

A magician will instantly see the truth behind any colleague's illusion. But we have a bit of an advantage: We know we are being fooled. Scientists are instinctive doubters who employ a rigorous method to zero in on the truth, but they aren’t necessarily trained to expect deception by subjects and collaborators.

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We can't make magicians out of scientists – we wouldn't want to – but we can help scientists "think in the groove" – think like a magician. And we should.

For most of my life I’ve pecked away at a certain type of swindler: faith-healers, mystics, mind-readers. Those of a certain age may remember my appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson – a skilled amateur magician himself who introduced my exposure of flummery to a huge television audience.

Mine was a lonely voice back then, but I'm not alone anymore. The immensely talented and popular Penn & Teller long ago joined me as foes of harmful deception, along with other magicians; the president of my foundation, D.J. Grothe, has a background in magic, and many of our associates are professional magicians, as well. They all agree with me that the Society of American Magicians and the International Brotherhood of Magicians should re-establish their once very active investigations of the fakers who claim supernatural powers.

It's not something that is generally done, or maybe at all – I'd love to see one funding grant that has a line item for the services of a magician, if somebody out there has one. But it is long overdue that my peers in the conjuring profession try to take a more active role in the elimination of nonsense science by joining forces with scientists, and that scientists be open to the proposition.

Please bear with me while I offer you a peek behind the curtain, a cursory glance at what we magicians are – and aren’t. First, we’re entertainers, actors, showbiz people who have as our primary objective the delight of our audiences. We’re deceivers, yes, taking on roles and characters to express our art, just as any actor does.

We are not scientists – with a few rare but important exceptions, like Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman. But our highly specific expertise comes from knowledge of the ways in which our audiences can be led to quite false conclusions by calculated means – psychological, physical and especially sensory, visual being rather paramount since it has such a range of variety.

The fact that ours is a concealed art as well as one designed to confound persons of average and advanced thinking skills – our typical audience – makes it rather immune to ordinary analysis or solutions.

I’ve observed that scientists tend to think and perceive logically by using their training and observational skills – of course – and are thus often psychologically insulated from the possibility that there might be chicanery at work. This is where magicians can come in. No matter how well educated, or how basically intelligent, trained, or observant a scientist may be, s/he may be a poor judge of a methodology employed in deliberate deception.

I particularly like the way our associate, magician and skeptic Jamy Ian Swiss, has expressed this point:

Any magician worth his salt will tell you that the smarter an audience, the more easily fooled they are. That’s a very counterintuitive idea. But it’s why scientists, for example, get in trouble with psychics and such types. Scientists aren’t trained to study something that’s deceptive. Did you ever hear of a sneaky amoeba? I don’t think so. You know, they don’t get together on the slide and go, "Hey, let’s fool the big guy."

It’s not a novel notion to call in a trickster for advice. In England, famous magician John Nevil Maskelyne [1839-1917] appeared in a courtroom to demonstrate how spiritualist fakers were working their swindles on vulnerable victims, with great success. French illusionist Gérard Majax and Italy’s Massimo Polidoro have repeatedly exposed a variety of swindlers in throughout Europe.

Harry Houdini stood on the floor of the U.S. Congress and stridently denounced a variety of hoaxers, flaunting his cash prize for an example of a supernatural feat that would prove him wrong. Magicians like Penn & Teller and others have stepped forward to express their expert opinions concerning expensive and wasteful pursuits of chimeras.

What we need now is to formalize this. We magicians have to make it clear that the insights we need to be magicians can be leveraged in the scientific method, and that we are on call. And scientists have to be open to the idea that a magician just might be the most important research associate on the team when it comes to looking into anomalous claims.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Had I been at Arthur’s elbow as he wrote those words, I'd have suggested adding: "to the uninformed observer." The techniques of the conjuror – or of the “psychic” performer – are apparently magic to even some of the best-intentioned scientists.

So, scientists, what do you say? We magicians look pretty good in lab coats, too.

Photo: Whit 'Pop' Haydyn. Photo: Glen Bledsoe/Flickr

Opinion Editor: John C. Abell @johncabell