In 1974, Uri Geller sat in a room with some very respectable scientists. It was part of a laboratory at Stanford Research Institute, and Geller's paranormal abilities were being tested by physicists. During most of the formal tests, he was isolated in an electrically shielded room, while somebody outside drew something on a piece of paper. Despite being unable to see the drawing, or even know who was drawing it, Geller managed to draw an almost exact duplicate.

The experiments, which included several trials like this, were reported in Nature, and the authors were quite clear that this was an attempt ‘to resolve…whether a certain class of paranormal phenomena exist’. Naturally, this required the exclusion of ordinary explanations, so ‘we conducted our experiments with sufficient control, utilizing visual acoustic and electrical shielding, to ensure that all conventional paths of sensory input were blocked’. Whether such measures were ‘sufficient’, of course, depended upon their competence to assess what was sufficient, but they explained that they had investigated the ability before, carried out pilot studies, and both their knowledge of the literature and their observations led them to conclude that ‘such abilities can be studied in laboratory conditions’. Such abilities were compatible with scientific investigation, amenable to ‘analysis and hypothesis in the forms with which we are familiar in scientific study’.