 There is a hunger, a very strong hunger with us all. I'm not just saying audiences that watch the magician, no, with us all. We'd like to have a certain amount of fantasy in our lives be true, but it's a very dangerous sort of a temptation to immediately assume that it must be magic or supernatural or all called or paranormal if we don't have an explanation for it. Now I can tell you that in my life I've spent a great deal of my life investigating and observing and carefully noting and making use of psychology. I'm not a psychologist, not by any means. I have no academic credentials whatsoever, so I come to you today absolutely unencumbered by any responsibilities of that nature. There is no dean who will call me on the carpet tomorrow morning and say, you shouldn't have said that. You see, I'm in the business of giving opinions from an uninformed point of view except from the point of view of a skeptical person who knows how people's minds work and often don't work. It was mentioned previously that if everyone in a certain number of years, the scientists will consist of every human being on earth and all the animals, the donkeys, the burrows and the whole thing and my friend David Alexander here remarked to me in a cruel aside that even today certain parts of certain horses have become scientists. And that is quite true. I have met many of them and though they have PhDs, you'd hardly know it. I've just come back from, I won't mention where, it's a project that's ongoing at the moment and I have seen that principle at work and I must share with you another thing while in passing. I have a theory. This is only a theory folks, unproven, but observations so far tend to support its possible validity. With my advanced apologies to PhDs in the room, I have a theory about PhDs and the granting of the degree itself. I'm only outside the field, not in an academic, so I observe as a curious observer, I have many times seen films of and in a couple of occasions actually attended ceremonies where PhDs are created. They are created, you know. The PhD itself is earned, but then the person who has passed all of the tests and done all the right things in the right way and has been approved doesn't become a PhD until one significant moment in history where a roll of paper usually with a red or a blue ribbon around is pressed into his or her hand. At that moment, that person becomes a very special class of being known as PhD in various disciplines. Now I have noted at those ceremonies and perhaps you have noted in a well and wondered about it yourself that the man who gives out those rolls of paper wears gloves. Why? A question I frequently ask, why would he want to wear gloves? Is the paper dirty? I don't think so. Is there something about that roll of paper or perhaps the ribbon that he doesn't want to contaminate? He doesn't want to touch his skin? I'm going to postulate you, just an idea, just an idea that perhaps there is a secret chemical which has been carefully genetically engineered, which is on the surface of that paper, so that when the PhD, up until that moment, not a PhD, you see, receives that roll of paper, this chemical is absorbed by the skin and goes into the bloodstream and is conducted directly to the brain. This is a very carefully engineered chemical which goes directly to the speech center of the brain and paralyzes the brain in such a way that two sentences from then on in any given language are no longer possible to be pronounced by that person. Those two sentences are, I don't know and I was wrong. I don't know, I don't know. I honestly don't know about that. However, my observations of the situation are that I've never heard any PhD utter either one of those sentences. I've never heard them say, I'd like to marry a lobster either, but that doesn't mean they can't say it. But those two sentences never seem to pass their lips. And of course I'm being exceedingly facetious. I have, believe me, and I mean this now sincerely, every respect not only for science, but for those who pursue the various disciplines of science. It takes a great deal of courage, application, study, sacrifice, and in many cases some outrageous attacks upon your integrity and your ability in order to maintain a point of view in science which may or may not be popular. I have been with many prominent scientists who have from time to time had to stick their professional necks out, their academic necks out, and sometimes their necks get pretty badly beat up in the process. It's not an easy thing, certainly, to speak against what is generally accepted. Well then, what is generally accepted? I'm afraid, due to the media impact on our civilization, that a great number of things are easily accepted because they are repeated so often. They are repeated endlessly to the public and don't think that it won't get through to the academic community as well. Any number of times I have spoken to scientists who, when I asked them a critical question about some belief in some sort of parapsychological, supernatural, or occult claim, have said, I really don't know. You know, I hear a good deal about it and professors so and so, whatever, did make a statement on this and the other thing. Now, I am often asked by reporters about opinions by professor Dr. So-and-So, and my response is almost always like this. I say, if I were an academic, my answer to you would have to be, perhaps, professor Brontosaurus based upon the small amount of data that he has presently gathered compared to what should be gathered in order to establish a satisfactory statistical picture and an amount of data upon which conclusions could be drawn by one of the various statistical pictures available to him has come upon conclusions which prematurely expressed on further examination, I'll go on and on forever if you wish, that's the academic's reply. When they ask me, I simply say, in my layman's non-academic opinion, I think the professor Brontosaurus is not rowing with both ours in the water. Well, that's simple and it's direct and it is an honest expression of my opinion.