And so I segue mysteriously (yet relevantly) into the Channel 4 ‘Bodyshocks‘ series of documentaries. This week’s programme focussed on ‘the girl with the x-ray eyes’. Natasha, a seventeen-year-old from Russia claims to literally see inside people in order to diagnose their medical conditions. Having submitted to the sceptic’s tests, she was debunked, but not entirely satisfactorily.
And now my final, and not so mysterious segue, is into Professor Richard Wiseman’s research into spoon-bending. He had two sets of undergrads witness the trick. In half, the wannabe Yuri suggested that the spoon continued to bend after he put it down. Sure enough 40% reported the spoon continuing to bend – as if by magic.
→ Read on about why the debunking might not have been satisfactory.
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Hello, and welcome to PsyBlog. Thanks for dropping by.
This site is all about scientific research into how the mind works.
It’s mostly written by psychologist and author, Dr Jeremy Dean.
I try to dig up fascinating studies that tell us something about what it means to be human.