What prompted me to describe these common occurrences is an article in the May 1995 issue of The Psi Researcher, a British quarterly. Written by David Fontana, president of the Society for Psychical Research, it discusses how those troublesome spirits called poltergeists may actually follow investigators home and even haunt their tape recorders. Such an occurrence, Fontana speculates, may have happened to Maurice Grosse, one of the investigators in the notorious Enfield poltergeist case. (The case takes its name from a northern suburb of London where an outbreak of spooky disturbances occurred in 1977. Actually, British parapsychologist Anita Gregory concluded that many—if not all—of the incidents attributed to a poltergeist had been deliberately produced by the two girls in the household (Clark 1981).)

As Fontana tells the somewhat less-than-spine-tingling story of the haunted recorder, Grosse was speaking at a “Mensa at Malvern” conference where he played some tapes from the Enfield case, treating his listeners to the rough voice of a particular entity: allegedly that of a deceased man which “came from the throat of Janet, one of the young girls around whom much of the poltergeist phenomena revolved.”

Suddenly, the disembodied voice was silenced when the recorder, “a large, reel-to-reel machine” malfunctioned. This in itself was not strange, Fontana concluded, except that the tape “had jammed itself in a manner which appeared to defy the laws of mechanics.” Without breaking or becoming detached from either reel, it had unaccountably jumped upward, seemingly threaded itself through an aperture (big enough for the tape but not the 7” reel to pass), and wound itself around a pressure plate and its left rod in the opposite direction from its normal (left-to-right) travel. The resultant winding could only be undone, Fontana suggests, by cutting the tape. He states:

The determined critic will suggest there may have been an accomplice up to no good under the desk who removed the tape from one of the reels, wound it some forty times around the plate and the rod, and then wound the free end back onto the reel. Alternatively, he or she might suggest Maurice faked the whole thing, having rigged his tape recorder beforehand, and used another (hidden) machine to play the tape, stopping it dramatically at the point where he claimed the jamming occurred. Or the same critic might suggest that Maurice and I dreamt the whole story, or that we were the rather obtuse victims of as (unspecified) practical joke.

Point by point, however, Fontana explains how “None of these suggestions is tenable.” He says of the event, “There may be a normal explanation for it, but if so, we have been unable to find it.”

Reenter Tom Flynn. At my request, he read Fontana’s article, studied his accompanying diagrams, and reported to me as follows: “Occasionally, especially with older tape and under humid conditions, as the tape travels it can adhere to one of the guide posts. When this happens on a deck where both supply and take-up spindles are powered, the tape continues to feed, creating a fold.” It was such a loop of tape, Flynn theorizes, that threaded its way amid the works of Grosse’s recorder so as to create the previously mentioned illusions. Explains Flynn: “The fold pushes forward and as it has twice the density of plain tape, it can gather considerable momentum, arch through the mechanism, and wind tightly [from either direction, depending on how the tape is impelled] around one or more of the objects it encounters. The result can be exactly the sort of impenetrable mess Fontana spoke of.” (See Figure 1.) (“However,” Flynn adds, “if one understands that one is dealing with an ordinary crimping event in the 1/4 inch tape, and one takes about 20 minutes with a penknife, it is often possible to unwind the tape without cutting it.”)

Having witnessed such an effect himself, Tom Flynn concludes: “No movement of the 7” reels through tiny spaces is required. All we're dealing with is ‘worming’ behavior by a doubled-over length of 1/4” tape.” He has convinced me that his is the probable explanation for the “haunted” recorder. Of course, neither of us believes in poltergeists either.

References

• Clark, Jerome. 1981. “Update...,” Fate. July: 94.
• Fontana, David. 1995. “The Haunting of Maurice Grosse,” The Psi Researcher, No. 17 (May 1995), 10-12.

What should skeptics do when pathological world-views collide? A recent festival in a small coastal town in New South Wales (in Australia) produced some friction between New Agers and fundamentalist Christians and prompted these reflections.

First, it isn’t always prudent or wise for skeptics to directly confront the counterculture. Benign neglect may well be the wisest course. For example, a few years ago, the Canberra Skeptics picketed a Festival of Alternative Medicine and ESP. We scored some points and gained publicity for the Skeptics; but we also got the event onto the front page of The Canberra Times and thousands came out to the festival. The following year, overcome as much by inertia as careful strategic planning, we ignored the festival and it was a comparative flop.

Skeptics certainly need to be prepared to apply the blowtorch, but keep in mind the possible consequences of doing so. If it just provides the New Age with the oxygen of free publicity, then the temptation should be resisted. No free rides.

Bear in mind, in particular, the media craving to respect the commendable liberal principles of tolerance and balance. This means that the media will want to present the issues as ones where (maybe) skeptics have some important points to defend, but, on the other hand, so do the New Agers. What the press regards as a balanced report can be extremely satisfactory to the fruitcakes.

Secondly, there is an important principle which skeptics can exploit. It’s the cognitive equivalent of the principle in the martial arts of using the force of your opponents to your advantage. The principle is: For every fruitcake there is an equal and opposite anti-fruitcake. We should try to harness the energies of the counter-culture to our advantage and thereby, in some cases at least, see them harmlessly dissipated.

The anti-fruitcake principle (if my memory serves me) can be attributed to Patrick Moore. Moore suggested it some years ago, although not under that name (as I recall) in The New Scientist.

As a high profile scientific journalist, Moore gets a lot of letters, which he divides into three categories: “For reply soon,” “For reply when time permits,” and “Oh dear!” The latter, however, serves a useful function.

Suppose Moore receives a letter from a flat-earther in Yorkshire. He knows from experience that if he replies, patiently addressing the points raised, a time-consuming and unprofitable correspondence will be initiated. So, he riffles through the “Oh dear!” pile until he finds, for instance, a letter from a group in Germany who maintain that we actually live on the inside of a sphere. He then writes back to the flat-earther and says, “Your letter raises some very important issues; I have taken the liberty of forwarding it to Herr Schmidt’s group in Stuttgart, who I know will be very interested in the points that you raise.” Any exchange that then ensues at least does not involve Moore.

The answer to the skeptics’ dilemma is straightforward. Which side should we cheer for when pathological world-views collide? Neither. But we can still cheer nonetheless. And enjoy!

This error occurs frequently in the area of epidemiology, where the researcher uses statistical methods to discover the causes of diseases. (For example, to determine if cancer is caused by certain environmental factors.) The trouble is, there are good epidemiologists and bad epidemiologists. In addition, the methods of epidemiology are frequently used by people without a degree in epidemiology who think that there is not much more to the subject beyond calculating averages and standard deviations.

I feel qualified to speak on this topic because I was once married to an epidemiologist. She was a good one, having co-authored the basic textbook on the subject (Epidemiology, by Mausner & Bahn, Saunders, 1974), and she was perpetually going about the house screaming about the bad epidemiology that was being published in the journals. As a result, I am a skeptic about the use of epidemiology and biostatistics. They are valid sciences when used properly, but they are somewhat soft as sciences and are readily open to abuse. Therefore any results obtained with their aid must be examined critically.

The particular topic that stirs my attention today is an old one: the possibility that low frequency electromagnetic waves act as carcinogens. A large amount of research has been done trying to establish the relationship between magnetic fields from power lines and the incidence of cancer in the neighborhood. Physicists in general have been doubtful about this work, but have been too polite to say much in public.

Finally the American Physical Society, the broadest professional organization of physicists (of which I have been a member since 1948), has issued an official statement saying that it can find no evidence that electromagnetic fields (emf) radiated by electric power lines are a measurable cause of cancer. (New York Times, May 14, 1995.) A study conducted by Dr. David Hafemeister, of California Polytechnic State University, has reviewed all the existing literature on the subject and interviewed specialists in the field. His conclusion is that the statistical evidence for a correlation between electromagnetic fields and cancer is negligible, and is growing smaller as time goes on (a well known effect in parapsychology research).

The most devastating criticism about some of the emf research is that no effort was made to measure the actual em field strength experienced by the at-risk population. One paper I recall found that the cancer rate among electricians was higher than in the general population. But there was no effort made to show that these electricians actually experienced higher magnetic fields in their work. If I was an electrician I would want to shut off the power before going up on a high-voltage line. There are many chemical agents an electrician might encounter which would be much more harmful than possible em fields. (PCBs from transformer oil, for example).

Not only is the statistical data of doubtful value, but the people belaboring the emf-cancer connection have little or no theoretical explanation of how such em fields can actually produce cancer. The absence of a causal explanation greatly increases the skepticism in my mind.

The reason for the American Physical Society’s unprecedented statement is the fact that efforts to reduce the supposed effects of power-line fields on the population are likely to cost the public billions of dollars. This is money spent with no evidence that it does any good.

“No More Mr. Nice Guy,” continued:

Since my last piece on publications touting unusual theories, I have received in the mail a 21-page book written by Fereydoon Salehi, of Tehran, Iran. Not only is this book nicely printed by word-processor, but it comes in a professional hard binding.

The title of this book is Equivalence Principle of Mass-energy Conservation Law by Physical Constant. Its subject appears to be the classification of mass and energy in cosmic structures (planets, stars, galaxies, etc.). There is a large amount of mathematics in this book, and clearly much work has gone into it. I am sympathetic to the author’s seriousness of purpose, and so do not wish to hurt his feelings with a casual dismissal. Yet, am I to spend my few remaining days wading through insufficiently explained mathematics, even as I try to understand the uncertain English? The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Fortunately, two general principles come to my rescue.

The appropriate laws of physics must be applied to the work at hand. If you are talking about galaxies and the universe as a whole, Newtonian mechanics will not do. General relativity must be used. The book under review starts with Kepler’s third law (regarding motion, which is okay for the solar system, but not okay for larger-scale structures.

In any equation, the quantities on the right side must have the same dimensionality as the quantities on the left. By dimensionality I mean the following: All physical quantities can be broken down into simple fundamental quantities. In mechanics, these fundamental quantities are mass (M), length (L), and time (T). In any equation within mechanics, the combination of M, L, and T on the left must be the same as on the right.

For example, the familiar expression for energy, Mc², has a dimensionality of ML²/T² (because c is a velocity, and a velocity is L/T).

On page 6 of the book in question is an equation in which Mc² is equated to M²G², where G is the gravitational constant. I do not understand how this equation is derived, but it takes but a few minutes to see that M²G² has a dimensionality of L⁶T⁴, which is not the same as the dimensionality of Mc². Therefore, I do not have to know how this equation was derived to demonstrate its fallacy. I know from dimensional analysis that this equation cannot be correct — which, of course, makes me dubious about the rest of the book.

The use of such general principles can avoid a lot of fuss and bother. It is an example of another general principle: It is easier to prove that a theory is false than to prove that it is correct.

“This project was started ten years ago by a group of scientists in different fields of medicine and experimental physics . . . for studying the paranormal immunities [Super Reactions (SR)] to pain, bleeding and infection possessed by swamis and gurus, who can ram sharp objects through their bodies without feeling pain or having serious wounds. . . . We recently became able to . . . bestow SR [spontaneously] . . .to all people without restrictions or reservations. . . . It looks as if this technique [connects] the human body to a certain source of unknown energy which . . . protects [it] from any harm resulting from driving swords and sharp objects into it. . . . These techniques show 100% success when applied to different persons, including those who had had no idea about the expected results of the techniques. . . .We hope that our Programme will be of interest to you so that we can conduct joint research in fields of mutual interest.”

On April 8, after sharing Dr. Hussein’s letter with the TBS members attending our meeting, I replied on behalf of TBS. Noting our standing “$1,000 Challenge” for “verifiable proof of any paranormal phenomenon,” I informed Hussein that if he could demonstrate to us that the claims in his letter were true, “that would suffice.” I continued: “If you would like to visit the United States, specifically sunny Florida, we would love to test your claim, and would be agreeable to increasing our award to $10,000 if you were to exhibit no signs of pain or injury as we passed a knife through your body. Of course, we would have the police present to verify that we were doing this at your request. And, despite your claimed ‘100% success’ rate, as a physician I would be able to properly dress your wounds.”

I then received a May 10 letter from Louay J. Fatoohi of the physics department at Durham University, Durham, England, “on behalf of my colleague, Dr. Jamal Hussein, he will be on the East Coast next month and would be pleased to meet you and members of your committee. Dr. Hussein would therefore like to know how to arrange for the suggested meeting.” I replied on May 15, again on TBS stationery, which contains both our address and telephone number: ” . . . It is hard to believe that your colleague is prepared to be stabbed with knives. . . . Nevertheless, TBS is prepared to put him to the test. . . . You might send me a copy of Dr. Hussein’s plans for visiting the eastern U.S., including specific dates on which he could be available for testing.”

We heard nothing more until a July 25 mailing arrived from Paramann containing seven snapshots and a three-part article (co-authored by Hussein, Fatoohi, and two others) titled “The Deliberately Caused Bodily Damage Phenomena: Mind, Body, Energy or What?” which was published in the September, October, and November 1994 issues of the International Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine. An editor’s note accompanying the first installment of the article stated the following: “If the claims which are made in the article can be reproduced please do not try any of these methods on yourself or your patients! we would have a powerful method to use against trauma and pain.”

Unfortunately, despite our efforts, and our $10,000 offer, the Tampa Bay Skeptics was denied a unique opportunity to test these techniques on Dr. Hussein himself.

Update:

Several days prior to publication, I received another mass mailing, dated August 20, from Paramann Programme Labs. Their new letterhead now contains an e-mail address, that of L. Fatoohi, to which I promptly sent an inquiry. In his reply, Fatoohi apologized for not having answered my May letter, and informed me that Dr. Hussein had to cancel his planned trip to the U.S. “for personal circumstances.” I will be continuing my dialogue with Fatoohi, and will submit additional reports.