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Nov. 10, 2009 - Skeptoid
16:29
Skeptoid #179: The Scole Experiment

Said to be the best evidence yet for the afterlife, the Scole Experiments were actually just a hackneyed performance. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Skull Experiment Exposed 00:07:52
In the 1990s, a group of paranormalists were determined to prove that seances can indeed make it possible to communicate with the dead.
Unfortunately, they didn't go about it very wisely.
They hired some professional mediums who fooled them with essentially the same tricks they would use in any normal seance performance to fool the general public.
The Skull Experiment is today on Skeptoid.
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The Skull Experiment.
Turn out the lights and link your hands.
For today, we're going to hold a seance and contact the dead and have them perform parlor tricks for us in the dark.
We're going to look at the Skull Experiment, a large, well-organized series of seances conducted by members of the Society for Psychical Research in the late 1990s in Skull, a small village in England.
Reported phenomena included ghostly lights flitting about the room, images appearing on film inside secure containers, reports of touches from unseen hands, levitation of the table, and disembodied voices.
Due to the large number of investigators and sitters involved, the number and consistency of paranormal episodes observed during the seances, and the lack of any finding of fraud, many believers often point to the skull experiment as the best scientific evidence that spirits do survive in the afterlife and can and do come back and interact with the living, demonstrating an impressive array of conjuring powers.
There were a total of six mediums and 15 investigators from the Society for Psychical Research.
The SPR is based in London and is more than a century old.
Its membership consists of enthusiasts of the paranormal.
The authoritative source for what happened in the Skull Experiment is a report several hundred pages long called the Skull Report, originally published in the journal Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and written by three of the lead investigators who were present at the sittings, all current or former senior officers of the SPR.
Plant scientist Montag Keen, electrical engineer Arthur Ellison, and psychologist David Fontana.
I have a copy of it here on my desk.
It goes through the history of how the experiments came together, details each of the many seances, and presents analysis and criticism from a number of the SPR investigators who observed.
Unfortunately, the Skull Experiment was tainted by profound investigative failings.
In short, the investigators imposed little or no controls or restrictions upon the mediums, and at the same time agreed to all of the restrictions imposed by the mediums.
The mediums were in control of the seances, not the investigators.
What the Skull Report authors describe as a scientific investigation of the phenomena was in fact, by any reasonable interpretation of the scientific method, hampered by a set of rules which explicitly prevented any scientific investigation of the phenomena.
The primary control offered by the mediums was their use of luminous wristbands to show the sitters that their hands were not moving about during the seances.
I consulted with Mark Edward, a friend in Los Angeles who gives mentalism and seance performances professionally.
He knows all the tricks, and luminous wristbands are, apparently, one of the tricks.
There are any number of ways that a medium can get into and out of luminous wristbands during a seance.
The wristbands used at Skull were made and provided by the mediums themselves, and were never subjected to testing, which is a gross dereliction of control by the investigators.
Without having been at the Skull Experiment in person, Mark couldn't speculate on what those mediums may have done or how they may have done it.
Suffice it to say that professional seance performers are not in the least bit impressed by this so-called control.
Tricks like this have been part of the game for more than a century.
Since hand-holding was not employed in the skull seances, the mediums effectively had every opportunity to be completely hands-free and do whatever they wanted to do.
Believers in the skull experiment are likely to point to specifics in the skull report and say something like, But according to the detailed notes, the medium never moved his hands, or something like that.
But we have to remember that, assuming the skull mediums were using trickery, the authors of the skull report were merely witnesses who were taken in by the tricks.
Of course, their report is likely to, and does, state that they could not have been fooled.
This is a perfect example of confirmation bias.
These Society for Psychical Research fellows firmly believed they were witnessing genuine spirit phenomenon and desired a positive outcome.
They followed the medium's instructions to the T and acted as an audience only and not as investigators.
The Skull Report details the authors' perceptions of what happened in the room.
No reader has cause to believe it describes what actually happened in the room.
Repeatedly throughout the Skull Report, the authors state that no evidence of fraud or deception was found.
For example, There's a further complaint that we made little mention of the views of people like West or Professor Robert Morris, who expressed reservations on the basis of their experiences.
That is partly because no such reservations were expressed to us at the time.
We were looking for evidence of deception.
We looked in vain.
If I go to Penn and Teller's magic show to look for evidence of deception, but I impose the rule that I have to stay in my seat and watch the show as presented, and I'm not allowed to go on stage and examine the performers or the equipment, or watch from behind, or observe the preparations, I guarantee you that I will also find no evidence of deception.
Placing illuminated wrist cuffs on the seance mediums and allowing no further controls is perfectly analogous to having Teller show you his arms, hey look, nothing up my sleeves, then allowing him total control over everything that follows.
It can reasonably be argued that the Skull Experiment investigators, whether deliberately or through near-total investigative incompetence, created the conditions of a stage show designed to fool an audience.
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The phenomenon most commonly reported in the skull experiments were small points of light that flitted about the room, often striking crystals and illuminating them from within, or causing disconnected light bulbs or a small glass dome to light up.
Since the mediums banned video gear, there's no way we can really evaluate these claims other than by reading the skull report, which only tells us the perceptions experienced by a few true believers who were present.
Mark Edwards said these tricks have been commonly performed in seances with laser pointers since the 1970s when they first became available.
Strike a light bulb or rock crystal with a laser pointer and it lights right up.
An advantage of laser pointers is that the tip can be easily cloaked, obscuring the orifice from anyone whose eyeball is not the target of the beam.
We have no evidence that the skull mediums used such techniques, but their rules also prevented us from establishing that they didn't.
The next most impressive feat was the spontaneous appearance of images on film.
During the seance, factory-sealed film cartridges were placed inside a padlocked box.
The spirits were then asked to imprint images upon the film.
The locked box was then taken and the film developed in the strict constant supervision of the investigators.
This feat was repeated many times.
One of the investigators, Alan Gold, wrote critically of how he discovered how this locked box could be quickly and easily opened in the dark, which allowed for easy substitution of film rolls.
This box was provided by the mediums.
Whenever any other sealed container was used, no images ever appeared on the film.
Yet even while acknowledging these facts, the authors of the Skull Report still maintain that the film images are most likely evidence of the supernatural.
Perhaps the biggest red flag in the Skull Experiment is the venue in which the sittings took place, a room in the basement of the house in Skull where two of the mediums lived, Robin and Sandra Foy.
Rather than controlling the environment, the investigators ceded total control over the room and conditions to the mediums.
The seances were held about once a month, which gave the FOIs ample time to make any desired alterations to the room.
There's no evidence that they did so, but granting them unrestricted opportunity pretty much torpedoed any hope for credibility.
The Skull Report states that the room was available for examination before and after every seance, but there's no reason to believe that any truly thorough examination was ever performed.
And in any event, it's a poor substitute for what the investigators should have done, which was to provide their own room over which the mediums had no control at all.
A few seances were held at other locations, but the Skull Report describes the results from those as variable.
The next biggest red flag was the mediums' insistence that the seances be held in complete darkness, and their refusal to allow any night-mode video cameras or light enhancement equipment.
The mediums' explanation was that they felt such equipment would distract the investigators.
That's like telling a pilot that having instruments might distract him from flying.
Astoundingly, the investigators agreed to this, though they did express dismay, as if their desire and good intentions alone validate their conclusions.
Audio recordings only were permitted, but since the claimed phenomena were primarily visual, the audio tapes are of essentially no value.
A third red flag is the fact that there's been no follow-up.
If amazing phenomena truly did happen at the Skull Experiment, it would have changed the world.
Mainstream psychologists and other academics would have gotten in on it.
It would have made worldwide headlines, and it would be repeated in labs everywhere and become mainstream science.
They did have the opportunity.
Skeptical psychologist and author Richard Wiseman sat in on one seance, taking charge of some of the photographic film, which failed to be imprinted while in his control.
But rather than coming away impressed and spreading the word, he summed it up to me in six words.
It was a load of rubbish.
This same principle explains why we don't see articles from the proceedings of the SPR, like the Skull Report, republished in scientific journals.
A scientific investigation of a strange phenomenon assumes the null hypothesis unless the phenomenon can be proven to even exist.
But the authors of the Skull Report, with complete credulity, did the exact opposite.
Their stated position is that the lack of disproof means their seances were real supernatural events.
But a primary feature of good research is the elimination of other possible explanations, at which the Skull investigators made no competent effort.
Many of the investigators express that they were not very convinced by what they witnessed, and it is to the credit of the Skull Report authors that they fairly reported this.
But this raises the question, why then write such a lengthy and credulous report, making such obvious conclusions that these phenomena were real?
The lesson to take away from the Skull Experiment is a simple one.
Although we all have preconceived notions, we have to put them aside and follow the evidence when we investigate.
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