I want the earth put back, how it once was, somewhat an irrational desire I
know. But I cannot stop dreaming.

Regards Peter.

RP Turland, 4B Gopsall st, Leicester LE2ODL. England. Tel 0116 2533317
Website   http://freespace.virgin.net/peter.turland/START.HTM
Begat determinism: My father and mother begat me. My ex and me begat my
son and daughter. My (great^n) grandparents were fish.

-----Original Message-----
From: Clay Stinson <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
<[log in to unmask]>
Date: 09 April 1999 23:48
Subject: Human Gullibility Beyond Belief


>The truth is not out there: Secrets of the Paranormal is no more factual
>than The X Files
>
>Human Gullibility Beyond Belief
>(by Richard Dawkins)
>
>Hello, good evening and welcome. I have paranormal, psychic powers. I can
go
>on prime-time live television and make somebody vomit, by remote
>teleportation of what we call psychonauseous energy. Here in the studio I
>have a map of Britain. I am going to breathe on a particular part of the
>country ­ let's say here, over the Pennines. Now, you people out there, I
>want you to telephone if anything strange happens during the programme.
>
>It would not be long before the first phone call came in.
>
>Caller: "My lad has just sicked up his tea and there's ketchup all over the
>sofa."
>
>Knighted presenter: "Amazing, astounding. And where do you live?
>
>"Manchester! Isn't Manchester just west of the Pennines? Uncanny. Beyond
>belief. Ketchup, you say? Don't clear it up, we'll get a camera crew out
>there straight away. Tell me, Richard, when did you first notice your
>strange mystic power?"
>
>The audience for a prime-time television show in the north of England must
>be well over a million. Given a million households for an hour, you can be
>confident that somebody out there will throw up. At a pinch, somebody who
>just felt poorly would probably earn a round of applause.
>
>But will the presenter point all this out? He will not. Will he call
>attention to the millions of households in which nothing untoward happened,
>who did not phone in? Of course not. That would spoil the fun and be bad
for
>the ratings ­ whose side are you on?
>
>My example was hypothetical, but something very similar regularly happens
in
>the current epidemic of "paranormal" programmes on television. Here is an
>actual item from Carlton's Beyond Belief, produced and presented by David
>Frost: a father and son team in which the son, blindfolded, can see
"through
>his father's eyes". Sir David personally checks the blindfold to reassure
us
>there is no cheating. A young woman sashays in to perform her brief cameo
>task of spinning a roulette wheel. The ball stops in slot number 13. The
>father stares fixedly at it, clenching and unclenching his fists under the
>strain, and asks his blindfolded son in a strangled shout whether he can do
>it. "Yes, I think so," croaks the son. "Thirteen." Wild applause. How
>astonishing! And don't forget, viewers, this is all live TV, and factual
>programming, not fiction like the BBC's The X Files. Astounding!
>
>What we have just experienced is indistinguishable from a familiar, rather
>mediocre conjuring trick. The only difference is that a television company
>has seen fit to bill it as "paranormal". The basic formula for these shows
>is simple but effective. Wheel in a succession of performers, but
repeatedly
>tell the audience they are not conjurers but genuinely supernatural. Yet
>these acts seem to be subjected to less control than a performing magician
>would be. I imagine the telepathy stunt depends upon some kind of coded
>message passing from father to son . There are numerous ways in which such
>messages could be sent. Any decent conjurer goes into an elaborate,
>sleeve-emptying pantomime to rule out the more obvious tricks. Perhaps
place
>father and son in sealed, separate rooms. Perhaps search shoes for hidden
>radio transmitters.
>
>In the present case, no such technology is necessary. The father always
asks
>his son, out loud, "Can you do it?" or an equivalent question. Any conjurer
>knows there are many ways in which a two-digit number could be coded in the
>details of such a message. Information could lie in the exact words used,
in
>the durations of pauses, in the pitch or loudness of the voice, perhaps
>interspersed with throat-clearings or foot-tappings. In this case, I
>distinctly heard a throaty whisper at the crucial moment. Yes, yes, it was
>probably just a cameraman whispering to the tea-maker. But if the show was
>sufficiently unrigorous to permit audible whispering, it was certainly
>unrigorous enough to permit less obvious means of communication.
>
>In another programme, a performer demonstrated his magnetic personality by
>"willing" objects to slide around a table. Any conjurer would have allowed
>the audience a ritual peep under the table to check for hidden magnets. In
>this case, neither the viewers nor studio audience were granted even this
>courtesy.
>
>The whole point of a good conjurer is that we, the audience, do not know
how
>he does it. But a good conjurer never claims to have done anything more
than
>a trick and, however mystified we may remain, we do not take it as evidence
>for telepathy, paranormal psychic powers or energy fields unknown to
>physics. Several good conjurers, from the great Canadian James Randi down,
>have made it their business to replicate all the tricks of the television
>paranormalists. If the producers of these television programmes were
>genuinely interested in investigating the truth, the least they could do
>would be to invite Randi, or another sceptical conjurer, into the studio to
>duplicate, publicly, the tricks.
>
>This does occasionally happen, but not often enough to dent the gullibility
>of the studio audience. On Carlton's The Paranormal World of Paul McKenna,
>one performer came on, did a brief but good trick and then clearly stated
>that a trick was all it was. The audience applauded politely. But did they
>go on to question the paranormal claims of the other performers? Did the
>compere? Alas, no. Okay, so that one was a trick. But surely this next one
>is genuine? Indeed, the honesty with which an occasional trick is admitted
>may serve to reinforce confidence in paranormal claims.
>
>The BBC is falling over itself to put on drivel similar to Carlton's. In
one
>episode of BBC2's Secrets of the Paranormal, a builder turned "healer" is
>given the prestige of the channel to tell us that his body is inhabited by
a
>doctor called Paul of Judaea, dead 2,000 years. Some sad people think they
>are Napoleon reincarnated, but we do not expect them to be granted a
>prime-time "factual" television slot to air their delusions. Who in the BBC
>is responsible for commissioning this and why aren't they fired?
>
>The defense offered is that viewers should be free to make up their own
>minds. Wouldn't it be undesirable censorship to "suppress" such programmes?
>Oh, please! As others have pointed out, you should on the same grounds
grant
>prime time to the Flat Earth Society. Producers, editors and controllers,
at
>least where factual programming is concerned, have a responsibility to
>exercise some control.
>
>Or, it may be said, aren't scientists being arrogant in claiming to have
>explained everything? Isn't it healthy to have alternative hypotheses laid
>before us? Yes, of course it is. Scientists certainly do not have an
>adequate explanation for everything. But "paranormal" claims must be
treated
>with the same rigorous scepticism as scientific hypotheses are. On a recent
>episode of BBC1's Out of this World, presented by Carol Vorderman
>(shamelessly abusing her Tomorrow's World "scientific" credentials),
"Mystic
>Carol" spent a night alone with a camcorder in a haunted hotel.
>Unfortunately she did not see a ghost, but she did feel pretty spooky in
one
>room that was abnormally cold. Oooh!
>
>Yet scientists are required to back up their claims not with private
>feelings but with publicly checkable evidence. Their experiments must have
>rigorous controls to eliminate spurious effects. And statistical analysis
>eliminates the suspicion (or at least measures the likelihood) that the
>apparent effect might have happened by chance alone.
>
>Paranormal phenomena have a habit of going away whenever they are tested
>under rigorous conditions. This is why the $740,000 reward of James Randi,
>offered to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal effect under proper
>scientific controls, is safe. Why don't the television editors insist on
>some equivalently rigorous test? Could it be that they believe the alleged
>paranormal powers would evaporate and bang go the ratings?
>
>Consider this. If a paranormalist could really give an unequivocal
>demonstration of telepathy (precognition, psychokinesis, reincarnation,
>whatever it is), he would be the discoverer of a totally new principle
>unknown to physical science. The discoverer of the new energy field that
>links mind to mind in telepathy, or of the new fundamental force that moves
>objects around a table top, deserves a Nobel prize and would probably get
>one. If you are in possession of this revolutionary secret of science, why
>not prove it and be hailed as the new Newton? Of course, we know the
answer.
>You can't do it. You are a fake.
>
>Yet the final indictment against the television decision-makers is more
>profound and more serious. Their recent splurge of paranormalism debauches
>true science and undermines the efforts of their own excellent science
>departments. The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is
>quite odd enough to need no help from pseudoscientific charlatans. The
>public appetite for wonder can be fed, through the powerful medium of
>television, without compromising the principles of honesty and reason.
>
>Today we are faced with a real possibility that fossil life is embedded in
>ancient Mars rock. Will a public gorged on a pseudoscientific pap of alien
>abduction lore, lulled into possession of a spastic critical faculty, be
>capable of recognising what a fantastically exciting possibility Martian
>life, if verified, would be, how far-reaching and revolutionary its
>consequences for our world view? Or has television once too often cried
>wolf?
>
>Richard Dawkins is Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of
>Science at Oxford University and the author of Climbing Mount Improbable.
He
>will debate Selling Out to the Supernatural at the Edinburgh Television
>Festival tomorrow.