Physicist and workshop co-instructor Bernard Leikind demonstrates one of many methods of “self torture” whose secrets were revealed to participants

Dr. Leikind, a physicist, revealed the secret of firewalking, which does not require any special preparations or beliefs. Anybody can do firewalking, as Dr. Leikind has. The audience enjoyed his anecdotes from these events and his digressions into other “amazing” phenomena such as steel-rod bending and the bed-of-nails. There is a solid scientific reason firewalkers are not burned. For burns to occur, the heat from the smoldering embers or coals, or the hot stones, must penetrate the skin and elevate the temperature of the underlying tissue. The time the skin is in contact with the heat source is too short for this to occur if the walker steps briskly and the bed of coals is around 10 feet long.

Dr. Nickell, a magician and author, took the participants through the history of wonder workers and their performances, with examples from previous centuries. Among these were the tricks of cannon ball catching. Much of this information can be gleaned from books about magic available in many libraries. However, often, they needed no tricks, just exceptional physical abilities as seen in the strongmen and sword-swallowing acts. The trademark of most of the famous performers, including Houdini, was meticulous preparation and flawless execution. Dr. Nickell showed this point by twice escaping from a strait jacket after having his wrists bound with a Siberian chain and handcuffs, and his thumbs locked in thumbcuffs, once behind a screen and then in full view of the audience.

A brave workshop participant tries his hand–and more–at escaping from a strait jacket. He succeeded!

These demonstrations were most useful in focusing the discussion on what it means to be skeptical of paranormal claims. For example, it is not enough to come up with an explanation, and expect it to be the explanation! The scientific approach demands that one come up with multiple plausible explanations, and then conduct controlled tests of each. It is important to remind people that truth matters, and that the search for truth, even when it takes the form of “de-bunking” deeply held beliefs, is worthwhile. The experience of what is taken to be a paranormal event is very real to the person who has the experience. We should not ignore their subjective reports, but we do not have to believe them. We can ask them for objective and scientific evidence to support their claims. Otherwise we are trapped in the situation of having to prove a negative. In other words, skeptics should ask the believers to prove that Santa Claus’ reindeer can fly, rather than the skeptics trying to prove that they cannot fly.

Dr. Leikind pointed out that, compared to today, people alive thousands or hundreds of years ago lived incredibly chaotic lives, with no reasonable assurance that they would survive from one year to another. They did observe regularity in the movement of the stars and planets. It may have been natural to take as a hypothesis that the stars and planets contain information about events on earth. This hypothesis, called astrology, has been elaborated upon throughout the centuries, but even some ancients knew that it was not correct. Scientific tests of astrological forecasts also show that they are incorrect.

Joe Nickell seems securely fettered–with a padlocked wrist chain, handcuffs, and thumbcuffs–but was free presently

Magician and mentalist Mark Edward entertained after the banquet with an excellent performance showing his “mental powers.” At least some of us enjoyed being thoroughly fooled by several of his acts. He did not explain how he did his acts, but he did state that no paranormal events were involved. There is a clear difference between a magician who entertains and a charlatan who claims supernatural powers. Certainly no one present had any reservations about magic performances put on solely for entertainment. CSICOP has no interest in investigating or revealing trade secrets of magicians. Only when the tricks are used to defraud money from unsuspecting people does the matter become of concern. This stance is in the tradition of many magicians going back to Houdini and earlier performers.

The next workshop is tentatively scheduled for August in Buffalo, New York. CSICOP promises that the snow will be melted by then so that the participants can enjoy a four-day course “Introduction to Critical Thinking.” We highly recommend that you participate.

Related Information

This review originally appeared in Rational Inquiry, the newsletter of the San Diego Association For Rational Inquiry.

We must not nitpick, however. Dr. Brown informs us that the farthest reaches of the universe are now open to us and can be reached in short order using his rigorous and exacting remote-viewing protocols developed by the US military for espionage purposes. Although these methods are new, they are “valid and exceptionally reliable research instruments, regardless of whether many other scientists yet accept them or are familiar with them” (p. 2). That takes care of that! Brown goes on to inform us that: 1) there is extraterrestrial life, lots of it; 2) this is not a book of speculation about ET life but a volume of results; 3) there is always a study that is the first of its kind and this is such a study; 4) widespread acceptance of his methods will come and we need not be ashamed of using these methods now; 5) his methods are as rigorously controlled as those in any other social science study, although the methods are not the same; 6) he is able to replicate his results, in other words, he can do his SRV over and over and go back where he was before; 7) a wide array of psi phenomena exists; 8) remote viewing — the ability to accurately perceive information at great distances across space and time no — longer needs to depend upon a few gifted individuals because now we know that SRV can be taught and learned, and the reliability of trained individuals is “generally much greater than that of the best natural psychics” (p. 4).

Brown next informs us that he discovered SRV after making contact with several of the Pentagon’s ex-psychic warriors who successfully spied on the Kremlin during the Cold War. Brown became interested after these warriors turned their attention to the enigma of UFOs and ETs visiting Earth. Brown then quickly learned how to use SRV to investigate the ancient Martian civilization that flourished on Mars at the time dinosaurs roamed the earth. Next he learned how to use SRV to study the little Greys and to visit them on their home world. Once Brown mastered the technique, wonder after wonder began to unfold. Things got so wonderful, in fact, that Brown had to stop and insure his readers that “what I discovered in the process of my research was more unexpected than the plot of any science-fiction novel. I never could have dreamed up a story more amazing than the reality that I have perceived” (p. 6).

As the reader turns the pages what strikes the eye is, indeed, amazing. Following a brief history of the U.S. Military Psychic Warfare Program, we are informed about the work of Robert Jahn and Harold Puthoff and Robert Monroe and Ingo Swann and how important meditation and the work of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is in teaching one to use SRV. After learning how one uses the mind and imagination to sail off into the wild blue yonder and how to master the seven stages of SRV protocols and the six different types of remote-viewing data, we are then introduced to the UFO literature as provided us by those good doctors — Dr. John E. Mack and Dr. David Jacobs — who tell Brown about the reality of the little Greys and send him forth to pursue them to their own planet. After a brief excursion to the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi program and the Monroe Institute, Brown takes us on a journey through Akasha — the home of that fount of universal knowledge, the Akashic Record.

Brown is now ready to get down to business and he does. He next takes us to Mars. Then we visit a UFO-abduction and follow this with conversations with the present-day Martians who have survived and discuss Martian civilization with them. Brown now has us visit subspace, where all SRV occur, and introduces us to the subspace helpers as well as other members of the Galactic Federation. We then visit the home of the Greys and learn along the way that, believe it or not, the ETs helped write many of the Star Trek episodes, which are previews of what we will become in the future. A little further along the way we meet Jesus, God, and Guru Dev and study Earth’s future environment. Following a delightful conversation with Buddha and a study of the Martian culture now present here on Earth, Brown urges us to make official diplomatic contact with the Martians but not before we launch an all-out program to carefully train our human diplomats so that they can bring about the desired results with the Martians, the Greys, and other members of the Galactic Federation. Brown closes his astounding, incredible, and scientifically amazing book by informing us that there is already a Martian underground base in New Mexico and that we should use it as a “processing center” to receive the waves of Martian citizens that will be coming after the president contacts the Martians and begins negotiations. In Brown’s words, “I suggest that the president of the United States authorize (with United Nations sanction) the transmission to Mars of an invitation to begin direct talks between Earth-based humans and the chosen representatives of the Martians. The transmission would indicate that humans are warmly receptive of the idea of working with the Martians with regard to issues of mutual concern” (p. 260). As for the Greys, Brown feels they are not yet ready to work physically with large numbers of humans on an equal level. Nevertheless human diplomats should start working with them, using SRV in subspace, and win them over. Brown thinks we should even help them with their UFO-abduction genetic project. Brown is also convinced that neither the Martians nor the Greys will do anything to further communication with us. "They are waiting for us to act first Let us speak, finally, to those who have waited so long and patiently for us, out there.” Readers who would like to communicate with Dr. Brown can do so by writing him at The Farsight Institute, P.O. Box 49243, Atlanta, GA 30359.

As for the conquest of time, this marvelous accomplishment has also been made with SRV, and exact procedures for doing so are set forth in a lovely book with the intriguing title Future Memory: How Those Who “See the Future” Shed New Light on the Workings of the Human Mind. The book is authored by Phyllis M.H. Atwater, L.H.D. (Doctor of Humanities) and published by Birchlane Press (Carol Pub. Group, New York, 1996). According to Atwater many people “are able to live life in advance of its physical manifestations and remember in detail of having done so when something triggers that memory.” As a child Atwater suffered from synesthesia — hearing colors and seeing sound — and has had at least six near-death experiences thus far. She also believes that we humans invent reality as much as we discover it and that reality is loose and flexible and occasionally “shifts.” We call these shifts coincidences. All such things as prophesying, forecasting, precognition, clairvoyance, and clairaudience are models and proof of our futuristic awareness. Moreover, we all have future memories and Atwater interviewed over 200 people who gave her examples of seeing ahead. Everyone having dj‡ vu experiences, for example, can attest to “seeing ahead.”

The best way to travel in time, however, is to learn the sure-fire future memory technique of “Remote Viewing.” Atwater learned it from an electronics design expert, James Van Avery, at the International Conference on Paranormal Research a year or so ago. Van Avery believes all of us can live the future in advance “by merely deciding to, then practice and practice and hone the skill until it becomes natural to us.” Van Avery says that once, as a child, he knew every turn of the roulette wheel in advance and that he then finally developed his present jim-dandy procedure for “remembering the future.” Jim and Atwater provide the reader with a detailed how-to-do-it, step-by-step procedure in the book and it is, indeed, very simple and something everyone can learn. Boiled down to its essentials it consists of quietly closing your eyes and concentrating on what things will look like in a few minutes; checking a few minutes later, closing your eyes, and imagining again; and gradually going further and further into the future, concentrating on specific details until you can describe the future precisely. While persistent practice is mandatory, the absolute essential ingredient, Atwater tells us, is the matter of belief. “You must,” Atwater says, “make a drastic change in your belief system that what you’re doing is real and that Future Memory is possible and can be controlled.” Most important of all, we are told, “Beliefs do not rely on logic for justification. Once you accept that Future Memory is possible and you can do it, something wonderful will happen. Being conscious of future events will seem almost as easy as remembering what you ate for lunch yesterday. You will actually wonder why visualizing future events was so difficult” (pp. 49-50). Atwater also tells us not to let wrong results discourage us but to use them as means of learning how to improve.

If any of you skeptics are considering taking up remote viewing and, thereby, conquering both space and time, we advise you to do it quickly; otherwise you are likely to be crushed in the mad dash of millions of gamblers and horse players and stock brokers beating new paths to the doors of Brown and Atwater. And you must also take into consideration all those millions of Martians and Greys camped out in front of Brown’s and Atwater’s doors asking for a handout. As for self-deception, we can confidently conclude that on planet Earth today, it is alive and well and flourishing nicely among those with advanced degrees.

Today there are two Israels. One is the old, religious Israel with its deep faith in ancient traditions — and which accepts paranormal events as part of its worldview. The other is the modern, secular Israel which, though it rejects much of the old tradition, seems equally willing to live in a world where the normal and paranormal exist side by side.

The recent elections here gave us one good example. Israeli election laws forbid the payment of voters to cast their ballots for one party or another. "Payment” means not only cash, but also the promise of miracles. For example, it is forbidden to bribe a voter by promising that an especially important rabbi will pray for him. The issue came up in 1996 when rabbis associated with the Sephardic Torah Guardians party (known in Hebrew as “Shas”) began distributing holy amulets and postcards with sacred powers to potential voters (in exchange for a promise to vote for Shas).

The distribution of the amulets on a mass scale raised a major scandal, though there were few voices which dared (in an election season) to raise the question of how exactly these amulets brought good luck. Shas’ opponents simply argued that the amulets were ineffective because they were manufactured in the Far East, by gentiles. Not only wouldn’t they work, but they would probably bring bad luck upon those who took them. Nevertheless, Shas supporters claimed that the amulets were already working. In one case, a little boy fell out of a fourth story window and survived without a scratch — because his father had taken one of the holy amulets.

It is not only the Sephardic Jews, who originate in the Islamic countries, who have their miracle workers. The Ashkenazi (European) Jews have their fair share of miracles too. A shop in Jerusalem was recently caught selling bath water in which the late Lubavitcher rebbe had purportedly bathed. When reproached for this commercial exploitation of sacred water, the store owners insisted that the water was not actually for sale, but that donations were appreciated.

The cult which arose world-wide around the Lubavitcher rebbe was rich in miracle lore. The rebbe’s unexpected death (he was supposed to reveal himself as the Messiah and redeem the world) did nothing to dampen enthusiasm among his supporters, and his photograph continues to decorate posters around the country. The fact that such a “cult of personality” flies in the face of thousands of years of Jewish tradition (which rejects idol worship) has not deterred the Lubavitcher hassidim.

In recent years, Israel has grown rapidly and today it has the highest economic growth rate in the Western world. A new, educated urban middle class has been one result of that growth. These Israelis, thoroughly modern in every way, have been no less enthralled by the possibilities of the paranormal. Though they laugh off holy amulets and sacred bath water, they embrace the whole gamut of modern paranormal beliefs.

In most ways they are just copying Americans. The “X-Files” is enormously popular here, especially among the very young. The fake Roswell autopsy film was shown on Israeli television months after it was first shown in the U.S. and Europe, with no critical comment. Astrologers and others who claim to see into the future are often brought in to lighten up the news with their predictions of who will win elections and the like. All the major newspapers and several magazines run astrology columns in every issue. Books on paranormal themes are widely available.

UFOs are sighted in Israel all the time; sometimes a special significance is attached to alien visitors coming here, to the Holy Land. Not long ago, Israeli television’s respected news program devoted several minutes to this phenomenon. Reporters interviewed the secretary of a moshav (cooperative farm) who had met one of the “greys” (alien visitors), as well as one of our local expert UFOlogists. In late April this year, one of the two biggest daily newspapers ran a large frontpage photo of a light blur against a dark background headlined (you guessed it) “UFOs in Tel Aviv?” The question mark was more than appropriate, because — as became clear from reading the story — what actually happened was that a nervous resident of Israel’s largest city had called the police to report what turned out to be a military helicopter.

Unconventional and “alternative” health cares are as popular here as anywhere else. In the early 1990s the Ministry of Health set out to look into the whole issue and formulate policy, and came up with a document basically saying that all forms of “complementary medicine” were all right. Since then there have been a profusion of “colleges” teaching the skills necessary to practice such treatments, as well as practitioners in search of Israelis who have grown dissatisfied with conventional medicine.

Of course when one thinks of Israel and the paranormal, the name that jumps to mind is Uri Geller. But Mr. Geller now resides in London, where you can pick up his latest book teaching you how to bend spoons. He is not often here, if ever, and gets little media attention.

I’ll end on an upbeat note. A few years ago, one of our two television stations decided to cash in on the paranormal and devote a show to the whole range of phenomena we've just mentioned. The show would begin each week with weird music and occult symbols, setting just the right tone for serious discussion of the paranormal. But ratings were low, and the show flopped. Maybe there’s hope for us yet.

The question of bias is important since Levengood’s attitudes and assumptions reveal him as a partisan crop-circle “believer” of the Terence Meaden, ion-plasma-vortex variety. Alas, Meaden-who wrote several articles and books advocating the vortex hypothesis-was increasingly forced to conclude that great numbers of crop circles, especially the elaborate pictograms, were produced by hoaxers, and he reportedly abandoned interest in the subject. [6] Levengood’s colleague, John A. Burke, seems particularly defiant towards “alleged hoaxers” [7], as if there were not powerful evidence that most-probably all-of the crop patterns were man-made.[8]

There is, in fact, no satisfactory evidence that a single “genuine” (i.e., vortex-produced) crop-circle exists, so Levengood’s reasoning is circular: Although there are no guaranteed genuine formations on which to conduct research, the research supposedly proves the genuineness of the formations. But if Levengood’s work were really valid, he would be expected to find that some among the putatively “genuine” formations chosen for research were actually hoaxed ones-especially since even some of Meaden’s most ardent defenders admit there are more hoaxed circles than “genuine” ones. [6,8] In fact, there is now evidence that a major formation that Levengood believes genuine and uses as a basis for theoretical discussion-the “Mandelbrot” formation-was the work of hoaxers. [6]

Although Levengood finds a correlation between “structural and cellular alterations” in plants and their location within crop-circle-type formations (as opposed to those of control plants outside such formations) [1], he should know the maxim that “Correlation is not causation.” As the noted Temple University mathematician John Allen Paulos recently demonstrated-quite tongue in cheek-there is a direct correlation between children’s math ability and shoe size! [9] Comments statistician Rand Wilcox of the University of Southern California: “Correlation doesn't tell you anything about causation. But it’s a mistake that even researchers make.” [9]

That Levengood’s work does not go beyond mere correlation in many instances is evident from his frequent concessions: For example, “Taken as an isolated criterion,” he says, “node size data cannot be relied upon as a definite verification of a ‘genuine’ crop formation.” [1] Again he admits, “From these observed variations, it is quite evident that [cell wall] pit size alone cannot be used as a validation tool.” [1]

Even his alleged correlations are suspect. Citing variations in pit expansion and node size in plants from within the formations, he states: “These energy distributions are by no means uniform.”[10] Again, he cites formations where there were increases in plant pit size well outside the formations, saying that “some 20 feet out is the farthest I've seen this energy carryover and so even [though] those crops were standing upright and looked perfectly normal they had been hit.” He attributes this to “several different kinds of energy” being involved. [10]

He thus gives the impression that, like Meaden, he is constantly rationalizing new data and attempting to fit it in to preconceived vortex notions. Apparently no one has yet independently replicated Levengood’s work. One scientist from Colgate did attempt to verify his seed germination claims using some of his seeds but without success.[10] Apparently few mainstream scientists take Levengood’s work seriously other than one or two friends who wish “to remain anonymous because of the ridicule. [10]

Until his work is independently replicated by qualified scientists doing “double-blind” studies and otherwise following stringent scientific protocols, there seems no need to take seriously the many dubious claims that Levengood makes, including his similar ones involving plants at alleged “cattle mutilation” sites.[10]

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Franklin D. Trumpy, professor of physics, Des Moines Area Community College, for critiquing this article.

References

1. W. C. Levengood, “Anatomical Anomalies in Crop Formation Plants,” Physiologia Plantarum 92 (1994): 356-363.
2. W. C. Levengood, “Technique for Examining Crop Circle Energetics,” Report No. 18, [Pinelandia Lab], October 12, 1993.
3. W. C. Levengood and John A. Burke, “Delineation of Electromagnetic Energy Influencing Crop Formations,” Report No. 24, Pinelandia and Am-Tech Labs, September 28, 1994.
4. W. C. Levengood and John A. Burke, “Study of Simulated Crop Formations, 1994,” Report No. 27, Pinelandia and Am-Tech Labs, October 10, 1994.
5. The Earl of Haddington, letter to The Cereoloqist (Spring 1991), quoted in The Skeptics UFO Newsletter 10 (July 1991): 7.
6. Joe Nickell, “Crop-Circle Mania: An Investigative Update,” Skeptical Inquirer, in press.
7. John A. Burke, Introduction to W.C. Levengood’s Report No. 18 (see ref. 2).
8. Joe Nickell and John F. Fischer, “The Crop-Circle Phenomenon,” chapter 11 of Joe Nickell with John F. Fischer, Mysterious Realms: Probing Paranormal, Historical and Forensic Enigmas
(Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1992), 177-210.
9. “Statistics Often Misused to Cite Links as Causes,” Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.), January 5, 1995.
10. W. C. Levengood, telephone interview by A. J. S. Rays, December 8, 1994.