Thanks to the organizers, I had a front row VIP seat to watch this experiment. (I guess there are some advantages to being a D-list celebrity!!)  I was very impressed with how meticulous the experiment was conducted and even more impressed with how all the audience (estimated at about 500) was able to keep absolutely quiet and still – not a cough, not a chair squeak – throughout the duration of the challenge.  I can’t imagine a room full of skeptics – outspoken skeptics – watching this demonstration of psychic power not wanting to scream out some invective or irreverence comment.  But we were all very well behaved and the demonstration of psychic Sonne’s ability to dowse failed – failed spectacularly.

The honest truth is that while I sat watching her dowse, I somehow wanted her to succeed.  Yes, my rational-self knew she would fail. I understand the laws of physics and that the fundamental forces of nature as well as statistics are not in her favor.  But yet, deep down, and for very selfish reasons I wanted her to succeed.  If she could indeed dowse for the cards under such strict conditions, she would be on her way to proof there there possibly could be another force of nature hereto undiscovered – and I was in a front-row seat to witness it – how cool is that?

I am trained as a scientist and worked in applied science and engineering all my working life but I grew up in a culture where existence of unmeasurable, undetectable imaginary force fields are taken for granted.  Perhaps if Connie succeeded and dowsing is indeed a reality, we can set out to find the reality behind the phenomenon. If we can find the “dowsing force” can we not find the “chi force” and rehabilitate my fore-bearers pseudoscience and bad medicine?  Wishful thinking!

There is one observation I would like to share with you – and that is the noticeable absence of attendees and panel participants of Asian descent.  This is not the only skeptics movement events where I have noticed this dearth of Asian (especially Chinese and Koreans) participation. Go to any science, technology events or to any science and engineering departments in any major universities in North America and you will see people of Chinese, Korean and Japanese ancestry very well represented. Yet, they are all but absent from the skeptics movement.  I met a couple of “pale white guys” (their words!) from the skeptic society in Vancouver, BC, Canada and they brought up the same observation.  Vancouver, BC has the largest Chinese population or any cities outside China, after Singapore, yet they are conspicuously absent from their local skeptic movement. I find it impossible to belief that all the professors in physics, chemistry,  or astronomy of Chinese ancestry in our great universities and research centers believe in chi, animal astrology, feng shui and other woo-woo nonsense.  I cannot believe that all the pharmacology professors in our most esteem pharmacy and medical schools would accept all the Chinese herb remedies that have been tested and found to be a placebo at best and harmful at worst. So where are they in the skeptic movement – are they not interested in getting the message out?  Are they not willing to “rock the boat” when it comes to skewering the holy cows of their own culture?  Is there too much respect for their ancestors and filial piety prevents them from criticizing their ancestors cherished believes?

I don’t know, but I’ll be looking in it and see if I can do some outreach!

Here’s what happened: Months ago I got a call from “Stephen Cardozo,” a “Field Producer” for “Little Duke Productions,” to do a talking-heads interview on psychics and how to test them — the usual stuff, so I didn’t think twice about it. I didn’t check up on the production company because I have never been burned and there were no signals of distrust for me to notice. I drove down to “Occidental Studios” in Los Angeles, where I was greeted by Cardozo, who was polite, loquacious, and jovial, and we sat in the green room for two hours talking. I suppose I should have been skeptical by the fact that I was not allowed on the set for the ongoing taping when I found out that it was Brian Dunning (whose skeptical abilities I trust) who was performing the tests of the psychics. I wanted to observe Brian’s protocols, but I was told that no one was “allowed on the set” because it was small and the cameras might see people standing around in the background. When I got on the set I noticed that this was not true, and in fact there were people standing around all over the place. The make-up woman spent about 15 seconds on me, which was also unusual, but it was the end of a long day so I figured she was just burned out.

Brian and I began a conversation about how science works and how to test psychics when one of the psychics he had tested earlier — improbably named “Shirley Ghostman” — burst into the studio wheeling a body bag on a cart and screaming about how he had Lee Majors in it because he predicted earlier that day that the “Six Million Dollar Man” had died, and he wanted Brian to pay up the $50,000 prize money for psychic powers. I unzipped the bag and there was this fat ugly balding guy with electronic gadgets duct-taped to his body (a calculator on his bicep, a computer keyboard on his hairy chest), about which I had a good laugh (not even close to a Lee Majors look alike!) I told him that Lee Majors had not died, at which point “Ghostman” said that Gandhi had lied to him. Right … Just before that I turned to Brian and said “we’re being punked!” But the spectacle went on for a while longer, growing more inane by the minute, so I played along waiting for everyone to break character and burst out laughing. That never happened, and as I was leaving Cardozo wanted to know if I wanted “security” to escort me to my car. I said “sure, why not?” and some little guy who was hanging around walked me out, as if he was going to protect me from a crazed psychic!

Out in the parking lot Brian told me that he thought the entire day was a set up, including phony cameramen, phony directors, phony make-up artist, etc. He was right. I initially thought that it was just Ghostman punking the Showtime people, but it turns out there is no show called “Versus,” the psychic’s real name is Marc Wootton (a British comedian and wannabe Borat character), and that Showtime has a show under production called “Untitled Marc Wootton Project.” (See the IMDB page.)

Here is Wootton’s “Shirley Ghostman” website.

Here are some other Ghostman punkings.

And here are some British skeptics catching on to Wootton’s antics fairly quickly.

Weirdly, I found this guy in real estate who had a similar experience (punking real estate brokers? — only in a housing crisis I suppose): Beware: Little Duke Productions for Showtime. Duping Realtors on camera while actors cause havoc in LA area homes.

The funniest story of all, however, was the punking of the actress and environmental activist Daryl Hannah, who explained in a Guardian article how she was punked by the same people. I have to admit that the image of a miniskirted “research scientist” in a lab coat who told Daryl how she had been fed by condors in the wild is a hellova lot funnier than Lee Majors in a body bag! Here’s the Daryl Hannah punking article.

From the story:

It turns out that, a little way off, Hannah was introduced to a “director” who looked to her to be far too Central Casting to be true. There were three cameras and 15 crew members, which she knew to be too many for a nature documentary. The “director” then took her to meet a “research scientist”, a woman in a miniskirt and lab coat who was peering from under too much blue eye shadow into the distance, supposedly looking for the perfect “condor release spot”. The scientist told Hannah that she herself had been fed by condors in the wild for three days, at which point Hannah started to laugh, and pretended she needed to use the bathroom.

She calls her manager. “I’m telling you, that was a full-on Punk’d-Borat situation,” she says. “The whole thing was a big ‘let’s make fun of celebrities’ show.” (Later, when I Google the production company named on the release forms, Little Duke Productions, all I can find is a random warning on someone’s Twitter feed: “Beware of Little Duke Productions for Showtime. May be dangerous. Please RT.”) The manager promises to look into it.

Now, here’s the other shoe falling: Brian and I figured out it was all a hoax, so I asked Cardozo in several voice mails and emails point blank: “this was a punking, right?” He didn’t return my calls and his only email answer was this generic statement:

“I did get your messages, but I’ve been in and out of the office, so I apologize for the late reply. Thank you again for participating in the show. The segment we filmed with you, the versus segment may or may not make it into the eventual show for Showtime. We obviously film more than we actually use in the series. Like you, we are interested in looking at all the methods and practices of the self-proclaimed psychics including those who participated in the versus segment. We also appreciated your participation in the segment as it goes to show how skeptics approach all types of people who claim to have psychic abilities. Feel free to contact me with any additional thoughts you may have. Best, Stephen”

So, naturally I concluded that it was the skeptics being punked, and I ranted and released the hounds (think Mr. Burns pressing the button) to go disrupt their show (since retracted!). But then the producer of the show, Misha Manson-Smith (whom I initially thought was a pseudonymic play on Sasha Baron-Cohen, the Borat actor/comedian), contacted Brian and explained: “Shirley Ghostman is a satirical dig at psychics” and “In case you and Michael are concerned about how you might appear on the show, I just wanted to let you know that I think you both came across very well and were excellent foils to Shirley’s idiotic outbursts” and that I shouldn’t be upset because “our show so clearly endorses his [the skeptics] position.”

Wow! So it is the psychics being punked, not the skeptics!! That’s a relief. It seems funnier now, of course, because it isn’t my goose being plucked. But since we’re on the topic of punks and hoaxes, I’m really not sure what the point of these Borat-like events are, other than getting a cheap laugh at someone else’s expense. Although Daryl Hannah’s environmental politics are not mine, what was the point of tricking her out to a condor sighting? Had she fallen for the mini-skirted scientist, I suppose, it would be an indictment of her politics beclouding her critical faculties. But she didn’t. So…

In my opinion, a hoax is only interesting if those who are hoaxed should have seen it coming, if they were blinded by their prejudices and presuppositions, and who were given clues but ignored them. In James Randi’s “Alpha Project” hoax he instructed his magician charges to fess up to using magic tricks (to simulate psychic power) if anyone ever asked them; but no one ever did, despite obvious clues they left behind. Alan Sokal’s “deconstruction” hoax of the lit-crit journal was beautiful because he submitted an article that was complete nonsense and was so chockablock full of the sort of jargon that lit-crit folks love to read that the editors of the journal who accepted it just assumed that it must mean something. But if you simply lie to someone and deceive them so well that they could not possibly have known you were setting them up, it only proves that you are a clever liar.

Later in the show, after “Shirley” had been “thrown out and escorted from the grounds” (so I believed), Michael and I were having our discussion, on camera, about my findings with the psychics. Suddenly the studio doors slammed open, and in ran Shirley, pushing a cart holding a bodybag! I knew that Shirley was unbalanced and belligerent, so I stood the hell back and expected that security was going to tackle him and get him out of there. No such thing happened. In fact, the film crew hardly reacted at all. Michael had not had my previous experience with Shirley, so he stepped up cheerfully and asked to see what was in the bag. After some tussling, they got it open, and there’s some guy with a desk calculator or something taped to his chest, and another to his arm: The Six Million Dollar Man. Shirley was right: Lee Majors had died, and here was the body to prove it.

At this point, Michael (clearly less naive than I) asked if he was being punked, if this whole day was a setup and a joke on him. I told him no, this was real, and this guy was just a nut. This is why Michael is the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and I’m just some guy.

I was aware the crew was short on time, and I know that time costs money, nowhere more than on a production set. So I had no patience for Shirley’s hijinks, and refused to play, standing over against the wall like a curmudgeon. I damn near called the police, because Shirley was as belligerent as ever demanding that I give him the $50,000 he claimed to have just won, and nobody on set seemed to take any interest in getting him out of there or in calling security. Michael was much more fun than I.

Long story short, they eventually put on a show that looked like they were wrestling him and his Six Million Dollar Man out the door, and Michael and I gave a brief 5-minute conclusion and wrap-up for their show.

So I would like to take this opportunity to illuminate for you just how big of an idiot I am. All day long I noticed red flags about the production, but it never occurred to me to heed them.

• The first red flag came when they told me I was going to be the host of the segment for their big show on Showtime. This is without ever meeting me, or having any conversation about the format of the show, or anything. But I hadn’t met them yet either, so I just figured they must really know what they’re doing. Pretty much always a bad assumption to make, class.
• Their web site was a default iWeb template. Perhaps 10 minutes of work had gone into it.
• The next red flag waved when I arrived at the studio. One of the producers, a friendly guy calling himself Steve, told me they’d secured a $50,000 prize to award to any psychics who could pass my tests today. That’s a fair amount of money to fool away, given that they’d paid very little attention to the tests, and hadn’t really even asked what I was going to do. It was extraordinarily half-assed.
• Next, I saw the set. They’d told me this was for Showtime, but the set looked like it was made from whatever random crap furniture happened to be in the adjoining office. Most pitiful was the show’s logo, “Versus”, which appeared to be hand drawn with a Magic Marker on foamcore. Steve probably noticed that I practically fell over when I saw the set. But, trusting fellow that I am, I just figured, well, their show is really going to suck; but they’d paid me so I resolved to give them the benefit of the doubt and do my best as their host.
• The makeup girl was the most lackadaisical person I’ve ever met, and I even brought an assortment of extremely obvious pimples with which to challenge her. She left me to mop sweat off my face by the gallon all day long — it was about 120 degrees under the lights, with no A/C, and I was there all day. I’m sure they got plenty of footage of that.
• Throughout the day, the director, Misha, couldn’t have cared less what happened. He never gave me any meaningful direction, he never spoke to me or to the psychics about what he wanted to see, and he was completely unfazed by the absurd direction Shirley took his show. (Like all these red flags, this one makes perfect sense in retrospect – but at the time I took it as merely sad, rather than as a tipoff.)
• Part of what they wanted me to do was have a conversation with Michael Shermer. Two skeptics chatting away like old pals? Makes for some real wild television. I even brought that up to Misha and Steve, but they shrugged and acted like they didn’t care.
• All day long, the crew and a few extra random guys sat around like wooden statues. They were completely uninterested in Shirley and his Six Million Dollar Man, as if they’d seen it all a hundred times before. Even when I asked them for help, they might as well have been asleep.

So, obviously something was wrong. It was painfully obvious from the minute I got there. But, fool that I am, I never caught on. I will publicly admit here and now that it never occurred to me that the show was a setup, and I could not possibly have been given more obvious hints. You’d think I would have been at least slightly skeptical. Nope. They got me good: hook, line, and sinker.

But even though I knew something wasn’t right, they’d paid me to “host their show”, so I gave it my level best all day long. Even when I stood off set being a curmudgeon, it was because I did not wish to contribute to their time being wasted.

After the fact, Michael searched online and found that for some weeks, people had been Twittering and posting warnings about their production company, saying that it’s fake, and to stay away. Even Daryl Hannah was sucked in by them within the past couple of weeks, though we’re not certain if it’s for the same show or not (probably, given the time frame and the same ambush format). We’ll never know, because she saw the fake right away and dumped them.

And, as more than one person has already emailed me, anyone who attended The Amazing Meeting 6 in Las Vegas last year even watched Shirley Ghostman do the same sort of ambush to Chris French in the UK. Chris played the YouTube video on the big screen. How did Michael and I miss that? Well, I spoke right after Chris, so I was probably out of the room preparing my talk. Anyway that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

So I’ll conclude by giving a simple word of advice, and as always, do as I say and not as I do. Be skeptical.

Today I was invited to host an episode of a new series for a major cable network in which I was to interview and administer a test to three professional psychics. This was the first episode they’d shot, and the producers and director were really nice and cool and it had all the makings of a fun and productive day. They had located three psychics who were all game, and were fully willing to undergo the tests under controlled conditions. Moreover, the show had even secured a $50,000 prize that any psychics who passed today’s tests would be qualified to try for. I arrived fully prepared, with some detailed protocols, and a raft of properly controlled materials.

Here’s the rub. The entire day was a setup. It was a gag, with Michael Shermer and myself as the unwitting victims.

The psychics and I began each interview with a discussion of each psychic’s personal history, what they knew about their abilities, and what they were able to tell us about them. Two of them, a pair of very friendly and positive ladies named Sylvie and Austyn, gave very fair descriptions of what they believed they could do, and sportingly undertook the tests. You can probably guess the results. But those tests were certainly not what the day ended up being about…

The third psychic was, unfortunately, not a psychic at all, but a young comedian who used to have a show on the BBC, and now appears to be trying to make a name for himself with a new character who is a wannabe nemesis of skeptics. He’s going to find this an uphill battle, as he’s neither clever, funny, particularly talented in any apparent way, nor does he seem to know much about psychics or criticism of psychics.

He goes by the moniker “Shirley”, and looks like a televangelist in a gaudy white suit with colored piping, and either the world’s worst hair or a gauche orange wig, I couldn’t quite tell which. When it was his turn to come out, Shirley came up to me, took his seat, refused to return my friendly greeting, and launched into what he seemed to think was a clever attempt to “get into my head” – insulting my parents, my wife, and “revealing” to all my terrible guilt at how I’ve treated people. Essentially, his routine was to ignore the reason [that I believed] he was supposed to be there, and try to establish himself as – well, I can’t even think what. He refused to participate in the arranged tests, instead throwing tantrums about each, constantly demanding that he be paid his $50,000.

At one point, Shirley inexplicably stopped the production, and fiddled with his iPhone for a few minutes. He then announced that his spirit guide, Sheba, informed him that my background was as an Irish flute player (perhaps not so coincidentally, this is just what a quick Google search of my name reveals. There’s also a third Brian Dunning who is an Elvis impersonator, and doubtless many more.) He then demanded his $50,000 again for “correctly” reading my background. When I then informed him that he was duped by careless Googling, he begged for that segment to be edited out. It was just one more thing that was weird: Was this part of his gag? Shirley, hire a new writer.

For one test, I’d drawn something and sealed it in an envelope. Each psychic was supposed to duplicate my drawing. When I finally persuaded Shirley to open his envelope to reveal what he’d drawn, he pulled out a poster sized sheet with at least 100 small doodles — anything and everything he could think of that I might possibly had drawn (he still missed it). He demanded his $50,000 again.

And then he went into his channeling act. A mysterious power overwhelmed him, and he began channeling Lee Majors, of The Six Million Dollar Man fame. Lee Majors began telling us what heaven is like. By now I’d given up, as we were clearly wasting everyone’s time, and wasn’t even standing on the set any more. Some of the crew informed Shirley that Lee Majors is not dead, and something in his brain seemed to snap. He became belligerent, had to be restrained by some of the crew, and strangely the director asked me to play along for three minutes — why, I have no idea. Shirley then set his phone down on speakerphone, ran to the opposite side of the room, and took out a second cell phone and called his first one, saying “This is Lee Majors’ agent, and he died today.”

If this was a comedy routine, it left something to be desired.

Eventually Shirley was muscled out of the studio, and we proceeded with a test of one of the other psychics, which brought back some semblance of normalcy. For the final segment, Michael Shermer came on and he and I discussed the results of what had happened with my tests. But we didn’t get very far.

For that was when the real weirdness happened.

Michael Twittered a description of this afterwards, which included a very apt reference to Andy Kaufman (except Kaufman truly was a comic genius), and promised to write it up on his own upcoming blog. So I will allow him to pick up the story from that point. You won’t want to miss it. It includes bodybags, and made me wish to hell I’d brought my camera.

So, I’m sorry to report that there is no new TV show on critical thinking. From a deeper study of Shirley Ghostman’s web site, it looks like he hasn’t had a BBC show for some years, but maybe we’ll get to see some of this action on YouTube. Kudos to the set crew who played along for so many hours, let’s hope it was worth someone’s while.

A MILLION dollars!

I think one of the coolest things — if not the coolest thing — the James Randi Educational Foundation does is the Million Dollar Challenge: if you can prove you have paranormal abilities (you can dowse, you’re psychic, you can make objects float or catch fire or turn into cheese just with the power of your mind), then we’ll give you a million bucks.

Of course, lots of people claim the money doesn’t exist (yes it does), or that the rules are unfair (no they’re not; we negotiate protocols with the claimant until both parties are satisfied), or that we’re out to disprove the paranormal (not true; or else why have the MDC in the first place?). Despite these complaints, there is a long list of people attempting to win the Challenge.

But first they have to pass a preliminary Challenge, a test run if you will. If they can pass muster, then they move on to the Megabuck test.

The latest person to take this test was Patrica Putt. She claims she can listen to a person’s voice and be able to tell all sorts of information about them, which, if true, would clearly be paranormal. She took the preliminary Challenge last week, tested by Professors Christopher French and Richard Wiseman.

The results? Well, read Professor French’s account of it at The Guardian. Or you could read Professor Wiseman’s account. Or you could read JREF staff member (and MDC Research Assistant) Alison Smith’s account on the JREF’s Swift blog (and an earlier quick post of the results right after the trial here).

All in all, it went pretty much as you’d expect… if you’re skeptical.

In this video demonstration I bend spoons and forks and give you just enough information so that you can figure how how to do it yourself (without actually providing a full reveal of the trick). This video demonstration was inspired by James “the Amazing” Randi, whose miniature likeness supervises the entire process (you have to watch the video to see what I mean). As Randi likes to say, “if psychics are bending spoons with psychic power they’re doing it the hard way.”

This video demonstration was shot in the library of the Skeptics Society and was filmed, edited, and produced by Josh Timonen, the highly talented web designer and videographer for RichardDawkins.net. Josh has produced a number of excellent DVDs with Richard in conversation with a number of thinkers (e.g., “The Four Horsemen” with Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris). Go to www.richarddawkins.net to check them out.

So watch this video and then go to a restaurant tonight where they use relatively cheap cutlery (i.e., easy to bend) and amaze your friends and family!