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Pure Deception. Charles Reynolds, editor and member of the Psychic Investigating Committee of the American Society of Magicians, agrees. "When evaluating the research, we have found that the researcher's will to believe is all powerful. It's a will that has nothing to do with religion; there are Marxists, atheists, agnostics who cling stubbornly to the ancient faith in black magic. Only now it's called 'the paranormal.' "
That faith is nowhere more evident than in the U.S.S.R., which has been beset in recent years with controversial sensitives. One, Ninel Kulagina, was appraised as capable of causing objects to float in midair. As Martin Gardner notes, "She is a pretty, plump, dark-eyed little charlatan who took the stage name of Ninel because it is Lenin spelled backward. She is no more a sensitive than Kreskin, and like that amiable American television humbug, she is basically show biz." Indeed, Ninel has been caught cheating more than once by Soviet Establishment scientists.
Another Russian lady, Rosa Kuleshova, can "read" with her fingertips while securely blindfolded. James Randi, analyzing photographs of Kuleshova, promptly announced that her act was "a fraud." To prove his point, he invited testers to blindfold him with pizza dough, a mask and a hood. Then he proceeded to drive a car in traffic. "I won't tell you how I did it," he says. "But it was not parapsychologically. It was pure deception, just as hers was." Such revelations have not deterred the parapsychologists in the U.S.S.R. or elsewhere. They freely concede that many of their subjects do sometimes cheat, but still may have paranormal powers.
In and out of the laboratory, many paranormalist investigators conduct experiments that mock rigorous and logical procedure. Claims are made, and the burden of proof is shifted to the doubter. Ground rules are laid down by the psychic subject and are all too eagerly accepted by his examiner. If the venture proves unsuccessful, a wide range of excuses are proffered: an unbeliever provided hostile vibrations; the subject was not receiving well; negative influences were present; testing rules were too restrictive. It is all reminiscent of the laws in Through the Looking-Glass, where people approach objects by walking away from them. And it creates an atmosphere in which even a genuine paranormal subject might have a hard time certifying his abilities.
No one has contributed more to the paranormal explosion than Uri Geller, the handsome, 26-year-old Israeli former nightclub magician who seems equally adept at telepathy, psychokinesis and precognition. "I don't want to spend my whole life in laboratories," Geller recently told TIME London Correspondent Lawrence Malkin. "I've just done a whole year at Stanford Research Institute [TIME, March 12]. Now I'll go on to other countries, and let them see if they know what it is I've got."
Death Threats. At the Stanford Research Institute