Uri Geller

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There is a broader, perhaps slightly less biased, article on Wikipedia about Uri Geller

Uri Geller is an Israeli magician and mentalist who has made his career for the last forty years posing as a psychic, despite having been effectively discredited in 1974 in an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (Geller failed to bend spoons that Carson, (an amateur magician in his own right), had chosen beforehand and that Geller did not have access to.^[1] He was a focus of much paranormal research during the Human Potential movement^[2] of the 1970s, including a well-known study at the Stanford Research Institute that claimed to validate his powers. Geller is notoriously litigious, and has on many occasions attempted to use this study (considered flawed at best by experts on magic and pathological science) as a cudgel in court against his opponents. Despite this, Geller has lost in court on a number of occasions.

It has been commented by some, including skeptical writer Martin Gardner (who is well-trained in magical techniques), that Geller's magic is rather amateurish and mediocre, and that his entire reputation rests on the assertion of psychic powers, allowing him an out if a trick fails, something that happens often in the presence of a skeptical audience. Geller has of late had a career as a reality TV star, being embarrassed on his Israeli TV show "The Successor" for getting caught using a fake finger gimmick to rig a "psychic" demonstration, and later being embarrased on the American version, NBC's "Phenomenon", when co-judge (and legitimate magician) Criss Angel called out both Geller and a contestant claiming psychic abilities with a sealed envelope, the contents of which neither would attempt to divine.^[3]

Geller's early career has been extensively documented in the skeptical literature, particularly Martin Gardner's Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus, James Randi's Flim-Flam! and The Truth About Uri Geller, and William Poundstone's Big Secrets. In recent times, Geller has become sort of a professional hanger-on, associating with credulous celebrities (including Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and, at one point, Michael Jackson), as well as investing in soccer teams in his adopted home of the United Kingdom and running them into the ground.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ http://www.metafilter.com/63568/Uri-Geller-on-Johnny-Carsons-Tonight-Show
2. ↑ See the article at wikipedia.
3. ↑ The envelope was later, according to James Randi in a November 2007 blog entry, revealed to contain the numbers "911", a swipe against psychic claims of being able to predict the future.