UPDATE: A revised version of this post, which abrogates this one, cane be found atInvestigating the impossible: A skeptical approach (Updated)
For over 20 years, psychologist Richard Wiseman has delved deep into the mysterious world of the paranormal, carrying out high profile, and often controversial, investigations into the impossible. In this talk, Wiseman describes some of his more colourful adventures, presenting a scientific look at a range of seemingly paranormal phenomenon, including fire-walking, ghostly encounters, and ESP. Discover whether such phenomena really exist, what the future holds for parapsychology, and why we are all attracted by the lure of strange stuff. Free packet of peanuts for the best question.
About Richard Wiseman
Psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman started his working life as a professional magician and currently holds Britain’s only Professorship in the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. He frequently appears on the media, and has written over 60 academic articles and several books, including The Luck Factor and Quirkology.
Richard Wiseman Websites
Homepage
Wikipedia Entry
Quirkology
Talk
Magic
He starts by looking at the psychology of magic, noting that we are not very good at perceiving the world around us, so that is why we need science. Richard presented a number of amusing optical illusions to demonstrate this. Behind these there are systematic methods and a kind of logic. Magicians, of which Richard used to be a professional one, are experts at these to`produce tricks, slights of mind as well as slights of hand. Behind these are methods of psychology, that magicians use for misdirection. We have hard wired heuristics and biases in our brain, that magicians take advantage. For example, the audience look where the magician looks, even if the audience knows ot look elsewhere, the heursitic keeps us looking at where the magician wants us to look. These biases and heursitics are so automatic that even if your are a magician, you can still be fooled, even knowing the preception tricks being used. Magicians use these techniques to rip up the mind, so do psychics and their ilk.
Seances
Richard tried to see if the same techniques were used by mediums. He stages seances (for the Equinox TV program). The simple techniques work very well, many get fooled - especially being subjected to these in darkness.
Haunted Houses
He also investigated haunted locations. He examined ghost photographs capturing spirit energy - which turned out to be bad photographs - such as capturing the end of a pair of spectacles the photographer took off to take the photograph! Still this does deny that paranormal phenomena do not exist, one still needs to test them and see.
Fire Walkers
On a Tomorrow's World show Richard tested walking on hot coals.Now physicists know that walking 12 to 15 feet across coals will not harm your feet. No supernatural skills required. So how about test claimants to see if they could walk more than 15 feet? The show presented a world firewalking record attempt. Can you guess what happened? Did the claimants mumbo jumbo help them? Just as well the were first aid workers available. Bizarre excuses were presented ofr failure, such as a claimant's guardian angel vanishing at the crucial moment!
Psychic Dogs
JT the dog beloved by Rupert Sheldrake was tested by Richard to see if JT could tell when his owner arrived home. Other TV shows did not test this properly and did not monitor the dog whilst the owner was far away. Can you guess what realy happened? Unfortunately the dog was waiting by the door when the owner was still 8 miles away! The dog went to to door 12 times, on a second test the dog went 12 times. The usual ad hoc explanations were made made by the owner Pam, it was the summer, the dog was looking for the post man and so on.
Testing normal people not psychics
The argument here is that everyone has these powers and so one should test the general population for small effects rather than a few special people "psychics" with purported strong effects (which have not been demonstrated, at least under the Richard's diligent eyes). The Ganzfeld Effect is the best known of these tests. Hornton clailmed using a meta-analysis that this had a statistically significant effect. Hyman critcised this meta-study. Richard performed another meta-study to see if these effects worked across labs. The answer was a resounding NO. The problem is that there is much selection over the studies used to claim effects. Richard still thinks this is curious but not remotely as convincing as the beleivers claim.
The Luck Factor
This book examined the psychology of exceptionally lucky and unlucky people. Test were designed with hugely blatant clues to help pass the test and unlucky people kept on missing these cues, causing much hilarity from the film makers.
Quirkology
This asked, amongst others, such questions as "Why do incompetent politicians win elections"? Not an issue to be laughed at, as amusing as the whole of Richard's talk is! In one demonstration of quirkology Richard used YouTube to present his infamous Colour Changing Card Trick. Look at the video and its YouTube explanation. The original video has now had over 5.5 million views. Another video is the amazing floating cork.
Conclusions
There is no evidence for the claims of mediums of psychics, whereas it is still worth pursing experimental work on the general population. Richard is a highly entertaining, amusing and visual presenter. It really is worth seeing him giving a talk live.
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