read any of Professor Schwartz's emails, having confined himself to
deriding the Professor for believing in the tooth fairy, making wild claims and
being a "doctor who embraces bump-in-the-night theories without a trace of
shame". Further, that he had been a colleague at Harvard of Dr John Mack,
"the man who has never met anyone who hasn't been abducted by aliens",
and similar abuse. This is the language and conduct of the gutter, not of an honest
difference of opinion expressed in civilized and restrained terms about scientific
issues.. Mr. Randi notoriously failed to fulfil his boast to be able to
replicate Ted Serios' "thoughtography" tests (as described by his investigator,
Dr Jule Eisenbud in The World of Ted Serios, Jonathan Cape, 1968) and has consistently
ignored efforts by Mr. Maurice Grosse, the principal investigator of Britain's
most famous recent poltergeist event, the Enfield Case (See Guy Lyon Playfair's
book This House is Haunted, Souvenir Press, 1980), to examine the recorded visual
and aural evidence to support a claim of paranormality and apparent veridical
messages from a discarnate entity. Worse still are the multiple errors of
fact, admixed with derision, abuse and misrepresentation, which Mr. Randi makes
in his book Flim-Flam (1980) about a number of distinguished scientists, notably
Russell Targ, Harold Puthoff and Charles Tart and their roles in the remote viewing
experiments with Ingo Swann and the clairvoyant claims of Uri Geller. That Randi's
denunciations turned out to be mainly a tissue of lies is apparent from the penetrating
account given by parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo in Psychic Breakthroughs Today
(Aquarian Press, 1987, pp.216-226), and devastatingly amplified in a recent website
publication by Michael Prescott (http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/FlimFlam.htm)
The challenge to Mr. Randi and friends
I am not applying
for Mr. Randi's $million but only for some evidence that his challenge is genuine.
Before I reproduce my comments on the television programme , I present Mr. Randi,
and any of his fellow-skeptics, with a list of some of the classical cases of
paranormality with most or all of which Mr. Randi will be familiar. I know he
will be because he has been studying the subject for half a century, he tells
us. And just as I would not pretend to authority and expertise in conjuring unless
I could perform some party tricks to bedazzle a troop of intelligent ten year
olds, or apply for an assistant professorship in physics while admitting I had
never heard of Boyle's Law or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, nor seek admission
to the Bar without first having some familiarity with the leading cases, so I
would not imply that Mr. Randi is ignorant of these cases, many of which have
long awaited the advent of a critic who could discover flaws in the paranormality
claims. For me to suggest this would imply the grossest hypocrisy on Mr. Randi's
part. But to refresh his memory, and help him along, and despite the refusal of
some of his colleagues like Professor Kurtz, Professor Hyman and Dr. Susan Blackmore
to meet the challenge, I list the requisite references. They are based on (although
not identical to) a list of twenty cases suggestive of survival prepared by Professor
Archie Roy and published some years ago in the SPR's magazine, The Paranormal
Review as an invitation or challenge to skeptics to demonstrate how any of these
cases could be explained by "normal" i.e. non-paranormal, means. Thus
far there have been no takers. It is now Mr. Randi's chance to vindicate his claims.
-------------------- AND
HERE ARE THE CASES FROM WHICH MR. RANDI MAY WISH TO SELECT A HANDFUL TO ANSWER: 1.
The Watseka Wonder, 1887. Stevens, E.W. 1887 The Watseka Wonder, Chicago; Religio-philosophical
Publishing House, and Hodgson R., Religio-Philosophical Journal Dec. 20th, 1890,
investigated by Dr. Hodgson. 2. Uttara Huddar and Sharada. Stevenson I.
and Pasricha S, 1980. A preliminary report on an unusual case of the reincarnation
type with Xenoglossy. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 74,
331-348; and Akolkar V.V. Search for Sharada: Report of a case and its investigation.
Journal of the American SPR 86,209-247. 3. Sumitra and Shiva-Tripathy.
Stevenson I. and Pasricha S, and McLean-Rice, N 1989. A Case of the Possession
Type in India with evidence of Paranormal Knowledge. Journal of the Society for
Scientific Exploration 3, 81-101. 4. Jasbir Lal Jat. Stevenson, I, 1974.
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (2nd edition) Charlottesville: University
Press of Virginia. 5. The Thompson/Gifford case. Hyslop, J.H. 1909. A Case
of Veridical Hallucinations Proceedings, American SPR 3, 1-469. 6. Past-life
regression. Tarazi, L. 1990. An Unusual Case of Hypnotic Regression with some
Unexplained Contents. Journal of the American SPR, 84, 309-344. 7. Cross-correspondence
communications. Balfour J. (Countess of) 1958-60 The Palm Sunday Case: New Light
On an Old Love Story. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 52, 79-267. 8.
Book and Newspaper Tests. Thomas, C.D. 1935. A Proxy Case extending over Eleven
Sittings with Mrs Osborne Leonard. Proceedings SPR 43, 439-519. 9. "Bim's"
book-test. Lady Glenconnor. 1921. The Earthen Vessel, London, John Lane. 10.
The Harry Stockbridge communicator. Gauld, A. 1966-72. A Series of Drop-in Communicators.
PSPR 55, 273-340. 11. The Bobby Newlove case. Thomas, C. D. 1935. A proxy
case extending over Eleven Sittings with Mrs. Osborne Leonard. PSPR 43, 439-519. 12.
The Runki missing leg case. Haraldsson E. and Stevenson, I, 1975. A Communicator
of the Drop-in Type in Iceland: the case of Runolfur Runolfsson. JASPR 69. 33-59. 13.
The Beidermann drop-in case. Gauld, A. 1966-72. A Series of Drop-in Communicators.
PSPR 55, 273-340. 14. The death of Gudmundur Magnusson. Haraldsson E. and
Stevenson, I, 1975. A Communicator of the Drop-in Type in Iceland: the case of
Gudni Magnusson, JASPR 69, 245-261. 15. Identification of deceased officer.
Lodge, O. 1916. Raymond, or Life and Death. London. Methuen & Co. Ltd.16.
Mediumistic evidence of the Vandy death. Gay, K. 1957. The Case of Edgar Vandy,
JSPR 39, 1-64; Mackenzie, A. 1971. An Edgar Vandy Proxy Sitting. JSPR 46, 166-173;
Keen, M. 2002. The case of Edgar Vandy: Defending the Evidence, JSPR 64.3 247-259;
Letters, 2003, JSPR 67.3. 221-224. 17. Mrs Leonore Piper and the George
"Pelham" communicator. Hodgson, R. 1897-8. A Further Record of Observations
of Certain Phenomena of Trance. PSPR, 13, 284-582. 18. Messages from "Mrs.
Willett" to her sons. Cummins, G. 1965. Swan on a Black Sea. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul. 19. Ghostly aeroplane phenomena. Fuller, J.G. 1981 The Airmen
Who Would Not Die, Souvenir Press, London. 20. Intelligent responses via
two mediums: the Lethe case. Piddington, J.G. 1910. Three incidents from the Sittings.
Proc. SPR 24, 86-143; Lodge, O. 1911. Evidence of Classical Scholarship and of
Cross-Correspondence in some New Automatic Writing. Proc. 25, 129-142, Comments
(August 7th) on the pre-edited TV show
These comments are written in
response to those eager to know how last night's Fulcrum TV programme The Ultimate
Psychic Challenge was conducted at the London Television Studios. It purported
to be a serious television programme aimed at discovering whether there was sound
evidence of after-death communication. More immediately, this is an appeal to
those responsible for the production to correct in the cutting room the serious
imbalance and misleading message of the taped programme. I had been pressed
to attend the studio in order to help provide that evidence, as a counterbalance
to whatever James Randi might be presenting or arguing. The filming lasted three
hours+ . The show is to be edited down to one and a half hours, less commercial
breaks. Despite doubts of several who believed that Fulcrum TV deliberately
conceived the programme to rubbish the concept of survival, and not to present
a balanced assessment of the case for and against communication with the dead;
and despite at least two pieces of evidence suggesting that this is what they
did, I am prepared to acquit those responsible of any charges worse than naiveté,
arrogance and inadequate research. But first let me summarise what happened. The
audience was first asked to vote whether they believed, disbelieved or were uncertain
about discarnate communication. The initial voting percentages, from a self-selected
audience, were respectively 44, 19 and 37. Randi was introduced pseudonymously
as a psychic and proceeded to attempt cold readings, with embarrassingly negative
results. He was eventually stopped, ostensibly because of some technical hitch,
left the room, and later returned to resume his act, this time with more success.
The presenter, Kate Galloway, who did a difficult job with considerable skill,
then revealed to a far from astonished audience, most of whom said they had recognised
Randi from the outset, that it was all faked, and that Randi had access to audience
names and addresses, and indeed employed a researcher to show how easily fake
mediums could discover information about potential sitters, or clients. All
of this, which took up most of the first hour, was simply to demonstrate how cold
and hot reading works. The implication was absolutely clear: this was typical
of how mediums, platform or face-to-face, operated. To illustrate this further,
we saw a screening of a freshly-coached actor under the guidance of sceptic Tony
Youens giving a fake reading to a young and clearly inexperienced client who confessed
himself impressed with the evidential standard achieved. To make certain
we got the message there was another clip, this time of a genuine medium, who
was present. Her statements were interlarded with comments from Youens aimed at
showing how each of them could be reasonably deduced from responses, facial expressions,
guesswork, etc. The medium herself, from the front row of the audience, protested
most vehemently that by omitting much more evidential material the extract of
her filmed sitting had given a false impression, stigmatising her as a fake. Additional
pieces were aimed solely at proving how gullible people are. Randi produced half
a dozen so-called psychological studies based on questionnaires previously completed
by members of the audience. Each was asked to score the results for accuracy/appropriateness.
Only one gave him top marks. The analyses were, of course, identical, and were
simply designed to show how readily people attributed general characteristics
to themselves. Interspersed with this were responses by Professor Chris
French to questions on a range of associated psychological and sociological issues.
French, a noted sceptic of the less unenlightened kind, gave fairly reasonable
responses, and appeared to have ample time to do so. He was not asked to deal
with either the leading cases indicating survival (readers of his magazine The
Skeptic will have noted that he is too busy to study this sort of evidence) or
even the current work of Professors Archie Roy and Gary Schwartz. The principal
- indeed virtually the only - counterbalance to this was the performance of a
genuine medium, Keith Charles, an ex-detective. Two of his former clients gave
impressive testimony to the accuracy of statements he had made, e.g. about the
precise contents of a sealed letter deposited in the coffin of their daughter.
His appearance in person was preceded by a clip in which Philadelphia police officials
testified to their conviction that Charles could help trace missing persons. His
on-floor readings were likewise impressive, save when an opaque screen precluded
sight of a studio guinea pig. The only other person of whose presence I
had previously been advised was Dr Adrian Parker, who spoke briefly on Near Death
Experiences as an indication of the independence of consciousness from brain. I
had been given four questions the responses to which, albeit necessarily brief,
were aimed at addressing the issue of communication evidence. One related to the
SPR and its membership; a second asked how compelling was the evidence from people
like Professor Gary Schwartz, Professor Fontana and myself. A third asked why
I thought some within the scientific community had rejected that evidence, and
a fourth asked whether there was any particular experience that had convinced
me - with special reference to the Scole investigation and report. I was
given very little time to deal even with the first and last question, but had
virtually no opportunity to explain the steps that had been taken both in the
distant past and at present to eliminate all of the sensory clues on which skeptics
like Randi continued to dwell, and to indicate the measure and importance of the
recent work of Roy, Robertson and Schwartz, with which I had assumed the programme
to be essentially concerned. The programme ended with a slightly botched
experiment in psychometric reading by Charles for which there was quite inadequate
time, and then an entertaining card trick by Randi, who stated that everything
Charles had told the audience could be attributed to cold reading, a statement
so grotesquely at variance with his own performance as to be risible. Clearly
a good many of the audience felt the same way, since at the end the percentages
of believers, non-believers and uncertains had changed to 54, 24 and 22. But,
as Randi rightly said, the evidence is determined by scientific investigation
(plug for his $1,000,000 offer amid cries of "phoney") not by votes. Comment Before
offering my general comments on what was wrong with the entire conception of the
programme, which is likely to be seen by a very large number of people, may I
examine the two aspects which I find disquieting? One is the vehemence and distress
of the medium who said her interview gave a wholly false impression and left the
clear impression that she was a fraud. I believe an independent person or group
should be invited to examine the uncut and the edited version and issue a report.
The
second concern relates to a very positive instruction I received from the person
whom I believed to be the producer (actually assistant producer, I later learned)
that I was not to mention the Jacqui Poole case when giving examples of impressive
evidence of posthumous messages. (Many will know that this refers to a large number
of highly evidential statements about a murdered woman given to the police shortly
after the crime and resulting eventually in the conviction of the person accurately
described and named). Ostensibly this was because it would cause distress to the
relatives. The murder was more than 20 years ago. Details have been widely circulated
on the Net and in the Police Gazette, and the case was the subject of a half hour
TV programme in Ireland where the medium lives. It seems to me far more likely
that the producers did not wish to confront Youens and French, both of whom are
familiar with the strength of the case, with evidence they couldn't answer. I
may be wrong, but this arbitrary prohibition is suspicious, all the more so since
I learn that Youens, desperate to find holes in the evidence, has contacted the
police officer responsible and found his theories shot to pieces by facts. ALTHOUGH
it will be seen that some attempt at balance was achieved, undue emphasis was
given, and time devoted, to the views of Youens and French, neither of whom addressed
themselves to the evidence, but concentrated (as indeed they were doubtless asked
to) on such interesting but strictly irrelevant issues as human gullibility and
techniques for fraud. The deepest flaw in the entire programme was obsession
with entertainment, based on the conviction that audiences interested in the most
profoundly important issue for mankind need gimmickry, and are liable to switch
off or over because "talking heads" aren't stimulating enough. While
this is a belief common to television producers generally, when a serious topic
is supposed to be under expert examination and discussion, it constitutes an insult
both to the television studio audience and to subsequent viewers. So quite
apart from the more personal issues arising from cavalier and misleading treatment
of invitees (one man told me he had spent three days rehearsing the answers he
was to give to three questions from the production team, but was not only ignored
but left stranded at the studio late at night after the departure of his last
train), the uncut programme spent far too much time on matters essentially irrelevant
to the question at issue, and on sheer gimmickry, and far too little time to learn
from those familiar with the evidence what it was, how strong, and why all of
the demonstrations seen by the audience were based on the wholly false premise
that serious investigators of mediums were either unaware of those dangers or
had been unable to devise safeguards against them when experimenting with mediums. Despite
the fact that there was a significant swing towards belief, the audience did so
in the absence of the scientific evidence they should have been given the chance
to consider, and for the presentation of which I had been specifically invited.
Had I been given one quarter the time devoted to Randi the audience would have
been in a better position to form a judgement. As it is, I trust this message
arrives in time to influence the cutting process.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Post-edited
comments (August 18th) Not all addressees will have seen my earlier
note of August 7th written immediately after the filming of Fulcrum TV's "Ultimate
Psychic Challenge" which was screened last night on Discovery Channel on
Saturday, August 23rd, in advance of its repeat on Channel 4 during a Paranormal
evening devoted to three programmes on mediumship and associated phenomena. I
therefore append my original note (in italics) which explains the reasons for
the criticisms which I and others had of the manner in which the show was formulated. To
fit over three hours of programming into the (slightly less than) one and a half
hour slot, some severe cutting was necessary. The substance of this complaint
is not that the programme as edited lacked balance between the negative and positive
approaches, but that there was deliberate suppression of important and relevant
material in favour of irrelevant gimmickry, with the result that viewers were
denied what small opportunity they could have had to be aware of at least one
crucial fact about the scientific evidence from mediumship. We were constantly
reminded that the programme was devoted solely to discovering the answer to the
question: can we talk to the dead? I had been invited to give the scientific evidence,
and given prior notification of four questions, previously discussed with the
assistant producer Victoria Coker (see below) and recorded on email. Probably
the most crucial question, which I was given all too little opportunity to answer,
was: "There are a number of scientists who are investigating
the existence of the spirit world: how compelling is the evidence they are producing?
(you, Fontana, Gary Schwartz etc)"
It would be reasonable
to conclude that this went to the heart of the issue. As stated below, I had barely
an opportunity during the filming to point out that from the earliest days scientists
had been aware of the need to guard against sensory leakage when testing mediums.
However, this question and answer was cut entirely from the edited text. My contribution
lasted a fraction over one minute. This compares with the minimum of five which
I had been led to believe I would have, and contrasts with 40 or more minutes
devoted to Randi. What made this worse, and which I cite to justify my
accusation that this crucial omission from what was already a severely truncated
contribution was dishonest as well as deliberate, was that three and a half minutes
at the end of the programme was devoted to a card trick by Randi which had not
the remotest bearing on the subject. Yet the brief passage excised from my remarks
would have shown that most of the programme devoted to Randi's hot and cold readings,
and to two film clips and subsequent discussions by Tony Youens on the same subject,
were irrelevant to the scientific evidence, particularly in the light of the single
and double blind procedures adopted by Gary Schwartz and Robertson and Roy during
the past five years.
Montague Keen. 22nd August 2003
<<
Return to Victor's column |
