Help Stamp Out Absurd Beliefs

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As an investigator of unusual claims, I'm accustomed to being confronted with incredible examples of medieval thinking in the 20th century. Everywhere we look, we find antiscientific bias and belief in the unbelievable -- from demons causing susceptible serial killers to act up to researchers who find top-secret code words in George Bush's speeches when they are played backward, leading them to the conclusion that the President and others thereby unconsciously reveal this information. Thousands of Americans think bacteria do not cause disease, and are convinced that death is an aberration; they are known as Christian Scientists.

Local police departments all over the U.S. regularly consult clairvoyants, who they feel give them supernatural clues in tough cases. In Washington weekly parties of goggle-eyed believers sit about caressing spoons so that their mind power can cause the silverware to bend, paying $30 for half an hour of this mind-expansion instruction. Late-night TV viewers can call a 900 number to be advised on their future -- for a price -- by soothsayers whom they will meet only by telephone, introduced by Israeli "superpsychic" Uri Geller. Blissful devotees of meditation techniques sit for endless hours in yogic positions in ashrams, bouncing about on mattresses and trying to fly with mental power. With my experiences of these and hundreds of other incredible examples of human credulity, the notion of foreign agents' playing presidential speeches backward is hardly surprising.

The scorecard for the crazies is not very impressive. "Police psychics" have been investigated scientifically and found to be of absolutely no use; in fact, they impede investigations. Yet they flourish, are consulted by law officers and promoted lavishly in the press. Spoons vigorously stroked all the way to a high polish don't deform unless a little actual physical bending is applied, but that fact doesn't interfere with the parties taking place in Washington. The "flyers" of transcendental meditation spend $5,000 and up to learn how to bounce around on a rubber mattress, but they never get airborne. No amount of evidence against any transcendental claims will dampen the fervor of the believers.

We in the U.S. are not alone in our credulity. In China a large percentage of the public visits "Qi Gong" hospitals for diagnosis and treatment by a mystic who never touches them; he merely waves his hands about. If a patient is in a remote location and cannot visit an expert in person, he merely mails a slip of paper with his name written on it, and the practitioner performs both the diagnosis and the cure -- an exotic hand-and-body dance designed to "re-establish the balance of yin and yang" -- from any distance away. Thousands of visitors pour into the Philippine Islands to have local sleight- of-hand artists apparently dip bare-handed into their body to remove cancerous tumors. They dip into their bank accounts rather dramatically too.