“I used a scientific facility.”
“You subjected a woman with a verified formaldehyde allergy to the chemicals in a lab. She was, in your words, demonstrably uncomfortable.’ You cite fear of failure. Maybe it was because her mucous membranes were swelling up and her stomach was turning over. She still did better than 50 percent on the aura readings.”
“I will not redo my research. And as for the interviews and confrontations—I can’t just throw them out. They’re what gives the article punch. I will not rewrite it.”
“Fine. Then sell it to a cult-basher. I won’t print it.” He tossed the manuscript to the edge of his desk.
“Fine. Someone else will.”
“I’ve no doubt. As I said, it’s well-written.”
She snatched up the article and her notebook and tucked both under one arm. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re suited to editing a skeptical journal. Maybe the National Tattler would be more your style. Or maybe the UFO Times.” She turned and headed for the door.
Oh, great he thought. This ought to be good for about three days of silence.
“I’ll talk to you again in about a week… if you’re lucky,” she said, and was gone.
(August 20, 1998—Interview: Dr. Petra Genoa, Ph.D., conducted by Kenneth Shaw of the Skeptical Review. Subject: precognitive experiences.)
SR: Would you call yourself a true believer?
PG: A true believer? In what?
SR: In psychic phenomena.
PG: That’s an awfully broad area. Could you be more specific?
SR: Alright. Extra-sensory perception. PG: If by that you mean do I believe there are more than five senses—yes. SR: Would you call yourself a psychic? PG: Would you call yourself a dreamer? SR: Excuse me?
PG: Sometimes you dream. Does that mean you define yourself as a dreamer? SR: I see your point; but do you believe you have psychic powers?
PG: Now there’s a loaded term: powers. I believe I have experienced extra-sensory awareness. I don’t know if I can lay claim to powers.
SR: What sort of experiences are we talking about?
PG: Knowing something was going to happen in advance, for example.
SR: Precognition?
PG: (nodding) Yes, that’s a fairly precise term.
SR: And you’ve experienced this often? PG: More often than most people I’ve interviewed, yes. I have maybe, oh, one or two episodes per month (laughing). I seem to have them most often when I’m ovulating.
SR: Seriously?
PG: Seriously.
SR: Describe a precognitive episode for me.
PG: The first one that really got my attention was the day of my high-school graduation. I was sitting there, during the ceremony, when f had this sudden conviction that the girl sitting next to me—a close friend—was going to lose her father that night.
SR: It just came out of the blue, then? You weren’t thinking about your friend?
PG: No, I wasn’t. And I felt horribly guilty. I mean, what a thought to have about a friend’s father! I almost said something, but—good God—what do you say? “Gosh, Rose, I just had the weirdest thought…”
SR: What happened?
PG: Her father was killed in a car wreck on the way to the graduation. I remember the look on her face when she realized he was late. She kept glancing out the door, while I sat there and just about peed in my pants in anguish.
SR: And that was the first time you had that awareness?
PG: No. That was when I realized… suspected I had some sort of… sensitivity. You see, before, it was always positive. I’d get the sudden feeling that I’d win a tennis match or an essay contest or receive an unexpected present or get a call from someone I hadn’t heard from for a long time. That was the first time I couldn’t explain it away as wishful thinking.
SR: The dark side of ESP.
PG: You could say that.
SR: Doesn’t your belief in ESP conflict with your position as a professor of psychology?
PG: Now, I happen to know that you’re a philosophical theist. Doesn’t your belief in a deity conflict with your position as the editor of the Skeptical Review?
SR: I’m not against belief, just ignorant belief.
PG: Can’t argue with that.
SR: To what do you attribute your precognitive experiences?
PG: I don’t know. I tend to think it’s a sense we have, or a talent, maybe, that develops or fails to develop just like any other.
SR: Why don’t I have it?
PG: Can you sing?
SR: What? Not really.
PG: Me neither. But I know many people who can. If they can sing…
SR: OK. But isn’t it more like sight or smell?
PG: I don’t know. Is it? Or is it like the ability to make music or write… or conduct interviews? What makes one person a brilliant performer and another totally graceless? People ask me to explain my awareness. But how do you explain that sort of thing? How do you explain Mozart’s musicality? The man pulled symphonies right out of his head and put them on paper—every note right the first time. You suggest it’s like sight. Fine. We can explain blindness, even if we can’t always cure it. We’ve yet to explain Mozart.
SR: Would you be willing to have your abilities tested under controlled scientific conditions?
PG: Willing, certainly. But you see, I’m a skeptic, too. I’m skeptical about my own ability to be precognitive on demand—mine or anyone else’s. I’ve never been able to sit down and meditate my way to precognition. It’s like trying to pull in my favorite radio station; sometimes it comes in clear as a bell—sometimes it’s pure static. And it’s subjective as hell. I don’t believe it when someone walks up to me and says, ‘I see auras.’ I’ve personally never seen one.
SR: But you have foretold the future.
PG: Don’t put words in my mouth. I’ve had brief, uncontrollable precognitive episodes. Like… like sneezes. Can you sneeze on command?
SR: If someone waved ragweed under my nose, maybe. So, you don’t believe ESP can be scientifically verified?
PG: I’m not sure. Maybe someday we’ll be able to set up the right conditions or ask the right questions or take the right measurements. So far, we haven’t been able to. No psychic ragweed, I guess.
SR: Some people are of the opinion that if you can’t measure something scientifically, it doesn’t exist.
PG: But doesn’t that call into question the existence of a lot of things we take for granted? Things that are critical to the functioning of our society?
SR: Such as?
PG: Well, at the risk of sounding smarmy—love, truth, trust, honor, loyalty—that sort of thing. Even musical or artistic talent.