Sleight of mind

Recently I considered whether or not to stop blogging, since blogging takes up a good deal of time and is not remunerative. Eventually I decided to continue, though at a reduced pace. I could invent all sorts of high-minded reasons for this decision, but the truth is that I wanted to maintain my modest forum because it permits me to vent. And sometimes I really want to vent.

This is one of those times.

I just purchased a book called The Table Rappers: The Victorians and the Occult, by Ronald Pearsall. It's a fairly skeptical -- though not entirely skeptical -- examination of Victorian séances, and I'm sure it will contain some interesting information. But the very first thing I did, after opening up the box from Amazon.com, was to look up Eusapia Palladino in the index. What I found did not fill me with confidence.

Palladino, as regular readers of this blog know, was an Italian medium known for her ability to levitate tables, produce mysterious winds of no apparent origin, and make musical instruments play by themselves, among other things. She remains highly controversial to this day. Anyone who has studied the various investigations of Palladino knows that ,while skeptical explanations can suffice for some of the phenomena she produced, they are inadequate to cover the totality.

Pearsall, however, clearly wants us to believe that Palladino has been utterly discredited. Here is his entire treatment of a series of sittings conducted in Naples in 1908.

Eusapia was up against a new generation of researchers; Myers and Sidgwick were dead, and were replaced by W. W. Baggally and Everard Feilding. Baggally had been investigating physical phenomena for thirty-five years, and had found nothing but fraud. Feilding had been investigating for ten years, but he too had drawn a blank. Eusapia did not encourage them to change their minds. In 1910 she admitted to an American reporter that she had cheated, claiming that sitters had 'willed' her do so. [Pages 223-224]

I do not see any way this passage can be interpreted other than as follows: Baggally and Feilding, who held the conviction that physical mediums were all frauds, investigated Palladino and did not change their minds.

Admittedly, Pearsall doesn't phrase it quite that baldly. But I think this is the implication that any reader would take from passage.

And it is totally, provably false.

Feilding and Baggally did go into the séances with Palladino expecting to find clear evidence of fraud. What they found instead, to their surprise and considerable consternation, was evidence that the phenomena were genuine. By the conclusion of the sittings, both men -- as well as a third investigator, Hereward Carrrington, whom Pearsall doesn't mention -- were entirely convinced that Palladino had genuine paranormal abilities. They believed, after intensive study under rigorous conditions, that she actually could levitate tables and other objects, produce air currents in a sealed room, cause musical instruments to play even at a considerable distance, and effect the materialization of spirit hands and other forms.

There is no doubt whatsoever of the conclusions they came to. Feilding and his colleagues wrote a book on the subject titled Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, which includes extensive extracts from their notes taken after each séance. These notes track their gradual change of mind from skepticism to reluctant belief. They maintained this belief long after the study was complete. (Lengthy extracts of these notes can be read in Stephen E. Braude's The Limits of Influence. Palladino is briefly but even-handedly treated in Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters.)

Now, the three investigators may have been mistaken in their observations and conclusions. Personally I do not see any way that Palladino could have fooled all three of them, given their extensive experience and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to fraud that they imposed on the séances. But I could be wrong. Perhaps Palladino was such a master illusionist that she could deceive even the most wary observers under the most difficult conditions.

But that is not the issue. The issue is that these three investigators were convinced that Palladino was genuine, and went on the record to say so. Yet Pearsall would clearly have us believe otherwise. He knows the subject too well to be ignorant of the truth. The conclusion is inescapable: he is deliberately misleading the reader in this passage.

Notice that he does not actually say that Feilding and Baggally didn't change their minds. What he says is, "Eusapia did not encourage them to change their minds." This is a safely ambiguous way of putting it. Taken literally, it may be true. There is no particular reason to think that Palladino actively tried to convince the researchers that she was genuine. She seems to have been indifferent to other peoples' opinions. But of course the implication of the statement is that Eusapia's phenomena, as observed by the researchers, did not encourage them to change their minds. And this is simply false.

Also notice the very next statement: "In 1910 she admitted to an American reporter that she had cheated..." Undoubtedly this is true. Palladino confessed to cheating on many occasions throughout her long career. She was amusingly outspoken about it, insisting that she would cheat whenever she thought she could get away with it. Every researcher who ever looked into her was aware of this strange tendency on her part and reported it. It was not breaking news in 1910, at least not to the investigators who had followed her career for decades. And her statement in 1910 had nothing to do with the specific sittings organized by Feilding and Baggally, in which stringent precautions against cheating were imposed.

Pearsall undoubtedly knows this, too. But he also knows that 99% of the people who read his book will be unaware of the details and will assume that the 1910 interview was a) a revelation to all the researchers who had come before and b) a direct disavowal of any paranormal phenomena at the Feilding-Baggally seances. This is obviously how Pearsall intends the passage to be understood.

Summing up just one paragraph later, Pearsall writes of Palladino, "The furore that was generated about her can be attributed to wish-fulfillment." Actually it can be attributed to wish fulfillment only if we ignore the actual reports of the researchers who investigated her - something that Pearsall is only too anxious for us to do.

Unfortunately I've encountered this sort of thing before. Some skeptics are masterful at creating the suggestion that a given medium or a certain paranormal case has been decisively debunked, without actually saying so. They string facts and sentences together and use ambiguous phrasing in order to deceive the reader. It's a lot like the magician's technique of sleight-of-hand, only done with words, not with coins or handkerchiefs or bunny rabbits.

The difference is that the magician lets us know it's just a trick.

Comments

[Bruce Cleaver]

Michael -

I for one appreciate that blogging is work and a time-sink. Nonetheless, I enjoy your posts and support your continued (if attenuated) writing. My own interests over the past 10 years somewhat parallel yours: why the rigid adherence by scientists to materialism and the fanatic skepticism towards anything that cannot be explained by prosaic means? Why the hostility? Can *every* encounter with the unknown be explained by conventional means? (I highly doubt it).

[Art]

I am a big beliver in life after death, and have a high degree of confidence that most near death experiences and death bed visions are "real." However, what levitating tables, making accordions play, and other so called physical manifestations has to do with life after death is beyond me. Am I to believe that life after death is so boring that spirits have nothing better to do than do parlor tricks for sitters at a seance? When a person's consciousness leaves their body, they are free to explore the whole Universe, but instead these spirits focus their attention on doing little tricks for sitters? I find it very hard to believe and it makes very little sense to me. Sorry! - Artie

[John C]

Michael,

I enjoy your commentary on the paranormal because you seem about as open-minded levelheaded and fair about this controversial topic as one could be. There are far too many true believers out there who are not willingly to look at the paranormal rationaly and discern between what is backed up by evidence and what is not, and conversly there are far too many close-minded skeptics who made up their mind a long time ago and have no interest in looking at any evidence.

You strike a nice balance and also bring a lot of interesting angles and topics to the discussion of the paranormal.

Thanks!

[Michael Prescott]

>instead these spirits focus their attention on doing little tricks for sitters?

Braude argues in The Limits of Influence that the physical phenomena are probably examples of psychokinesis, not spirit activity.

[Malveaux]

Do you agree with him? I thought you didn't believe in super-psi.

[Michael Prescott]

PK is not super-psi.

[tina brewer]

Art: why do you assume that spirits, once freed from their bodies, are suddenly "free" to explore the whole entire universe at will? I could easily imagine it being quite as limiting a place as here, only different in its limitations.

[Malveaux]

"PK is not super-psi."

What do you think the term "super-psi" means? Braude has defined it as "highly-refined psi among the living." (PK is a psi phenomenon.)

[Michael Prescott]

Super-psi is usually taken to mean a medium's purported ability to read the mind of the sitter, read the minds of other people some distance away, use clairvoyance to obtain information unknown to any living person, and (sometimes) see the future. The medium would then weave all this information together to produce a credible impersonation of a deceased individual. It is usually postulated that the medium does all this unconsciously.

I find this theory unconvincing because it gives the medium virtual omniscience, and because such robust ESP has not been observed in the laboratory. Macro-PK, on the other hand, has been observed, for instance in Jack Houck's PK parties.

[Malveaux]

"Super-psi is usually taken to mean a medium's purported ability to read the mind of the sitter, read the minds of other people some distance away, use clairvoyance to obtain information unknown to any living person, and (sometimes) see the future. The medium would then weave all this information together to produce a credible impersonation of a deceased individual. It is usually postulated that the medium does all this unconsciously."

It means this when used in the context of mental mediumship, but the term can also be applied to physical effects. "Highly-refined psi among the living" isn't theoretically limited to just ESP.

"I find this theory unconvincing because it gives the medium virtual omniscience, and because such robust ESP has not been observed in the laboratory. Macro-PK, on the other hand, has been observed, for instance in Jack Houck's PK parties."

First, Jack Houck's PK parties aren't conducted in laboratories. Second, some of Palladino's phenomena (e.g., the materialization of phantoms) are not exactly analogous to cutlery bending. Third, I can think of numerous displays of ESP which exceed the psychic robustness exhibited by Houck and his guests (see e.g., Pat Price, Joseph McMoneagle, Mary Craig Sinclair, and Stefan Ossowiecki).

As far as I can tell, you do not disagree that Palladino displayed "highly refined psi." You believe though, that super-psi only exists in relation to PK and not ESP. I do not think that position is justifiable. As I have indicated, there are many cases of ESP which could arguably fall under the rubric of super-psi. Further, if we acknowledge that Palladino "could levitate tables and other objects, produce air currents in a sealed room, cause musical instruments to play even at a considerable distance, and effect the materialization of spirit hands and other forms" without recourse to spirits, there is little reason to think the same prodigiousness can't be exhibited through ESP.

[Michael Prescott]

>As far as I can tell, you do not disagree that Palladino displayed "highly refined psi."

I don't know what kind of abilities she displayed. The point of my post was that Baggally and Feilding were convinced she was genuine, and Pearsall misrepresented their position.

>You believe though, that super-psi only exists in relation to PK and not ESP.

Frankly, I don't know what I believe. There are a lot of ambiguities in this area. I don't think any theory covers all the data.

My problem with super-psi is that it is unfalsifiable, therefore not a testable theory. Also it does not seem to explain the motivation of (alleged) discarnate communicators, especially communicators of the drop-in variety. Braude covers this issue in his book Immortal Remains. Alan Gauld discusses it extensively in Mediumship and Survival.

Too little is understood in this area for me to be dogmatic about it. The data are hard to argue with, but the interpretation of the data remains open to question. Maybe it always will. I've resigned myself to accepting (and living with) the ambiguities.

[Bruce Cleaver]

"I've resigned myself to accepting (and living with) the ambiguities."

You've come a long way from the Days of Rand!