Silly Uri – Tricks Are for Legitimate Entertainment Illusionists
July 17th, 2007
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It’s been said many times, you can’t spell “Urinary Tract Infection” without URI. And Uri Geller proves that sometimes watching a scammer can be just as painful as peeing with a raging case of urethral inflammation. He’s been around since the 1970’s, claiming to be a psychic and able to do truly amazing and earth-shattering feats, such as bending spoons. Of course this has been debunked many times by the likes of James Randi and others. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YJDh1xjSeU
And more recently he’s made a fool of himself by blatently putting an item on his thumb on Isralie Television. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Y7QR314xA
But back in the 1970’s he managed to get a few of the researchers at CalTech to take him seriously and, from the sound of things in their “documentary” film, even believe he had some powers. In most of the scenes, it’s hard to find any trickery, but then again, it’s extremely poorly documented and they never give much information about who was in the room, what protocols was used and so on. Therefore, it’s pretty tough to know if or how he may have cheated.
But in one scene, there seems to be something a tad bit funny that the camera picks up. This is where Gellar tries to influence an electronic scale, with a small mass balanced on it…
(here is part of the video on Youtube. The other portions are hosted by the same user.)
hmmm… something doesn’t look right…
There seems to be something a bit odd about his left thumb….
Lets see if maybe I turn up the contrast a bit. Yes it looks a bit odd, but it is from Youtube and the quality is not the best so it’s hard to tell…
Maybe if he’d stop constantly moving his hand fast so that the camera never gets a good shot…
And all those weird hand movements, where he seems to pull back on his thumb or just obscures it
Now that looks weird. Maybe it’s just an artifact? It looks like there’s something on his thumb!
Would you just hold your hand steady for one frame so I can get a better look? There that’s better. Wait! What the….
It’s worth mentioning that the video claims that they did try bringing a magnet near the test equipment to assure that it would not cause a measurable effect. This is pretty easy to explain though, because if the apparatus did not have much ferrous material, it’s possible that only certain parts were affected. Another likelihood is that his rapid hand movements caused the magnetic field to induce a small current in the electronics of the scale. Both of these are consistant with the relatively small peaks which Uri created on the graph printout.
Or maybe he is psychic and we just need to re-write all we know about the universe… Which one seems more likely?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Humor, Misc, Paranormal, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 20th, 2007 at 9:04 am
PLEASE spell his name correctly, or it will escape search methods. It’s “Geller,” not “Gellar.”
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July 20th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Noted and Corrected.
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July 20th, 2007 at 9:53 am
I believe this shows Geller using a standard thumb-tip with a tiny magnet inside, and that he did this because he didn’t know whether a magnet would affect the weighing system, but thought it might. Remember, he was dealing with very naive “scientists,” and he knew he’d not be challenged or controlled… He’d probably already discovered that he could move a compass using such a gimmick, and just introduced it in case the weighing system would be affected by it.
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July 20th, 2007 at 9:55 am
In any case, next week on SWIFT I’ll be showing a photo of my own thumb wearing such a device… It’s a standard magic-shop prop…
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July 25th, 2007 at 10:26 am
I believe what you see in the video is an artifact and not a thumb-tip for the following reasons:
1.) Watching the sequence in its entirety and at normal speed Geller’s thumbs look completely normal; no thumb tip of that era looked much like a real thumb.
2.) At least one of the experimenters present was knowledgable enough about conjuring to make the use of such a well known gimmick very hazardous.
3.) Geller overwhelmingly favours methods that the camera can’t catch in action; prefering to do any dirty work before the cameras role or whilst they are misdirected elsewhere. (with the possible exception of the recent incident on his own show, “The Successor”)
Also it should be noted that Randi has never before suggested Geller used a magnet during the balance experiment, claiming instead that Uri or an accomplice jarred the chart recorder itself. Further, given the experimenters’ track record we should not assume that the chart recorder paper record shown in the clip is a record of that particular trial; this experiment was run more than once and the chart recording could well belong to one of the other trials not shown in the film.
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July 26th, 2007 at 11:58 am
That seems unlikely to me. It appears to be too well defined and distinct to be an artifact. But it’s possible he cheated by another method. Geller has been debunked many times and I have no doubt that “scientific tests” were rigged by Geller.
What is frustrating is the lack of evidence of him cheating on most of the experiments, because the footage is extremely limited. It only shows a brief part of the tests and gives very little context.
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July 27th, 2007 at 12:25 am
In an ideal world we would get hold of equipment identical to that used with Geller and try the magnet test ourselves (along with surreptitiously knocking the chart recorder) – certainly if I had the funds I would.
Bare in mind that the tiny super-strong magnets available today weren’t available in late 1972 and if that is a thumb-tip in this clip then it looks like a tight fitting one, leaving very little room inside it for much else. It’s conceivable I suppose that the balance they used was ultra sensitive to magnetic fields but I doubt it. Even if it were then Uri could have simply concealed the magnet in his mouth with little risk of discovery and just brought his head near to the equipment (as he does when moving compasses); much safer than using a gimmick that even then was very well known to anyone with any magical knowledge.
For the record, I don’t believe Uri is psychic and share your view that he influenced the tests, i.e. cheated.
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August 26th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Hi,
As I posted on your YouTube page:
Can I make a serious suggestion? Contact a few magicians who are knowledgeable about such things and take a straw poll as to whether or not Uri is using the gimmick you suggest. Whilst Randi agrees with your analysis he has yet to post the details of this ‘exposure’ anywhere. I believe this is because he knows it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny.
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August 26th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Steve Knight said:
Well I can name several other magicians and those who had experience in illusions who consider him a fraud. I think you’ll find the following are or were (in the case of the deceased) in Randi’s camp on this:
Johny Carson
Jerry Andrus
Penn Jillette
Teller
Jamie Ian Swiss
Banacheck (Steve Shaw)
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September 4th, 2009 at 5:43 am
With respect, the issue isn’t whether certain magicians believe Geller is a fake or not, the majority do and a few don’t. The whole point of this page and your YouTube pages is to promote the idea that this video shows Geller using a magnet concealed in a fake thumb. Either it does or it doesn’t. My contention is that it doesn’t and further that the majority of magicians if asked would say the same. I have no problem with your scepticism regarding Uri’s claims of psychic ability but I do believe that such scepticism should be accurate and informed.
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