URI GELLER AND SCIENCE

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2014/01/09: CIA-RDP79-00999A000200010087-0 3 
Comment 
Uri Geller and science 
Millions, of viewers across Britain watching the 
"Dimbleby Talk-In" on BBC television last Friday 
evening were treated to a fascinating demonstration 
of what was alleged to be telepathy and psychokinesis 
?supposed paranormal faculties of the human mind 
which have excited the imagination of scientists and 
yet resisted experimental verification despite almost 
a century of laboratory studies. The young Man 
demonstrating the phenomena, Mr Uri Geller, success-
fully reproduced a drawing which a production assis-
tant had sketched and placed in a sealed envelope, 
made kitchen forks bend and break, and persuaded 
dud watches to start ticking simply by touching them. 
This was all done to the satisfaction of David 
Dimbleby, the studio audience, a two-man scientist 
panel and, no doubt, the vast majority of the viewing 
audience at home?large numbers of whom 
apparently later rang the BBC to say that forks had 
bent mysteriously nn their kitchen tables. 
"Uri gets Britain in a twist" was one newspaper 
headline the next day, commenting presumably on 
the nationwide fork bending. And if the Sunday 
papers are to be judged, Mr Geller was equally suc-
cessful at a special press conference on Saturday. 
The science correspondent of one highly respectable 
newspaper reported that Geller had apparently bent 
one of his keys, without even touching it, and that his 
own scepticism about such matters had taken a nasty 
tumble. All this, of course, made fabulous TV material 
and newspaper copy, and served to launch Uri Geller 
into the British national consciousness in the same 
way that similar exposure in the United States and in 
his native Israel has previously achieved. 
There is, however, clearly something more than a 
good story for journalists at issue here. If Mr Geller 
had appeared on the programme as a professional 
magician, it would have been surprising if there had 
been a hundredth of the fuss. Demonstrations of the 
kind given by Mr Geller are a feature of the repertoire 
of many good professional magicians. But Geller does 
not claim to be a magician. He states specifically that 
he achieves his effects by special paranormal powers. 
Furthermore he has convinced a number of scientists, 
most notably at the highly respected Stanford Re-
search Institute, that his phenomena are more rele-
vant to the world of parapsychology than to that of 
the Magic Circle (see New Scientist, vol 59, p 95). If 
this is indeed so, and Mr Geller really does bend metal 
with his mind, mend broken watches without tinkering 
with them, and do telepathy, then he must be one of 
the most brilliant exponents of psychic phenomena 
that the world has ever seen. His powers (or more 
precisely his ability to demonstrate them) would be 
of tremendous significance for the future of scientific 
theory and practice. On the other hand, if the 
phenomena demonstrated to millions of people over 
television were achieved by the subtle touch of the 
.professional magician, then it is equally important 
that this is made clear. 
New Scientist believes that last Friday's demonstra-
tion, while fascinating, can hardly be counted as a 
controlled investigation. Mr Geller himself expressed 
awareness of this and declared that he was willing to 
demonstrate his powers to interested scientists. For 
this reason we have invited Mr Geller to demonstrate 
his ability to a small research committee, the composi-
tion of which will reflect the multidisciplinary 
approach needed in investigating phenomena outside 
the mainstream of orthodox science. The committee 
will consist of a ,member of the Society for Psychical 
Research, a research psychologist, the editor of New 
Scientist (a biologist) and one other member of the 
editorial staff a (physicist), a professional magician of 
international standing, and a journalist from an inde-
pendent national newspaper. The committee has been 
chosen from people varying in their attitudes to extra-
sensory phenomena, but none of them believes that 
such phenomena should be discounted. It is proposed 
to make audio and video tape recordings of the entire 
proceedings and to publish a full report of the ;re-
search session or sessions in New Scientist. Every 
effort will be made to ensure that arrangements for 
the session(s) are agreeable to Mr Geller?who has, 
of course, never claimed to be able to perform "to 
order". 
It might be argued that further investigations of 
Geller's phenomena are superfluous, because he has 
already demonstrated them satisfactorily to the Stan-
ford team, or possibly that it would 'be unreasonable 
to expect him to demonstrate them at will. Neither 
argument has much substance, as a satisfactory 
demonstration to an independent, critical group in 
Britain could only serve to accelerate parapsychologi-
cal research by confirming Stanford's controversial 
findings. On the second point, Mr Geller has re-
peatedly been able to generate the phenomena on 
numerous television shows in various parts of the 
world, admittedly under poorly controlled conditions 
but under the glare of TV lights and in the tense and 
oppressive atmosphere of a TV studio. The vast wave 
of publicity which has followed his latest appearance 
will, of course, give a great boost to public interest in 
alleged paranormal powers of the mind. 
However, scientific research and parapsychology, 
which has made at best painful progress in the last 
50 years, will not be advanced one jot by demonstra-
tions in which it is not 100 per cent certain what is 
being demonstrated. For this reason New Scientist has 
taken the unusual step of instigating this direct re-
search proposal. We believe that the majority of our 
readers would wish us to take this step. 
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2014/01/09: CIA-RDP79-00999A000200010087-0