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#1 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 2,105
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Report of a Jack Houck PK Party
originally posted by Flyboy217 in thread 'PK Parties' http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showt...0&pagenumber=1
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What is particularly interesting about this account, is that it was undertaken by skeptics who had prepared themselves beforehand to spot trickery and deception. Photgraphs, further accounts and similar investigations are expected to follow. |
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#2 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 16,274
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Re: Report of a Jack Houck PK Party
Quote:
Given that the crux of the claim is not what happens to the spoons, but the relative ease or difficulty with which it happens, and given that the participants did not have an objective means of measuring the ease or difficulty, I would have to question characterizing this as a case of "skeptics who had prepared themselves beforehand". They did prepare for some possibilities, but did not prepare to objectively measure the very crux of the claim itself. edited to add color for clarity |
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#3 |
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Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 7,675
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Re: Report of a Jack Houck PK Party
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#4 |
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Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 1,087
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Sounds interesting, I look forward to the full report.
"Their attempt to unbend the same bowl was unsuccessful, as was their attempt to perform the same feat on another spoon from the batch." 'The batch' - there's a term that rings the alarm on my concern-o-meter. The batch was provided by .... ? |
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#5 |
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#6 |
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#7 |
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#8 |
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#9 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 16,274
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Luci, these reports suffer the same flaw as the OP. No one has separated out the physical, mechanical manipulation from the alleged psi manipulation, they merely report a subjective "it was easier than I expected it to be" type of reaction. I have, myself, bent very stiff wire repeatedly until it reached this plastic state; if you hold the wire upright at that point, it will bend as the spoon in the "older daughter" description does. The fact that the participants find it remarkable, I do not find remarkable. Their ignorance of the structural qualities of metals is not evidence of psi ability.
In all your links, are there any that simply look at mechanical manipulation of metal without attempted psi influence? I would think that structural engineers (do we have any around here) would have conducted such tests of materials quite often. We cannot know whether something bent more easily than it should have if we do not know how easily it bends in the absence of psi influence. This is critically missing from your anecdotes. It is a fatal flaw in the accounts. |
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#10 |
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#11 |
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#12 |
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#13 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
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No, Luci, this does not address the problem at all. A laboratory analysis, it would seem, but not of the question at hand. If these two samples differ, it says nothing about any psi effect at all, since that was not manipulated. What I am after is even simpler than that. Looking through an area of the library I am admittedly unfamiliar with, I just found (don't ya love search functions?) an article in the Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology which seems to be more of what I am looking for. No, it does not address psychokinesis (indeed, a search of the entire Applied Science and Technology database, there were only two hits for "psychokinesis", neither of which applied to metal-bending. Such practical people, and they ignore such a promising phenomenon?), but it does discuss bending-unbending tests for measuring the plasticity of metals (in a special issue on metal-forming--Oct 2001), which indicates to me that such tests are quite possible, even simple. |
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#14 |
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Join Date: Oct 2001
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PK Party at the Rhine
PK Party at the Rhine
[quoute][...] Made famous by Uri Geller and popularized by Jack Houck, spoon bending supposes that by mental effort, a person is able to alter the metal in a piece of silverware so that it is easily bent and manipulated into swirls and strange angles. So there I was, following the direction of our PK party leader, Bill Joines, shouting emphatically at my fork... Well, the silverware I brought along survived the encounter, but I did see a lot of strangely altered utensils by the end of the event. Twirls and swirls and twists of numerous forks and spoons were put on display at the end of the night, and some utensils bound up in a coil so tight, one would be hard pressed to remain skeptical seeing them. [...][/quote] http://www.rhine.org/PKParty.htm |
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#15 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 16,274
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Quote:
In addition, suppose that we grant that they are both honest and accurate. Are they also knowledgeable about the amount of pressure that is necessary to bend the spoons without intervention of psi? There is no indication that they are. This was my initial objection, of course; no values were given at all for the force necessary to bend such objects. With the bending-undbending mechanical test mentioned in my last post, it should be very easy to test the effect of the psi intervention. Simply run an appropriate sample of metal rods through the mechanical bending-unbending, and randomly select half of them for the psi proponent to influence. Hey, have an entire crowd of psi proponents surround the machine and focus. Just don't touch. Such an experiment would, I think (but around here, if there are holes, someone will point them out), test your claim. It won't be nearly as spectacular as a curled-up fork...but perhaps that is for the best. |
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#16 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 324
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I would like to make some clarifications.
1) Because the spoon that the old lady buckled came from a batch that Mr. Houck provided, they (and I) agree that it wouldn't be prudent to draw any conclusions from that (hence "inconclusive"). However, they did ask to hold the spoon as soon as she finished buckling its bowl, and they were entirely unable to get the bowl to move at all. They had seen her do it as though it were made of putty, with no straining at all. 2) Two of my friends are male ("B" and "D"), and one is female ("S," B's girlfriend of several years). B is well-versed in hypnosis, and says that, while he can of course never be certain, he felt as though he were in a normal state of mind upon bending. D is more hesitant. As is often related, it only happened while he was watching someone else. When he looked down, he noticed he had twisted the handle around several times. Having been trying to do so for a while at that point, he was aware of the strength that it should normally take. Also, having taken several courses in metallurgy during his time at the U, he is well aware of the fact that repeated bending of metal can soften it. He attempted immediately to untwist the handle, and found he could do it only with great difficulty. This does not match with the claim that repeated bending should make it softer. 3) Because B and D were only able to do it while somewhat distracted, they tell me they are unwilling to discard the possibility that they somehow used considerably more muscle strength than they thought--but only because the alternative (psi) is almost unthinkable. However, S is a weak girl. B and D witnessed her contorting forks and spoons (that they had brought) with ease. When they immediately took the spoon from her to see if it had just become weakened, they found themselves unable to untwist it, even though they are considerably stronger than she (note: this spoon was of a heavier construction than the ones they claimed they could bend with physical strength alone). Again, this does not support the conclusion that the metal had been weakened by repeated attempts. They are of the impression that, even with an adrenaline rush, and being distracted, she does not have the physical strength to do that to that particular spoon (again, which they had brought from home). This is supported by her futile attempts on the car ride home to cause any further deformation of the utensil. They did not come prepared with gauges and meters, but they did come with some crucial points of realization (that they were never to let their spoons out of their hands, that metal does become weak after repeated bending, etc.) They believe that none of the proposed conclusions is in agreement with their experience, although it is not possible to rule anything out "completely:" - Jack Houck did the bending for the audience members (clearly false). - Tampered spoons (they brought their own). - The metal became weakened by repeated effort (they took the spoons from the elderly woman and S immediately, and could cause no further movement at all). - It was caused by distraction. S is clearly not strong enough to bend the spoons that she did, distracted or not. B and D, however, are, and acknowledge this. They are not sure what to make of the whole experience, but they agree that the psi hypothesis is a very possible contender. They're trying to come up with ways to test this, but are finding it hard to replicate the results with any consistency at all. This leaves them (and me) in a very difficult position, although I'm pressing on them quite hard to provide further results. Once B and S get back from vacation, I'll get the pictures from them. I hope this clarifies a few things. |
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#17 |
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Quote:
Merc, go and get a spoon. Now try and crumple the bowl of the spoon in the palm of your hand, with all your physical force What happened? |
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#18 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
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#19 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
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As for being unable to bend it at other times...it is very easy not to bend something even if you do have the strength to, and very easy to convince yourself you do not have the strength. I have done demonstrations of the power of the expectancy effect on physical strength in my classrooms for years. I can very reliably get people to feel weaker or stronger based solely on my suggestion. Of course, I cannot guarantee that this is what is happening here, but neither can you guarantee it is not. The solution, once again, is to remove the "touching" element and test the crux of the claim, that there is a "psi" element involved. Do it with a machine and people concentrating--if the effect works as you suggest, they need not touch the spoon itself to get the group presence effect.
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Besides, Luci, it is absolutely irrelevant whether I can or cannot do it. All you are suggesting is that we substitute one subjective observer (me) for another. The same problem arises. Whether or not I can do it (and, frankly, it sounds pretty cool, so I want to try it) does not test the hypothesis. The way to do that is through controlled conditions, which have been completely lacking in your anecdotal accounts. To the best of my reading, none of them support the notion of a psi effect. (Neither do they deny it--for the most part they simply fail to address it at all, and the conclusions of the participants go far beyond what their experience should allow them to conclude.) |
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#20 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2004
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#21 |
Muse
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 561
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Outstanding! This is a clear example of something that would be considered supernatural at this time. This would easliy qualify for the million (at least) dollars. Scientific evidence of this phenomena would usher in a new age of discovery. Fame, fortune, and glory are only steps away. GO FOR IT! |
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#22 |
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Merc, have you tries the 'bowl crumple' yet?
Has anyone? Be honest. ![]() |
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#23 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 16,274
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Quote:
![]() In the meantime, could you clear something up for me? In reading your anecdotes, it is unclear to me whether anyone has claimed that they have taken a spoon of their own (so no prior manipulation) and bent the bowl as you have asked me to do: "try and crumple the bowl of the spoon in the palm of your hand, with all your physical force." The nearest thing I find is in your "after 5 minutes" story, in which I could infer that 5 minutes of manipulation might be enough to plasticise the bowl. In your OP, the witnesses who saw the old lady had also had sufficient time to manipulate their spoons to a plasticised state, so we may infer that the old lady could have done so as well. In neither of those cases did anyone "crumple the bowl of the spoon in the palm of [their] hand, with all [their] physical force." What you are asking me to do is, from my reading of your anecdotes, completely different from what has been accomplished at these parties. Of course, I will try it--both as you suggest, and as the anecdotes describe. It could be that no amount of manipulation whatsoever would be sufficient to plasticise these spoons, in which case flyboy's most recent post is absolutely correct. Or it could be that the manipulation makes all the difference, in which case the only way to properly test this is (I know, I sound like a broken record) to remove the subjective element from it and do the mechanical testing. Speaking of which...Luci, flyboy...neither of you have commented on my suggested protocol. It seems to me that it would be a simple and clear test of the claim, and would eliminate the problems that people like me have with the spoon-bending party anecdotes. I would think you'd jump at the opportunity to support such a test. |
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#24 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 324
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Nobody from my party was able to do this themselves. Crichton and Radin both claimed to do this.
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Specifically, I have suggested a preliminary experiment in which Jack's party is employed on spoons supplied directly by Oneida (see above post). Once we are in agreement that these more basic flaws have been worked out, I will be the first to rush it to the labs. What do you think? |
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#25 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
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Quote:
I, myself, would prefer to cut to the chase. If the claim is that it is the psi attention that assists the bend, then test that. Eliminate all else. Do it mechanically using a standard device and standard spoons and we remove the possibility of the structure making a difference, and if done right, we remove the possibility of cheating (by pre-bending, or whatever). anecdote: At one dinner at TAM2, Quinn borrowed a quarter from me. I knew, of course, that when I got the quarter back, it would be bent. I even signed my initials on it to guard against a switch, and then kept my eye on him to the best of my ability. He bent my quarter, of course, which (try it with one yourself) is considerably less flexible than a spoon (oh, he also bent a fork while we were there), and I did not see him do it despite being on high alert. Do I think Quinn has PK abilities? Not at all, nor did he claim any. Do I think I would rather trust a mechanical device, rather than assume that I would be able to pick up any cheating with a hand-held spoon? Oh, yeah.... |
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#26 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 324
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It would seem this post got lost, since the forum is acting funny:
I would like to suggest a preliminary experiment which should be agreeable to both sides. I will use the terms "skeptics" and "believers" here loosely. The believers claim that skeptics cannot do it, because they are unwilling to let it happen. Skeptics believe that believers are employing some measure of trickery or (self-)deception. So how about the following. Go to Mr. Houck's California party in October, armed with a box of the same Oneida utensils he claims to be ordering (I can post the link here again if anyone is interested). Make sure they are unopened between shipping and the party. At the party, keep half as a control group, and the other half to be used for the party. Keep the control group as far from the party as possible. Allow Mr. Houck to do his thing, and wait for the results. Be as inconspicuous as possible at the party. Ideally, one would simply provide Mr. Houck with the untampered spoons, and sit back in a corner of the room and observe carefully. Then, hold a control party, with different (preferably skeptical) attendees. Use the control spoons. Teach them nothing about the purported psi methods. Ask them to perform the same feats that were accomplished at Houck's party. Presumably, nobody there will be able to bend the head of a spoon over, as it appears physically nearly impossible with one's hands alone. This seems to be a reasonable preliminary experiment. Thoughts? |
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#27 |
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#28 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
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#29 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 324
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Then we are left with the possibility that the audience is filled with magicians. Personally, I trust my own friends to not lie to me about being magicians. Actually, come to think of it: has anyone seen a trick where a normal spoon was used, and the bowl was bent by the magician? It would seem that the magician would need a larger piece of equipment to do this than to bend a quarter. In addition, would it be possible to do this trick (again, with a normal spoon) so that it looked as though the spoon turned into a soft putty? I am only suggesting this as a preliminary test, mind you. It wouldn't prove anything. But in the case of my friends, it certainly convinced me that deeper investigation is warranted. At some point, certainly a mechanical setup will be necessary to provide more solid evidence. But I don't think we're at a point where sufficient evidence has been collected to convince everyone that such a test is warranted. |
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#30 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 324
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Duplicate post.
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#31 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 42,367
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BECAUSE, OTHERWISE, IT DOESN'T WORK!!! Sheeesh....(the secret to spoon bending is to bend it when nobody is watching) ![]() |
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#32 |
Anti-homeopathy Illuminati member
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 1,185
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Question:
Could a good "stage magician" replicate the events at the PK parties ? I'm always curious as why people who claim to have powers that would revolutionise our understanding of the Universe muck around in the entertainment industry. |
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"...at the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense." Carl Sagan I am a Homeopath. Remedies available at reasonable prices. |
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#33 |
Banned
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#34 |
Banned
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Quote:
Is 'Goodwill' some sort of American cutlery store? |
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#35 |
Banned
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Posts: 2,105
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Quote:
![]() Claus, how many magicians can you name who can fold the bowl of a mundane spoon, and have the audience replicate that effect for him? This would be a start, at least. Can you help with some names? |
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#36 |
should be banned
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Earth, specifically the crusty bit on the outside
Posts: 16,217
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Can someone please clarify. Are these sppons bent using the mind or are the people bending them allowed to hold them ?
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#37 |
Muse
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 936
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In addition to Lothian's question, what exactly is being claimed here?
Does the PSI effect weaken the metal? Or does it strengthen the person doing the bending? Whichever it is claimed to be could not be proven one way or another without the aid of materials testing equipment. Talking about a report of a spoon bending party is not conclusive evidence of anything. Any opinion I give now would be based on hearsay and past experience. |
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#38 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 16,274
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Quote:
Lothian--it would appear that all of them are allowed to touch them. Not merely touch them, in fact, but manipulate them for a period of minutes, in an environment full of distractions--note that flyboy's report mentions that "it only happened while he was watching someone else". Clearly, such an environment is not conducive to precise observation. Luci--Goodwill is a second-hand store. I am not a wealthy individual; I cannot afford to pick up a brand new set of Oneida flatware on a whim. Luci--do you think that my suggested protocol would be a fair test of the psi hypothesis? If you like, you could invite the entire group from the Houck party to concentrate...but not to touch. If you are so certain the effect is not achieved by cheating, it seems that my protocol should be acceptable to you. |
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#39 |
Critical Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 324
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#40 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 2,105
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Quote:
OK, forget Oneida for the time being, just get hold of any old stainless steel dessert spoon. At least give it a go with brute force and a hammer. |
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