Peter R. Phillips
Randi sent two young magicians, Steven Shaw and Michael Edwards, to Phillips's lab, where they pretended to possess psychokinetic abilities and simulated feats like spoon bending using sleight of hand.
Peter R. Phillips was the director of the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research at Washington University. His laboratory became the target of a hoax orchestrated by magician James Randi in 19831.
Randi sent two young magicians, Steven Shaw and Michael Edwards, to Phillips's lab, where they pretended to possess psychokinetic abilities and simulated feats like spoon bending using sleight of hand. Randi sent twenty-two letters to Phillips, warning him that spoon bending could easily be faked by skilled magicians and offering methods to catch those who were cheating, but Phillips never took him up on his offer1.
Phillips dismissed Shaw and Edwards from the lab at one point, but rehired them months later. When Randi exposed the hoax, Phillips stated that he had trusted the research subjects and that "there are ethical issues involved" in lying to scientists1.
Sources
- Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩
Local network
Search or select an entry to see how it connects to Peter R. Phillips.
An interactive diagram of Peter R. Phillips's connections, drawn on a canvas and explored with a pointer. The same connections are listed as links in the Connected and Mentioned-in sections below.
How to read the graph
- People
- Organizations
- Programs
- Events
- Concepts
- Places
Larger = more mentions across the vault.
A link from one entry to another.
A name mentioned in an entry without a direct link. Toggle these with “Inferred”.
Gold rings mark entries mentioned across several clusters.
Orange rings mark your selection.