Talk:Spoon bending

Does anyone have any experience with "spoon bending parties"? I've never been to one, but they're described as large gatherings in which nearly everyone ends up bending flatware. From what I've read, participants do touch the spoons and forks to bend them, but can do things like bend the bowl of a spoon in half or twist a handle as if it were a piece of string.

iguana_nirvana14 19:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Michael Crichton talks about going to such a party in his auto-biography (Travels), and there's a number of net sites that describe the same thing. All of the spoon bending debunking sites, however, simply make their case against Uri Geller and leave it a that. --Jwanders 19:03, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Penn and Teller, on their series "Bullshit!", debunked spoon bending parties. — Phil Welch 19:38, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Oh, cool. Could you elaborate on that a bit? What did Penn and Teller say? —Jwanders 11:45, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I d/led and watched the episode after reading this, and it is a stretch to say that anything was debunked. They showed a few seconds of footage of people at a party bending spoons by obvious force, implied that that is how it is always done, and left it at that. No one was shown claiming that they bent their spoon without force. No explanation was offered for why so many seemingly reliable people, like Crichton, do claim so. Not even a dulcet "false recall" or "hightened suggestibility", but a simple mute snubbing. And I find that the net is similary silent. Anyone have a good explanation (of a non- supernatural kind)? 217.132.48.59 21:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we should mention such things. Wikipedia is not the skeptics dictionary. We should provide both sides. There are many links on the net that talk about spoon bending parties and many people all over the world believe they are able to do it. We should at least mention this phenomona. If there are proper critiques list them, otherwise just mention it and move on. It's kind of disappointing just how much the whole fundamentalist materialist philosophy is biasing wikipedia. It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not, or whether penn and teller believe it or not. We should try to stay neutral and just present facts.

Article has been updated to include the theory of "actual" spoon bending, and links to how-to sites and the PK party website. keep those minds open and give bending a go!

Request for comment

Please take a look at Talk:Out of This World (card trick)#Request for comment. Bovlb 2005-07-06 04:42:02 (UTC)

NPOV

This article shouldn't be taking the view that spoon bending can only be done manually or as a trick. It should also allow for the possibility that Uri et al actually bend spoons with their minds, and that spoon bending is a psychic phenomenom (even though it isn't). - 00:44, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Heh, that's really funny! No, what really should be looked into is the rumour that the legendary japanese magician Dr. Sawa published the first known spoonbending effect in the english magic magazine "Abra" in the 60's, and that a young budding magician in Israel named Uri Geller subscribed to that magazine around that time. I have not checked out those rumours due to a lack of intrest, but that's how the rumour goes --TStone 22:50, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Rather, the article should allow that some people believe that spoons can be bend with the mind. That limits the absurdity that takes up unnecessary space. It may be possible that George Washington was actually cross-dressing woman. The lack of facts to that point is irrelevant under the theory that we should allow for all possibilities. There is a lack of facts supporting mental spoon bending. But we include that theory because it is a noticeable part of popular culture.

Anyone who comments about spoon bending being nonsense who hasn't actually been to a spoon bending party and seen what is going on is talking out of their hat.

I've collected a nice assortment of internet links about spoon bending from those who have been to spoon bending parties, including some very sober reports from skeptics and a newspaper article.Sdaconsulting 21:33, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

James Randi/NPOV

However the reports were met with skepticism by most scientists, and many reported performances were eventually exposed as tricks and frauds by professional stage magicians such as James Randi.

Two problems with that sentence: most scientists is an impossible claim, unless every scientist in the world has stated their opinion and more than 50% were skeptic. Also, the performances weren't exposed as tricks by Randi, etc. He merely suggested his own theories on how Uri Geller could have performed the spoon-bending.

Wikipedia is meant to be NPOV, but the second paragraph implies that Randi's opinion of Geller as a fraud is a proven fact. 172.162.155.129 00:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

```See Spoon bending and especially the photos and videos in external links. Fork-you.com is the coolest one. (Personally, just the thought of a critical scientist proving PK by the bending a spoon is scraping the bottom of the barrel). User:Kazuba 21 Oct 2006

The Experiment

```Thought experiment...Look at this way. Imagine you are the president of a university. Madonna writes a will giving you the decision of funding $5,000,000 of her money to only spoon bending research or medical research. Madonna croaks. Now which one do you chose? Are you prepared to make the choice? This is what it really comes down to, dollars and cents. It's your call. User:Kazuba 19 Oct 2006

Discovery Channel thing

A while back I saw a documentary about this on the Discovery Channel. At one point it featured a "school" of sorts with kids that were supposed to have some sort of psychic gift. They put the spoon in a plastic jar, closed the jar, then worked their magic remotely, without direct contact with the spoon. Then the jars were opened, with the spoon now bent. Of course there is always the possibility of a simple trick, in this case including the camera.

In another segment of this show, they also demonstrated (using thermal imaging) the apparent ability of a man to generate inordinate amounts of heat simply using his bare hands. He was even able to make wet towels create steam. There doesn't seem to be any way to dismiss that other than offering some explanation about conditioning the mind to learn how to control body temperature, which isn't *too* supernatural since the subconscious brain already does it (as with breathing or heart rate, and these can also be controlled, to varying extents). This segment also showed monks sleeping in freezing snow, wearing nothing but light robes (which did not even cover the entire body), and yet they were able to maintain a normal, warm body temperature, presumably through temperature control.

I wonder if these phenomena are related -- in holding and attempting to bend a spoon and "focus energy" on it, the person is actually learning how to adjust the temperature in his fingers, to the point where the metal becomes warm enough to be flexible (this would also depend on the strength and quality of the metal). And since metals are thermal conductors, the heat would transfer readily across the entire body of the spoon, not just the point of contact, so the person would be able to bend not only the neck of the spoon but in some cases the actual bowl (or more easily, the prongs of a fork) as has been claimed in some of these reports. Of course, if there is a scientific, biological principle of heat generation and transfer at work, it doesn't explain how the kids were able to bend spoons through a plastic jar. Perhaps magnetism has something to do with that.

At any rate, the sheer amount of documented evidence that this phenomenon does occur, and the outright freakiness of it, warrants research funding. This is one of those things where people (mostly Westerners) are justified in skepticism, but this is due mainly to certain biases in how Westerners approach science. It's a lot like acupuncture. Even many Western doctors acknowledge that it works, and there probably is a scientific explanation for it, but Western scientists are not motivated to find that explanation, relying instead on building their chemically-oriented knowledge of medicine and ignoring the possible role of electromagnetism and similar subtle realities that may affect the human body -- realities which will only become more poignant as we increase the number of invisible radio transmissions shooting around on a daily basis. Recently, Western doctors also widely accept that a person's psyche affects their physical health, something that they just as easily dismissed just a few decades ago, lacking better understanding of brain chemistry.

So I don't think that spoon bending is ultimately a supernatural phenomenon, simply one that has not been researched enough to have a solid scientific understanding. The fact that it freaks people out is simply indicative of our ignorance on the subject. Given that it could yield applications in medicine, I think it is perfectly deserving of research grants -- Madonna's or anyone else who cares to give it.