Posted By: Lumo (** Lumidek **) on 'CZmystery'
Title:     Uri Geller poprve nafilmovan pri podvodu
Date:      Thu Jan  1 03:49:36 1998

Znamy "mag" Uri Geller, jeden z nejpopularnejsich lidi, kteri o sobe tvrdili, 
ze maji zazracne schopnosti (diky kterym umi ohybat klice apod.), o jehoz 
neuspesich jste mohli cist i v To snad nemyslite vazne, pane Feynman, byl 
vubec poprve v historii jasne nafilmovan, kterak svoje podvody provadi. Clanek 
strucne referujici o udalosti pretiskuji.

URI GELLER CAUGHT RED-HANDED! 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
For the first time, a film clearly shows the famous spoon-bender using 
trickery.

Many have already said that Uri Geller, the Israely self-proclaimed psychic, 
famous for his ability to bend spoons apparently with the
power of his mind, uses trickery to perform his wonders. Never before, 
however, had happened that he could be clearly seen using
trickery in the recording of a tv show. Today, the finding of a videotape 
containing a participation by Geller to an Italian Tv show
documents inequivocably his recurring to fraud. 

Massimo Polidoro, one of the founders of CICAP (the Italian Committee for the 
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal)* and an
expert in psychic-deception, found the tape. ''I was researching material for 
my book Mysteries'', Polidoro explains, ''when I found the
recording of an episode from a few years back (March 18, 1989) of 'Alla 
ricerca dell'arca' (Search for the Ark), a tv show then airing on
RAI3. Guest on this episode was Uri Geller who, as usual, demonstrated his 
claimed powers by bending a key and moving the hands of a
watch ''with his mind'', as he said. However, if one looks carefully to the 
recording of the show one can catch various clues that show
how Geller did really perform the demonstrations: for example, Geller can be 
seen taking out the stem of the watch to move its hands,
myabe thinking that the move went unnoticed''. 

It's the first time that Geller, who has always stated that he has never used 
any trickery, is so clearly caught red-handed on tape. It's
surprising, however, that nobody had ever noticed before this damning 
evidence. "This, instead, shouldn't come as a surprise", Polidoro
explains. "At Padua's University we have conducted experiments which 
demonstrate this precise fact: it is not possible for somebody to
catch a trick behind a claimed psychic demonstration if he has no specific 
training in how tricks of this kind work. It's not a question of
intelligence but, as I say, of knowledge. In fact, it has happened many times 
that scientists have been duped by psychics or mediums just
because they couldn't figure out their tricks. In the Geller tape, for 
example, it is not so obvious how he bends the key or moves the
hands of the watch, but a trained eye can catch the crucial moments where he 
appears to use a second key to bend the first one and
where he pops out the stem of the watch to move the hands of it with a 
finger". 

A detailed analysis of the tape, along with telling pictures, will be 
published in ''Scienza & Paranormale'', the journal of CICAP (article
and pictures, however, are available in pre-view to journalists requiring 
them). 

CICAP (the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the 
Paranormal) is a scientific organization founded by Italian
journalist Piero Angela and joined by many Italian scientists and 
intellectuals, among them: Silvio Garattini (neuropharmacologist,
Director "Mario Negri Institute", Milan), Margherita Hack (astrophysicist, 
University of Trieste), Giuliano Toraldo di Francia
(physicist, Firenze University), Nobel Prize winners Rita Levi Montalcini and 
Carlo Rubbia and writer and sociologist Umberto Eco.


More information on CICAP. 
For further information on the press release: Massimo Polidoro.

      /////  Superstring/M-theory is the language in which God wrote the world.
    /// O __   Your Lumidek.  mailto:motl@physics.rutgers.edu, motl@usa.net
   ///           ---------------------------------------------------
  ///_______/  http://www.kolej.mff.cuni.cz/~lumo/,   http://www.motl.org/
 Mazte zbytecne casti replikovanych prispevku - hmat CTRL/K maze celou radku!
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