If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.

-Tweedledee, in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass

One of the questions that skeptics are asked most persistently is to explain how acupuncture, homeopathy, faith healing, Qigong, and other treatments work. Skeptics often use the placebo effect-a response to the act of being treated, not to the treatment itself-as an answer, but usually to no avail. I believe that’s because most people, both logical and fuzzy thinkers, don't truly understand what the placebo effect is.

Spontaneous remission and the placebo effect, which are known as nonspecific effects, are significant phenomena that have great impact on consumers and health-care professionals. Recovery from illness, whether it follows self-medication, legitimate treatment, or avant-garde therapies, may lead one to conclude that the treatment received was the cause of the return to good health.

A common saying is that if you treat a cold it will last a week, but if you leave it alone it will be gone in seven days. Even serious diseases have periods of exacerbation and remission; arthritis and multiple sclerosis are prime examples. There are even cases of cancers inexplicably disappearing. The major logical error in plotting disease progress is: post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("after it, therefore, because of it"). This common fallacy credits improvement to a specific treatment just because the improvement followed the treatment.

H. K. Beecher’s seminal paper “The Powerful Placebo” (Beecher 1955) is among the most frequently cited and was undoubtedly responsible for the double-blind study design having been adopted as the universal standard. Beecher reported on twenty-six studies and arrived at an average placebo response rate of 32.5 percent. From this figure comes the often cited statement that a fixed fraction (one-third) of the population responds to placebos. But this is a myth. A recent paper (Roberts et al. 1993) concluded that “under conditions of heightened expectations, the power of nonspecific effects (placebos) far exceeds that commonly reported in the literature.”

The paper, “The Power of Nonspecific Effects in Healing,” is fascinating. The authors analyzed data for treatments that met the following criteria:

• strong positive reports by at least two groups of investigators;
• at least one well-controlled negative report;
• the treatment had been abandoned as ineffective; and
• data from a major portion of the positive studies were presented in a manner that permitted reliable classification into categories of excellent, good, or poor outcomes.

The treatments that were studied included: glomectomy (the surgical removal of a small, normal mass of tissue called the carotid body that is found on the carotid artery) for the treatment of asthma; levamisole (an immunomodulatory drug) for the treatment of Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV); organic solvents (ethyl ether and chloroform), also for HSV; and gastric freezing for duodenal ulcers. In all the cases the doctors and the patients expected the treatments to work. The results for all the positive studies combined showed an excellent or good outcome in 69.8 percent of the almost seven thousand cases studied. These results led to the conclusion that a treatment outcome “is always due to some interactive combination of specific and nonspecific effects.”

Research also illustrates how difficult it is to separate valid treatments from apparently valid ones. In other words, we're never without some level of nonspecific effects.

A number of other myths are associated with placebos. Try to answer the following questions:

1. Does a positive response to a placebo mean the patient’s problem is imaginary?
2. Does a patient have to believe in the therapy for a placebo effect to occur?
3. Are placebos harmless?

The answer to all three questions is no. Placebo responses can occur in patients with real disorders; the subjective symptoms can resolve while the objective ones remain. Belief in the treatment only appears to explain a portion of the placebo effect (Jarvis 1990). It appears that belief, operant conditioning, and suggestibility all play important roles. In an interesting experiment, a man experienced pain and exhibited marked depression of a specific part of his heartbeat while being monitored by an electrocardiogram (ECG) machine during a treadmill diagnostic test. This occurred at a treadmill setting of 44. For a second test, when the treadmill number was miscounted so that the patient exercised less, he exhibited the same pain and ECG depression as at the setting of 44 (Jarvis 1990). This dramatically demonstrates the power of suggestion.

Contrary to popular belief, placebos can be harmful. Placebo responses can “teach” chronic illness by confirming and/or reinforcing the delusion of imagined disease (Jarvis 1990). Patients can become dependent on nonscientific practitioners who employ placebo therapies. Such patients may be led to believe they're suffering from imagined “reactive” hypoglycemia, nonexistent allergies and yeast infections, dental filling amalgam “toxicity,” or that they're under the power of Qi or extraterrestrials. And patients can be led to believe that diseases are only amenable to a specific type of treatment from a specific practitioner. On the other hand, the practitioner can also be blinded to the real disease because of being convinced that the patient’s condition is only imagined. Jarvis (1990) reminds us that “for both patient and practitioner to be blind to the clinical realities is an unacceptable version of the 'double-blind.'”

The use of placebos can undermine the doctor-patient relationship by requiring deception on the part of the caregiver. Consumer advocate Stephen Barrett has explicit reservations concerning overreliance on the placebo effect in clinical practice: “I am against people being misled. The quack who relies on a placebo effect is also pretending he knows what he is doing-that he can tell what is wrong with you and that he has effective treatment for just about everything . . . he is encouraging people to form lifelong habits of using things they don't need” (Barrett 1977).

In addition, placebos “need not always be beneficial and may be frankly toxic: dermatitis medicamentosa and angioneurotic edema (allergic-type reactions) have resulted from placebo therapy. More subtle but equally important negative placebo effects must occur when the physician by virtue of a moment of inattention, a raised eyebrow, or a transient look of disgust, loses the trust of his patient” (Bourne 1991).

Paracelsus (Swiss alchemist and physician 1493-1541) wrote: “You must know that the will is a powerful adjuvant of medicine.” It is imperative that skeptics recognize the wisdom and warnings inherent in this statement.

References

• Barrett, S. 1977. Health frauds and quackery. FDA Consumer 11:12-17.
• Beecher, H. K. 1955. The powerful placebo. JADA 159:1602-1606.
• Bourne, H. 1991. Unrecognized therapeutic measures, including placebo. In Clinical Pharmacology, ed. by K. L. Melmon and H. F. Morrelli. New York: Macmillan.
• Jarvis, W. T. 1990. Dubious dentistry: A dental continuing education course. Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, Calif.
• Roberts, A. H., D. G. Kewman, L. Mercier, and M. Hovell. 1993. The power of nonspecific effects in healing: Implications for psychosocial and biological treatments. Clinical Psychology Review 13:375-391.

Certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, the revolutionary theory developed early in the century to account for the anomalous behavior of light and atoms, are being misconstrued so as to imply that only thoughts are real and that the physical universe is the product of a cosmic mind to which the human mind is linked throughout space and time. This interpretation has provided an ostensibly scientific basis for various mind-over-matter claims, from ESP to alternative medicine. “Quantum mysticism” also forms part of the intellectual backdrop for the postmodern assertion that science has no claim on objective reality.

The word “quantum” appears frequently in New Age and modern mystical literature. For example, physician Deepak Chopra (1989) has successfully promoted a notion he calls quantum healing, which suggests we can cure all our ills by the application of sufficient mental power.

According to Chopra, this profound conclusion can be drawn from quantum physics, which he says has demonstrated that “the physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world” (Chopra 1993, 5). Chopra also asserts that “beliefs, thoughts, and emotions create the chemical reactions that uphold life in every cell,” and “the world you live in, including the experience of your body, is completely dictated by how you learn to perceive it” (Chopra 1993, 6). Thus illness and aging are an illusion and we can achieve what Chopra calls “ageless body, timeless mind” by the sheer force of consciousness.¹

Amit Goswami, in The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World, argues that the existence of paranormal phenomena is supported by quantum mechanics:

. . . psychic phenomena, such as distant viewing and out-of-body experiences, are examples of the nonlocal operation of consciousness . . . . Quantum mechanics undergirds such a theory by providing crucial support for the case of nonlocality of consciousness.

(Goswami 1993, 136)

Since no convincing, reproducible evidence for psychic phenomena has been found, despite 150 years of effort, this is a flimsy basis indeed for quantum consciousness.²

Although mysticism is said to exist in the writings of many of the early century’s prominent physicists (Wilber 1984), the current fad of mystical physics began in earnest with the publication in 1975 of Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics (Capra 1975). There Capra asserted that quantum theory has confirmed the traditional teaching of Eastern mystics: that human consciousness and the universe form an interconnected, irreducible whole. An example:

To the enlightened man . . . whose consciousness embraces the universe, to him the universe becomes his “body,” while the physical body becomes a manifestation of the Universal Mind, his inner vision an expression of the highest reality, and his speech an expression of eternal truth and mantric power

Lama Anagarika
Govinda Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism³
(Capra 1975, 305)

Capra’s book was an inspiration for the New Age, and “quantum” became a buzzword used to buttress the trendy, pseudoscientific spirituality that characterizes this movement.⁴

Wave-Particle Duality

Quantum mechanics is thought, even by many physicists, to be suffused with mysteries and paradoxes. Mystics seize upon these to support their views. The source of most of these claims can be traced to the so-called wave-particle duality of quantum physics: Physical objects, at the quantum level, seem to possess both local, reductionist particle and nonlocal, holistic wave properties that become manifest depending on whether the position or wavelength of the object is measured.

The two types of properties, wave and particle, are said to be incompatible. Measurement of one quantity will in general affect the value the other quantity will have in a future measurement. Furthermore, the value to be obtained in the future measurement is undetermined; that is, it is unpredictable-although the statistical distribution of an ensemble of similar measurements remains predictable. In this way, quantum mechanics obtains its indeterministic quality, usually expressed in terms of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In general, the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics can only predict statistical distributions.⁵

Despite wave-particle duality, the particle picture is maintained in most quantum mechanical applications. Atoms, nuclei, electrons, and quarks are all regarded as particles at some level. At the same time, classical “waves” such as those of light and sound are replaced by localized photons and phonons, respectively, when quantum effects must be considered.

In conventional quantum mechanics, the wave properties of particles are formally represented by a mathematical quantity called the wave function, used to compute the probability that the particle will be found at a particular position. When a measurement is made, and its position is then known with greater accuracy, the wave function is said to “collapse,” as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Wave function collapse in conventional quantum mechanics. An electron is localized by passing through an aperture. The probability that it will then be found at the particular position is determined by the wave function illustrated to the right of the aperture. When the electron is then detected at A, the wave function instantaneously collapses so that it is zero at B.

Einstein never liked the notion of wave function collapse, calling it a “spooky action at a distance.” In Figure 1, a signal would appear to propagate with infinite speed from A to B to tell the wave function to collapse to zero at B once the particle has been detected at A. Indeed, this signal must propagate at infinite speed throughout the universe since, prior to detection, the electron could in principle have been detected anywhere.

This surely violates Einstein’s assertion that no signals can move faster than the speed of light.

Although they are usually not so explicit, quantum mystics seem to interpret the wave function as some kind of vibration of a holistic ether that pervades the universe, as “real” as the vibration in air we call a sound wave. Wave function collapse, in their view, happens instantaneously throughout the universe by a willful act of cosmic consciousness.

In their book The Conscious Universe, Menas Kafatos and Robert Nadeau identify the wave function with “Being-In-Itself":

One could then conclude that Being, in its physical analogue at least, had been “revealed” in the wave function. . . . [A]ny sense we have of profound unity with the cosmos . . . could be presumed to correlate with the action of the deterministic wave function . . . .

(Kafatos and Nadeau 1990, 124)

Thus they follow Capra in imagining that quantum mechanics unites mind with the universe. But our inner sense of “profound unity with the cosmos” is hardly scientific evidence.

The conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics, promulgated by Bohr and still held by most physicists, says nothing about consciousness. It concerns only what can be measured and what predictions can be made about the statistical distributions of ensembles of future measurements. As noted, the wave function is simply a mathematical object used to calculate probabilities. Mathematical constructs can be as magical as any other figment of the human imagination-like the Starship Enterprise or a Roadrunner cartoon. Nowhere does quantum mechanics imply that real matter or signals travel faster than light. In fact, superluminal signal propagation has been proven to be impossible in any theory consistent with conventional relativity and quantum mechanics (Eberhard and Ross 1989).

Romantic Interpretations

Not everyone has been happy with the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics, which offers no real explanation for wave function collapse. The desire for consensus on an ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics has led to hundreds of proposals over the years, none gaining even a simple majority of support among physicists or philosophers.

Spurred on by Einstein’s insistence that quantum mechanics is an incomplete theory, that “God does not play dice,” subquantum theories involving “hidden variables” have been sought that provide for forces that lie below current levels of observation (Bohm and Hiley 1993). While such theories are possible, no evidence has yet been found for subquantum forces. Furthermore, experiments have made it almost certain that any such theory, if deterministic, must involve superluminal connections.⁶

Nevertheless, quantum mystics have greeted the possibility of nonlocal, holistic, hidden variables with the same enthusiasm they show for the conscious wave function. Likewise, they have embraced a third view: the many worlds interpretation of Hugh Everett (Everett 1957).

Everett usefully showed how it was formally possible to eliminate wave function collapse in a quantum theory of measurement. Everett proposed that all possible paths continue to exist in parallel universes which split off every time a measurement is made. This has left the door open for the quantum mystics to claim that the human mind acts as sort of a “channel selector” for the path that is followed in an individual universe while existing itself in all universes (Squires 1990). Needless to say, the idea of parallel universes has attracted its own circle of enthusiastic proponents, in all universes presumably.

Effective Nonlocality

Admittedly, the quantum world is different from the world of everyday experience that obeys the rules of classical Newtonian mechanics. Something beyond normal common sense and classical physics is necessary to describe the fundamental processes inside atoms and nuclei. In particular, an explanation must be given for the apparent nonlocality, the instantaneous “quantum leap,” that typifies the non-commonsensical nature of quantum phenomena.

Despite the oft-heard statement that quantum particles do not follow well-defined paths in space-time, elementary-particle physicists have been utilizing just such a picture for fifty years. How is this reconciled with the quantum leap that seems to characterize atomic transitions and similar phenomena? We can see how, in the space-time diagram shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Effective nonlocality. How an apparent instantaneous “quantum leap” can be made between two points in space. An electron-positron pair is created at C by a quantum fluctuation of the vacuum. The positron annihilates an electron at A, undoing the original vacuum fluctuation so that there is zero net-energy change. The electron thus appears to make an instantaneous quantum leap from A to B. The distance AB is comparable to the wavelength associated with the particle, so “holistic” wave behavior results.

On the left, an electron (e-) is moving along a well-defined path. An electron-positron pair (e-e+) is produced at point C by a quantum fluctuation of the vacuum, allowed by the uncertainty principle. The positron annihilates the original electron at point A while the electron from the pair continues past point B. Since all electrons are indistinguishable, it appears as if the original electron has jumped instantaneously from A to B.

In Figure 2, all the particles involved follow definite paths. None moves faster than the speed of light. Yet what is observed is operationally equivalent to an electron undergoing superluminal motion, disappearing at A and appearing simultaneously at a distant point B. No experiment can be performed in which the electron on the left can be distinguished from the one on the right. A simple calculation shows that the distance AB is of the order of the (de Broglie) wavelength of the particle. In this manner, the “holistic” wave nature of particles can be understood in a manner that requires no superluminal motion and certainly no intervention of human consciousness.

Furthermore, since the quantum jump is random, no signal or other causal effect is superluminally transmitted. On the other hand, a deterministic theory based on subquantum forces or hidden variables is necessarily superluminal.

Thus quantum mechanics, as conventionally practiced, describes quantum leaps without too drastic a quantum leap beyond common sense. Certainly no mystical assertions are justified by any observations concerning quantum processes.

Conclusion

Quantum mechanics, the centerpiece of modern physics, is misinterpreted as implying that the human mind controls reality and that the universe is one connected whole that cannot be understood by the usual reduction to parts.

However, no compelling argument or evidence requires that quantum mechanics plays a central role in human consciousness or provides instantaneous, holistic connections across the universe. Modern physics, including quantum mechanics, remains completely materialistic and reductionistic while being consistent with all scientific observations.

The apparent holistic, nonlocal behavior of quantum phenomena, as exemplified by a particle’s appearing to be in two places at once, can be understood without discarding the commonsense notion of particles following definite paths in space and time or requiring that signals travel faster than the speed of light.

No superluminal motion or signalling has ever been observed, in agreement with the limit set by the theory of relativity. Furthermore, interpretations of quantum effects need not so uproot classical physics, or common sense, as to render them inoperable on all scales-especially the macroscopic scale on which humans function. Newtonian physics, which successfully describes virtually all macroscopic phenomena, follows smoothly as the many-particle limit of quantum mechanics. And common sense continues to apply on the human scale.

Notes

1. For a review of alternate medicine, including “quantum medicine,” see Douglas Stalker and Clark Glymour, eds., Examining Holistic Medicine (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1985).
2. For a fuller discussion and references, see Victor J. Stenger, Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1990).
3. L. A. Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1974), p. 225, as quoted in Capra 1975, p. 305.
4. See, for example, Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1980).
5. Of course, in some cases those distributions may be highly peaked and thus an outcome can be predicted with high probability, that is, certainty for all practical purposes. In fact, this is precisely what happens in the case of systems of many particles, such as macroscopic objects. These systems then become describable by deterministic classical mechanics as the many-particle limit of quantum mechanics.
6. For a fuller discussion and references, see Victor J. Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology (Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1995).

References

• Bohm D., and B. J. Hiley. 1993. The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. London: Routledge.
• Capra, Fritjof. 1975. The Tao of Physics. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala.
• Chopra, Deepak. 1989. Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. New York: Bantam.
• —. 1993. Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old. New York: Random House.
• Eberhard, Phillippe H., and Ronald R. Ross. 1989. Quantum field theory cannot provide faster-than-light communication. Found. Phys. Lett. 2: 127-149.
• Everett III, Hugh. 1957. “Relative state” formulation of quantum mechanics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 29: 454-462.
• Goswami, Amit. 1993. The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
• Kafatos, Menas, and Robert Nadeau. 1990. The Conscious Universe: Part and Whole in Modern Physical Theory. New York: Springer-Verlag.
• Squires, Euan. 1990. Conscious Mind in the Physical World. New York: Adam Hilger.
• Wilber, Ken, ed. 1984. Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala.

And now, something even more bizarre has happened, if that’s possible. According to the New York Post (June 14), Ford and his associate Joseph Mazzachelli were arrested and charged with planning to use radioactive materials to assassinate several Suffolk County officials and politicians. Police raided Ford’s home and found several canisters of radium, a large cache of weapons, a mine detector, and a gas mask. According to District Attorney James M. Catterson, who apparently was one of the officials targeted, Ford’s plan was to spread radioactive materials on the car seats of the intended victims and strew it around their homes, in the hopes of inducing fatal cancers.

In other UFOlogical developments, alien implants seem to be turning up everywhere, yet somehow we seem to be learning almost nothing about them. Whitley Strieber, the noted author of Communion, Transformation, The Wolfen, Breakthrough, and other imaginative works, placed the story of his own alleged implant on his World Wide Web page (strieber.com). He says that for years he has been carrying an alien implant in the back of his left ear, which has caused him to hear Morse code-like beeps, as well as voices. “In early April of 1996 I endured fifteen minutes of horrific threats to kidnap and slowly kill me. During this event, which took place in the afternoon, I had an image of a black late-model Ford Mustang sitting in the street. I went outside and saw the car. Two men were in it. When they observed me, they sped away. Subsequently, on May 29th, I heard a male voice say, Whitley and Anne come in please.” Strieber attempted, without success, to obtain a radio signal from the implant in his ear. Several other people have, however, had alleged implants removed, and I eagerly await the publication of these amazing findings in the scientific journals.

"Do you have them?” Strieber asks. “The implants have been found most commonly on the left side of the body, the scars on the right. A lump in the pina of the ear, a grey spot in a toe or finger or along the calf muscle are all indicators of possible implants. Small, unexplained scars covering indentations where tissue has inexplicably disappeared are another indication. So far, no implant has had a scar directly above or even near it.” Scan the scars.

As you probably heard, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton made news recently because of sessions in which Jean Houston helped her carry out imaginary conversations with the late Eleanor Roosevelt as a mental exercise. The spin-doctors immediately went to work, claiming that this was just an exercise in “creative visualization.” To prove that nothing spooky was involved, Houston appeared on Larry King Live, guiding the host to “creatively visualize” the wisdom of departed sages.

What is not generally realized, however, is that Jean Houston and her husband, Robert Masters, are esteemed by parapsychologists for their ESP research, especially upon subjects who are in the “psychedelic state.” In their book Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, they describe a series of experiments they conducted during the 1960s to determine whether a subject’s ESP skills improved after ingesting LSD. They did. More recently, Masters and Houston conducted a series of experiments intended to establish telepathic contact with the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet. According to the publisher’s blurb for Masters’ book The Goddess Sekhmet, “As a result of the seeker’s direct encounter with Sekhmet in a series of telepathic trance states, he is given the teachings of the sacred books of the Sekhmet that were lost, pillaged from the temples, and destroyed by unbelievers” (ashlandweb.com). It’s pretty hard to pass that off as “creative visualization.” (For more about Jean Houston see Martin Gardner’s column in this issue.)

As for Bill Clinton, his guru of choice for difficult times was Tony Robbins, well known as a motivational speaker and promoter of “mind-over-matter firewalking.” No word out of Camp David as to whether anyone walked across the barbecue. However, given that Clinton won the November 5 election handily, it would seem that gurus can deliver the goods.

Of course, Bill and Hillary Clinton are not the only famous people to be Dancing with Gurus. The National Enquirer (April 16, 1996) describes how Hollywood’s highest-paid actress, Demi Moore, “finds serenity with her guru in India.” The star of Striptease is said to have become a disciple of the New Age healer Deepak Chopra and expects that his teachings will enable her to reach age 130. “To help Demi avoid serious illness, Indian-born Dr. Chopra teaches her that good thoughts create disease-fighting chemicals in the body.” Perhaps they do, but they clearly do not keep away legal troubles. The New York Post (June 24, 1996) reports that Chopra has been accused of plagiarism not once but twice concerning his book Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. In 1995, Chopra was accused of plagiarizing a passage from The Metheuselah Factor by Dan Georgakas. Chopra’s representatives blamed it on an editing error and promised that correct attribution will appear in later editions. Now Robert M. Sapolsky charges that in that same book Chopra plagiarized from Sapolsky’s textbook, Behavioral Endocrinology, and states he is “strongly considering litigation.”

As for John Travolta, star of the movie Phenomenon, in which a light-like encounter temporarily gives him supernatural powers (later explained as due to a brain tumor), he doesn't seem to need a guru, because apparently he is one. The National Enquirer (July 16, 1996) reports that in real life Travolta is “having near-miraculous success in healing sick and injured people by laying on his hands-and modern medicine can't explain it.” The Enquirer claimed he has had such success in helping sick and injured people that his co-workers have taken to calling him “St. John.” One of Travolta’s biggest successes was said to be when he did a backstage “touch assist” to heal the sore throat of the rock singer Sting in front of a large crowd of people. “The laying on of hands worked wonders for Sting’s throat. In fact, he gave one of his strongest singing performances that night,” the Enquirer reported. An unnamed friend of Travolta is quoted as saying, “In the realm of Scientology, John is classified as an Operating Thetan, which means he is a spiritual being-someone who’s able to control matter, energy, space, and time.” What we don't understand is, if Travolta is an Operating Thetan, why doesn't he do his own movie stunts?

In this election year we've wanted to bring you more paranormal coverage, but there hasn't been a lot to report. The Nashua (New Hampshire) Telegraph reported (February 13) that Jack Mabardy was running as a write-in presidential candidate in the Republican primary on a platform of a strong defense against UFO invasions. Mabardy warned that Americans are woefully unprepared to face a hostile alien invasion, saying, “We don't know who these people are, we don't know if they are friendly or hostile.” He urged “commonsense” training in the schools that would warn students to avoid all contact with extraterrestrial visitors. He didn't win.

Perhaps the most impressive political prediction in recent years comes from the Psychic Reader, published in Berkeley, California (January 1996). Its 1996 prediction for the political scene: “In the United States there will continue to be dissension between political parties, with no sign of resolution.”