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How People Are Fooled by Ideomotor Action
Ray Hyman, Ph.D.
In 1992, I was hired by the state of Oregon as an expert witness
in a trial of four chiropractors who had been accused of using
a "Toftness-like device" in their practices. The "Toftness
Radiation Detector" was an appliance designed by a chiropractor
for diagnosing ailments. It consisted of a metal cylinder shaped
somewhat like a thick soup can. At one end was a lens; at the
other was a smooth plastic "rubbing plate." A handle
was attached perpendicular to the middle of the cylinder. In practice,
the operator would grasp the handle with one hand and place the
lens against the patient's spine. While moving the device along
the spine, the chiropractor would rub the fingers of his other
hand back and forth on the plastic rubbing plate. As long as the
lens was over a healthy part of the spine, the operator's fingers
would continue to slide freely across the plate.
At least that was the theory. According to Toftness, when the
lens came to a diseased part of the back, the operator's fingers
would encounter increased friction and start to "stick"
on the rubbing plate. The lens, he believed, was sensitive to
a very subtle form of radiation that was emitted by portions of
the spine that were in need of chiropractic manipulation. Toftness
conducted seminars to train chiropractors in the proper use of
his apparatus. He would then lease these devices to them for use
in their own offices.
In January 1982, the United States District Court in Wisconsin
issued "a permanent nationwide injunction against the manufacturing,
promoting, selling, leasing, distributing, shipping, delivering,
or using in any way any Toftness Radiation Detector or any article
or device that is substantially the same as, or employs the same
basic principles as, the Toftness Radiation Detector." [emphasis
added] The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
upheld this decision in 1984. Although the chiropractors who were
charged by the State of Oregon claimed to have abandoned the outlawed
Toftness device, prosecutors maintained that they were guilty
of using a Toftness-like device. Their particular derivative had
been designed by one of the defendants, also as an aid for spinal
diagnosis. It consisted of a block of wood with an embedded concave
plastic surface. This time, however, the "rubbing plate"
was placed on an adjacent horizontal surface, rather than being
part of the instrument that was in direct contact with the spine.
The chiropractor would use his left hand to palpate the patient's
spine while he moved the fingers of his right hand back and forth
across the plastic rubbing plate. In this slight variation on
Toftness' theme, the defendants claimed that whenever their left
hand contacted a problematic spot on a patient's spine, friction
would increase, causing the fingers of their right hand to "stick"
on the rubbing plate.
Despite these similarities, the Oregon chiropractors strongly
denied that theirs was a Toftness-like device. Although the chiropractor
who designed the Oregon rubbing plate had been trained by Toftness
and had previously used the Toftness Radiation Detector himself,
he claimed that he no longer believed that Toftness' instrument
detected radiation of any sort. In fact, he now believed that
the sticking of the fingers on the plate with both the Toftness
and the Oregon instruments was not triggered by any physical signal
at all. Instead, he argued that the sticking was a trained subliminal
response of the chiropractor, evoked unconsciously by his or her
accumulated experience in locating spinal problems. He claimed
that, although the visual and tactile signs of pathology obtained
from spinal palpation were often too weak to be consciously perceived
by a chiropractor, years of acquired expertise in spinal diagnosis
were stored in his or her unconscious. Supposedly, this expertise
could be brought to the surface with the aid of the rubbing plate.
A Video Demonstration
One of my tasks as a consultant and expert witness for the
State of Oregon was to produce a video tape to illustrate the
psychological principles that made the rubbing plate seem to work.
For this purpose, I used two groups of student volunteers. I met
with the first group and showed them the Oregon rubbing plate
which the Assistant District Attorney had loaned to me. I also
showed them a pendulum made from a ring suspended from a cord
and a pair of dowsing (or "divining") rods consisting
of two metal bars bent at right angles [1]. With one rod in each
hand, I first demonstrated how dowsing works by holding the rods
in front of me, aimed straight ahead and with their horizontal
arms parallel to each other and to the floor. I then slowly walked
about the room until the rods suddenly crossed one another. I
walked away from that spot and showed how the rods uncrossed and
became parallel again. I suggested that the place where the rods
had crossed must be near a source of flowing water, perhaps a
water pipe under the floor. I then requested that each of the
students try the rods. To their amazement, the rods crossed when
they walked over the spot I had indicated.
I then did a similar demonstration using the pendulum, before
turning to the rubbing plate. I explained that the rubbing plate
had been created by an Oregon doctor to amplify the sensitivity
of our perceptions. To show how, I spread some playing cards face
up on a table. I told the students that the red playing cards
reflected mainly light from the long end of the visual spectrum.
The black playing cards, on the other hand, reflected very little
light, but what they did reflect contained an equal amount of
radiation from all parts of the spectrum. Normally, I continued,
the human senses cannot detect the difference between these two
types of emission. However, by using the rubbing plate, we might
be able to enhance our sensitivity to these differences, I suggested.
I demonstrated this by passing my left hand back and forth, about
a foot above the face-up playing cards. Meanwhile, my right-hand
fingers were sliding back and forth across the surface of the
rubbing plate. My fingers glided smoothly over the plastic surface
whenever my hand was passing over a black card, but they would
always begin to "stick" whenever my left hand encountered
a red card.
I had each student try the experiment in turn. To their surprise,
their fingers would also "stick" whenever their other
hand was hovering over a red card. One of the students was from
Africa. She became terrified when her fingers seemed to stick
as her hand passed over a red card. She was convinced that this
was the work of the Devil. I had to spend some time trying to
reassure her that the sticking sensation was nothing but a normal,
unconscious psychological reaction of her own, not demonic powers
at work.
I did similar demonstrations for the second group of students.
However, this time I let them see my dowsing rods crossing at
a different arbitrarily chosen location in the room. Sure enough,
for these students, too, the rods crossed just at the spot where
mine had. Also, this time I told them that my fingers would stick
only when my left hand was over a black card. As you might guess,
for the second group, their fingers stuck only when their left
hand was over a black card.
I made this video to illustrate a simple, but important, point.
Under a variety of circumstances, our muscles will behave unconsciously
in accordance with an implanted expectation [2,3]. What makes
this simple fact so important is that we are not aware that we
ourselves are the source of the resulting action. This lack of
any sense of volition is common in many everyday actions as well
as reports of those responding to hypnotic suggestions [4]. The
latter report that their actions feel as though they are being
propelled by powers external to themselves. My demonstrations
with the divining rods had implanted the suggestion in each of
the onlookers that the rods would cross at a certain location.
When these students took the rods in their own hands and walked
over the place where they believed the water pipe to be, they
unconsciously made tiny muscle movements that caused the unstable
rods the cross. They emphatically denied that they had done anything
intentionally to make the rods move. Indeed, many insisted that
they could feel the rods moving of their own accord, driven by
some outside force.
The sticking response on the rubbing plate is even more compelling
in this regard. When the students see one hand over the card that
is expected to make their fingers stick on the rubbing pad, they
unconsciously press somewhat harder on the surface and/or change
the angle of their fingers slightly. This is sufficient to increase
the friction between their fingers and the rubbing surface. The
subjective experience for most students is eerie and they insist
that they are doing nothing on purpose to make the sticking occur.
Ideomotor Action
This "influence of suggestion in modifying and directing
muscular movement, independently of volition" was given the
label ideomotor action by the psychologist/physiologist William
B. Carpenter in 1852 [4]. Later the concept was more widely publicized
by the Harvard physician-turned-psychologist William James [5].
Carpenter wanted to show that a variety of currently popular phenomena
had conventional scientific explanations rather than the widely
believed supernatural ones. The phenomena he tackled included
dowsing ("water witching"), the magic pendulum, certain
aspects of mesmerism, spiritualists' "table turning,"
and Reichenbach's "Odylic force." Carpenter did not
question the reality of the phenomena, nor the honesty of the
people who were involved. He only disputed the explanation, arguing
that, "All the phenomena of the 'biologized' state, when
attentively examined, will be found to consist in the occupation
of the mind by the ideas which have been suggested to it, and
in the influence which these ideas exert upon the actions of the
body." Thus Carpenter invoked ideomotor action as a nonparanormal
explanation for various phenomena that were being credited to
new physical forces, spiritual intervention, or other supernatural
causes. He published many books and articles during the latter
half of the nineteenth century expounding his ideas about ideomotor
action [6,7].
William James [5] elaborated upon Carpenter's ideas, asserting
that ideomotor activity was the basic process underlying all volitional
behavior: "Wherever a movement unhesitatingly and immediately
follows upon the idea of it, we have ideomotor action. We are
then aware of nothing between the conception and the execution.
All sorts of neuromuscular responses come between, of course,
but we know absolutely nothing of them. We think the act, and
it is done; and that is all that introspection tells us of the
matter." James viewed ideomotor action not as a curiosity
but as "simply the normal process stripped of disguise."
James concluded that, "We may then lay it down for certain
that every [mental] representation of a movement awakens in some
degree the actual movement which is its object; and awakens it
in a maximum degree whenever it is not kept from so doing by an
antagonistic representation present simultaneously to the mind."
Modern brain researchers have produced data and theory that help
explain how quasi-independent modules in the brain can initiate
motor movements without necessarily engaging the "executive
module" that is responsible for our sense of self-awareness
and volition.
Probably the first major scientist to become concerned about
the mischief being created by ideomotor action, although he did
not know the concept by this name, was the French chemist Michel
Chevreul. Chevreul, who lived for one hundred three years, became
interested in the experiments of some of his fellow chemists around
the beginning of the nineteenth century. These colleagues were
using what was known as "the exploring pendulum" to
analyze chemical compounds.
The first recorded use of the exploring pendulum occurred around
371 C.E. A priest would bow over a plate, the edge of which was
marked with the letters of the alphabet. This "diviner"
or "oracle" would hold a ring, suspended from a thin
thread, over the center of the plate. A question would be put
to the priest. The movements of the ring would then be observed.
When the ring was set in motion, it would swing toward one of
the letters. This letter would be recorded; then the same process
would be used to select another letter. This would continue until
one or more words, which answered the question, would be generated.
In this, we see the origins of the modern Ouija board, used to
this day by occultists for divining purposes [8].
In the early nineteenth century, certain chemists were advocating
this method for analyzing the composition of substances. In 1808,
a Professor Gerboin of Strasbourg wrote an entire book on use
of the pendulum for chemical analysis [9]. As a budding scientist,
Chevreul was intrigued, but he remained skeptical. He was surprised,
however, to find that the pendulum worked as advertised when he
tried it over a dish of mercury. He carried out more tests, however.
To see if a physical force was responsible for the movement of
the pendulum, he placed a glass plate between the iron ring and
the mercury. To his surprise, the oscillations diminished and
then stopped. When he removed the glass plate, the pendulum movements
resumed. He next suspected that the pendulum moved because it
was difficult to hold his arm steady. When he rested his arm on
a support, the movements diminished but did not stop altogether.
Finally, Chevreul did what none of his predecessors had thought
of doing. He conducted the equivalent of what we would call a
double-blind trial. He blindfolded himself and then he had an
assistant interpose or remove the glass plate between the pendulum
and the mercury without his knowledge. Under these conditions,
nothing happened. Chevreul concluded, "So long as I believed
the movement possible, it took place; but after discovering the
cause I could not reproduce it." His experiments with the
pendulum show how easy it is "to mistake illusions for realities,
whenever we are confronted by phenomena in which the human sense-organs
are involved under conditions imperfectly analyzed." Chevreul
used this principle of expectant attention to account for the
phenomena of dowsing, movements of the exploring pendulum, and
the then current fad among spiritualists, table-turning.
Chevreul was one of France's most prestigious scientists by
the time he conducted these investigations. By the 1850s, table-turning
(also called table-tilting or table-rapping) had become the rage
among spiritualists, both in North America and in Europe. In a
typical session, a small group of persons, usually called "sitters,"
would sit around a table with their hands resting upon its top.
After an extended period of expectant waiting, a rap would be
heard or the table would tilt upon one leg. Sometimes the table
would sway and begin moving about the room, dragging the sitters
along. Occasionally, sitters would claim that the table actually
levitated off the floor. Table-turning was what first attracted
many prominent scientists to the investigation of psychic phenomena.
During the summer of 1853, several English scientists decided
to investigate this phenomenon. Contemporary theories attributed
table-turning to such things as electricity, magnetism, "attraction,"
the rotation of the earth, and Karl von Reichenbach's "Odylic
force." Electricity, which the public at that time considered
to be an occult and mystical force, was the most popular of these
explanations.
A committee of four medical men held seances in June 1853 to
investigate [10]. They discovered that the table did not move
when the sitters' attention was diverted; nor did it move when
they had not formed a common expectation about how the table should
move. The table would not move if half the sitters expected it
to move to the right and the other half expected it to move to
the left. "But," the panel commented, "when expectation
was allowed free play, and especially if the direction of the
probable movement was indicated beforehand, the table began to
rotate after a few minutes, although none of the sitters was conscious
of exercising any effort at all. The conclusion was formed that
the motion was due to muscular action, mostly exercised unconsciously."
The most publicized and carefully controlled study of table-turning
was reported by Michael Faraday in 1853. Faraday obtained the
cooperation of participants who he knew to be "very honorable"
and who were also "successful table-movers." He found
that the table would move in the expected direction, even when
just one subject was seated at the table. Faraday first looked
into the possibility that the movements were due to known forces
such as electricity or magnetism. He showed that sandpaper, millboard,
glue, glass, moist clay, tinfoil, cardboard, vulcanized rubber,
and wood did not interfere with the table's movements. From these
initial tests, he concluded that, "No form of experiment
or mode of observation that I could devise gave me the slightest
indication of any peculiar force. No attraction, or repulsion
. . . nor anything which could be referred to other than mere
mechanical pressure exerted inadvertently by the turner."
By then, Faraday suspected that his sitters were unconsciously
pushing the table in the desired direction. However, his sitters
firmly maintained that they were not the source of the table movements.
And, as already mentioned, Faraday was satisfied that his sitters
were "very honorable." So he devised an ingenious arrangement
to pin down the cause of the movement. He placed four or five
pieces of slippery cardboard, one on top of the other, upon the
table. The sheets were attached to one another by little pellets
of a soft cement. The bottommost sheet was attached to a piece
of sandpaper that rested against the table top. This stack of
cardboard sheets was approximately the size of the table top with
the topmost layer being slightly larger than the table top. The
edge of each layer in this cardboard sandwich slightly overlapped
the one below. To mark their original positions, Faraday drew
a pencil line across these exposed concentric borders of the cardboard
sheets, on their under surface. The stack of cardboard sheets
was secured to the table top by large rubber bands which insured
that when the table moved, the sheets would move with it. However,
the bands allowed sufficient play to permit the individual sheets
of cardboard to move somewhat independently of one another. The
sitter then placed his hands upon the surface of the top cardboard
layer and waited for the table to move in the direction previously
agreed upon. Faraday reasoned that if the table moved to the left,
and the source of the movement was the table and not the sitter,
the table would move first and drag the successive layers of cardboard
along with it, sequentially, from bottom to top, but with a slight
lag. If this were the case, the displaced pencil marks would reveal
a staggered line sloping outwards from the left to the right.
On the other hand, if the sitter was unwittingly moving the table,
then his hands would push the top cardboard to the left and the
remaining cardboards and the table would be dragged along successively,
from top to bottom. This would result in displacement of the pencil
marks in a staggered line sloping from right to left. Faraday
observed that, "It was easy to see by displacement of the
parts of the line that the hand had moved further from the table,
and that the latter had lagged behind -- that the hand, in fact,
had pushed the upper card to the left and that the under cards
and the table had followed and been dragged by it."
'It's Not the Same Thing!'
Faraday's report was sufficient to convince most scientists
that table-turning and related phenomena did not stem from new
physical forces or occult powers. Unfortunately, it inadvertently
had the opposite effect upon a few prominent scientists such as
Alfred Russel Wallace, the cofounder with Darwin of the theory
of evolution by natural selection. Wallace had his first encounter
with "the phenomena of Spiritualism" in the summer of
1865. He was seated with other sitters around a table. The table
behaved in ways that he was sure could not be entirely explained
by Faraday's findings and Carpenter's theory of ideomotor action.
Faraday's research only dealt with one of the many possible causes
of table movements. Indeed, in the original seances using tables,
the movements were caused not by ideomotor action but by various
cheating methods employed by fraudulent mediums and their accomplices.
In addition, many converts' testimonials were obtained under conditions
that tend to exaggerate normal human biases and result in sincere
but mistaken reports of things that never actually happened.
Wallace experienced gyrations of the table that he was sure
could not be handled by Faraday's findings. In his mind, this
showed that skeptical scientists such as Faraday cannot be trusted
to discover and fairly report upon truly revolutionary phenomena
[11,12]. This tendency to dismiss a skeptical investigation because
it cannot account for every instance of an alleged class of paranormal
phenomena is what I call loopholism -- the tendency to seek out
each and every loophole in a skeptical account as a way to protect
one's belief in a cherished supernatural or pseudoscientific claim.
Wallace was familiar with Faraday's report. However, he seized
upon the differences between the table's behavior in Faraday's
experiment and what he had witnessed to assert that what Faraday
had explained and what Wallace had experienced were not the same
thing.
Perhaps the most striking, and saddest, example of loopholism
is the story of the eminent American chemist, Robert Hare. Hare
was professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania
when he became involved with table-turning in 1853, at age 72.
According to Isaac Asimov [13], Hare was "one of the few
strictly American products who in those days could be considered
within hailing distance of the great European chemists."
When Faraday's report was published, the Philadelphia Inquirer
asked Hare for his comments. In his letter to the paper, on July
27, 1853, Hare firmly rejected the possibility that some exotic
force could produce movement of wooden tables. He wrote, "I
recommend to your attention, and that of others interested in
this hallucination, Faraday's observations and experiments, recently
published in some of our respectable newspapers. I entirely concur
in the conclusions of that distinguished expounder of Nature's
riddles."
A Mr. Amasa Holcombe and a Dr. Comstock replied to Hare's letter
and invited him to attend a table-turning session. Comstock appealed
to Hare's sense of fairness by asking him to observe and test
the phenomena for himself rather than rely upon Faraday's report.
Accepting the invitation, Hare attended a "circle" at
a private house. He describes his experience as follows:
Seated at a table with half a dozen persons, a hymn was sung
with religious zeal and solemnity. Soon afterwards tappings were
distinctly heard as if made beneath and against the table, which,
from the perfect stillness of every one of the party, could not
be attributed to any one among them. Apparently, the sounds were
such as could only be made with some hard instrument, or with
the ends of fingers aided by nails. I learned that simple queries
were answered by means of these manifestations; one tap being
considered as equivalent to a negative; two, to doubtful; and
three, to an affirmative. With the greatest apparent sincerity,
questions were put and answers taken and recorded, as if all concerned
considered them as coming from a rational though invisible agent.
Subsequently, two media sat down at a small table (drawer removed)
which, upon careful examination, I found present to my inspection
nothing but the surface of a bare board, on the under side as
well as upon the upper. Yet the taps were heard as before, seemingly
against the table. Even assuming the people by whom I was surrounded
to be capable of deception, and the feat to be due to jugglery,
it was still inexplicable. But manifestly I was in a company of
worthy people, who were themselves under a deception if these
sounds did not proceed from spiritual agency.
On a subsequent occasion, at the same house, I heard similar
tapping on a partition between two parlours. I opened the door
between the parlours, and passed that adjoining the one in which
I had been sitting. Nothing could be seen which could account
for the sounds.
Hare goes on to describe other phenomena that he could not
explain on the basis of normal agency. Although he dismisses the
possibility of trickery, Hare does not seem to realize that he
would find it just as difficult to detect the modus operandi behind
a magician's tricks as he would to find a normal explanation for
mediums' feats. In one instance, a skeptical lawyer friend indicated
that what they had just witnessed must be due either to legerdemain
on the part of the medium or to the agency of some invisible intelligent
being. Hare's response is revealing:
But assigning the result to legerdemain was altogether opposed
to my knowledge of his character. This gentleman, and the circle
to which he belonged, spent about three hours, twice or thrice
a week, in getting communications through the alphabet, by the
process to which the lines above mentioned were due. This would
not have taken place, had they not had implicit confidence, that
the information thus obtained proceeded from spirits.
In other words, Hare rejects the possibility of trickery not
because it was impossible but because people of "good character"
would not have wasted their time on this if it originated in trickery!
This same overconfidence in the belief that members of one's own
high social class could not engage in treachery protected the
often inept spy, Kim Philby, from being exposed for decades while
he stole British and American secrets for the USSR. It also shielded
the Soviet "mole," Aldrich Ames, who left numerous clues
as he systematically plundered the files of the CIA for years.
Hare describes his subsequent research into spirit communication
in his remarkable 1855 book which bore the equally remarkable
title, Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations,
Demonstrating the Existence of Spirits and their Communion with
Mortals. Doctrine of the Spirit World Respecting Heaven, Hell,
Morality, and God. Also, the Influence of Scripture on the Morals
of Christians [14]. Before undertaking his research into spiritualism,
Hare tells us he was a materialist and an atheist. He describes
in detail the various experiments he conducted that, to him, proved
the existence of the spirit world. He himself developed mediumistic
powers. During these experiments Hare claimed he had communicated
not only with the spirits of his departed relatives but also those
of George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Benjamin
Franklin, Lord Byron, and Isaac Newton.
Hare created a device "which, if spirits were actually
concerned in the phenomena, would enable them to manifest their
physical and intellectual power independently of control by any
medium." The Spiritscope, as he called it, consisted of a
pasteboard disk slightly larger than a foot in diameter. Around
its circumference he attached the letters of the alphabet in a
haphazard order. An arrow that swivelled at the center of the
disk was used to select letters one at a time by pointing toward
them. For his initial test, he had a medium sit opposite him at
a table. The disk was placed between Hare and the medium such
that Hare could see the letters and the movements of the arrow
but the medium could not. The medium sat with her hands on a surface
above the table which, through a system of pulleys, cords, and
weights, was attached to the arrow such that slight pressures
of her hand would cause it to move in various directions and point
to letters. Hare asked if any spirits were present. The arrow
pointed to the letter Y (indicating "Yes."). Hare next
asked the spirit to provide the initials of his name. The index
pointed to R and then to H. Hare asked, "My honored father?"
The index pointed to Y.
Hare carried out several more such experiments with similar
results. Apparently he never fully understood the key aspect of
Faraday's results -- that honest, intelligent people can unconsciously
engage in muscular activity that is consistent with their expectations.
Although the medium sitting opposite him could not see the letters
or the index on the disk, she was looking directly at Hare as
he was observing the behavior of the index. We now know from many
other investigations of ideomotor action -- such as Oskar Pfungst's
classic investigation of the allegedly intelligent horse, Clever
Hans [15] -- that people frequently give clues about what they
are thinking or observing without realizing it [16]. These subtle
clues can guide the behavior of other individuals -- or even animals.
Sometimes these individuals consciously detect these clues and
use them to deceive [27], but frequently the person being guided
by the clues is just as unconscious of them as is the individual
providing them. Hare eventually found he could work alone, without
the help of mediums, and still get meaningful communications from
his Spiritscope. He had no inkling that he could be source of
the messages being spelled out on his Spiritscope. Hare's example
shows again that intelligence, professional accomplishment, and
personal integrity offer no automatic protection against wishful
thinking and self-delusion. Hare's Spiritscope served as the model
for the later commercial development of the Ouija board -- another
striking example of the power of ideomotor action.
Radionics and Medical Radiesthesia
Perhaps in no other area has the seduction of ideomotor action
created as much mischief as it has in medical settings. Over the
past two centuries, many Europeans have used the term radiesthesia
to refer to the alleged force that underlies dowsing and the exploring
pendulum. The term is especially prevalent in connection with
medical and healing applications. Medical radiesthesia is used
to diagnose a variety of ailments -- often from a distance. During
this century, medical radiesthesia has often been merged with
what is called "radionics."
Radiesthesia remains very popular today among naturopaths [18].
Radionic devices are "black boxes" or similar contrivances
that proponents claim have the ability to harness energy to diagnose
and to heal illness. Today's practitioners of medical radiesthesia
and radionics trace their beginnings to contraptions created by
the San Francisco doctor Albert Abrams at the beginning of this
century [19].
Abrams had a conventional medical education, becoming professor
of pathology at what eventually became the Stanford University
School of Medicine. In 1910, Abrams claimed to discover that he
could diagnose a variety of diseases by tapping his fingers on
the patient's abdomen and listening for locations that yielded
a dull sound. He then claimed to diagnose a patient from a distance
by tapping on the belly of a proxy patient and using a drop of
dried blood. Later, finding that an autograph was sufficient,
he diagnosed by proxy numerous past celebrities, many of whom
he diagnosed with syphilis. Next, Abrams built "electronic"
boxes that would enable doctors to diagnose patients at a distance.
He went further and devised other gadgets that he leased to others
to treat patients at a distance. He required the others to sign
an oath that they would never open them. But when finally examined,
they revealed a functionless jumble of components. Abrams became
extremely wealthy and earned an American Medical Association title,
"the dean of the twentieth-century charlatans."
Some of his students had difficulty with the proxy percussion
method, so Abrams devised a substitute -- a glass rod drawn across
the proxy's abdomen. When the glass rod encountered an area corresponding
with the distant patient's disease, the friction would increase
and the rod would "stick." Note that this "sticking"
response resembles the modus operandi of the Toftness Radiation
Detector and the Oregon rubbing plate. Indeed, Abrams was the
grandfather of the use of the sticking response as the "output"
feature of many subsequent radionic devices.
"Dr." Ruth Drown replaced the abdomen with a rubbing
plate as the detection component in radionic devices. Mrs. Drown
and her various contraptions were the objects of well-publicized
quackery trials just before World War II. Like Abrams, Drown invented
gadgets to both diagnose and treat patients from a distance. During
the war, it became impossible to import Drown instruments into
England. George de la Warr was recruited to construct a copy of
Drown's apparatus for the British market, and developed grandiose
and aggressively marketed descendants of the rubbing plate in
England for 30 years. He added a variety of changes -- all relying
on a rubbing plate. He and his promoters claimed they had discovered
a new form of radiation that would revolutionize science and society.
In 1949, an inventor named Hieronymous obtained the first patent
for a radionic machine. Not surprisingly, its alleged ability
to detect unusual emanations depended upon a rubbing a plate and
the sticking response.
Facilitated Communication, Applied Kinesiology, and TCM
Devices whose seeming utility depends ultimately on a rubbing
plate or some related form of ideomotor action are still widely
promoted on the fringes of medical, agricultural, forensic, geological,
mining, and other applied fields. The preceding account provides
the barest outline of the extent to which theories, systems, and
machinery, dependent on some kind of ideomotor action, delude
intelligent, sincere people -- sellers and buyers alike. The following
are three contemporary instances of ideomotor action in medicine:
"facilitated communication," "applied kinesiology,"
and certain aspects of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
In "facilitated communication," [20] the "facilitator"
attempts to aid autistic children or those with other cognitive
and language deficits to communicate. The child is placed in front
of a keyboard, letters of which appear on a screen. The facilitator
physically steadies the child's finger as it presses the keys.
The child then types coherent sentences, apparently revealing
high level communication skills.
Advocates of the method claimed that the children possessed
high intelligence and considerable knowledge, but they could not
express thoughts in speech or writing. Facilitators helped reveal
the intellect within. Parents and many therapists were thrilled.
Several university professors who specialized in treatment of
mentally handicapped children claimed that the method was a revolution
in the understanding of autism. Scientists who called for controlled
experiments were rejected for showing lack of understanding and
sympathy. Facilitators maintained that they were not influencing
the children's letter selections.
Some patients, guided by facilitators, typed out messages claiming
that their parents or other caregivers had sexually abused them.
Reputations were ruined, alleged perpetrators were jailed, and
families were torn apart. Eventually, controlled, blinded experiments
isolated the information coming to the facilitator from that coming
to the patient, proving the source of the messages was the facilitator,
through ideomotor action. Another example is "applied kinesiology."
Legitimate kinesiology is the study of human motor performance
using the standard tools of biochemistry, physiology, biomechanics,
and psychology. "Applied kinesiology" purports to show
that isolated muscle group weakness can be used to diagnose allergies,
toxicities, and other disorders. Naturopaths and chiropractors
are among its most ardent practitioners. Such things as refined
foods, foods grown with chemical fertilizers, artificial food
colorants and preservatives, infinitesimal pesticide residues,
refined sugar, or even flourescent lighting are said to sap vital
energies and cause disease.
To measure susceptibility to such influences, practitioners
place their palms face down on the hand or forearm of the patient
who is told to exert an upward counter-force. The practitioner
then puts a small amount of the allegedly offensive substance
on the patient's tongue, skin, or nostrils, or turns on the fluorescent
lights. The patient loses strength instantaneously, the kinesiologist's
force easily overcomes the resistance, and the arm collapses.
Of course, both participants in this folie deux feel they maintain
a constant effort throughout. As the reader is no doubt aware
by now, such a demonstration proves nothing in the absence of
a placebo control and a double-blind administration. Knowing an
allegedly harmful substance has been applied, the practitioner
unconsciously presses a little harder and the patient unconsciously
resists a bit less.
Some years ago I participated in a test of applied kinesiology
at Dr. Wallace Sampson's medical office in Mountain View, California.
A team of chiropractors came to demonstrate the procedure. Several
physician observers and the chiropractors had agreed that chiropractors
would first be free to illustrate applied kinesiology in whatever
manner they chose. Afterward, we would try some double-blind tests
of their claims.
The chiropractors presented as their major example a demonstration
they believed showed that the human body could respond to the
difference between glucose (a "bad" sugar) and fructose
(a "good" sugar). The differential sensitivity was a
truism among "alternative healers," though there was
no scientific warrant for it. The chiropractors had volunteers
lie on their backs and raise one arm vertically. They then would
put a drop of glucose (in a solution of water) on the volunteer's
tongue. The chiropractor then tried to push the volunteer's upraised
arm down to a horizontal position while the volunteer tried to
resist. In almost every case, the volunteer could not resist.
The chiropractors stated the volunteer's body recognized glucose
as a "bad" sugar. After the volunteer's mouth was rinsed
out and a drop of fructose was placed on the tongue, the volunteer,
in just about every test, resisted movement to the horizontal
position. The body had recognized fructose as a "good"
sugar.
After lunch a nurse brought us a large number of test tubes,
each one coded with a secret number so that we could not tell
from the tubes which contained fructose and which contained glucose.
The nurse then left the room so that no one in the room during
the subsequent testing would consciously know which tubes contained
glucose and which fructose. The arm tests were repeated, but this
time they were double-blind -- neither the volunteer, the chiropractors,
nor the onlookers was aware of whether the solution being applied
to the volunteer's tongue was glucose or fructose. As in the morning
session, sometimes the volunteers were able to resist and other
times they were not. We recorded the code number of the solution
on each trial. Then the nurse returned with the key to the code.
When we determined which trials involved glucose and which involved
fructose, there was no connection between ability to resist and
whether the volunteer was given the "good" or the "bad"
sugar.
When these results were announced, the head chiropractor turned
to me and said, "You see, that is why we never do double-blind
testing anymore. It never works!" At first I thought he was
joking. It turned it out he was quite serious. Since he "knew"
that applied kinesiology works, and the best scientific method
shows that it does not work, then -- in his mind -- there must
be something wrong with the scientific method. This is both a
form of loopholism as well as an illustration of what I call the
plea for special dispensation. Many pseudo- and fringe-scientists
often react to the failure of science to confirm their prized
beliefs, not by gracefully accepting the possibility that they
were wrong, but by arguing that science is defective.
Another variation of this special dispensation was illustrated
by the reaction of a dowser that Barry Beyerstein and I tested
on an edition of the television program Scientific American Frontiers,
hosted by Alan Alda. The dowser had agreed in advance to a double-blind
test that he felt would prove his powers, but failed the test.
Mr. Alda felt some compassion for this dowser, and discussed the
failure with him. The dowser admitted he was disappointed but
he felt that the outcome simply revealed that science had not
yet matured to the point where it could cope with dowsing.
A final example of ideomotor mischief can be found in certain
practices of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). [21.22] The essence
of TCM is a scientifically undetectable vitalistic force called
Qi (pronounced "chee"). Disease, according to TCM, results
from an imbalance in the flow of the yin and yang forms of this
universal "energy" in one's body. Acupuncture, Chinese
herbs, massage, and so on, are supposed to restore the balance
of Qi and thereby restore health. TCM practitioners claim to diagnose
a wide variety of aliments using "pulse diagnosis" which
bears little resemblance to the way scientifically trained physicians
take a patient's pulse. The way in which the patient's hand is
held by TCM practitioners while taking the pulse provides fertile
ground for contamination by ideomotor activity (see the section
on "muscle reading" in Marks and Kammann). Not surprisingly,
there is little to no objective evidence that these procedures
have any diagnostic value. In a similar manner, TCM practitioners
who employ the discipline called "Qi Gong" assert that
they can direct their own Qi into others in order to achieve both
diagnosis and healing. When a Qi Gong master's Qi is supposedly
flowing, the "recipients" often feel suddenly energized
or experience paralyzing weakness. In an unblinded demonstration
shown on Bill Moyers' PBS series, Healing and the Mind, stalwart
students were suddenly seen to lose the strength to push over
their frail master. In properly blinded tests of Qi Gong masters,
when "recipients" do not know when Qi is or is not being
directed at them, such changes in how strong they perceive their
muscles to be fail to appear.
Some Common Features of Ideomotor-Based Systems
Although the effects of ideomotor action have been understood
for at least 150 years, the phenomenon remains surprisingly unknown,
even to scientists. To conclude, the following are some of the
psychological features that characterize nearly all the systems
and schemes that have bases in ideomotor action.
- Ideomotor action. To reiterate, all systems
using the rubbing plate, the dowsing rod, the exploring pendulum,
or related technique depend on an almost undetectable motor movement,
amplified into a more noticeable event. The impetus arises from
one's own subtle and unperceived expectations. Elaborate, grandiose
theories are then devised to explain the observed effects.
- Projection of the operator's actions to an external
force. This is one of key properties of ideomotor action.
Although the operator's own actions cause the fingers to stick,
the rod to move, or the pendulum to rotate in a given direction,
the operator attributes the cause onto an external force. Subjectively,
that is what it feels like. Lacking a sense of volition, one
credits unknown forces, radiations, or other external emanations.
- The cause of the action is attributed to forces new
to science and revolutionary in nature. This is implied
in the previous point. Not only is the cause attributed to an
external source, but each time the phenomenon is encountered
anew, those who have not read their history attribute it to a
force previously unknown.
- Delusions of grandeur. Not only do the proponents
insist that the cause is external, but they tend to see themselves
as revolutionary saviors of mankind. They claim to have discovered
new principles and forces, ones whose ramifications will transform
contemporary science, not to mention society as we know it.
- Delusions of persecution. Those who suffer
from delusions of grandeur frequently exhibit delusions of persecution.
Self-styled revolutionaries assert that orthodox scientists dismiss
discoverers of breakthroughs such as radionic devices and the
like merely out of envy, pig-headedness, conformism, or unwillingness
to give credit to brave outsiders who are not part of the scientific
establishment.
- To be forearmed Is to be disarmed. Proponents
of quack devices and procedures will often argue that they are
aware of ideomotor action and the role of expectancies. They
often assert that their awareness makes them immune from its
effects. Many dowsers now admit unconscious expectations can
affect the action of the divining rod. They assert that their
awareness prevents ideomotor action and allows expression of
the "true dowsing response." Unfortunately, the awareness
of ideomotor action does not make one immune from its expression.
- Self-sealing belief systems. Once the proponent
becomes convinced that his favorite system "works,"
then the psychological forces discussed by James Alcock come
into play. These self-serving biases serve to protect the belief
system from falsification. Loopholism is one way proponents protect
their beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Saying "It
is not the same thing" allows the believer to shield the
system. Alcock supplies more examples of this ability to distort,
forget, or ignore evidence. The true physician is aware of distortions
of one's own judgement, as well as those of pseudoscientific
competitors.
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