I'm sorry to have to place another sad announcement here on our web page. My friend Stephen Jay Gould, internationally famous evolutionary biologist and professor of geology and zoology at Harvard University, died this last week. He lost his long battle with cancer, and we at the JREF are devastated by this tragedy. He was 60 years of age.

Obituaries on Stephen have used the word "passionate" to describe his pursuit of truth. Indeed, he was totally dedicated to the scientific method, and was not reluctant to express himself on that subject. For 25 years, he did a weekly column for "Natural History" magazine, and his book "The Mismeasure of Man" won the National Book Critics Award in 1982 and was number 24 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 greatest English-language nonfiction works of the 20th century. Only recently, his 1,400-page book, "I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History," was published.

Stephen was a great fan and supporter of our colleague Michael Shermer, and of SKEPTIC Magazine.

I am indebted to many readers, among them Brian Siano, Wendy Grossman, and David Martin, who contributed the following quotes and observations for use here. Stephen wrote:

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview — nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history.

The fundamentalists, by "knowing" the answers before they start (when examining evolution), and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science — or of any honest intellectual inquiry.

Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency — the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.

This next comment from Stephen might serve us well when considering the 9/11 tragedy....

Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the "ordinary" efforts of a vast majority.

Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.

We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction.

and.....

We pass through this world but once.

And once was enough for you, Stephen. But you — and we — needed more time to have us at your feet.....

In his last book, Stephen Jay Gould talked about certain remarkable co-incidences in life and death. One example he mentioned was the passing of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826, which was also the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration.

(Well, not quite. The National Archives & Records Administration at www.nara.gov/exhall/originals/declarat.html tells us that the Declaration was really written out on the 2nd, formally adopted and first printed on the 4th, but actually signed on August 2nd! Picky, picky, but you folks tend to jump down my throat....)

Then there was 1859, the year of publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species" and the death of Von Humboldt, famous naturalist and explorer; Gould also encountered these elements in his life and work. He at one time occupied an office in the same room in which Thomas Huxley debated with Archbishop Wilberforce in 1860, marking the last time that the clergy seriously debated with scientists on such a high level. Gould's 300th essay for "Natural History" fell on the millennial date of January 2001, an appropriate theme on which to close. And he pointed out the remarkable coincidence that his grandfather arrived on these shores on September 11, 1901 — an exact century before "that event." Gould did not imply that there were any hidden meanings to be found here — these are just coincidences and odd matches that give us pleasure and wonder when we notice them.

Yes, Stephen was very "left" politically, something we argued about. This might be perceived by some as a small flaw in his makeup. If all of us could claim only that degree of imperfection.....

We will miss you greatly, Stephen.

Reader Richard Thomson, also on the subject of co-incidences, writes:

Sometimes coincidences happen which could be interpreted in the supernatural category. One morning I was going out of the students accommodation where I lived and passed the row of telephones in the lobby. I had the mild urge to phone my mother. Now normally I only ever got in contact with my mother when I needed money or I was in trouble. This was not the case on that day. So I really don't know why I wanted to talk to her. I had no real reason other than that I wanted to. I went out the main door but after about eight or nine steps I thought, "Why not?", turned around and phoned. The phone rang through to the engaged tone without my mother picking up. I hung up and rang again.

This time she picked up the phone after two rings and I said "Hi" and she said "Just a second," and put the phone down. When she got back on the phone again she told me that she had been starting to collect wood and coal for the range stove that we had (still have) when she heard me call originally. That was why she couldn't pick up the first time that I called. The reason for her saying "Just a second" was that she had heard a noise. She went to investigate the noise and found that an entire wall had collapsed where she had been standing. The wall was about 30 feet high. I saw it, and still see it, as a coincidence, but till the day of her death my mother thought that it was some kind of supernatural thing. It bugged the hell out of me when she used to tell other people about it.

Thing is, that coincidences are happening all the time — only not to the same person but to different people, everywhere. What annoyed me most about the entire thing, was the spin that my mother would put on the incident, when talking to someone else. She would always put a metaphysical slant on it. Like, "He felt that something was wrong, so he had to phone me." No, I know what I was thinking and feeling at the time. I had no feeling of impending doom or anything like it. I just passed the phones, and looking at them reminded me that I had not talked to my mother in a long time.

One thing that I must say to make it clear why I phoned on that particular day: I am a chronic "just-in-timer." I never arrive early for anything. That morning I had plenty of time because I did not have any particular appointments to keep, so I had no reason not to phone my mother, that is, be in a hurry to be somewhere.

Whenever I have heard about so-called unexplained phenomena, it is nearly always somebody's account of what they heard from, or read about, someone else. Whenever I have talked to someone who purportedly had some kind of "unexplained phenomena" happen to them, I have easily caught them out in the lie. They know the story off by heart, but when I've asked them about what they were doing that day, or details about something not directly associated with the story then they usually cannot give me any.

Now when something that unusual happens (a wall of your home collapsing), then the other bits and pieces around it tend to stick in memory as well; I know that this is true in my case. For instance, I know that I went out because I was getting bogged down with a program that I was writing. The reason why I still remember this is because that was the only time I ever attempted axiomatic programming and after I eventually finished, with quite a bit of outside help, I realized that I just didn't have the talent for it, and I never attempted it again. I know that when my mother told me about the wall having just collapsed I was thinking "Wow, I hope the insurance will pay up for it."

I know that I felt pretty disturbed at having to go home and help clear up the debris, but good because nothing had happened to my mother. It was also a nice day weather wise, not too hot. Now if the same thing had happened to somebody from the looney fringe it would have been plastered all over their websites as "proof" that supernatural powers exist.

I look at it this way: the chance of something wildly coincidental like the above happening to me is extremely small. But, with all the billions of people in the world, the chance of something wildly coincidental happening to one of us is a lot higher.

There must be thousands of people out there that have had similar coincidences happen to them, who, like me, do not believe in "supernatural causes," and who are just as brassed off with being told, that what happened is proof of everything, from out-of-body-experiences to UFO's.

Another experience is more common-day for me. I am a computer techie, and have been involved with computers as a hobby and professionally for nearly 20 years. Personally and professionally I get approached to help in solving computer problems. I nearly always get it sorted. The point that I am trying to make, is that people think I have some kind of weird "contact" with computers. I regularly hear, after everything is working again, "But I did exactly that, and it didn't work for me." Thing is, they possibly did do what I did, but not in the same order!

Here is, to my mind, a very funny example: I got a call from someone who had to install an upgrade to our software on a server in the German foreign office. The person was getting frustrated because the installation routine was "jumping" to the wrong part of the CD and not accepting the serial number (we had two different versions of the software on the same CD). To cut a long story short, I asked what kind of CD-ROM the person was using and whether or not it was a SCSI device (it was). I asked the person to take the CD out of the drive, told him to make sure that the disc was not simply dirty, then told him to rub it quite hard and vigorously against his shirt. I can picture you reading this, and scratching your head in puzzlement, just as the person I was talking to, probably did.

After he had assured me that he had done this, I told him to put the CD back into the drive and kick off the installation routine again. Lo and behold, it worked! Was it magic? No. Had it anything to do with "energy flow" or some other paranormal twaddle? No. The solution was, that the earlier CD-ROM drives had pretty poor error-detection and error-correction. By rubbing the CD against his shirt, this guy had put small scratches on the CD, and that kicked in the error-correction. If I had told him to put scratches on the CD, you and I know that he would probably have put score-marks with a knife or something like that on it, damaging the CD beyond the error-correction's power to do any good.

To this day (the person didn't actually get around to asking me why it had worked) he is probably telling some fantasy about what happened and why it worked. As you point out, many people like to believe that something paranormal is happening, and very often there is a simple explanation. I hope this brought a smile to your face, because your site has given me a lot of enjoyment, and it would be nice if you consider this a partial repayment.

Richard, I'm happy to have your interesting observations to share with our readers. On this website, we try to give examples of problem-solving and critical thinking. You've done both!

A reader sends me a note reporting that scientist Naudin has answered to him the questions I sent to Naudin, posted again last week! I'd asked if the light shown lit beside the Bearden "invention" was actually powered by that device. He wrote:

This is not a simulation and the EMG [maybe he meant MEG] in the photo is lighting an [sic] neon type eco lightbulb... Is the electric light bulb shown in the photo being powered by the device, or by another source of power not seen to be evident in the photo? Yes, Naudin answered, the lightbulb is powered by the MEG output coils.

I looked up the "neon type eco lightbulb" mentioned, and found that it operates at 1 watt, requiring 2 AAA alkaline cells. Now, if this "MEG" device is operating the bulb as shown, if the MEG has no moving parts, and it is not powered internally nor externally, we have a genuine miracle, one that is acceptable to any scientist by that term. But why, I must ask, did Naudin not respond to me? Is there a fear, perhaps, that I'd rush right off and examine this device? I could certainly get very heavy scientific support on this.... I think I'll wait until the man himself answers me, then ask to have an in-person look....

Reader Don Finan suggests you go to: http://www.roswellrods.com and see just how super-silly the latest delusion is: "rods" as opposed to "orbs" produced on digital cameras. I'm going to as you interested readers to experiment — much as Henrik Herranen did for us last week — after you examine the mysterious "rods" on the web site. Send us your analysis and examples of photos. We made some at the JREF, but I'd like to see some independently produced.

As expected, the site folks prefer mysterious explanations for these artifacts. They'd love them to be extragalactic beings who only register on digital cameras, of course, and that's what they will always prefer to believe, in spite of what we come up with. The photo offered here is pretty tame, but others shown at the "rods" site are very complex. It appears to me that we are seeing here artifacts of the digital photo process, a "shutter flutter" or perhaps bird/bug pattern of some sort. Can any of our readers solve it? Go to it!

Meanwhile, back in "orb" territory, reader Laddie Chapman, who gave us one of the recent "orb" photos we've run here, also sent in two shots that definitively prove the very ordinary nature of these anomalies. Both photos are of a snow flurry; the one taken with flash shows the "orbs," the other does not. I hope we'll see the last of this nonsense some day, and thank you, Laddie....

Reader James H.G. Redekop comments, concerning the "Creature" photograph recently featured here, and other similar claims:

I've always found it very bizarre that anyone would mistake these (and other) very, very common photography "mistakes" as anything but what they are. Even the "Moon Landing Hoax" nonsense bases its most prominent evidence on ignorance of photography. It can get quite tedious to explain to people that cameras aren't magic devices that capture an exact image of the world, but are mechanical, chemical, and digital machines which are really only as good as the photographer.

From Brazil, reader Pádua Pires writes:

Congratulations for providing us with one of the most useful and amusing sites around the net. I'm a Brazilian musician who eventually took a Ph.D. in Physics (it happens). I've been interested in paranormal and pseudo-scientific matters for many years. I used to instigate my university fellows, playing the role of Devil's advocate in very animated discussions on the subject.

This interest periodically pushes me to purchase books I'm pretty sure you wouldn't recommend. Last week, while attempting to put some order to the sempiternal mess of my personal library, I found a Portuguese translation of French astrologer Anne Barbault's "Introduction ŕ l'astrologie." The 7th chapter denounces "the anti-astrological process" (you know, the malignant academic complot to exclude astrology from the Science mainstream) and attempts to refute some of the classical criticisms.

Among these, the problem of the precession of the equinoxes (which continually shifts the real positions of the zodiacal constellations with respect to those shown in horoscope charts) and the inherent arbitrariness in establishing the "shape" of a constellation, are treated in some detail. Barbault's approach to these issues is remarkably original: she accepts both arguments and takes them as irrelevant. In effect she quotes Ptolemy, who pointed out in his "Tetrabiblia" that the names of the signs were based on a seasonal symbology, not on the aspect or position of the constellations. Thus, Libra is Libra because it comes in the autumn equinox, when the Sun spreads its light equally over both hemispheres, and Cancer is Cancer because it comes in the summer solstice, when the Sun "stops" and moves backwards, like a crab. Barbault continues (my translation):

No less evident are the choices of an animal from the warm countries: the Lion for the summer, and a Virgin holding a bouquet or a spike for the harvest month — the Earth exhausted, becoming virgin again.

Now I'm stuck. Being a Brazilian is already astrologically embarrassing, because here in the South the seasons are inverted, so Leo comes in the winter. But worse than that, I live in Fortaleza, a really nice, sunny city on the northeast coast, at the 4th parallel: we don't have seasons! Maybe we need some kind of Austral Astrology (hmmm...$$$). Alas, it's becoming more and more difficult to play Devil's advocate....

Pádua, it's hard to keep up with pseudoscience, as you've discovered. I'll amuse you with the Encyclopaedia Britannica (first edition, 1771) entry on astrology:

ASTROLOGY, a conjectural science, which teaches to judge of the effects and influences of the stars, and to foretel future events by the situation and different aspects of the heavenly bodies. This science has long ago become a just subject of contempt and ridicule.

Well, we all know just how presumptuous that statement was....!

A colleague of mine who handles UFO nut cases regularly, wrote to tell me that he is variously designated by these folks as some sort of depraved monster with less than sterling qualities:

. . . arrogant, bizarre, closed-minded, emotionally disturbed, professionally incompetent, intellectually dishonest, a dishonest journalist, sleazy, unethical, a quack, a thug, a bully, a Nazi, a hired gun for vested interests, the leader of a subversive organization, and engaged in criminal activity (conspiracy, extortion, filing a false police report, and other unspecified acts).

Gee, sounds about like the kind of stuff I get!

Last week I wrote about the demise of UK physicist John Hasted, who was transformed into a parapsychologist by witnessing some spoon-bending that he chose to believe was somehow transcendent. I wrote about him in my book, "Flim-Flam!" and I will insert here part of the chapter "Off the Deep End," a section dealing with how people like Hasted perceived the world around them, and reported on it. John had written a letter to the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (JSPR), objecting to my account of a test session in June of 1977 of a young spoon-bender who had applied to win my prize, then only US$10,000. Here is that excerpt from my book:

Julie Knowles was a young English girl who worked with John Hasted as a spoon-bender. According to Hasted she was a good worker, very strong and dependable. His description made her seem like just the one to walk away with my $10,000. Upon my arrival in England on other business, I received urgent phone calls and letters from Mrs. Hasted, begging me to come to Bath to watch tests of Julie in the lab there. I set aside time to do this and showed up in Bath in the company of colleagues to witness this wonder. We sat Julie in the lab area and retreated behind a one-way mirror so as not to disturb her. Her mother, looking very fierce, stayed in a remote office, announcing that she would not come anywhere near me — except to collect the check.

The girl sat there for two hours holding a spoon, the upper bowl area of which was blackened with a film of carbon from a candle to prevent her from touching it without leaving evidence both on her hands and on the spoon, that she had done so. Hasted sat nearby [see the photo] saying constantly that he was seeing the spoon bend and nodding and smiling encouragingly. He had signed an agreement saying that our protocol was satisfactory, and that he expected success. I knew damn well that as soon as Julie was discovered not to have any psychic powers working, he would rationalize like mad. I was right.

A note: Hasted's verbal encouragement and belief was felt to be necessary to success in the metal-bending art. Even today, Uri Geller likes to have his audience bellow out "BEND!" to coax the cutlery to deform, and since Geller had pretty well established the "rules" for this art — though for very much different reasons than believed by the scientists, in my opinion — Hasted was playing the game by saying that something was happening, that was not. That spoon remained unbent all through the episode.

Hasted later complained that the protocol had been complicated (it was not), that I had said Julie was "highly touted"(she was, by both Hasted and his wife) and that I had failed to test the unbent spoon for such changes as "nominal strain, residual stress, dislocation loop density, microhardness, grain structure, electrical resistance, specimen dimensions, etc." He ignored the fact that, unlike certain incompetent experimenters, we who designed the protocol for testing Julie Knowles specified in advance that we were testing for gross downward bending of a simple teaspoon, a feat this girl was said to be able to do. We did not intend to search for obscure peripheral effects and decide after the fact that any discovery was significant. When Hasted goes to the races he is not allowed to collect at the betting window if a horse he bet on to win comes in sixth and sideways. He simply does not recognize an adequate and proper experiment when he sees one!

Another note: it is, as my reader perhaps knows, a failing of scientists that they over-instrument, over-measure, and over-interpret experiments that often need such embellishment to have any apparent value. Hasted was fond of attaching sensors and labels to everything in sight, reading and recording everything from body temperature and skin moisture to heart rate and respiration, when a subject was simply trying to bend a spoon or fork. This, to him, made it "scientific." If we had agreed to test Miss Knowles for peripheral physical changes she might induce in a teaspoon, we would have specified those elements. It was simply a question of whether she could bend a spoon without using the usual trickery; she could not, and our experiment ended with that result.

Remember, too, from last week's mention of this subject, that John Hasted had thrown away the spoon that I myself bent and broke for him at Birkbeck! Why did he, as a reputable scientist, not retain it and examine it for "nominal strain, residual stress, dislocation loop density (?), micro-hardness, grain structure, electrical resistance, and dimensions"? To continue:

Hasted, in his letter to the JSPR, had called my conditions for the experiment "crude." No, John, they were simple and direct. Hasted said that the spoons used were unlabeled. Not true. They were labeled, quite adequately and permanently. He complained that only one side of the bowl was blackened. That's quite true; since we had agreed — in advance — that a downward bend was to be attempted (there's that damned insistence on announcing in advance what we intended to do, in very clear terms!) it was necessary only to blacken one side, where pressure would have to be applied if trickery were used. Blackening both sides would have allowed the possibility that Julie could disturb any blacking on the underside of the spoon when setting it down, which could have invalidated the experiment. We knew what we were doing. In his rebuttal to my own letter in the JSPR, Hasted said that he pointed out these things "in order to deflate Mr. Randi's claims that he is a better witness than scientists." This is a statement I have never made. But I will say that I am a better witness than some scientists.

Hasted ended his denunciations with the comment that "experimental design had better be left to professional experimenters and not to professional deceivers." No, Professor Hasted, let us say that experimental design had better be left to competent professional experimenters. Then we professional deceivers can get back to the entertainment business.

I hope that my reader has recognized in Hasted's retort to my JSPR letter the techniques of misquoting, inventing claims, overlooking the facts, exaggerating, and implying the inferiority of the opponent. They are cheap shots, and ineffective at best. I will admit that I cannot manage calculus as well as I'm sure Professor Hasted can, and I cannot claim his education, but I sure as hell can catch a kid bending a spoon! In fact, any moderately intelligent person can do just that, unless he has a compulsion to play dim-witted.

When Steven North, another wonder-child metal-bender whom Hasted also declared to be genuine, underwent tests at Birkbeck College that were attended by Granada TV, a young woman who was with the crew peeked in at Steven during one of the tests in which he was — as usual — left unattended and unobserved except by recorders hooked up to the metal samples; this is a favorite Hasted method of testing children. She distinctly saw him bending a sample with his bare hands and hastened to tell Hasted. But the scientist shrugged it off as an error on her part. Smiling, he said, "Steven may cheat in the next world, but not in this!" I have no interpretation at all of that comment. It is typically Hastedian.

Looking back on these comments, written so many years ago, I find that I don't regret them one bit. John Hasted is gone, and I hope that he will be remembered for what he added to our knowledge, our enjoyment, and to our world in general, but I find it unfortunate that he never had an epiphany in which he was able to recognize just how thoughtless, cruel, and predatory were the acts perpetrated on him by fakers who took advantage of his naivety and trust. I think he could have been one who served to clear the air on just how easily well-educated, well-meaning academics can be deceived — largely self-deceived — and yet can sometimes turn about in midstream and quite drastically improve their aim and direction. John Taylor, at one time also quite taken with the Geller phenomena, successfully did this, much to his credit.

Remember the "Henriette Syndrome"- the overpowering need by some people to accept and believe something preposterous, and the ability to ignore and dismiss the contrary evidence, no matter what it's quantity, nor how strong it is? Well, it appears that the Dutch have an excellent saying that expresses it well...

Wat baten kaars en bril,
Als de uil niet zien en wil.

The candle and glasses are useless,
If the owl doesn't want to see.

Excellent!