Uri Geller and the reception of parapsychology in the 1970s

TL;DR

This thesis argues that the controversy over SRI’s 1974 *Nature* paper on Uri Geller marked a shift in how skeptical scientists treated parapsychology—from an incipient, flawed science to pseudoscience—and helped produce CSICOP. It attributes that shift to fears that Geller’s fame and the 1970s occult revival were lending scientific legitimacy to irrationalism.

Key findings

• Targ and Puthoff’s October 1974 *Nature* article claimed remote viewing; in the Geller tests, Geller guessed the showing face of a die correctly 8 out of 10 times, passing on 2 trials, and in one drawing-matching case judges matched images with only a 1 in 300,000,000 probability of chance. Their tests did not confirm Geller’s psychokinetic spoon-bending under adequately controlled conditions.
• Critics responded with boundary-work rather than constructive methodological critique: *Nature* printed only two letters in response, by J.H. Fremlin and Martin Raff, which dismissed the paper as irrationalism; John Wheeler called for the Parapsychological Association to be disaffiliated from the AAAS.
• The controversy contributed directly to the founding of CSICOP: James Randi and Ray Hyman met Martin Gardner in 1973, forming Sanity in Research, which with Paul Kurtz and Marcello Truzzi became CSICOP, the first major U.S. skeptical organization.
• The paper links the reaction to the “occult revival”: U.S. newspapers running astrology columns rose from 100 to more than 1,200 of 1,750 dailies; occult paperbacks in print rose from 169 in 1968 to 519 in 1969; over 2 million Ouija Boards were sold in 1967. A 1971 *New Scientist* poll found 25% thought ESP an established fact and 42% a likely possibility; a 1972 *Sunday Times* poll found 26% and 47%, respectively, with 75% believing some truth in astrology.

Methods

• Historical case study of the controversy around Targ and Puthoff’s SRI experiments and Uri Geller, drawing on scientific and popular press sources such as *Nature*, *New Scientist*, *Science*, *TIME*, *The New York Times*, plus organizational retrospectives and secondary literature.
• Analysis uses Thomas Gieryn’s “boundary-work” and Michael Gordin’s historicist approach to pseudoscience/demarcation, rather than evaluating parapsychology against Popperian or Kuhnian criteria.
• The thesis measures parapsychology’s acceptance through appearances in major cross-disciplinary journals, institutional support and funding, and reception in the scientific press.

Limitations

• The paper states that it is hard to say how much increased sales figures, sensationalized news stories, and methodologically weak surveys indicate about the actual extent and strength of occult belief; it notes Marcello Truzzi’s view that many engaged with the occult casually, and that the occult revival may not have been the monolithic cultural force media reports suggested.
• The paper states that accounts like David Kaiser’s do not pay adequate attention to the substantial, organized resistance to incorporating New Age ideas into science, which this thesis aims to address.
• Evident from the text: the argument is a qualitative historical interpretation, with causal claims about critics’ fears often phrased as “probably influenced,” and it relies on published discourse and secondary sources rather than systematic sampling or coding of press coverage.