Houdini's book is great. Its title is A Magician among the Spirits.

Randi ... would not accept it if he saw someone levitate for real (just because he could do it via illusion) (Two Bears)

Two Bears, you understand little outside of your field. He surely wouldn't accept it if the 'levitation' was only shown under conditions where fraud is possible. But if he was allowed to study closely and make some quick tests, the matter would be completely different. Have you ever asked yourself why supposedly paranormal stunts are done under bad viewing condition, with no checks, are not done repeatedly etc? Well, that's are the conditions under which prestidigitators work.

As for Randi not changing his skeptical mind, there once was that man who claimed he could see from a vinyl record (without any labels!) at 1 yard distance which recording that was and who was the conductor (only classical music). Randi didn't believe that at first, tested him and found the guy could do what he claimed.

I get the impression, Two Bears, that you wouldn't recognise a magician's trick when you watch it.

Daylia, the Olsen and Hanson study is exactly what I believe to be true and have said so all the time: Several technique of subjective pain reduction, your methods being a few of many, are (for a subgroup of patients; large enough to be interesting) working. But they do not work better than a placebo control. That study is just the no control group pre-post subjectivwe dependent variable design which is known since long to reduce subjective pain. A former colleague of mine could get a wisdom tooth removed with no narcotics at all. He just knoew how to hypnotise himself. It would only be interesting (though hardly to expect) if Reiki etc would work worse than a placebo treatment.

That's why I was so surprised to find studies showing that Reiki works better than a placebo control, for that's what these studies said. That would have been truly interesting and puzzling. But then I found all these studies were published by a fraudster.

You do not seem to realise how much damage the elimination of these studies does to Reiki. From a real alternative to pain killers it went back to the status it shares with many relaxation methods and methods influencing the ego-perception: One of many methods eliciting in some people a placebo effect. This is not a blank dismissal for as I have said, if that works I'd prefer it to painkillers, but it is much less than advertised.

Bring on the good studies and I'll have another look. The good study should have: (1) random assignement (2) a placebo (or opposite treatment) control (3) blinding and (4) an objective outcome measure. It is not for nothing that these requirements are made. For if these are met and we have a positive result we really have soemthing new to think about and not just a new one of the many methods using the placebo effect to alter subjective perception since more than 2,000 years.

Wolfgang