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Vassula

Born to Greek Orthodox parents in Heliopolis, Egypt, on January 18, 1942, Vassula Ryden emigrated to Europe when she was fifteen. She says as a teenager she saw herself surrounded by souls of the dead, although she claims to have been indifferent to religion for a time. Following marriage, the birth of two sons, divorce, and remarriage, she claims to have begun receiving messages from her own invisible “guardian angel,” Daniel. “I almost freaked out,” she said (Ryden 2004). That occurred in late 1985 while she was living in Bangladesh. Five years later, she “regularized” her marriage in the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church, to which she still belongs (“Vassula” 2010). Nevertheless, Ryden says that God revealed to her the Sacred Heart (a Catholic symbol of Christ’s love for the human family) to show her the equality of all faiths (Ryden 2004).

In the mid-1990s, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued two notices of concern about Ryden. The first came in 1995, pointing out “several negative elements and errors.” It requested that bishops refuse to give her the opportunity to spread her questionable ideas within their dioceses and asked them not to treat her writings or speeches as “supernatural.” The following year, another notification encouraged priests to “exercise serious spiritual discernment” regarding Ryden’s messages, declaring that they must be considered merely “private meditations” and not divine revelations. However, some of her Catholic supporters observe that the church does not completely discount her teachings, and the publications of her organization, the American Association for True Life in God, have obvious Catholic trappings (“Vassula” 2010; Tokasz 2004).

The Catholic Church is skittish about such freelancers—urging caution toward supposedly supernatural phenomena (such as stigmata or weeping effigies) and any reputed visions or messages. The Church is all too aware of delusional persons and pious frauds. However, such matters are usually left to the local bishop, and investigations are typically less about science than about how a claim comports with Catholic teachings.

I determined to take an objective look at three aspects of Ryden’s purported messages (within my own areas of expertise): first, the distinctive handwriting (I am author of textbooks on writing and forgery, including Pen, Ink, and Evidence [Nickell 1990]); second, the text (I have a PhD in English, experience in examining unusual texts, and membership in the International Association of Forensic Linguists) [Nickell 2008]; and third, whether Ryden might have a fantasy-prone personality (I have studied this trait for years, especially under the direction of the late psychologist Robert A. Baker [Nickell 1997]).

Handwriting

Ryden insists that the messages she receives and writes down are not the result of spiritualistic phenomena such as channeling or automatic writing (“Vassula” 2010). However, neither phenomenon is defined as being limited to spirits of the dead; either may involve interaction with any type of alleged nonphysical beings, such as angels, deities, extraterrestrials, or the like (Guiley 2000, 25–26, 70–71). So, Ryden is by definition a channeler and an automatic writer.

Reportedly, the messages began in late November 1985 when Ryden was about to make a shopping list. Her hand suddenly began to move, seemingly without her control, to form words and drawings, initiating a phenomenon that continues to the present day. The self-styled visionary reportedly receives about four to six hours of guided-hand “dictation” each day (Carroll 1995, ix; “Vassula” 2010). From a scientific perspective, (assuming it is not deliberately contrived) such a phenomenon is attributed to the ideomotor effect, in which a participant unconsciously produces a movement. The same psychological phenomenon is responsible for the motion of dowsing rods and pendulums, Ouija-board planchette movement, table tipping, and the like (Randi 1995, 169–70).

Ryden’s messages supposedly “come through dictation by an audible voice within, then are written in a stately handwriting—distinct from her own—as she allows her hand to be guided supernaturally” (“About” 1995). Interestingly enough, the same “distinct” script that is used for messages from the angel “Daniel” is employed by “Jesus,” “Mary,” and “Yahweh” (see figure 1), rather than each entity having his or her own individual handwriting.

Figure 1. Handwriting produced by artist Vassula Ryden—supposedly “supernaturally guided”—is drawn rather than freely written. (The same mannered script is used for messages from “Yahweh,” “Jesus,” “Mary,” and her guardian angel, “Daniel.”) It contrasts with her own handwriting.

Keeping in mind that Ryden is an artist (“About” 1995), it seems noteworthy that the “guided” handwriting has the characteristics of a script that is artistically drawn rather than naturally and freely written. It is a “mannered” or affected hand, rendered in a self-consciously non-slanted style—rather like the so-called “vertical writing” that was taught in American and Canadian schools from 1890 to 1900 but was deemed too time consuming to produce practically and subsequently abandoned (Nickell 1990, 124, 126; Osborn 1978, 140). Most mainstream scripts, intended for right-handed persons to render with some speed, slope in the forward direction, as does Ryden’s ordinary handwriting. Interestingly, an alteration in slant is one of the most common ploys used for disguising handwriting (Hilton 1982, 169; Osborn 1978, 147, 149, 211). Use of this simple change can thus instantly impart a new look to an entire page. The “stately” hand also differs from Ryden’s in size (being larger than hers), another common disguise ploy (Nickell 1996, 49).

Apart from the “stately” affectation, the supposedly supernatural handwriting is essentially a formal, copybook version of Ryden’s own naturally jotted script that alternates with the “stately” hand in her notebooks. The “stately” hand avoids some of her script’s idiosyncrasies, yet it still has mostly printed capitals just like her own handwriting. On occasion, one of the copybook forms sneaks back into her natural script (replacing, for instance, her individualistic f, which has a backwardly made loop, with the standard copybook f) (see Ryden 1995, 171, 223).

Consistent with its neat, drawn appearance is the fact that the “guided” handwriting is done on lined paper, with the lines showing in some of the reproduced pages (Ryden 1995, e.g., 232–33). This is consistent with the use of eye-hand coordination. One suspects that if Ryden were prevented from seeing what was being written, the entities supposedly guiding her hand would be unable to so faithfully follow the lines! I invite Ryden to accept my invitation to perform a scientific test to refute or confirm this suspicion.

Text

On January 25, 1987, Ryden wrote:

Courage daughter, I, Jesus Christ have instructed you that the cross you bear is My Cross of Peace and Love, but to bear My precious Cross, daughter, you will have to do much self-sacrifice; be strong and bear my Cross with love; with Me you will share it and you will share My sufferings; I was pleased to hear your prayer of surrender; in surrendering to Me I will lift you to the heights and show you how I work; I will mould you, if you let Me, into a better person; you have given Me your consent to become My bride, so what [sic] more natural for a bride to follow her Spouse? I am glad you realize your worthlessness, do not fear, I love you anyway. . . . (Ryden 1995, 233–34)

Is this really a message from Jesus guiding Ryden’s hand? Not only is the handwriting the identical, mannered script that is also used for her “Daniel,” “Yahweh,” and “Mary,” but the perpetual use of semicolons is another similarity from alleged speaker to alleged speaker. All—except, appropriately, Daniel—call her “daughter” (Ryden 1995, 153, 188, 225), and they refer to themselves with the same construction: “I, Jesus,” “I, God,” “I ‘i Panayia’ ” (Greek for “Our Lady, most Holy”) (Ryden 1995, 155, 231, 293).

Ryden’s purported messages can be compared with other alleged communications from Jesus. One set of writings was “received from Jesus” by Lilian Bernas (1999), a purported stigmatic. (Stigmata are the supposedly supernaturally received wounds resembling those of Christ. However, Bernas’s wounds—which I have seen up close—appear to be consistent with self-infliction [Nickell 2007, 59–66].) In one communication with Bernas, Jesus supposedly said (Bernas 1999, 23):

My Suffering Soul—

This is your Beloved. I have come as promised to embrace you with the spirit of peace. Take this time, and have respite from the wicked assaults of the evil one. My child, you have bent, but you have not broken. This pleases your Beloved. . . .

My child—humble yourself now, and ascend the hill of your Beloved with your Beloved. . . .

Nancy Fowler, a homemaker in Conyers, Georgia, claimed for several years to be receiving messages from both Jesus and, more often, the Virgin Mary. (The latter appeared punctually on the thirteenth of each month, and I was able to attend a session [Nickell 1993, 196–97]). One message from “Jesus” instructed the faithful (Fowler 1993):

Come through My Mother on your journey back to Me. From this very cross I give the world My perfect love. I give the world, I give everyone in the world, My dear, Holy Mother. Please, if you accept My Love, then how can you reject, ignore, not honor, not love My Mother. I come through My Mother and I want you, dear children, to come through My Mother on your journey back to Me.

I choose the word “Come” intentionally, not past tense. I still come through My Mother. Graces are poured forth through My Mother, the Graces come from Me.

I am especially familiar with these two groups of writings, although they are supposedly received by clairaudience (trance hearing) rather than by automatic writing. (Therefore, errors of grammar and the like could be attributed to mistaken transcription by the percipient.)

Now, whereas Vassula Ryden’s “Jesus” frequently identifies himself as “I, Jesus,” Lilian Bernas’s Jesus persona never does, nor does the one channeled by Nancy Fowler. There are many other differences among the three sets of texts; for example, the dominant theme of each: Fowler’s is the near-deification of the Virgin Mary (an emphasis sometimes disparagingly referred to as “Mariolatry”), Bernas’s is the importance of suffering, and Ryden’s is the need for divine love and guidance.

Style also differs from channeler to channeler. Ryden’s “God” and “Jesus” (as well as “Daniel”) speak similarly, often using convoluted diction (for example, “do not leave yourself be drifted away” [144], instead of “do not let yourself drift away”); wrong prepositions (e.g., “irrespective to their deeds” [146], rather than “irrespective of”); missing prepositions (such as in “I, Yahweh will remind them in this call many events” [150], wherein “of” is missing after “call”); subject/verb agreement error (e.g., “the reasons that makes” [44]); faulty auxiliary verbs (such as “I have restored you since the time you have accepted Me” [158], the second “have” being unnecessary); incorrect verb forms (e.g., “I will progress you” [163], “I fragranced you” [34], and “Jesus flourished you” [42]); and so on.

Ryden’s messages also have occasional misspellings: for example, “God” says, “work with Me writting [sic] down My messages” (231), and he also uses the misspellings “joyfull” (138) and “analising” (101, 105). If God deigns to use the English language, should we not expect it to be rendered accurately?

Before we become invested in imagining what a deity might or might not do, we should note that Ryden’s own written text has similar faults—for example, using “sprung” when “sprang” would be correct, the misspelling “panick,” faulty subject/verb agreement (e.g., “Joy and Peace is”), and many others. At times the respective errors are eerily similar, as when “God” uses “do” for “make” (e.g., “do not get discouraged when you do errors”) just as Ryden does (e.g., “I do so many mistakes”) (see Ryden 1995, 22, 89, 93, 235).

Fantasy-Proneness

From the evidence, it looks like Ryden’s channeled automatic writings are merely emanations from a single source: her imagination. Indeed, she exhibits many traits of what is known as a “fantasy-prone” personality: sane and normal but with a propensity to fantasize, as described in a pioneering study by Sheryl C. Wilson and Theodore X. Barber (1983). Since childhood, Ryden has had various “mystical” experiences. She has encountered apparitions (such as the souls of “dead people”), had vivid or “waking” dreams (with paranormal imagery), experienced religious visions, interacted with invisible companions, received messages from higher entities, and had other experiences common to many fantasizers (Carroll 1995; Ryden 1995, xx–xxl).

Taken together, the contrived handwriting, the linguistic lapses, and the indications of fantasizing all suggest that Vassula Ryden is not in touch with supernatural entities but is simply engaging in self-deception that in turn deceives the credulous. Her automatic writings therefore are not works of revelation but simply of pious imagination.

References

About Vassula Ryden. 1995. Publisher’s book-cover text, Ryden 1995.

Bernas, Lilian. 1999. This Is the Home of the Father.... Poole, England: privately printed.

Carroll, Robert J. 1995. I am your guardian angel and my name is Daniel. In Ryden 1995, ix–xiv.

Christopher, Milbourne. 1970. ESP, Seers and Psychics: What the Occult Really Is. New York: Crowell.

Fowler, Nancy. 1990–93. Purported messages from Jesus, in Journal 1993. 3–8.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 2000. The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits. New York: Checkmark Books.

Hilton, Ordway. 1982. Scientific Examination of Questioned Documents, revised ed. New York: Elsevier Science.

Journal of Reported Teachings and Messages of Our Lord and Our Living Mother at Conyers, Georgia, USA. 1993. (“Compiled by Our Loving Mother’s Children,” P.O. Box 309, Conyers, GA 30207), December.

Nickell, Joe. 1990. Pen, Ink, and Evidence. Reprinted New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press.

———. 1993. Looking for a Miracle. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 1996. Detecting Forgery: Forensic Investigation of Documents. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 1997. A study of fantasy proneness in the thirteen cases of alleged encounters in John Mack’s abduction. In The UFO Invasion, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Barry Karr, and Joe Nickell. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 237–44.

———. 2007. Adventures in Paranormal Investigation. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2008. Linguist. Accessed April 3, 2010. Available online at http://www.joenickell.com/Linguist/linguist1.html.

Osborn, Albert S. 1978. Questioned Documents, second edition. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith.

Randi, James. 1995. The Supernatural A–Z. London: Brockhampton Press.

Ryden, Vassula. 1995. My Angel Daniel. Independence, MO: Trinitas.

———. 2004. Lecture at St. John Maronite Rite Catholic Church. Amherst, NY, May 31.

Tokasz, Jay. 2004. Controversial “messenger” to speak. The Buffalo News, May 31.

“Vassula Ryden.” 2010. Wikipedia. Accessed April 30, 2010. Available online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassula_Ryden.

The high-profile “Wegman report” (Wegman et al. 2006) strongly criticized the steeply rising “hockey stick” temperature graph that was created by climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes and later used in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment (IPCC 2001).

The Wegman report was prepared by a team led by statistician Edward Wegman of George Mason University at the request of U.S. Representatives Joe Barton (Republican from Texas) and Ed Whitfield (Republican from Tennessee), both strong opponents of the scientific consensus about climate change.

The Wegman report, presented in 2006 at a hearing of a congressional subcommittee chaired by Whitfield, repeated numerous well-cataloged and long-debunked anti-science assertions, especially those claiming a conspiracy among climate scientists. Although rarely mentioned in peer-reviewed science publications, the report nevertheless immediately became a major source for climate anti-science articles, blogs, op-eds, and books. The report is also a key to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s attack on the University of Virginia and Michael Mann (Russell 2010). That certainly resembles a famous witch hunt (Monty Python 1975).

Discovery of Plagiarism

Canadian blogger “Deep Climate” uncovered plagiarism in the Wegman report in late 2009, accumulating ten pages of near-verbatim material copied from paleoclimatologist and hockey-stick coauthor Bradley and others, such as:

A cross section of most temperate forest trees will show an alternation of lighter and darker bands, each of which is usually continuous around the tree circumference. (Bradley 1999, 398)

A cross section of a temperate forest tree shows variation of lighter and darker bands that are usually continuous around the circumference of the tree. (Wegman et al. 2006, 13)

The term “coral” is generally applied to members of the order Scleractinia, which have hard calcareous skeletons supporting softer tissues. . . . (Bradley 1999, 247)

The term “coral” refers to the biological order Scleractinia, which have hard calcium-based skeletons supporting softer tissues. (Wegman et al. 2006, 15)

Deep Climate (2010a) posted the entire ten pages using colored highlighting that quickly shows the obvious cut-and-paste/edit process.

Based on Deep Climate’s work, Bradley filed a plagiarism complaint in March 2010 but kept it quiet. Bradley’s expert work was not only plagiarized but also often distorted to weaken or even invert his own conclusions by people with zero relevant experience. I then extended Deep Climate’s research and added much more in a comprehensive 250-page analysis of the Wegman report, “Strange Scholarship in the Wegman Report: A Façade for the Climate Anti-Science PR Campaign” (Mashey 2010b). USA Today (Vergano 2010a; Vergano 2010b; Vergano 2010c; Vergano 2010d) reported that George Mason University was investigating. Plagiarism experts called the plagiarisms “obvious” and “shocking.” Some defenders created their own fanciful definitions of the word to deny that plagiarism had taken place. Others contended that even if it was plagiarism, the Wegman report’s conclusions were still true. Then some claimed that Bradley himself was a plagiarizer, blackmailer, or liar. The debate remained intense.

Pseudoscience, Anti-Science, and Intense Beliefs

In pseudoscience, people promote long-debunked ideas as scientific (Mashey 2009). Anti-science obscures real science via the public-relations and propaganda techniques that were well honed in the tobacco wars and are sometimes employed by the same people elsewhere (Oreskes and Conway 2010).

SI readers are familiar with chaotic, amateur, or amusing pseudoscience efforts. Anti-science, in contrast, is well funded, professionally organized, and not amusing: tobacco-industry anti-science has damaged the health of millions. Although the Wegman report contained some pseudoscience, it was really part of a well-organized twenty-year anti-science campaign (Mashey 2010a). That campaign offered much evidence of a real conspiracy, in contrast to the climate-science opponents’ unsupported claims alleging a conspiracy by climate researchers. Not all conspiracies are imaginary—SI readers should assess the evidence before dismissing conspiracy hypotheses.

Pseudoscience beliefs can be strong. Climate anti-science beliefs are intense enough to generate frequent death threats against climate scientists. My analysis documents the Wegman report as filled with serious errors, biases, bad science, and frequent repetition of long-debunked anti-science memes. Its minimal statistics use another’s (incorrect) computer code (Deep Climate 2010b).

The Wegman report was promoted by Congressmen Barton and Whitfield as “independent, impartial, expert” work by a team of “eminent statisticians.” It was none of those things. Deep Climate had unearthed plagiarism (not “expert”) and distortion (not “impartial”), then found that a Barton staffer provided much of the source material to the Wegman team (not “independent”). In my initial investigation I found another twenty-five pages with plagiarism, totaling thirty-five when combined with Deep Climate’s findings (Mashey 2010b). Originally intended to be a short report, my analysis grew to its current 250 pages as interconnected problems in the Wegman report multiplied. My analysis eventually examined all ninety-one Wegman report pages plus related testimony, publications, and actions. “Climategate” started big and shrank, despite strong public-relations efforts. The problems with the Wegman report started small with a few pages of plagiarism, but those problems have grown ever since. Yet Barton still stands behind the Wegman report.

Half of the report’s eighty references were uncited in the text itself, a tactic called “bibliography padding” that is frequently used by undergraduates to create an illusion of expertise. Many references use “grey literature” (not peer-reviewed), including the key source (“MM05x”) of many anti-science memes. “MM05x” quotes an article that appeared not in Science but in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a favorite publication of pro-fringe-science researchers. It is filled with scholarly looking papers on extrasensory perception (ESP), UFOs, reincarnation, inexplicable weight gain in suffocated sheep, dog astrology, and other fascinating topics. Most of its articles are available online (Society for Scientific Exploration 2010). Occasionally proper skeptical debunking papers do slip into print there.

The Wegman report also referenced a 1987 article, “Magnetics May Hold Key to Ozone Layer Problems” by Tom Valentine. Its inclusion is utterly bizarre, especially in a report criticizing the quality of review elsewhere. A 1987 ozone article was at best irrelevant bibliography padding. The publication in which Valentine’s article appeared, MAGNETS in Your Future, was an obscure fringe-science magazine. Valentine often wrote on fuelless engines, psychic surgery, and conspiracy theories for the tabloid the National Tattler. His bio stated that he was the “Miracle editor.” Later his talk show often promoted “black helicopter” conspiracies. Nevertheless, some people remain unshakeably certain of the Wegman report’s credibility.

A short article cannot convey the pervasiveness and strangeness of problems with the Wegman report. Skeptics should read my long report to assess the claims made here. I expect to update my online report (Mashey 2010b) in a few months and will be glad to be informed of any honest errors.

References

Bradley, Raymond S. 1999. Paleoclimatology—Reconstructing Climates of the Quaternary, Second Edition. San Diego, CA: Academic Press/Elsevier.

Deep Climate. 2010a. Wegman report update, part 1: More dubious scholarship in full colour. Available online at http://deepclimate.org/2010/07/29/wegman-report-update-part-1-more-dubious-scholarship-in-full-colour. (Deep Climate has made many posts, but this reference is a good starting point.)

———. 2010b. Replication and due diligence, Wegman style. Available online at http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style.

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2001. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Third IPCC Scientific Assessment. Edited by J.T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, et al. Cambridge University Press. Available online at http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm.

Society for Scientific Exploration. 2010. Journal of Scientific Exploration past research articles. Available online at http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/articles.html.

Mashey, John R. 2009. Science bypass: Anti-science petition to APS from folks with SEPP, George C. Marshall Institute, Heartland, CATO. Available online at http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/2009 science bypass v3 0.pdf.

———. 2010a. Crescendo to Climategate cacophony: Behind the 2006 Wegman report and two decades of climate anti-science. Available online at http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/crescendo climategate cacophony v1 0.pdf.

———. 2010b. Strange scholarship in the Wegman report: A façade for the climate anti-science PR campaign. Available online at http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/strange-scholarship-v1-02.pdf.

Monty Python. 1975. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “Witch Scene” available online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_l5ntikaU.

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Russell, Wesley. 2010. RE: Civil Investigative Demand No. 3-MM. Available online at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/New Mann CID.PDF.

Vergano, Dan. 2010a. University investigating prominent climate science critic. USA Today (October 8). Available online at http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/10/wegman-plagiarism-investigation-/1.

———. 2010b. Experts claim 2006 climate report plagiarized. USA Today (November 22). Available online at http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2010-11-21-climate-report-questioned_N.htm.

———. 2010c. Climate science critic responds to allegations. USA Today (November 23). Available online at http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2010-11-21-climate-report-questioned_N.htm.

———. 2010d. Wegman report round-up. USA Today (November 23). Available online at http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/11/wegman-report-round-up/1.

Wegman, Edward, David Scott, and Yasmin Said. 2006. Ad hoc committee report on the “hockey stick” global climate reconstruction. House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans (July 14). Available online at http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf.

Project Alpha magicians Steve Shaw (with fork), Michael Edwards, and James Randi were featured on the cover of the Summer 1983 SI.

Fourteen years ago, I was astonished to read a brief article in the January 1997 (vol. 61, no. 846) Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (JSPR) written by parapsychologist Alexander Imich, a retired chemist and president of the Anomalous Phenomena Research Center in New York. His article, titled “Joe A. Nuzum, A Little-Known Psychic,” describes Nuzum as being “of the D.D. Home¹ class.” The article consisted of a long list of miracles that Nuzum appeared to have performed over the years. However, my astonishment was due not to the impressiveness of the list but rather to the following facts: 1) the conditions under which these presumed miracles took place were not described in the article; 2) all of the “phenomena” described belonged to the classic conjurers’ and fakirs’ repertoire; 3) it appeared that no magician was ever present at any of Nuzum’s demonstrations; and 4) there was no reference to the fact that Nuzum himself was a magician.

Banachek and Project Alpha

Banachek

Today Nuzum, though still claiming on his website to have “mastered many mind-over-matter studies,” runs a magic shop in Pennsylvania. I contacted mentalist and friend Banachek who, under his real name of Steve Shaw, was one of the celebrated alumni of Project Alpha (in which young magicians fooled scientists into thinking they had extrasensory perception [ESP]). Steve confirmed to me that he was a friend of Nuzum at the time of Project Alpha. They lived in the same town, had been friends for at least five years, and used to exchange tricks and ideas on magic. However, it appears that Nuzum—who had specialized in escapology at the time—was impressed by the press coverage that Steve had been able to gather while pretending to be a psychic, and he wanted to achieve the same result.

Nuzum started to perform mentalism tricks, most of which were pretty standard purchased items, and with these he convinced psychiatrist Berthold Schwartz that he was the real thing.

Schwartz had already been “amazed” by Steve during Project Alpha, and he continued to believe that Steve really had psychic powers even after the hoax was revealed. When Steve tried to explain to him via letters that Nuzum was a colleague and was just performing conjuring tricks, Schwartz refused to listen.

Steve told me:

There is a big difference between what Joe Nuzum is doing and what I did. My fiasco was an experiment. For years parapsychologists had lamented that the only reason there was no scientifically documented evidence under proper scientific controls was because of the lack of proper funding to perform such controls. We had countered and believed that this was not the case and the lack of such documentation lay in the parapsychologists’ pro-biased beliefs when they entered such experiments. MacDonald Douglass gave a half a million dollars to study . . . Psychokinetic Metal Bending, PKMB, to Washington University. Here was our chance to prove our point.

I went in not to take advantage, not to gain anything, not to take money, trips and vacations (unlike Joe), but simply to prove a valid point. I went in knowing full well that I was going to expose the fraud I was perpetrating. It became very hard at times. These were good people, with good hearts, who became my friends. It was very hard knowing I was going to have to hurt these people who had become a personal part of my life. Had I known they would mean so much to me, maybe I would have done things a little different, I certainly would have kept my distance emotionally.

On the other hand, I should have read the signs in Joe Nuzum. I should have known that he certainly would not have cared about hurting other people or lying to them; in retrospect I should have known that Joe would have had no problem using people for his own benefit.

Project Alpha was designed to show how competent magicians can complete the same tasks as self-proclaimed psychics. It appears, however, that some experts still don’t believe the phenomena aren’t genuine.

A “Challenge” Met

Because my comments (along with those of James Randi) were published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Imich decided to give us a reply (JSPR 61[848], July 1997). However, his words regarding our doubts, I regret to say, were quite disappointing. As usually happens in such cases, our real question was avoided.

As Randi and I had pointed out in our letters, the fact that the effects presented by Nuzum looked as if they were taken directly from a magic catalog should have raised flags. We did not insist, as Imich implied, that Nuzum’s effects were necessarily done by trickery. But they at least may have been done in such a way. What is the real question, then? Given the highly suspect nature of Nuzum’s demonstrations, it was for Imich of the utmost importance to ascertain that they were not the result of trickery. The only way to do this was to ask a competent magician to participate in the tests. Randi, Steve, or I would have loved to attend such demonstrations, but the suggestion was ignored.

Surprisingly, however, Imich wrote:

The crusaders against the paranormal usually do not tackle difficult cases. They prefer to deal with events easier to criticize. Mr. Randi, too, does not mention the “Gray’s Anatomy case,” an event out of the range of magical technique and much more difficult to discredit. I have challenged Mr. Polidoro to repeat this event, but I am not sure if he himself is a magician.

Aside from the fact that this was the first time I had heard of such a “challenge” (and the fact that Imich did not appear to have any qualification to judge whether an event is “out of the range of magical technique” or not), what most surprised me about this accusation was that in my letter I suggested a possible explanation for just one of the effects described by Imich, the “Gray’s Anatomy case”!

I wrote, in fact:

Mr Imich, for example, describes an effect by Nuzum he witnessed, in which the corner of a selected page of a book appeared inside an envelope. A simple suggestion: Mr Imich could invite Nuzum to perform the same phenomenon again, but asking him, this time, never to touch the book (not even to take it [off] of the shelf). It would be interesting to see if the same phenomenon will manifest again (provided, of course, that both book and page are chosen at random by the experimenter, and not “suggested” by Nuzum . . .).

Apparently Imich overlooked these lines in my letter.

Remembering this episode today, however, gives me the chance to also stress once more that it is not the duty of the critic to reproduce a claimed miracle. As should be widely known by now (but is apparently not to many researchers), the burden of proof always rests on the claimant. In this particular case, I would have considered it quite impressive if Nuzum could perform his miracle with a book provided by me. I would have made sure not to let him get anywhere near the book before the test, a precaution that Imich did not take. Quoting from his notes (JSPR, 61[846]: 336): “He took from my book-shelf a volume of Gray’s Anatomy and [he] opened it at page 354” (emphasis added).

In a postscript to his article, Imich added that a report about “the latest, never-previously-described paranormal events produced by Joe Nuzum” was in preparation. Fourteen years later, some are still waiting for some reliable proof of at least one real phenomenon produced by this self-proclaimed psychic. However, we stopped holding our breaths a long time ago.

Note

1. Victorian British medium Daniel D. Home, sometimes referred to as a super-psychic, was supposedly capable of moving objects, levitating, and producing all manner of supernatural phenomena at will.↑

Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age
By Sergio Luzzatto. Metropolitan Books, 
Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2010.
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8905-9. 384 pp. Hardcover, $30.

From humble beginnings in the town of Pietrelcina, Italy, Francesco Forgione (1887–1968) went on to become Italy’s most venerated saint of the twenty-first century, known popularly as Padre (“Father”) Pio (“Pious”). His tomb draws more pilgrims than Lourdes or any other Catholic shrine. Yet the full, true story of this purported miracle worker’s rise to sainthood has long needed to be told, and Sergio Luzzatto tells it in his Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age. (First published in 2007, this is a new English translation.) As the book’s subtitle suggests, Luzzatto details Pio’s fascist (he was reportedly an admirer of Mussolini) and other connections, although in this review I concentrate on the allegedly paranormal aspects of Pio’s life.

Pio is best known for his stigmata—the supposedly supernaturally received wounds resembling the wounds of Jesus—which he first exhibited in the autumn of 1918 when the trauma of World War I caused many to hope for supernatural intervention. Suddenly, at a Capuchin monastery in southern Italy, an alter Christus (living figure of Christ) was manifest. While praying before the chapel’s crucifix, the newly ordained priest was suddenly, he claimed, inflicted with the stigmata—bleeding so profusely, he alleged, that he feared he would bleed to death.

In fact, notwithstanding the claims in uncritical biographies, Pio’s stigmata devolved—from bleeding wounds that could easily have been self-inflicted (like those of many fake stigmatists before and after, as I described in my 2001 book Real-Life X-Files) to merely discolored skin that appeared to have been irritated by the application of a caustic substance. Indeed, a bottle of carbolic acid was once discovered in the friar’s cell, and Luzzatto cites letters from Padre Pio in which Pio requests that carbolic acid, and at another time a caustic alkaloid, be secretly delivered to him. Eventually Pio began wearing fingerless gloves, supposedly to cover his stigmata out of pious humility; however, to me, the practice seems instead a shrewd move to eliminate the need to continually self-inflict wounds.

Nor were the fake stigmata the friar’s only deception. Years before, Pio had written numerous letters to his spiritual directors describing his mystical experiences; however, it is now known that he copied these words verbatim from the writings of stigmatic Gemma Galgani (1878–1903) without acknowledging they were hers. And that is not all: Pio attempted to divert suspicion from his plagiarism by asking for help in procuring copies of Galgani’s books—saying he would very much like to read them!

As to miracles attributed to Pio, the report of a Vatican emissary in 1919 cited the wildest claims then circulating among an uneducated populace. The emissary characterized as fantasy the story of a church bell that fragmented when Pio’s confreres were wronged by a superior. Likewise, it was not true that Pio instantly cured a man of a limp; nor had he caused a deaf-mute girl to regain her speech. He also did not heal a hunchback so the man could walk away “at least partly made straight.” Not a single one of Padre Pio’s miracles was genuine, the investigator determined.

Nevertheless, Padre Pio’s reputation grew unabated, and ultimately “miracles” would be found to serve as the basis for his canonization. A once-hostile Vatican had eventually become conciliatory toward him and responsive to popular 
demand—this despite evidence that suggested sexual misconduct on behalf of the adored padre and the private opinion of Pope John XXIII (recorded in his daybook) that “P.P. has shown himself to be a straw idol.”

By the time of his death in 1968, Pio’s stigmata had disappeared, but that was effectively remedied in death. Although there was no need to cover his hands and feet—and indeed Capuchin rule forbids the wearing of socks—Pio’s “father guardian,” Father Carmelo of San Giovanni in Galdo, worried that the absence of stigmata might cause a faulty rush to judgment. Carmelo therefore had Padre Pio’s hands and feet covered, as if the covering still concealed his allegedly holy gift. And so the deception continued.

In 2002, the late friar was canonized Saint Pio of Pietrelcina—not for the stigmata he was so famous for but for his healings that were, with due illogic, assumed miraculous because they were said to be inexplicable. And when his remains were exhumed for display forty years after his death, those hoping his body would be found incorrupt (a supposed sign of sanctity; see my Relics of the Christ, University Press of Kentucky, 2007), or that it would still exhibit the stigmata, were disappointed. The embalmed corpse had deteriorated sufficiently that it required a silicon mask—complete with bushy eyebrows and beard—fashioned by a London wax museum. Of the supposedly supernatural wounds there was not a trace.

Sherley v. Sebelius was initiated by various claimants, including a number of Christian groups who were later dismissed for lack of standing. The remaining plaintiffs, adult stem-cell (ASC) researchers James Sherley and Theresa Deisher, were recruited to the suit and continue to claim standing based on alleged harm to their careers resulting from increased competition for federal cash.

Lamberth’s preliminary injunction on funding had an immediate and major impact on the science community. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) was forced to abandon its review of fifty new grant applications. It also halted second-level review of twelve applications worth fifteen to twenty million dollars.

Although funding was restored on September 9 when the appeals court temporarily stayed Lamberth’s injunction, many experts warn that mounting uncertainty has already caused irreparable damage and say American postdoctoral researchers are rethinking entry into the field. They also tell us that foreign graduates are more reluctant to consider positions in the United States.

The appeals court heard oral arguments on December 6 and was expected to rule sometime in January. The outcome is anything but certain, and many legal experts expect the case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Regardless, the legal fracas serves more constructively to highlight weightier and even more contentious questions.

First, the science: Just how important is continued research on hESC, and to what extent do recent advances in ASC and induced pluripotent stem-cell (iPSC) technologies alter that discussion?

Nothing obscures or distorts science quite like politics inspired by religion. According to celebrated skeptic Susan Jacoby (2011), “The problem with the good news that embryonic stem cell research will now go forward is that the public relations campaign against right-wing religious restrictions . . . [has] oversold the possibility of immediate practical results to conquer such diseases as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.”

Indeed, only three clinical trials involving hESC had received U.S. government approval as of this writing, and all were the product of privately funded research. In January 2009, Geron obtained permission to begin stem-cell therapy on patients with spinal-cord injuries. Then, in November 2010 and January 2011, respectively, Advanced Cell Technology got the Food and Drug Administration’s go-ahead to work on juveniles with Stargardt’s macular degeneration and adults with age-related macular degeneration. None of these trials, however, has produced any reportable results.

Research on ASC, by contrast, has already paid sumptuous dividends—including bona fide cures for certain blood diseases. Although ASC by themselves lack pluripotency, a barrage of recent headlines has flaunted this field’s undeniable vitality.

In 2009, for example, Dr. Tracy Grikscheit from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles opened up a pig and constructed a small intestine-like structure inside using nothing more than the animal’s intestinal stem cells and a biodegradable cylinder-shaped scaffolding, thus demonstrating that ASC somehow “know” what to do when seeded onto a familiar structure (Sala et al. 2009). Preliminary tests suggest that Grikscheit’s artificial bowel will function naturally in pigs.

A similar technique has improved the life of a human child. Again combining a synthetic scaffolding with stem cells harvested from his young spina bifida-inflicted patient, Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, created a new bladder that, once attached to the old paralyzed organ, attracted its own nerve and blood supplies. Now, several years after surgery, the twenty-year-old patient’s bladder performs normally.

But in recent months, iPSC have received more attention and generated more excitement among scientists than any other stem-cell technology. Back in 2006, Shinya Yamanaka was the first to successfully reprogram adult fibroblasts back to a pluripotent, embryonic-like state through the forced expression of four transcription factors (SOX2, KLF4, MYC, and OCT4). Just a few years later, staggering progress has been made in differentiating human iPSC into neurons and heart, liver, pancreas, and eye tissues. Now, say many experts, it appears that iPSC are “poised to have a major impact in biology and medicine” through applications in “disease modeling, drug screening, and, perhaps, cell-based therapies” (Sadelain 2010).

Indeed, on December 12, 2010, researchers from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio reported success in coaxing human iPSC (and separately cultured hESC) to form a three-dimensional organ resembling an intestine and to recapitulate smooth-muscle tissue, nutrient-absorbing cells, and mucous-, hormone-, and enzyme-secreting cells (Spence et al. 2010). Scientists have also used iPSC to cure diabetes in mice.¹

Nevertheless, iPSC have presented their own problems. First, the insertion of external genes into reprogrammed cells can cause any number of expression anomalies. Second, one of Yamanaka’s transcription factors is known to cause tumors. Third, the reprogramming process can be inefficient, resulting in only one success for every 1,000 cells treated. Indeed, one 2010 study reported that iPSC were thousands of times less likely to proliferate and suffered greatly increased rates of early senescence (aging) and apoptosis (cell death) when compared with their embryonic counterparts (Feng et al. 2010).

Emerging evidence also indicates that iPSC tend to retain traits from their tissue of origin—striking residual DNA methylation signatures that could seriously compromise their suitability for use in the fields of genetic engineering and regenerative medicine. In one of three new studies describing this phenomenon, now dubbed epigenetic memory, researchers compared iPSC reprogrammed through the Yamanaka method with mouse ESC generated via somatic-cell nuclear transfer (Kim et al. 2010). Disappointingly, they discovered that the iPSC were less likely to achieve “ground state pluripotency” and that they tended to differentiate into their original cell types.

Then again, scientists have addressed—and in some cases, overcome—these obstacles almost as quickly as journalists can write about them. Some labs now use viruses that don’t invade the cell’s genome, while others employ tiny rings of DNA called episomes that don’t replicate when the cell divides.

This past September, Derrick Rossi of the Harvard Medical School used synthetic RNA molecules corresponding to the standard Yamanaka factors to produce RNA-induced pluripotent stem cells, or “RiPS,” one hundred times more efficiently (a two percent success rate) than with viral methods and in roughly half the time (two weeks) (Warren et al. 2010). And because RNA disintegrates rapidly, RiPS are genetically identical to their source cells. Unfortunately, Rossi’s process is exceptionally expensive and time consuming.

Even more recently, Sheng Ding, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, effectively reprogrammed human skin cells by treating them with drugs and only one virus-delivered gene, OCT4 (Zhu et al. 2010). And because that gene, too, has been replaced in experiments on mice, says Ding, a human protocol entirely free of foreign genes may not be far off.

The direct conversion of ordinary body cells has lately gained momentum as well. On November 7, Mickie Bhatia at McMaster University reported the first-ever conversion of human skin cells into red, white, and platelet blood cells using an OCT4-infused virus and a brew of immune-system stimulating proteins called cytokines (Szabo et al. 2010). Because these cells never pass through an embryonic-like state, the risk of tumor formation is averted. On the downside, converted cells will not easily multiply in the lab.

Regardless, America’s most prominent and accomplished researchers continue to insist that neither ASC nor iPSC technologies have advanced far enough to render aggressive hESC research superfluous, let alone obsolete. During a well-publicized hearing on stem-cell research held on September 16, 2010, a Senate appropriations subcommittee took testimony from Francis Collins, director of the NIH, and George Daley, director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at the Children’s Hospital Boston.

A vocal evangelical Christian as well, Collins made it plain during the hearing that hESC “remain the gold standard for pluripotency” and that “to prohibit work on [them] will thus do severe collateral damage to the new and exciting research on [iPSC].” He then reminded the senators that the NIH spends nearly three times as much on ASC research as it does on hESC research every year.

But Collins’s most poignant testimony divulged how hESC are currently “providing key tools to help us study the origins of many devastating diseases that afflict babies and young children,” including fragile X and Rett syndromes, developmental disorders of the brain. Americans “must persevere and move this research forward in a strong and consistent manner,” he urged. The politics of delay and uncertainty, he warned, were tantamount to “pouring sand into the engine of discovery.”

Having co-authored Rossi’s ground-breaking RiPS paper, Daley’s adamant avowal that iPSC “do not obviate the need for [hESC]” may have been equally effective. He also noted the stubborn limitations of even the most successful ASC treatments involving the transplantation of hematopoietic cells. Despite fifty years of this research and practice, Daley said, “patients still die or become severely disabled because the transplant regimens are so toxic.”

Clearly irritated by the current legal intrusion into scientific matters, Daley likened the political debate concerning different classes of stem cells to a contest between entertainers on American Idol. These arguments, he scolded, “are not based on sound scientific evidence, but rather ideologically driven attempts” to control science and distort sober medical realities. Urging new legislation to encourage American research, Daley was “convinced that [hESC] are critical to a multifaceted portfolio of NIH stem cell research.”

Senate subcommittees are notorious for choosing witnesses certain to confirm member predilections. But these researchers’ credentials, and those of their many professional supporters, cannot be denied. In the end, Jacoby (2011, 98) concurs: “That treatments may be a generation or two . . . away is not an argument against basic scientific research. The difficulty of the science makes it more, not less, important for researchers to move full speed ahead now in all areas that offer promise for the alleviation of the most serious age related diseases.”

After the judiciary imposes itself, however, it quickly loses the option to bow out gracefully. Dickey-Wicker was a legal accident waiting to happen. But from the wreckage we must now address the next unavoidable question: How should Americans dispose of the stem-cell quandary—through the courts or through Congress?

In the courts, the defense will argue that Dickey-Wicker preceded and thus could not have been intended to control modern hESC research. It will contend that mere research on stem cells previously derived from embryos does not constitute harming those embryos, which is apparently the reasoning Congress relied upon during the past two presidential administrations.

But even the best-case judicial solution would be inadequate. With polls showing continued and increasing popular support for hESC research, all science-friendly members of Congress should promptly push for clear and comprehensive legislation that would override Dickey-Wicker and codify many of the research guidelines announced by Obama in 2009.

And we shouldn’t forget that the stem-cell question is part of a larger issue looming on the cultural horizon. America stands at a crossroads. Will it remain a nation committed to scientific innovation and economic progress? Or will ideology finally tear down those long-partnered academic and entrepreneurial edifices that generations of supremely talented, energetic, forward-thinking, and, yes, conscientious persons have worked so hard to erect?

Note

1. Also on December 12, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center presented findings at the fiftieth annual meeting of the American Society of Cell Biology that insulin-secreting beta islet cells, normally found in the pancreas, can be produced from human spermatogonial ASC without the use of extra genes. These researchers hope that continued progress in this area will lead to a novel solution to juvenile-onset (type 1) diabetes. ↑

References

Feng, Q., S. Lu, I. Klimanskaya, et al. 2010. Hemangioblastic derivatives from human induced pluripotent stem cells exhibit limited expansion and early senescence. Stem Cells 28: 704–12.

Jacoby, S. 2011. Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age. New York: Pantheon Books.

Kim, K., A. Doi, B. Wen, et al. 2010. Epigenetic memory in induced pluripotent stem cells. Nature 467(7313): 285–90.

Sadelain, M. 2010. The need for genetically engineered therapeutic pluripotent stem cells (Editorial). Molecular Therapy 18(2): 2039.

Sala, F.G., S.M. Kunisaki, E.R. Ochoa, et al. 2009. Tissue-engineered small intestine and stomach form from autologous tissue in a preclinical large animal model. Journal of Surgical Research 156(2): 205–12.

Spence, J.R., C.N. Mayhew, S.A. Rankin, et al. 2010. Direct differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells into intestinal tissue in vitro. Nature (advance online publication). doi: 10.1038/nature09691.

Szabo, E., S. Rampalli, R.M. Risueño, et al. 2010. Direct conversion of human fibroblasts to multilineage blood progenitors. Nature (advance online publication). doi: 10.1038/
nature09591.

Warren, L., P.D. Manos, T. Ahfeldt, et al. 2010. Highly efficient reprogramming to pluripotency and directed differentiation of human cells with synthetic modified mRNA. Cell Stem Cell 7(5): 618–30.

Zhu, S., W. Li, H. Zhou, et al. 2010. Reprogramming of human primary somatic cells by OCT4 and chemical compounds. Cell Stem Cell 7(6), 651–55.