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From the archive: S.G. Soal – A statistical master of deception

Chris Scott
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From the archive: S.G. Soal – A statistical master of deception

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 2, Issue 2, from 1988.

The philosophical world was startled in 1944 by the publication from the head of the Cambridge philosophy department of an extraordinary paper: a 15-page discussion in the journal Philosophy on “The Experimental Establishment of Telepathic Precognition.”

Of course this was not the first time that a respected thinker had expressed belief in a fringe science. Newton himself was a devotee of alchemy, Alfred Russell Wallace was a firm believer in spiritualism, Sir William Crookes believed in the séance room materialisation of the dead. But this time it really looked different. To begin with, the author had a reputation as a supremely cautious man. Head of a faculty which included Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein and Moore, his intellectual standing was beyond dispute.

Broad was not writing about his own experiments but about those of another academic, S.G. Soal, a mathematics lecturer at London University. Soal was a sceptic about psychical research. In the mid-1930s he had collected over 120,000 card guesses with no sign of above-chance results. He had become openly scornful of J.B. Rhine’s celebrated card-guessing experiments in America and Rhine’s claim to have demonstrated extrasensory perception (ESP). Yet it was these very results of Soal’s, apparently totally negative, that had led to the new findings. A colleague had urged Soal to look again at those discarded data and try the effect of scoring the guesses, not against the target card at which they were aimed, but against the cards just before and just after. As Soal later recounted, with much reluctance he made the check and found, to his surprise, two persons who had scored indisputably above the chance level on this new criterion. One of these subjects, Basil Shackleton, was then followed up by Soal in a new series of experiments and it was these that yielded the remarkable findings now signalled by Broad.

A black and white photo of Hubert Pearce and J.B. Rhine experimenting with Zener cards. Rhine is holding a pen in his right hand. Both men look serious, wearing suits, staring at the table.
Hubert Pearce with the parapsychologist J. B. Rhine, experimenting with Zener cards. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Soal’s experiments, unlike many others in the new field of “parapsychology”, appeared to be models of scientific rectitude. Extreme precautions were taken to eliminate normal means of communication, recording errors, cheating by the participants, and even fraud by the experimenters. The experiments continued over a total of 40 sessions. A large number of witnesses were brought in. Copies of the score sheets were made by hand at the end of each session, witnessed, and posted in the presence of witnesses to Professor Broad in Cambridge. The originals were stated to have been deposited in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research.

Shackleton scored consistently above chance throughout, but his success was with the card one ahead – the one to be looked at next. When the calling rate was doubled, his scoring shifted to the card two ahead. In some of the experiments the choice of each target card was made only at the moment of guessing, by taking a counter blind from a bag. This condition seemed to require precognition as the only explanation; it also ruled out any possibility of normal communication through some undetected channel. Finally, the statistical significance was overwhelming (over 10 to 1) so that chance as an explanation was clearly ruled out.

Over the years that followed, the Soal-Shackleton series was constantly cited by parapsychologists as a model; they saw in this work the conclusive evidence they had long awaited. Repeatedly it was said that only a person ignorant of the evidence could now rationally deny ESP. This theme was taken up by less committed but more influential writers, notably in England by C.E.M. Joad, the popular philosopher and broadcaster. Many open-minded people must have been led to see ESP as just another of the marvels, along with relativity and quantum theory, which modern science required them to believe in.

The full story of how these uniquely rigorous experiments were reduced to ruins is too complex to relate here. The process took thirty years and involved many independent researchers. We quote only the highlights.

In 1955, G.R. Price showed that several methods of fraud were possible if collusion were assumed between Soal and two other participants.

Between 1955 and 1960, C.E.M. Hansel developed a hypothesis of fraudulent card substitution by the agent (the person whose thoughts were supposedly being read by Shackleton). For this, Soal would need only one fraudulent collaborator in any given session. Over the whole series three different persons had operated as agent, selected by Soal. Some statistical features of the data seemed to lend some support to this hypothesis, though far from conclusively. Soal scornfully rejected Hansel’s reasoning: he successfully showed that the hypothesis could not account for all of the results.

In 1956, pressure from sceptics requesting the records for study obliged Soal to reveal that, contrary to the published report, the original records were not available because he had lost them. The handwritten duplicates that had been mailed to Broad were still in existence, held by the Society for Psychical Research.

In 1960, further pressure from sceptics obliged Soal to publish a more serious admission which had been known to some of them by hearsay. During the experiments one of the participants, Mrs G. Albert, had reported seeing Soal improperly “altering the figures” – specifically, changing ones into fours and fives. A full contemporary report had been kept by his collaborator, Mrs K.M. Goldney, but Soal had up to that point refused to allow publication, using the threat of a libel action.

In 1971, R.G. Medhurst reported a computerized attempt to identify the sequence of target digits that Soal had used. He was unable to trace the sequences in any relevant sources and concluded that Soal’s account of the way in which the targets were prepared must be incorrect.

In 1973, C. Scott and P. Haskell showed that there was strong statistical evidence in the experimental records supporting the allegation that Soal had “altered the figures”, changing ones into fours and fives in such as way as to turn misses into hits. The effects found were both highly significant statistically. They appeared in just three of the 40 sittings, and in particular in the one in which Albert had reported observing the manipulation, and they could account for the whole significant ESP-effect in these three sittings.

This damning evidence seems to have had little effect on the community of parapsychologists. Almost without exception those who commented rejected the fraud interpretation, despite the highly specific confirmation of Albert’s observation, and reaffirmed confidence in Soal.

The coup de grace came in 1978 when B. Markwick published the results of an astonishingly tenacious pursuit of the line opened earlier by Medhurst. She first showed that the target digits contained many runs of consecutive digits that were repetitions of runs used in earlier sessions, and that this could not have arisen by chance. This in itself was not particularly serious. However, she also showed that in many such cases the repetition was not exact but there were intrusions – digits inserted in the sequence – and that these intruded digits were nearly always hits. The implication of improper manipulation seems almost inescapable.

A black and white photograph of five white men, all in suits and appearing to be over ~50 years of age. They are sat around a table that has cards spread out on it, with a projector screen and bookcase behind them.
The mentalist Frederick Marion (back right) being tested at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research in a card experiment by the psychical researchers Samuel Soal (middle) and Harry Price (right). Source: Josef Kraus (Frederick Marion), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

After Markwick’s publication parapsychologists generally gave in and admitted that the evidence against Soal’s honesty was overwhelming. Many, however, continued to discuss the possibility that some of the data in the Soal-Shackleton series were still due to ESP. And most said that, despite their new-found belief in Soal’s duplicity, they had been right at the time to reject the Scott-Haskell evidence.

Clearly the views of parapsychologists are highly resistant to infection by unfavourable evidence. The total collapse of the strongest experimental series ever produced has not visibly diminished their belief in ESP. They simply cite different experiments now.

Recently, parapsychologists have argued that frauds have been identified in many branches of science without thereby discrediting the field of knowledge concerned: “why should parapsychology be treated any differently?”, they ask. They overlook a crucial fact: in ESP research, it is the very existence of ESP that is at stake. The only serious evidence for ESP comes from experiments, like Soal’s, in which guesses are aimed at random targets in conditions where normal communication is supposedly ruled out. But every one of these experiments has been less carefully controlled than the Soal-Shackleton series.

The Soal débacle is the clearest possible demonstration that believers in ESP are over-ready to accept defective evidence. To continue to accord the same value to the remaining experiments even after this demonstration implies an unshakeable faith impervious to counter-evidence.

From the archives: Creationism and Noah’s Ark – founders on the facts

Stephen Moreton
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From the archives: Creationism and Noah’s Ark – founders on the facts

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 6, from 1987.

People are sometimes surprised to learn that there still exist today individuals who sincerely believe the earth to be flat and to lie at the centre of the universe. Genuine flat-earthers really do exist and are based in California. Also based in American’s most crank-ridden state are the devotees and promoters of a far more popular but equally ludicrous set of beliefs – the self-styled “scientific creationists.”

According to organisations such as the San Diego-based Institute for Creation Research, the earth is only 6000 years old. fossils prove nothing, and the Genesis account of creation is the literal truth. Being fundamentalists, they are compelled to accept every story in the Bible as historical truth, thus Jonah really did get swallowed, the sun really did stop for a day, and the first woman really was formed from Adam’s rib. In their attempts to prove tales which ought to be taken with a pillar of salt, the creationists resort to gross distortions of fact, ignore mountains of contrary evidence, and use the most absurd fallacies and sophisms. Here I shall examine in detail one of their favourite “theories” – Noah’s Flood – which is also one of the easiest to disprove.

As historians and archaeologists have long known, the ancient Sumerians living in the Tigris-Euphrates valley were subject occasionally to disastrous floods, one particularly severe flood giving rise to the flood story in the “Epic of Gilgamesh” and, after centuries of exaggeration, the story in Genesis. The creationists do not want to know. They believe that the flood took place in 2348 B.C., and the fact that Egyptian history carried on through that period is of no consequence: the Egyptologists have got it wrong.

The creationists tell us that prior to the flood the planet was surrounded by a huge water-vapour canopy which maintained a tropical climate over all the earth. In reality, such a canopy would require conditions like those on Venus to maintain it, and the humidity would have been suffocating. One is also left wondering how all the organisms adapted to extreme cold or dryness survived or even why they were so adapted. Imagine polar bears, cacti, and penguins living together in the conditions of a sauna!

A divine meteorite disrupted this impossible canopy and caused massive precipitation. Fortunately, the earth’s topography was not the same then. There were no very high mountains, so the amount of water needed was not too great. The mountains were thrust up later as the ocean basins opened up to allow the water to drain away afterwards. The creationists ought to learn about plate tectonics.

The “evidence” for all this consists of a few fossil graveyards where whole communities of living things have been wiped out suddenly and the fact that flood tales are common around the world. It does not occur to them that sudden burial and fossilisation can be achieved quite simply by local, natural floods. Nor does it occur to them that most ancient civilisations lived in fertile but flood-prone river valleys – hence the preponderance of flood myths.

Naturally, the geological record contains no record of any world-wide flood. The creationists’ answer is that the geological record is itself the record of the flood! All the rocks from Cambrian times onwards and all the fossils within them were laid down during and by Noah’s Flood. This “flood geology” is supposed to explain the ordering of fossils in the strata. Organisms dwelling on the sea-floor were the first to be buried and so appear at the bottom of the record. Fish are next, then slow-moving land animals, then more mobile ones, and finally the birds, as they can fly and so evade the rising waters the longest. Regrettably for the creationists, the fossil record is hopelessly at variance with this. Whales occur above equal-sized marine reptiles; corals should only be present in the lower levels whereas they occur continuously from the Ordovician to the present day; plants, being rooted to the spot, should all occur together, yet giant tree-ferns and mosses clearly precede flowering plants, and so on.

It is not just the order of fossils that contradicts flood geology. The Permian rock-salt beds of Cheshire formed by evaporation of sea-water, the Carboniferous Fossil Grove in Glasgow with its still upright tree-stumps, or the giant fossil coral reefs over a mile across in the Silurian limestones of northern Indiana all occur in the middle of the sequence of rocks that creationists tell us were laid down during and by Noah’s Flood. The mind boggles at how seas can evaporate, trees grow, and huge coral reefs form during a planetary flood.

The creationists are fond of telling us how the Ark would have been big enough to take on board all the animals. and they reckon it was about the size of H.M.S. Invincible. However. they tend to underestimate just how much living matter had to go on board. An article in Nature in December 1986 put the total number of species at between 1 ½ and 30 million, probably over 10 million. One wonders how a family of eight can, for about a year, look after a floating menagerie of several million sea-sick animals, including dinosaurs!

It is not just land animals that would have had to go on board. The mixing of salt and fresh water together with vast amounts of sediment would have made the oceans intolerable for most aquatic organisms. Presumably Noah somehow managed to cram on board the 90 or so species of Cetaceans, though I am not sure how the various pairs of whales were supposed to survive off a single pair of krill, or how the krill managed. Plants, too. pose problems. A large supply of fresh plant material would be required for food. Where it was all kept is not clear. Seeds (in hermetically sealed containers to prevent premature germination or decay due to the damp) of every species would be needed, as plants and their seeds would perish under miles of water just as surely as any animal. Those animals requiring specialised food would have a problem. The single pair of ants would not have lasted the pair of anteaters long, and pandas will eat nothing but fresh bamboo.

It doesn’t end there. How did diseases survive the flood? Did Noah and his family all carry smallpox, diphtheria, malaria, polio, syphilis, and all the other diseases of mankind? If so, then why did they not die, and if not, then how did the diseases survive? Were the bacteria and viruses kept in little phials in the fridge, perhaps? Thousands, possibly millions, of creatures are utterly dependent upon the Amazon rain forest for their survival. As any ecologist knows, such jungles take millennia to grow or to recover from damage. What did all those poor creatures do while waiting thousands of years for their habitats and food-supplies to regenerate?

Finally, I would like to finish with just one more little fact for the creationists to ponder. In some parts of the world, where lakes form around the foot of melting glaciers, one gets a seasonal variation in the sediments deposited in the lake. The sediment deposited in the summer is coarse, being washed in by the meltwater, and is rich in organic matter from the stagnant, algae-rich water of the lake. In the winter the sediment is the very fine clay left in suspension from the summer and is poor in organic remains The result is an alternation of layers, each pair of layers representing one year’s deposition, and they can be counted back just like the rings of a tree. These sediments, called varves, can contain up to 12,000 pairs of summer/winter layers and. because they contain carbon, they can also be dated by the carbon-14 method, which correlates with them as far back as 12.000 years.

Do those varves show any sign of a break at around 2348 B.C.? Not at all. The sequence is completely unbroken. These simple muds, on their own. are better evidence against the Biblical flood than all the creationists’ half-geology, semi-meteorology, and pseudoscience in general can ever counter.

From the archives: Magicians, mediums, and psychics

David Alexander
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From the archives: Magicians, mediums, and psychics

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 6, from 1987.

This issue, as promised, we will explore the methods used by mediums to produce spirit manifestations. However, before we get down to the nuts and bolts of the various phenomena, I believe it is important to examine the mental set of the sitters and the setting they are in. This is the key to understanding how and why the generally crude methods of the medium pass muster in the séance room.

First of all, the sitter is in a highly receptive and suggestive state. Their belief systems have them primed to see and experience “spiritual” and “psychic” phenomena. Virtually anything that occurs in a séance can be laid at the feet of the spirits. Most séances are conducted either in total darkness or under a very dim red light. Having sat in more than one pitch-dark séance room, I know how disorienting and disconcerting it can be.

In order for the medium to do his or her job properly, there is almost always a cabinet in which they sit. This cabinet is usually just a curtain drawn around an area, usually eight feet by six feet, to make a closed-off cubicle. Occasionally, the cabinet is simply a curtain drawn across the corner of a room. This is usually the case if the séance is in a private home.

The use of the cabinet is explained as being necessary as a sort of condensing chamber for the psychic force and ectoplasm (the mysterious substance drawn from the medium’s body) which enables the spirits to materialise. Of course, what it is really used for is a place for the medium to do his or her dirty work without being seen. The fact that many mediums allow themselves and their cabinets to be searched means absolutely nothing. Most mediums have a “cabinet attendant” who is, in reality, the medium’s bodyguard and a person who can pass the necessary material to the medium when needed.

The cabinet attendant is explained as being necessary to protect the medium from malicious individuals who would grab ectoplasm, thereby endangering the life of the medium. Sitters are constantly told horror stories of mediums whose spirit manifestations or ectoplasm was grabbed and of the resulting injury and/or death to the medium. Of course, these are merely convenient stories to prevent people from grabbing the ectoplasm and getting a handful of luminous chiffon or worse, a handful of medium.

While the assembled sitters sing hymns, the medium, supposedly in the cabinet in a trance, rapidly dons a black outfit and then slips several yards of luminous chiffon and gauze out of a hiding place and proceeds to manipulate it in various ways. What the sitters see is amazing: a tiny ball of ectoplasm sending out shimmering tendrils which gradually grow into a fully formed materialised spirit. This figure could disappear in the same manner it appeared, or it could grow, shrink, expand, or instantly vanish. While it sounds crude, the effect is quite remarkable.

During such séances any number of different things can happen. If the sitters are regulars and well known to the medium, he may “apport” something for the sitter. Many mediums will move about in the dark and remove small items from women’s purses. The owners are carefully noted and the item filed away, reading to be apported back to the owner days, weeks, or months later. If the medium has access to the individual’s house on a social occasion, it is relatively easy to remove some small piece of jewellery from the bedroom and bring it back “via the spirits” at a later time. This is very effective if the person actually requests the object and it appears seconds later. Boy Scouts aren’t the only ones who know the value of being prepared.

Many séance regulars are people well known to more than one medium. They have regular files, usually quite detailed, that are shared from medium to medium.

An old person's hands holding and moving around a crystal ball. The person's sleeves have white, puffy elasticated wrists
A fortune teller and their crystal ball

Other “manifestations” that occur are voices out of a floating trumpet that answer questions. Well, the trumpet floating is no big deal. The usual trumpet is like a large megaphone with a luminous band painted around the large end. Using his hand or a collapsible reaching device, the medium is able to make it “float” all over the place. Whispering in the end causes distortion and projection of the voice and gives the impression of “spirit” voices. I’ve heard of some mediums manipulating several trumpets simultaneously.

One medium was especially clever. He was challenged by someone claiming to be a magician and psychic expert. The challenge was to cause voices to come out of a trumpet after the trumpet was dusted with a powder that would cause stains on the hand. The medium accepted the challenge, the lights were turned out, and voices came out of the trumpet. The medium had a piece of stiff cardboard rolled around his leg. Under cover of darkness, he removed it, formed it into a megaphone, and produced his phenomena.

This same medium had a stunt that caused all sorts of consternation even among his fellow mediums. He was offered thousands for the secret, but exposed it himself after he went straight. He was able to produce spirit voices from a trumpet while it was being held by a sitter. Imagine the effect! No miniature radios were used, and the trumpet could be thoroughly examined. The secret is quite simple: dressed completely in black and moving through the darkness like the old radio character The Shadow, the medium had another trumpet, painted black. It was into this trumpet that he spoke, aiming it at the trumpet held by the sitter. From a distance of three or four feet, he could cause the spectator-held trumpet to vibrate, giving a perfect illusion.

To materialise different spirits, the combination of simple masks and the luminous chiffon mentioned earlier works wonders. I remember reading of one medium, many years ago, who materialised the face of a very life-like baby. I understand she had it painted on her rather ample bosom.

Turning the lights on and exposing what is going on seems to have little effect on the true believers. Back in 1960, the spiritualist world was shocked by what became known as the Great Camp Chesterfield Exposé. Two researchers who were sympathetic to the spiritualist cause, Tom O’Neil, editor of the Psychic Observer and an ordained spiritualist minister, and Dr Andrilja Puharich (in his pre-Uri Geller manager days), equipped a dark séance room with infrared lights and a snooperscope, a night vision device, for the purpose of filming the materialisation of a ghost. The medium they were filming was Edith Stillwell. Her cabinet attendant was Mable Riffle. Both of these women were professional mediums with many years’ experience and very tough customers.

Unfortunately for them, they had little understanding of what the devices the researchers were using could do. The experiment was a disaster for the spiritualists. Looking through the snooperscope, Puharich saw that what were supposed to be spirit forms of shimmering ectoplasm materializing out of thin air, were actually figures wrapped in chiffon entering the séance room through a hidden door from an adjacent apartment.

The infrared motion picture film confirmed Puharich’s observations. Caught on film, dressed in gauze, were the familiar faces of Camp Chesterfield mediums, impersonating departed spirits.

O’Neil raged against this in his spiritualist newspaper and quite a scandal developed in the spiritualist community. Unfortunately, O’Neil died not too long after. His paper’s circulation had declined seriously as the spiritualist churches which had provided most of its subscribers and advertising revenue rather than rally to his support. Some said he died of a broken heart.

From the archives: Soviet intercontinental missiles and the professional Spanish ufologist

Luis Alfonso Gamez Dominguez
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From the archives: Soviet intercontinental missiles and the professional Spanish ufologist

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 4, from 1987.

According to information published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais on 14 June 1987, a committee of Spanish Air Force investigators has come to the conclusion that the two UFOs seen by thousands of people on the Canarian archipelago on the evening of 5 March 1979 were really two intercontinental missiles fired by a Soviet nuclear submarine from the Canary Islands to the Siberian desert.

The firing took place 200 miles off the southwest of the archipelago, and from the first the Spanish Air Force suspected that the UFOs were missiles. The United States authorities, when asked about the incident, answered that no US combat unit had fired the two missiles.

The Spanish Air Force investigators found out that the UFOs were directed to Siberia, and study of many photographs of the event confirms that the UFOs were missiles. This was a controversial incident, because some Spanish UFOlogists thought that the UFOs were extraterrestrial ships, while others agreed that the photographs proved that the sighting was the firing of missiles from a submarine either from the US or the Soviet Union.

One of the most important defenders of the extraterrestrial explanation was Juan Jose Benitez, “the unique professional Spanish UFO investigator”. He said in one of his books that the “UFO of the Canary Islands was not a meteorological phenomenon, nor the aurora borealis, nor a meteorite, nor a sounding balloon, and much less a missile.” He affirmed that an “extraterrestrial ship” was seen over the Canarian archipelago on the evening of 5 March 1979.

Photographic analyses made by the Ground Saucer Watch in 1979 came to the conclusion that the UFO was a US Navy Polaris missile. But, on 14 October 1984, the newspaper Diario published an article about a Soviet submarine that had fired two nuclear missiles near the Canary Islands. However, Benitez has never considered the missile explanation, and has written many times ridiculing it.

Of course, this is not the first time that this UFOlogist has made mistakes, because he is the sensationalist UFOlogist par excellence. For example, he has taken toad songs for UFO sounds in a case in Bilbao, the Meier photographs for evidence of a lost civilization, Charles Berlitz for a serious investigator, and so on. But this time Soviet intercontinental missiles exploded over his head and revealed that Benitez has his head full only of exterrestrial ships.

From the archives: media clippings from the death of Doris Stokes

The Skeptic
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From the archives: media clippings from the death of Doris Stokes

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 4, from 1987.

As almost every newspaper reported, Doris Stokes died during the weekend of May 8/9 (coinciding (with no significance, we’re sure) with Mark Plummer’s visit to London. Psychic News caused a stir in a few places by running a large headline on the front page of their issue of May 9, “Doris Is On the Mend”.

Since then , there have been numerous press articles: the Mirror ran a series, “Doris Stokes – Trick or Truth?”; the Lewisham & Catford Mercury reported that her adopted son Terry claimed to have received a message from her after her death; the Sun reported that Doris Collins claimed to have received a message from Stokes as she was dying; the News of the World reported on the journey to the “spirit world” Stokes claimed to have made during a previous illness.

In an interview published in the (Scottish) Sunday Express, 5 January, 1986 , Stokes said she did not expect to act as a guide for other mediums after her death.

Doris Stokes was challenged a number of times to prove her powers were real. In addition to Randi’s standing $10,000 challenge, magician Paul Daniels offered a £10,000 challenge in the Sun, 9 November 1985, and Irish businessman Gerald Fleming, now living in London, offered first $20,000 Australian in 1978 and then later £100,000 if she could demonstrate her powers under properly controlled conditions. She refused the challenges. In an article in the Irish Evening Herald of May 28, 1986, reporter P.J. Cunningham wrote, “Mrs. Stokes has countered Mr. Flemings’ claims by saying he has a vendetta against her and dismissing him as an ‘ignorant Irishman’.” Fleming has made the same offer to Doris Collins, who has also refused to be tested.

Much of what appeared about Doris Stokes in print during her lifetime was uncritical. She published six books of claims with ghostwriter Linda Dearsley, she had a regular letters column in Chat, and there were many newspaper articles about her claims to have received messages from Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy (she even claimed the latter two told her they were “just good friends”).

However, there were dissenters. Magician and former British Committee Chairman David Berglas, in an interview with People, August 24 , 1986, said, “There is absolutely nothing that Doris Stokes can do that I can’t do myself… and I’m not psychic.” Paul Daniels, in discussing his £10,000 challenge, explained Stokes’ methods: “It is a mixture of artful questioning and people hearing what they want to hear.” Daniels also presented the skeptical viewpoint in the Mirror‘s “Trick or Truth” series, where he is quoted as saying, “I condemn those who make money callously from the sad, the lonely and the insecure. “

The Mirror added a brief article about Doris Stokes ‘ involvement in the Lamplugh case: Diana Lamplugh is quoted as saying that she received telephone calls from sixty mediums, all with different stories about what had happened to her daughter. Of Doris Stokes, she is quoted as saying, “Mrs. Stokes sounded like a very nice person , but nothing was found. In the end, I’m very sorry to say, she didn’t help us at all.” The Mirror concluded the series with a selection of readers’ letters, almost all of them in defending Stokes, and a few of them attacking Paul Daniels for taking a strong stand against her.

But the strongest, most detailed articles we’ve seen appeared in the Mail on Sunday on April 20 and 27, 1986, and were the work of journalists John Dale and Richard Holliday, the former of whom was also co-author of a three- part series on Uri Geller for the same newspaper.

Dale and Holliday investigated six of her most widely publicized cases. These were: the Yorkshire Ripper, the case of a boy found dead in the Bronx, two Lancashire murder cases, the New Zealand case of Mona Blades, the Baltimore disappearance of Jamie Griffin, and the Los Angeles investigation of the murder of Joe Weiss. In most of these cases, police officers told the reporters that Stokes gave them either no new information or information that was subsequently proved to be wrong. In the remaining cases, the Lancashire police disclaimed any knowledge of Doris Stokes’ having been involved in any way in the investigation, and the LA police told the reporters that they had never spoken with her.

Reporters Dale and Holiday concluded the first of the articles: “This year her books will once again top the non-fiction lists. After examining the evidence, we have found many reasons why some stories, at least, should be reclassified as fiction.”

Thanks to all who sent in clippings and information, from which this brief composite was compiled.

From the archives: The monstrous myth at Loch Ness

Steuart Campbell
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From the archives: The monstrous myth at Loch Ness

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 3, from 1987.

In 1933 the world learned of the belief that ‘a fearsome-looking monster’ had ‘for generations’ inhabited Loch Ness. In fact nearly every Highland lake (sic) was believed to be inhabited by a ‘water kelpie’, an evil spirit which lured travellers to their death by drowning. But now the spirit was incarnated in what the local water bailiff likened to a plesiosaur! Furthermore it had been seen cruising at the surface making a huge wash. Surely this was the zoological find of the century, or any century?

It is curious therefore that in the subsequent half-century, and despite strenuous efforts by individuals and teams, no reliable evidence for the Monster’s existence has appeared. Nessie buffs point to the existence of numerous photographs, taken both above and below water, a famous cine film and many sonar contacts as proof of Nessie’s existence. However, when subjected to close scrutiny, all this so-called evidence crumbles to dust. It can be shown that all the still photographs are either hoaxes or pictures of conventional objects or phenomena, sometimes both. For example, the famous ‘Surgeon’s Photograph’, taken in 1934, which is repeatedly used to illustrate books and articles (as the definitive picture), shows an object less than one metre high about 30m from the camera. Furthermore its resemblance to a picture of the tail of an otter as it dives leads to the conclusion that that is probably the explanation. Most of the above-water still pictures are hoaxes, and they are still appearing!

It is less easy to fake cine film and buffs have long exhibited Tim Dinsdale’s 1960 film as prime evidence. Their case was strengthened in 1966 when the RAF’s photographic interpretation unit (JARIC) unofficially endorsed the film; they concluded that it probably shows an animate object. This endorsement went unchallenged until last year when I showed that JARIC had made a fundamental error. They had assumed that the film was taken as one continuous sequence and their conclusion was based solely on the fact that the unknown blob was moving too fast for it to be a powered fishing dinghy (the only alternative explanation). However, Dinsdale had exposed the film in short bursts and had to stop twice to wind the camera’s clockwork motor. Thus JARIC were working to a contracted time-scale; when the correct time-scale is restored the object is found to move exactly at the speed of a powered dinghy. There is no other evidence inconsistent with the conclusion that this is what the film shows, and there is anecdotal evidence that such a dinghy did cross Loch Ness at the time the film was taken.

The most recent cine film is that taken by Gwen Smith in 1977, when she and her husband saw a strange pole-like object rise and fall several times about 160m away along the shore opposite Urquhart Castle. Coincidentally two Yorkshire schoolboys were in the same area, conducting (so they claimed) a school project. It is now suspected that the boys had rigged their ‘fishing line’ so that it could raise or lower a log or post out in the water. In that event the Smiths were the victims of an ingenious hoax.

Because the results of above-water photography were so disappointing many had high expectations of the underwater flash photography undertaken by the Academy of Applied Science (AAS) from New England. In 1972 this organization obtained two pictures which, when subjected to computer processing, appeared to show the diamond-shaped limb of a large creature. It is alleged that, at the same time, sonar showed the presence of large animals near the camera (although no evidence for simultaneity has been published). Doubt has since been cast on the legitimacy of these pictures; there is evidence that the primary enhancements do not show such limbs and the AAS has not fully detailed the process by which the pictures were obtained. The original (unenhanced) pictures appear to show debris on the bottom of Urquhart Bay caught in the flash as the camera and its support boat drifted shorewards.

It is certain that further pictures obtained by the AAS in 1975 do show bottom debris. Subsequent investigation has shown that the camera rig must have touched bottom and rolled as its support boat was driven onshore by the wind. The AAS has not published computer enhancements of these pictures. Significantly, when the AAS deployed their cameras on a secure mounting they obtained negative results.

A coloured statue of "Nessie" the sea monster in a lake at the Nessie Museum, with green trees behind. She looks like a plesiosaur (ancient and extinct aquatic reptile).
Nessie Museum’s statue of the ‘Monster’. StaraBlazkova at Czech Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sonar is a tool that ought to be able to locate Nessie. However, the use of sonar in lakes is fraught with problems that do not arise in the open sea. The steep underwater walls of Loch Ness produce anomalous echoes and the sonar side-lobes produce signals that mingle with the main-lobe signal. Nor have all the operators been expert with the apparatus they have used. The crews of several fishing boats have thought they had detected Nessie and, on one occasion, a sonar hoax was perpetrated.

In 1972 the AAS thought that they had caught Nessie in a sonar beam aimed horizontally towards the boat carrying their camera rig. In fact the ‘Monster’ trace was caused by the boat itself, and an overlaid second-time return from the bottom!

Much was made in 1968 of the results obtained by the University of Birmingham, who were testing a digital sonar system. Too late they discovered that some anomalous returns (which they had light-heartedly suggested might be from Nessie) were due to strong refraction of the sound waves as they passed through the thermocline (the layer of water with a large temperature lapse between the warm epilimnion and the cold hypolimnion). The bottom of the lake was appearing in mid water!

Not only have photography and sonar produced no evidence for Nessie, searches of the bottom of the lake have found no remains of the many creatures who must have died there in the last ten thousand years.

The simplest explanation for the repeated failure to obtain evidence for Nessie is that she does not exist! That would also explain why the determined efforts of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau brought no success. In fact, in 1962 a team of students from the University of Cambridge demonstrated that no monsters live in Loch Ness. Using several boats they ‘swept’ the lake from end to end with a sonar ‘curtain’ that either had to record monsters as it passed or force them to one end where they could be discovered. Nothing was found.

But if Nessie does not exist what is the cause of the repeated eyewitness reports? Mny of the reports are of a creature which closely resembles an otter. Since otters do inhabit Loch Ness and since they are rarely seen it may be concluded that the animals observed were indeed otters. They were more numerous before The Second World War, when most of these reports were made. Today the increased activity around the lake must inhibit them. In one case the witness mistook a young deer for the Monster (leading to the belief that the latter has horns).

However, another phenomenon is responsible for the reports which convince people that a monstrous creature lives in Loch Ness. Because the lake is part of the Caledonian Canal it is used by large and powerful vessels which create strong wakes. These wakes travel great distances when the surface is calm and they can be reflected by the steep shores of the lake so that, behind the vessel, they break as they encounter the vessel’s screw wake. In the 1930s the crews of several vessels reported being followed by what they thought was an enormous creature. Alternatively two opposing reflections can meet to produce interference effects (alternate humps and dips) which must travel parallel to the course of the vessel, although a long way behind. Moreover the two wakes pass through the interference enhanced as if they were the result and not the cause of the disturbance. Observers can be forgiven for mistaking this phenomenon for Nessie. Before the growth of road transport, especially in the ’30s, there was much more traffic by water and this certainly must have led to the growth of the myth. Wakes and disturbances will also break in the shallows of Loch Ness where observers often see a sudden ‘inexplicable’ upsurge of water. With no vessel in sight it is understandable that such upsurges will be interpreted as the Monster.

Once it was generally believed that a large unknown aquatic species lived in Loch Ness it was inevitable that reports of such a creature would be received. Such reports then reinforced the myth guaranteeing further reports. Ignorant of the tricks that Loch Ness can play observers under the influence of the myth are bound to see Nessie in every anomalous stimulus. It is even likely that reports of monster in other Scottish lakes, and in lakes in other parts of the world, have been generated by the Loch Ness myth. Loch Ness has not spawned a Monster but it has spawned a monstrous myth.

The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence by Steuart Campbell was published by Aquarian Press.

From the archives: Tolerating continued uncertainty – leaving cases unexplained

Peter O'Hara
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From the archives: Tolerating continued uncertainty – leaving cases unexplained

This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 1, Issue 1, from 1987.

In the ordinary courses of our lives, we come across new facts and later find explanations for them. In childhood, we deal with simple things, the sort we take for granted as adults. For example, when you turn on the hot water tap, the first part of the water is cold. You later learn that only in the large hot water cylinder can water be kept hot for long periods: the water in the pipe supplying the tap gets cold.

I can recall in my youth a bathroom where the cold tap produced hot water at the start. I felt sure that the hot and cold pipes were mixed up in some way. I learned the true explanation from an adult: there was no cross-connection of water between the hot and cold systems, and the taps were correctly marked. I am not giving the full explanation now because I want readers to experience the position of knowing about an unusual event, but not knowing the explanation. (Of course some readers will be able to work it out for themselves.) This will help with the problem of explaining. (or not being able to explain) more serious events in the rest of the article.

Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) came to public prominence after 1945, especially in the USA. An object seen in the sky is initially called a UFO when a person sees it and cannot for the moment say what it is. Many of the surveys on UFOs start by collecting such eyewitness accounts. Then they interview other witnesses to the same events. They also check. for aircraft and spacecraft with the appropriate sources, and they review weather and astronomical records for the times of the sightings. By these means, most of the objects originally dubbed “UFOs” have been identified as aircraft. spacecraft, planets, ball lightning, ground lights, etc.

One such survey, the US Air Force Project Blue Book, found that 94% of UFO reports could be thus explained. The remaining 6% of cases are “unexplained.” For some people that is all there is to be said. But there are others who fell this residual 6% are “true UFOs” – that they cannot be explained by anything in my list above but have another explanation – perhaps that they are craft from distant planets paying us fleeting visits. However, this is not because of any physical evidence left behind on Earth and available for examination. Rather, it is a jump into the unknown, as I hope to show in my next example.

When a person dies, the cause of death is officially registered. In peacetime the vast majority of deaths are from natural causes, and by a doctor who has seen the person before death can certify the cause. The remaining cases must be investigated by police and pathologists. Such deaths may be from natural causes (not seen before death by a doctor), murder, suicide, or accident. The post-mortem result or the circumstances of the death generally put it clearly into one particular category.

However, some deaths resist categorization. A body is pulled out after a week or two in the sea, and “marine digestion” has removed the facial features so that the person cannot be recognised. The amount of water in the body makes it reasonable to suppose that the person drowned, but did he or she fall in by accident, or throw him – or herself in, or was he or she pushed? So, one out of every eight thousand deaths in Dublin City cannot be put into one “unexplained cases” is either murder, or accident, or suicide, or due to natural causes, only we haven’t enough information to decide which. The police may feel that one case was a murder. The relatives of the dead person may feel it was an accident, while the doctor privately feels it was a suicide. Nobody makes up a fifth category to put them into. People put up with the uncertainty here.

We humans feel uncomfortable with an unexplained event. Some of us, in some circumstances, find such a puzzle so difficult that we make a jump, as with the residual 6% of UFO claims. But if we were to follow the example of the death of indeterminate cause, we would say that these sightings were “either aircraft. Or comets, or planets, or rockets, etc, but we don’t know which.”

For those who were puzzled by the cold tap producing hot water, its pipe lay alongside a long run of hot pipe, and was thus warmed up. After this section of water came out, the cold tap was really cold.

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