 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, as the case may be. I'm James Randi. When I get into discussions about whether or not there's any real science being used in the art known as parapsychology, and it is an art involving a lot of slight of mind, I often provide this parallel. Don't ever think that just because a specialized vocabulary has been developed for a variety of ology, such as parapsychology, that it necessarily has a factual basis just for that reason. Here's another example. Take the medieval notion known as transubstantiation. For those of you who are not up on religious mythology, I'll explain what that's supposed to be. When the ceremony slash ritual slash performance known as communion is conducted in some churches, two props are in evidence, bread and wine. Now what's supposed to be bread is hardly what we'd recognize as that commodity. It consists of a small, thin wafer of some sort, but the wine used is the real thing, though usually with just a soup sown that it may become vinegar at any moment. I tell you this because many, many years ago, I served as an altar boy at St. Cuthbridge Church in Leesai, just north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Yes, I sampled this van rouge for research purposes only, of course, and I found the product questionable. But here's the truth of the matter. The devote parishioners who partake of the communion ceremony are asked to believe and probably do believe that a magical transubstantiation has occurred, transforming the wine into blood and the bread into flesh. No, I'm serious. They're taught that this rather inferior bread and wine material has been miraculously transformed into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Now, I apologize if this is a rude surprise to you. It certainly was to me, and I need hardly tell you that I rejected the notion immediately. And getting back to what's supposed to be science, here's the parallel I'm trying to make. Take the word psychokinesis, meaning movement by psychological means as a good example. That's a commonly used expression in the woo-woo world of parapsychology, which word by itself means parallel with psychology. It's a widely held delusion by some people that they or other gifted persons can cause small objects to move or even change in substance. Folks, the fact that a name has been invented to describe this, even though it's formed from real Latin derivatives, doesn't make it any more real than transubstantiation or the tooth fairy or Sylvia Brown's year-end predictions. Much the same sort of reasoning can be applied to the parapsychologists themselves. Now, there are two different sorts of parapsychologists. One kind goes through life constantly deceiving themselves, making excuses and rationalizations for failures, and yet turning out many books and papers on their work, always promising further progress if only sufficient funding were to be provided. And that usually follows because there are lots of visual thinkers out there with money. The other kind of parapsychologist spends some time at it, then looks at the evidence more closely and opts to take up another profession. Sterling examples of this reversal can be found in Dr. Susan Blackmore and Dr. Chris French, UK scientists, who saw the train wreck they could have become part of, but left the track in time to avoid the inevitable collision with the real world. In fact, both Duke University and Stanford in the USA gave up their many years of involvement in parapsychology simply because they had no positive results to support their continued involvement. And the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab, known as PEAR, the Paralab, closed down operation just recently after almost 30 years in business, and for the same reason. In many cases, parapsychologists will be PhDs, a most exalted academic position. But many such folks make the presumption that once they've earned that distinction, they can't be fooled. Because they think logically, and in a straightforward, linear matter, they're much easier to deceive than they think they are, you see an electron, a cell, a crystal, will always do the same thing when subjected to the same forces, within limitations of course. But when the human element enters the equation, the possibility of purposeful deception or self-deception is present. And any magician will tell you that he or she would much rather take on the task of fooling for entertainment purposes, of course, a learned adult rather than a child. The reason for that is not intuitive at all. The fact is that a child is not smart enough, not sufficiently experienced with the real world to be easily deceived. Let me demonstrate that point for you. For example, here we have a common facial tissue. Now watch it carefully, don't take your eyes off it, whoops, for a second. Now you were probably deceived by that simple bit of sleight of hand, because you, as an adult, have learned over the years to accept the basic movements whereby an object is transferred from one hand to the other. And you made the expected assumption that that's what I was doing and that was wrong. You see, a child tends not to be sophisticated enough to make that assumption, since he or she did not actually see the object displayed in the second hand, and tends not to make the assumption that it went there. So we have a situation where the smarter, more sophisticated observer is actually less able to solve the simple trick. Of course, now that I've informed you about this, you'll be much better able to solve the tricks, right? Wrong. Never make that assumption. I'm James Randi and I thank you for the use of your monitor screen and your time.