Subject: Re: Aural photography
From: [email-masked] (Mark S. Bilk)
Date: Mon, 30 May 1994 07:28:43 GMT
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage,sci.engr.lighting,alt.meditation,sci.skeptic,sci.med.psychobiology,bionet.plants,bionet.general,alt.binaries.pictures.d,alt.devilbunnies

In article <[email-masked]>,
James J. Lippard <[email-masked]> wrote:
>In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Rohan Hawthorne 61-89-895442) writes...
>:I am looking for any information on Aural photography.  I know they have

>Kirlian photography.

>It's not the biologists who have the relevant expertise, but the
>physicists.  You can get nice Kirlian photographs of auras around
>non-biological objects, such as coins, washers, and paper clips. See
>
>   Arleen J. Watkins and William S. Bickel, "A Study of the Kirlian
>      Effect," _Skeptical Inquirer_ vol. 10, no. 3, Spring 1986,
>      pp. 244-257.
>   Arleen J. Watkins and William S. Bickel, "The Kirlian Technique:
>      Controlling the Wild Cards," _Skeptical Inquirer_ vol. 13,
>      no. 2, Winter 1989, pp. 172-184. 
>
>All of your questions are answered in those two articles.

It might be advisable to get a second opinion.  CSICOP has a 
fundamentalist belief in the non-existence of psychic phenomena.
It also does not permit any dissenting views to be published in 
its journal.  The combination of these two factors insures that it
cannot be a source of objective information.  Quoting from _The New 
Inquisition_, by Robert Anton Wilson:

  ...Dennis Rawlins, a Harvard physics graduate who knows CSICOP from the
  inside.  He was a co-founder in 1976, served on its Executive Council
  from 1976 to 1979 and was Associate Editor of their journal (originally
  the _Zetetic_, now the Skeptical Inquirer) from 1976 to 1980. ...
  
  Rawlins discovered in early 1977 that the first scientific study
  performed by CSICOP was, to put it mildly, erroneous.
  
  [Wilson gives a page of details and goes on to describe how the CSICOP
  Executive Council censored an article by Rawlins about this matter in
  the journal, and stopped a press conference in which Rawlins tried to
  speak out about it.]
  
  The executive council then met in closed session, with all members 
  but Rawlins, and voted him out of the executive.  They allowed him to
  continue as Associate Editor of their journal, however, and he went on
  struggling to get the correction published for another year.  In 1980, he
  resigned from CSICOP in total disillusionment.
  
  To summarize: CSICOP published a scientifically false report.  They 
  blocked all attempts by a member of their own Executive Council to
  inform members that the report was false.  When their own selected
  referees agreed the report was false, they suppressed the referees'
  report.*
  
Wilson then describes how Prof. Marcello Truzzi, editor of the CSICOP
journal, resigned or was ejected from the organization because he wanted
to print both sides of debates.  Apparently, CSICOP does not permit those
whose work it criticizes to answer the criticism in their journal.

  [Truzzi] says CSICOP isn't skeptical at all in the true meaning of that
  word but is "an advocacy body upholding orthodox establishment views."
  
Truzzi started his own journal in which he allows open debate.

* _The New Inquisition_, Robert Anton Wilson, 1986, ISBN 0-941404-49-8,
  Falcon Press, Phoenix AZ, $9.95.  (pp. 45-47)