TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE: THE MAGICIAN AND THE THINK TANK

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Body:  THE SEXES
 the "old-boy net" system of hiring, in
 which department heads (invariably
 male) ask other department heads for
 recommendations. A study by a man-
 agement consultant fine, commissioned
 by the administration, found major dis-
 crimination against women (70% of
 those with salaries below the minimum
 set for their category by the consultant
 fine were women), and recommended
 pay increases that would amount to
 $350,000, if and when implemented,
 ("Soon," promises the university.)
 Myths. "i'rouble is, say the women
 at U. of M., even those innovations are
 often sidestepped by a recalcitrant ad-
 ministration. Grievance procedures are
 slow and cumbersome, and women find
 it extremely difficult to get the neces-
 sary data (such as salary figures) to sup-
 port their cases. Despite promises to do
 so, the university has granted back pay
 because of discrimination in only one
 case. Although the school will make an
 effort to determine whether some fac-
 ulty women are still underpaid for their
 present rank, it still refuses to consider
 whether they are underranked because
 of their sex.
 The biggest stumbling block, the
 women contend, is the sometimes un-
 conscious discrimination evident in
 mate attitudes. Now, when they think
 they find that kind of discrimination, the
 U. of M. women immediately challenge
 it. Part-Time Student Claire Jeannette,
 appointed to the university staff as
 "women's advocate," was in a classroom
 when a professor, in speaking of "the
 face that launched a thousand ships,"
 commented, "Personally, I've never
 seen a piece of stuff that looked that
 good." Jeannette objected to the remark
 and the professor conceded, "You're
 right. I'm sorry, dear." ("I should have
 answered,  'Thanks,  darling,' "  says
 Jeannette.) When an economics profes-
 sor said, "Men work overtime because
 women make them," she demanded
 documentation, adding: "I suggest that
 you don't perpetuate myths unless you
 have the facts to back them up."
 The battle has even been carried to
 the pages of the University Record, the
 official news organ of the university,
 which recently printed a poem submit-
 ted by James Crump Jr. of the Far East-
 ern Languages department:
 1 think that 1 prefer to see
 A chairperson who is womanly
 And, if the choice were up to me,
 A fresh person who's a comely she.
 Replied Myl Johnson, a female re-
 search curator at Michigan's Kelsey
 Museum:
 Indeed we share
 Your appetite for golden hair
 And shapely figures slim and trim
 And do admire a comely him,
 But keep our minds upon our work
 And tolerate each shapeless jerk
 Outrankin-g us in pay and powers
 Who would demand we all be
 flowers.
 3/09/10
 The Magician
 And the Think Tank
 Sprawling over 70 acres of Menlo
 Park, Calif., the Stanford Research In-
 stitute is one of America's largest and
 best-known think tanks. Its staff of
 2,600 highly trained specialists solves
 problems and does research in nearly
 every field of human endeavor for both
 Government and private industry. SRI
 also does highly classified research for
 the military, and has worked on coun-
 terinsurgency programs in Southeast
 Asia, explosives technology, chemical
 and bacteriological warfare and anti-
 ballistic-missile systems. For its ser-
 ABBA EBAN & GELLER
 Under u cloud.
 vices, SRI last year earned revenues of
 $70 million. Last week it became ap-
 parent that in addition to its other proj-
 ects, the institute has been seriously in-
 vestigating the so-called psychic powers
 of a questionable nightclub magician.
 SRI is not alone in investigating psy-
 chic phenomena. Indeed, the persis-
 tence and growth of that search in an
 age of science is testimony to the vi-
 tality of the concept. But until psychic
 researchers produce something more
 than nebulous evidence, skeptics will
 Continue to Scoff.
 That is precisely what they did when
 rumors began to emanate from Menlo
 Park last December, Two men, it seems,
 had been demonstrating strange and
 wondrous powers for SRI researchers.
 One of the men, a 25-year-old Israeli
 named Uri Geller, was apparently able
 to communicate by telepathy, detect
 and describe objects completely hidden
 from view, and distort metal imple-
 ments with his psychic energy. The
 word among staff members was that SRI
 President Charles Anderson, who at first
 had opposed the project, changed his
 mind after witnessing demonstrations
 by Geller.
 Later in December, an SRI physicist,
 Russell Targ, sent a letter to one of
 the foremost U.S. scientific journals
 proposing an article on the work  of
 an SRI team engaged in psychic re-
 search. "I'arg said that the subjects with
 whom he had been working had ef-
 fected physical changes in laboratory
 instruments without touching them.
 Presumably, Targ was referring to such
 changes as increases in magnetometer
 readings and the disturbance of elec-
 tronic systems--all reported to TIME
 by a team member. The research sub-
 jects had also demonstrated remark-
 able perceptual skills, including te-
 lepathy. Working further with these
 men, Targ suggested, would enable
 SRI to understand psychical phenom-
 ena. Written on SRI stationery, the
 letter also bore the names of the
 other members of the investigating
 team: SRI Physicist Harold Puthoff,
 Kent State University Physics Pro-
 fessor William Franklin and former
 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell,
 Mitchell, who has retired from
 the astronaut corps and set tip his
 own foundation to investigate.psy-
 chic phenomena, eagerly confirmed
 some of the rumors during an inter-
 view last month with TIME. "I caj- as-
 sure you," he said, "that from
 [Charles] Anderson down, SRI views
 Uri Geller as legitimate. They find
 the results valid and are ready to
 stand on them." Said President An-
 derson last week: "Mr. Mitchell does
 not speak for SRI, and indeed the
 statement is misleading. Mr. Geller
 was provided to us as a subject
 for experimentation. Measurements
 were made in our laboratories, and the
 work will stand on its merits."
 News of the unusual activity at
 Menlo Park reached the Department of
 Defense, and investigators were soon on
 the scene. One of them was Ray Ily-
 man, a psychology professor from the
 University of Oregon who is used fre-
 quently by DOD as a consultant. Anoth-
 er was George Lawrence, DOD projects
 manager for the Advanced Research
 Projects Agency (ARPA). Ile was accom-
 panied to SRI by Robert Van de Castle,
 a University of Virginia psychologist
 and longtime researcher in parapsy-
 chology. Van de Castle decided that
 Geller was "an interesting subject for
 further study," but neither Lawrence
 nor Ilyznan was impressed. After spend-
 ing a day with Geller and Physicists
 Targ and Puthoff, Hyman was, in fact,
 incredulous.
 As Geller demonstrated ESP and
 psychokinesis (ability to move or bend
 objects without touching them) to the
 delight and excitement of Targ and
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 SCIENCE
 Puthoff, Hyman said that he was able
 to spot the "loopholes and inconclusive-
 ness" of each feat. Ile also caught Gel-
 ler in some outright deceptions that
 Targ and Puthoff apparently did not
 discern.
 In one case, Geller asked Lawrence
 to think of it number between one and
 ten and to write it down, as large as pos-
 sible, on a pad. While Lawrence wrote,
 Geller made a show of concentrating
 and covering his eyes with his hands.
 But Ilyman, carefully observing Geller,
 noticed that the Israeli's open eyes were
 visible through his fingers. Thus Geller
 was probably able to see the motion of
 Lawrence's arm as he wrote, and to cor-
 rectly identify the number, ten. Know-
 ing how to read arm movements,
 Hyman notes, is important to every
 magician.
 Later, Geller caused a nearby com-
 pass needle to turn about five degrees.
 Lawrence,  noting that Geller had
 moved his body and vibrated the floor,
 did the same, causing the needle to de-
 flect even more. Geller, startled, accused
 Lawrence of using trickery, and Targ in-
 sisted on examining the DOD man to see
 if he had magnets hidden in his cloth-
 ing. (Ile did not.) Hyman notes that
 Targ did not feel that it was necessary
 to search Geller. Ilyman's impressions
 were admittedly based on observations
 made on a day when normal testing rou-
 tine was not in effect. Nevertheless,
 Hyman wrote in a letter to a friend,
 SRI'S tests of Geller were performed
 with "incredible sloppiness"; the rec-
 ords from previous days, which Targ
 and Puthoff offered as proof of Geller's
 powers, were "the most uncontrolled
 and poorly recorded data I have ever
 encountered."
 Sensation. SRI continued to study
 Geller seriously for another three weeks
 (for a total of six), filming his feats, pay-
 ing him a $100-a-day honorarium and
 providing him with an automobile and
 all expenses.
 After leaving SRI,* Geller volun-
 teered to demonstrate his powers to
 TIME'S editors. Last month he appeared
 at the 'Time-Life Building in Manhattan
 and projected thoughts and images,
 claimed to read minds and caused a fork
 to bend-supposedly by using psychic
 energy. After Geller left, Professional
 Magician James Randi, who had been
 present, duplicated each of his feats, ex-
 plaining that any magician could per-
 form them. The fork bending, said
 Randi, was accomplished by sleight of
 hand; after distracting his audience,
 Geller h4i simply bent it with his two
 hands.
 SRI claims that it was aware that
 Geller had "detractors" before he ar-
 rived in California. Presumably the Cal-
 ifornia scientists knew that he had been
 something of a sensation in Israel. In
 1970, TIME'S Jerusalem Correspondent
 Marlin Levin reports, Geller began ap-
 pearing before soldiers' groups, in pri-
 *The other psychic, a New York artist named
 Ingo Swann, is still being studied.
 vate homes and on the stage, perform-
 ing his repertory of tricks and claim-
 ing to have psychokinetic powers. At
 first he was widely acclaimed; he came
 under suspicion when a group of psy-
 chologists and computer experts from
 Hebrew University duplicated all of
 his feats and called him a fraud. Even-
 tually, Geller left  the country  in
 disgrace.
 l;Ven so, SRI insists that its research-
 ers were not duped. "Whether the sub-
 ject be a saint or a sinner," said an SRI
 spokesman, "has nothing to do with our
 measurements concerning the so-called
 psychical awareness of individuals."
 How objective those measurements
 were may well become apparent this
 week at a Columbia University collo-
 quiurn in Manhattan, where Targ is
 scheduled to report on his studies and
 show a film of Geller in action.
 Suporcodded Computers
 The essential characteristic of all
 modern computers is speed. Their pro-
 digious memories can be probed with
 split-second precision; they can race
 through reams of complex equations
 with astonishing agility. Their swift skill
 is made possible by a battery of rela-
 tively simple devices, transistors that
 can turn an electric current off and on
 in as little as a billionth of a second.
 In effect, those switches speak the
 "yes-no" binary language of computer
 technology. Their simple answers can
 be combined to solve intricate prob-
 lems. But fast as such combinations can
 be made, computer speed is often not
 fast enough. The big machines strain
 to their limit to handle the demands of
 space travel; they are also too slow to
 process in time the vast amount of me-
 teorological data necessary to make the
 detailed and accurate five-day weather
 forecasts the U.S. Weather Service
 would like to achieve.
 Now help may be at hand. After
 five years of effort, IBM's research labs
 have developed an electronic switching
 device that can be turned on and off in
 less than ten trillionths of a second
 -more than 100 times faster than the
 fastest transistor used in computers.
 What is more, IBM's development re-
 quires only about one ten-thousandth
 of the power necessary to run these tran-
 sistors; it gives off only a tiny fraction
 of the heat they radiate. And it is tran-
 sistor heat as much as switching time
 that limits a computer's skills. For when
 transistors are packed closer together
 in order to speed up the flow of signals
 between them, the risk of overheating
 is sharply increased.
 IBM's switch is based on a phenom-
 enon first predicted in 1962 by a Brit-
 ish scientist named Brian Josephson,
 who was only 22 at the time. While
 studying superconductivity,* the Cam-
 bridge graduate student determined
 mathematically that pairs of electrons
 would "tunnel" through material that
 is normally an electrical insulator if it
 is thin enough and sand-
 wiched between two super-
 conductors. If the flow of
 electrons through the insula-
 tor were kept below a cer-
 tain critical value, he found,
 there would be no difference
 in voltage from one side of
 the insulator to the other.
 electric current never flows
 unless there is a voltage dif-
 ferential.)  Josephson  also
 predicted that if an external
 magnetic field were applied
 to the junction, a voltage
 drop would appear.
 Later verified by exper-
 iment, the so-called Joseph-
 son effect has been widely
 used to construct extremely
 sensitive laboratory measur-
 ing devices, including a mag-
 netometer that can detect fluctuations
 in a magnetic field only one five-bil-
 lionth as strong as the earth's. But IBM
 scientists found a more practical use.
 They knew that they could produce a
 voltage drop across a Josephson junc-
 tion by applying a weak magnetic field;
 generating that field would require only
 a fraction of the energy required to
 switch a transistor. Furthermore, the
 presence or absence of that voltage
 across a Josephson junction could be
 used to represent the same "yes" or "no"
 information conveyed by a transistor.
 For competitive reasons, IBM will
 not reveal the precise chemistry of the
 lead alloys used in its junctions. In fact,
 the company is cautiously refraining
 from predicting when they will be used
 in practical computers; many design
 problems must be overcome before
 computers can be built to operate at su-
 perconducting temperatures. Nonethe-
 less, IBM's laboratory triumph and con-
 tinuing research by the world's largest
 computer manufacturer suggests that
 high-speed, supercooled electronic
 brains are not far in the future.
 *The disappearance of electrical resistance in cer-
 tain materials when they are cooled to within a
 few degrees of absolute zero (--159.7' F.).
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