A yardstick for skepticism

In a used bookstore today, I came across a 1983 nonfiction book called The Spiritualists, by Ruth Brandon.  The book recounts the history of spiritualism in America from the mid-19th century through the early 20th-century from a skeptical point of view. I spent some time flipping through the book, but since I've already read a great deal on the subject -- both from the skeptical and nonskeptical perspective -- I didn't buy it.

Still, I found the book interesting, not so much for its content but for its approach. It is just so very typical of the way skeptics handle this material.

First, there is the inevitable snideness and sarcasm. Anyone who believes in the paranormal - or has investigated it in a serious way and come to the conclusion that these are legitimate phenomena - is subtly or not-so-subtly derided as eccentric, gullible, or just plain dumb. Psychoanalysis is liberally employed to investigate the subconscious motives of those who believe in the phenomena; we are repeatedly informed that they want to believe and that this bias has colored and distorted their perception. Naturally, no similar psychoanalytic techniques are leveled against the skeptics, whose motives are presumed to be purely objective. Skeptical authorities like James Randi and Isaac Asimov are quoted with unblinking approval, while authorities who have come to pro-paranormal conclusions are invariably disparaged, even if they stand taller in their fields then Randi and Asimov do in theirs. (Does anyone seriously doubt that Alfred Russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of the theory of evolution, and Oliver Lodge, knighted for his pioneering contributions to physics, and William James, America's foremost psychologist and philosopher, all rate higher in the history books than Randi and Asimov?)

But perhaps what was most eye-opening to me was the way the author treats a well-known controversy involving the Boston medium mean Mina Crandon. I know quite a bit about Mina Crandon and have written an essay on her here. The controversy involves the famous escape artist Harry Houdini, who was an inveterate enemy of all psychics and mediums, and who made it his mission to expose them as fakes whenever possible. He is the hero of skeptics to this day, and apparently served as a model for fellow escape artist James Randi and other magicians who crusade against the paranormal.

Houdini was invited to investigate Mina Crandon; in a series of sittings he was unable to debunk her. Finally, in one sitting, just as Mina was about to start she suddenly said (while allegedly in a trance and controlled by her spirit guide Walter) that Houdini's assistant had planted a folding ruler in the cabinet that she occupied and that he meant to produce this ruler as evidence that she was cheating.

A folding ruler could be unfolded into a yardstick. In the dark it could be used to manipulate objects that were some distance away from the medium and outside of her normal reach. For instance, it could be used to ring bells or to move things around on a table. If Houdini had "discovered" the ruler, it would have been a smoking gun that would have discredited Mina Crandon for good.

Houdini and his assistant both denied planting the ruler, and eventually the investigation continued, though not under very amicable circumstances.

Then the author adds a single sentence to conclude this episode, pointing out that years later Houdini's assistant did in fact admit to planting the ruler on Houdini's instructions, because Houdini was so frustrated in his inability to discredit Mina Crandon that he had decided to frame her.

Now, let's just stop and think about this for a moment.

Houdini is one of history's most famous skeptical investigators of the paranormal. And yet here we have what appears to be conclusive proof that he was himself dishonest and fraudulent in his methods at least some of the time. If the assistant can be believed, Houdini was willing to frame the mediums he was investigating in order to discredit them and maintain his unbroken string of successful debunkings.

At the very least, one would think that an admission of this sort would cast some doubt on Houdini's credibility, his honesty, his integrity, and any results of his investigations both before and after the Mina Crandon episode.

So how does Ruth Brandon deal with all this?

Answer: she doesn't deal with it all. Having briefly acknowledged the assistant's confession, she simply goes on with the story and continues to treat Houdini as an entirely credible investigator whose conclusions are beyond reproach.

Doesn't this seem odd?

I remember reading another skeptical book, Psychic Paradoxes by John Booth, a magician who, like Houdini, enjoyed debunking the paranormal. Booth tells the same story about Houdini, his assistant, and the folding ruler, as well as the assistant's later public confession.

To his credit, however, Booth at least attempts to deal with the serious issues raised by the confession. He goes to some pains to try to discredit the assistant, painting him as a disgruntled former employee who was trying to get back at Houdini.

I don't find this explanation very convincing, because the assistant did at least as much harm to his own reputation as he did to Houdini's. He may even have opened himself up to potential legal sanctions. The investigation of Mina Crandon was being carried out in the context of a magazine contest that offered $2500 to anyone who could prove psychic abilities. The discovery of the ruler was at least one of the reasons why Mina Crandon did not get the award. It could be argued that the assistant, in planting the ruler, was rigging the outcome of the contest, which, I would imagine, is a criminal act, just as rigging a game show or artificially modifying the outcome of a raffle or lottery would be a crime.

So it doesn't seem likely to me that the assistant would have made this up just to get back at Houdini -- who was dead by then, anyway. But at least the author of Psychic Paradoxes tries to address the issue. The author of The Spiritualists, on the other hand, simply ignores it. In her mind, Houdini remains an entirely credible and trustworthy source, despite the obvious stain on his reputation left by his assistant's public admission.

And this is the thing about skeptics that I find so peculiar and, simultaneously, so amusing. They really are not skeptics at all. A true skeptic, hearing about the folding ruler and its likely provenance, would then be skeptical of Houdini -- skeptical that he was honest in his investigations and accurate in his reports. A true skeptic would wonder if Houdini was a credible investigator and would suggest that most, if not all, of Houdini's investigations should be viewed with some degree of doubt. Honest believers in paranormal phenomena are not shy about saying that

Mina Crandon had credibility problems of her own, as my aforementioned essay makes clear. If we are willing to place some considerable doubt on Mina Crandon because of questionable episodes in her history, why are the so-called skeptics unwilling to place any doubt on Houdini for at least equally questionable lapses on his part?

The answer is that, for the skeptics, it's not really about truth and falsehood at all. It's about winning the argument. If they can win by sarcasm or ridicule or snide innuendo, well, all's fair in war. And if they can win by casting those who take their side as spotless and stainless crusaders for the truth, while ignoring any evidence to the contrary, then by all means go ahead and do that too.

In the end, it comes down to winning at any cost, rather than getting at the actual facts. And that's why I'm skeptical of the skeptics. By any yardstick, they just don't measure up.

Comments

[Henry James]

True skeptic:
http://caricatura.ru/parad/Sayenko/pic/5841.jpg

[Sideways]

Does anyone seriously doubt that Alfred Russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of the theory of evolution, and Oliver Lodge, knighted for his pioneering contributions to physics, and William James, America's foremost psychologist and philosopher, all rate higher in the history books than Randi and Asimov?
I'm uncertain what wallace's status as a biologist has to do with his authority on paranormal phenomena

[Varenius]

Sideways, I think Michael's point is that if one is going to simply appeal to authority, greater figures shouldn't be dismissed in favor of lesser ones.

[PJ]

Nice article. I have seen this psychology too many times to count.

For example, Dr. Richard Wiseman ran protocol for an experiment done with viewer Joseph McMoneagle at the Rhine Research Center some years back, and at the end, based on JM's viewing, the 30 people present were asked to individually choose which of 5 possible targets it might be. RW had control of the target, decoys, etc. 29 out of 30 had a first-place match; the other, a 2nd place match. RW was, as usual, so interested in his own results he walked away and that was the end of it.

There are other, less scientific but similar examples. TIME magazine spent two days getting educated about the science of remote viewing and even trying it out, after swearing they were doing a very serious, indepth article on the subject. When published, there was zero trace of any science, and they packaged the featured lab psychic (McMoneagle) between a guy repeatedly proven wrong, fraudulent (and openly nuts) and another guy with a lot of chest hair and gold chains who talks to the dead.

And then they wonder why the serious people don't want to do media anymore.

Author and scoffer Jim Schnabel, having finished with defrauding a group of crop circle researchers and then writing a jolly book about how weird the people were (...like this has bearing on the CC's...), wrote a book about Remote Viewing filled with more "trivial facts" than 4 textbooks. Alas it "accidentally left out" the entire modern science of the subject, which happens to be its most legit recommendation. Oversight? Gee, I wonder. While presenting plenty of 'Joe-the-Hero' stories, all his science conveniently stopped around 1985 or so, just prior to the point when his friend's "psychic method" (sold for thousands at a website near you, for the last decade) was researched, determined to be no more useful than other methods looked at, his contract canceled, and his (somewhat cult-ified) trainees by-default moved into the intelligence unit, which had such a drop in performance compared to its first half, that it was eventually thrown at the CIA like a hot potato, who closed it at the speed of light and took its funding and personnel slots for their (recently-cut) own use.

It hardly helps to 'take on' challenges even from seemingly legit critics, or allegedly well intentioned media or investigators, when all the efforts made only result in what does get done being ignored. And usually free on the part of the psychic, as if they have nothing better to do than have their entire reputation staked on one incident of a notoriously unreliable skill. (Kind of like a single freethrow making or breaking your entire career.)

McMoneagle's now been on 10 of Nippon TV's primetime series "FBI Psychic Investigator" which takes cold cases and looks for missing people. They've found a whole bunch of 'em now. The sketches and detail are amazing. Nobody knew where these people were, not even the law. This is exactly the kind of "on the ground application for intelligence purposes" that was proposed to be effective in the first half (but alas not the second) of the former US government program (now semi- collectively called 'stargate').

That would be the same program that noted scoffer Ray Hyman managed to get nearly-no access to actual materials from, yet still managed to come up with the comment that (despite his zero intelligence credentials) remote viewing had no value in intelligence. (Not to mention his memorable comment that there was clearly an effect but he "doesn't choose to call it psi.")

Of course, science can't measure a psychic successfully "helping" solve crimes or find missing people; this isn't about comparing a session to a few other pictures and choosing the one it best matches and doing statistics all day.

Maybe studying psi in the lab is a little bit like the joke about looking for your keys a block from where you dropped them because the light is better there.