Well, he's done it again, folks. When I returned from Italy, I found the usual pile of mail awaiting me, and one small hand-addressed envelope from Johnny Carson. In his letter, referring to a recent appearance by speaking-to-dead-folks John Edward on a popular TV show, Johnny expressed dismay at the acceptance afforded such a farce. The enclosed very generous check expressed his willingness — again — to support the work of the JREF. We are substantially encouraged by Johnny's participation, and we promise that his contribution will be assiduously applied to getting the facts out there to interested persons all over the world. It's so good to have friends, and Johnny Carson is one of The Good Guys who have reached out to us. Sincere thanks.
Tom Bearden, as we've told you here previously, obtained a patent on the "MEG" device — essentially a perpetual motion machine — which is now being re-evaluated by the US Patent Office, an action we've celebrated on this web page. On April 28th of this year, I had sent the "scientist" who works with Bearden, Jean Louis Naudin, this simple enquiry:
(1) Does the photo appearing at http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/meg.htm, a copy of which is attached, referred to as a photo of "scientist Jean Louis Naudin's MEG replication model," show the MEG device actually lighting an electric bulb, or is this only a simulation of what the device should do?(2) 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?
Thank you for your kind attention to these two questions.
Though another person received a response to these questions, which he had forwarded to Naudin from our web page, I did not, so on May 16th, and again on September 12th, I re-sent the questions to Naudin. I eventually received these responses to the two questions:
This is not a simulation and the MEG in the photo is lighting an neon type eco lightbulb...andYes, the lightbulb is only powered by the MEG output coils.
That, as you can see, is an evasive response. As if playing cat-and-mouse with a child, I saw that I'd have to find out what came before the "output coils." So, still on September 12th, I sent this additional inquiry to Naudin:
To be quite specific, sir, is there a source of energy powering the MEG output coils?
He responded the same day:
The MEG Output coils are ONLY powered by the primary coils (the Input) of the Meg unit... That's ALL...
You see how this game is played? Yes, you guessed the next question I would send. Still on September 12th, I asked:
Thank you! Now please tell me, what powers the primary coils? What is the "input"?
As you see, it was a case of "The primary coil powers the secondary coil, which powers the light bulb." We're getting there! This whole thing still looks to me like a glorified transformer.... But before I could receive an answer, I went off to Italy, and upon my return I found this awaiting me:
You will find all these technical details (if you are able to read the electronic diagram) in my web site at: http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/megv21.htm
And there was also an inquiry from Naudin attached to this comment. He was perhaps becoming a little alarmed at my persistence. He asked:
So, why you don't ask all these questions to the inventor himself ? This is NOT my invention, I have only replicated their patented device.
I answered:
Mr. Naudin:I looked at the web page, referring only to the basic diagram and the Abstract. The electronic diagram is stylized, but easy to read. I had no problem with it. I quote these three statements directly from the Abstract to U.S. patent number 6,362,718, followed by my questions:
(1) "The input coils are alternately pulsed...." Question: What pulses are introduced, of what nature and magnitude, and from where? These aspects are not addressed.
(2) "Driving electrical current through each of the input coils...." Question: From what source is the "electrical current" obtained, and what is its nature and magnitude? These aspects are not addressed.
(3) "In an alternative embodiment....Input coils extending around portions of the plates are pulsed...." Question: From where do the pulses originate that are put into the input coils mentioned here? This aspect is not addressed.
And I will ask you this question as well:
(4) The diagram you published has an item, #38, labeled "External Power Source." What is the nature of #38?
Basically, to get right down to it, Mr. Naudin, is there, or is there not, an external input of electricity applied to the input coils mentioned in the first three items above, and what is the source and nature (AC or DC, voltage, amperage) of that external input?
To the readers: Can I be forgiven for becoming a bit impatient here? This was not, and is not, a game for me. It's a serious inquiry. I continued:
Mr. Naudin, it is obvious that you are leading me on a winding path here by avoiding giving simple, direct, answers to my very basic questions. As long as you are going to play this game, I'm determined to be in the game. I will refine my questions at each re-phrasing of your answers until the matter resolves itself as a yes-or-no situation. I will not abandon my earnest attempts to receive a cogent response. If you choose, at this point, to abandon the task of trying to evade giving a simple, direct, response, you may of course do so. But, I assure you, I will not back out of this discussion; I'm in it either until I receive a direct answer from you, or you back out and avoid responding.These exchanges are being published on my web page, www.randi.org so that my readers will know of just how difficult — if not impossible — it is, to get non-evasive answers from certain persons. Of course, you may surprise us all with a definitive answer, in which case we will be properly put in our places....
Mr. Naudin, you also asked, in your latest e-mail, why I don't ask all these questions of the inventor himself? You pointed out that this is not your invention, and that you have only replicated Bearden's device. Excellent idea, that I should ask Bearden, but he appears to be so shy about this matter, that he has refused to respond to me. Besides, since you, Mr. Naudin, claim that you are the one who made a working model of the MEG, you are the person — the only person — who can answer these questions with any authority.
Again, I await your response with great interest.
Now I note — with alarm — that there is yet another caveat on the Naudin page just pointed out to me, an item that the casual reader might miss. It reads:
The Output (V/I) signals are really measured by the scope and this has also been checked by various methods (analog and digital scopes and multimeters), but unfortunately measurement artifacts remain possible.
Mr. Naudin, I have news for you. By far the greatest source of error in these "free energy" or "perpetual motion" machines, is in the output-measurement procedure. I have seen voltages, for example, measured on oscilloscopes that are being run far beyond their rated parameters, thus providing quite false values to those looking for the miracles. Reading that caveat of yours, I can only say, at this point, that until you eliminate all possible "measurement artifacts," you have no results that could have been, or should have been, published. This is a fact, not just a notion on my part.
We at the JREF deal in facts.
But hold on again! An anonymous correspondent has pointed out to us that Naudin says on his own web page:
Now, the BEST verification to do is to convert the "apparent" power measured into useable power such as : light, heat, mechanical energy (in motors).... and also, of course, to close the loop.... This has not yet been done today.
Whoa! Bearden has said that his device works! And I'm sure that's the impression that the US Patent Office examiner got. But just re-read those two pertinent phrases: "to convert the 'apparent' power measured into usable power," and "This has not yet been done today"! That is what they have been unable to do, and if that's the case, there's no invention here!
The obvious fact is, that if the Bearden/Naudin team has not achieved what Bearden claims they have, that photograph is a fake, it is a lie, a misrepresentation, a fraud, a phony. It is a sales gimmick, a cheat, a swindle, a scam. The US Patent Office, and any group or individual who has invested anything in the MEG, have been robbed.
As my correspondent concludes:
From their own words, they cannot convert the apparent power into useable power, it does not work! They have failed to achieve their own best test. They cannot connect the output back to the input and remove the external power source. That is why it does not produce more power than it consumes. That is why it does not work. If it did work, you would not need the external power supply at all. You would just wiggle the magnet, or slide a coil back and forth (like a little hand crank) to get it started, and it would run by itself after that. That is the bottom line. Forget the theories, forget the spin, does it actually work? "No," says the inventor.
In my opinion, not only should this fakery lose its patent, but there should be action taken in regard to such things as the fake photo referred to above. This is simply a scam, not an innocent frolic worked up by some fun-loving guys, but a scam. How do we get some authorities to look into it and take action? I just don't know.
The last message I sent to Naudin left here September 21 at 1: p.m. (7 p.m. his time). I am still awaiting a response....
An observation: note the two photos shown here. The one on the left is an old one showing a bulb powered — apparently — by the MEG, without any evident input to the MEG showing. The wires connecting the terminal strip to the bulb are indicated here by the red arrows. On the right, however, is a new, current, version of this photo, in which the device appears to be the same, though without the powered bulb, and we see the clear indication (indicated by the white arrows) of a standard black-with-white-stripe power cord going into the unit! (Click to enlarge, to see this more clearly.) My analysis? I think that Naudin, considering the persistent questions I was hammering him with, had to recognize that the earlier photo clearly indicated (a) there was no power input to the MEG device, and (b) the MEG was lighting the bulb all by itself — with no other source of power! Allowing this photo to be used, would be a fraud if there actually is a power input to the MEG, but the second photo can be now pointed to as an admittance that power is being input, without actually saying that. And, note, the suggestion that the MEG actually does some work — by lighting the bulb — has been avoided by this second version, too. I think Naudin is worried....
Reader Shawn Bishop perhaps has the most succinct observation on this subject:
In fact, Naudin has not replicated anything in his work, except for Faraday's Law of electromagnetic induction. . . . inspection of Naudin's own data provided at his website, shows this.
Shawn has exchanged correspondence with a chap who devotedly believes in Tom Bearden's "MEG" device, and finds Shawn's doubts about it to be ill-founded. His last — and final, it seems — message on the subject was:
Thank you again for your email and for forwarding a copy of your article "In Disdain of Garbage Physics." I have read the article. You and I disagree completely on the method of experimental science. You seem to think it is a spectators sport that can be judged at a distance. I happen to believe it is an activity for fearless discoverers who must not only roll back the veils of their own ignorance, but who must also politely endure a wide variety of harassment from people who have not bothered to run the experiment themselves. Your paper, as stated, is simply an interpretation of something you do not understand based on your established beliefs. Your efforts are not helping to produce all of the benefits that this science WILL one day bestow upon all of humanity. You have utterly failed to follow your own advice "What we need is not the will to believe, but the will to find out" — Bertrand Russell. As God is my witness, I tell you that there is something to find here . . . and if you discover it, it will change what you believe in profound ways. In lieu of this personal discovery on your part, please do not bother me again.
It was signed by "Peter Lindemann, D.Sc." Well, "in lieu" is strangely used here, which is a minor matter, but for a real D.Sc. to simply withdraw from a discussion under heat, seems indicative of some uncertainty in his position. As with all these matters, we'll just wait and see if the MEG "one day" brings us these heavy benefits. That's been claimed by every nutty invention from the dowsing rod to Penta Water. I guess I'd better see to rolling back those veils of ignorance that so afflict me.....
Our good friend Bob Park, a physicist with the American Physical Society, comments, in a personal note about the data published by Naudin:
I've been following the MEG claim since Patent 6,362,718 was issued in the spring (What's New 4 Apr 02). The claim, of course, is preposterous. It is a clear violation of the conservation of energy. The data shown in the Naudin website is useless without a precise knowledge of how it was taken. Such claims often involve a confusion between power and energy, but in any case, lack persuasive independent confirmation, and should not be taken seriously. You will no doubt be shocked to learn that there are unscrupulous persons making false claims.
Yes, Bob, I am shocked! I had no idea.....
An observation: I've received all sorts of mail from folks who wonder why I'm spending so much time fencing with the Psi Tech people. We have no choice, at JREF. We have to handle every challenger, until or unless that person or group shows that they're totally unreasonable and/or uncooperative, and/or mentally incapable of handling the matter. When Dr. Wayne Carr jerked us around for months concerning his claims for "remote viewing," then suddenly just vanished from the scene, it wasn't entirely unexpected. However, we got some accusations that we were "scared" by the awesome power of RV, and that we withdrew from the confrontation. We didn't withdraw, Carr did. But that doesn't stop the grubbies out there from hurling lies at us, even though they know the truth about the situation.
Carr had turned the test over to the Hawaiian Remote Viewers Group (HRVG), asking them to do the actual RV work, with his guidance. Then Carr disappeared, and everything came to a halt. The group recently came upon a snide comment from an unknown person who visited. He wrote, commenting on the maneuver of Psi Tech:
It will be interesting to see if the "Amazing" Randi agrees to a fair test when he is offered a hundred thousand dollars to just do what he claims to do every single day.
First, I have never claimed to be able to do any such thing, and certainly not "every single day." This is a total fantasy, probably just an anonymous juvenile throwing a rock into the discussion. But one of the heads of the HRVG, Glenn Wheaton, replied:
Randi has agreed to a fair test in dealing with Remote Viewing. I coordinated with James on the test undertaken by Dr. Wayne Carr. . . . I can assure you that James Randi gave Wayne every consideration. I spoke with him and others involved when the protocol was set up and found everyone willing to win or lose solely on the basis of the viewer's work. There was no ambiguity at all in the system established to determine viewer accuracy.
Refreshing indeed. Wheaton carried on much correspondence with the JREF's Andrew Harter, and things were going well until Carr dropped out. I'm glad to have this validation from the HRVG, and I thank them for it.
However, please note that the question is not whether the JREF can meet a challenge from Psi Tech — or from anyone else. The question is simply whether Psi Tech or anyone else can meet the JREF challenge!
Are you ready to go ahead with a test without Wayne Carr, HRVG group....? We're all ready!
Reader Wilf Campbell of Toronto, Canada, gives his revealing and perceptive comments on an appearance of John Edward:
I know you never tire of hearing about this guy. I happened to see the beginning of his show the other day, it was taped at a "live" appearance in Buffalo. I was astounded at how people bent over backwards to please him. He started out by pointing at a fairly specific area in the crowd announcing that "someone has flown in from Europe today to be here tonight."No takers. "Really strong," "Europe," "France," "today," "You're around here," and so on, over and over, for at least a minute and a half. Finally someone stood up and said, "I just returned from Las Vegas, and they have a reproduction of the Eiffel Tower there!" I figured he'd take that — the audience was already AMAZED — but no. He kept trying, until someone admitted to receiving a call from someone "today" who had just flown in from Iran, and eventually he got them to say that the said flight might have had a layover in Paris.
Then he tried to get the family name of said travelers. "Begins with L..." and eventually the woman came out with, and I swear this is accurate, "Well, it is a Large family!"
Yikes!
Jim Kutz of the South Shore Skeptics http://home.earthlink.net/~jimkutz/sss/ sends us this commentary on the chances of a lottery number being 911 on the anniversary of the September 11th terror attack, which occurred in the NY lottery, and caused the numerologists to go into swoons....
It's been said that actually the odds are 499 to1, because that date has come and gone twice since the attacks. If that number had come up a week before the attack, it would have been called "prophetic."That date has come and gone twice in the past year? I guess I missed one. Sorry. In the past YEAR AND A DAY ending 9-11-02, the "perceived spookiness" would have been the same had the NY lotto hit "911" on EITHER 9-11-01 or 9-11-02. Therefore the probability of satisfying that particular PERCEIVED spookiness was 499.5 to1.
For present purposes, one might roughly define "perceived spookiness" as "any demonstrated pre-existing tendency to view a SET of number-date combinations as significant — demonstrated, for example, by betting patterns." I'm guessing that a comparable number of people bet "911" on both the original date and the anniversary date, which should be on record somewhere. Back in college, an instructor asked students to name "seemingly significant" coincidences, such as being assigned to a classroom number that matched the student's home house number. The instructor would then ask, "Well, suppose instead that your campus mailbox number had matched your birthday — how many OTHER kinds of coincidences can you think of that would have "counted the same" subjectively?"
Randi comments: It should be mentioned here that those who bet on the lottery, or any other similar naive waste of investment money, very frequently bet on the date, or on their birthday, or 12345, or 77777, or — well, you see my point.
The instructor's point was that the odds of hitting a "perceived match" depends on how many kinds of matches one would perceive as hits. Interestingly, if a class-full of students were to brainstorm as many possible coincidence-types as they could, different students would find a match somewhere in the set — but would be much less spooked by it.A cold-reader or soothsayer does the same thing, choosing from a large mixed bag of possible matches until one of them hits. It's just easier to see this if one looks at simpler numeric examples, realizing that (for example) a hit on 9-11-01 has the same psychological impact as a hit on 9-11-02, and therefore the odds of that "perceived hit" are only 499.5 to 1. One can't eliminate "gut level" perceptions, but one can train one's gut to be more selective.
Comment from Randi: Bear in mind that "911" is only an emergency combination for the USA and Canada. And, anywhere but in the USA, 11-9-01 (or 11-09-01, 11-9-02, 11-09-02, 11-09-2001, etc., etc.) would have worked just as well....! We in the USA haven't learned how to write a date logically, or use the metric system, or get with Celsius.... Jim continues:
Back when we had a Skeptics' discussion board on the now-defunct Cleveland Free-net, we found that the public was much more willing to be skeptical if they could ask "Well then, what are the odds of X happening on ANY anniversary within, say, ten years?", or wherever they think the cut-off should be. Encouraging people to consider SETS of events can be a big step away from superstition, at least for some people.Superstition is often a "whole big bag of things." As an example of "thinking in sets," the Fox News Channel reported [recently] that a local Skeptic group (I didn't catch the name) demonstrated every way they could think of, to "tempt bad luck" on Friday the 13th. They stood under ladders, crossed paths with black cats, and so on, all to no avail. A SET of such events had a great deal more psychological impact than zeroing in on single events. This works for debunkers as well as bunkers.
Randi comments: we have assumed that in the case of this lottery co-incidence, we are dealing only with the NY lotto. Think for a moment. If it had occurred in any city or town, it would have attracted attention — and the crazies would be turning somersaults trying to get some connection — any connection — between that city or town, and the event. If it had happened in a location where any of the terrorists had ever been, or in a place that a victim had called home, or any place that in any conceivable manner could be related to the disaster, that would have sufficed.
Jim tells me that there's been a lot of discussion on this article of his, and I'm hardly the one to judge the math used. I'm sure my readers will delve into it and provide me with lots of critiques.....
Thanks, Jim!
The Amazing Meeting is receiving registrations, and next week we'll tell you about several additions that have been made to the planned program. Get your registration in soon, folks. We've got a fine event shaping up here, and we want to meet each and every one of you in sunny Fort Lauderdale next January!
Yes, Karnak came through for us again. What Johnny did as a comedy sketch for his late-night audiences is now being done as if it were the real thing. And now it's not funny; it's tragic.
NOTE: The Discovery TV channel will repeat their coverage of the Yale University debate on Nostradamus, at which the JREF was represented by our associate, Jack Latona. That will be done at 4 p.m. on Saturday the 28th of this month. Should be interesting! They mis-spelled my name, but it's only available for checking in several thousand places....
