In 1986 I watched James Randi on the Tonight Show when he revealed the absurd tricks used by faith healing fraud Peter Popoff to fool his credulous followers. Though I had left Christianity a short time before that, it was this event, more than any other, that pushed me to get involved in organized skepticism. Randi has a piece at Wired.com about his history of showing that Popoff is a con man, including the time he and his allies had Popoff heal a man of uterine cancer.
We had discovered that Popoff was using a hidden electronic earpiece to communicate with his wife Elizabeth, who was backstage relaying information she’d found out by interviewing prospects before the show. She would whisper into Popoff’s ear electronically, and he would seem to have a gift.
My team then — the mentalist Banachek, private investigator Alec Jason, postman-turned-actor Don Henvick, and several others — visited Popoff “revivals” in several cities. The clincher came when Henvick disguised as a woman named Bernice, was “called out” (The Holy Spirit had notified Popoff of her need for healing, you see) and was cured of uterine cancer, even though he lacked a uterus.
Now, that is a miracle.
Don — as a man — had already been “healed” of alcoholism by Popoff in San Francisco, and this drag act turned out to be the fraudulent preacher’s undoing.
First, Elizabeth said to her husband via their secret electronic link:
“Peter, there’s one there that has a beard. Looks like she has a beard. Her name is Bernice Meticall. She can’t walk. She gets real tired and Peter, the doctors think she has, doctors think she might have cancer of the uterus. She can walk. She can walk. That’s one of our rentals.”
(“One of our rentals” refers to a wheelchairs that these swindlers give to people who can walk but are wheeled in as a “courtesy,” only to rise to the amazement of an unwitting TV audience.)
Then, just as Don rose from the wheelchair and started to walk, Elizabeth “saw the light.” She started screaming to Popoff:
“That’s a woman? That’s not a woman! Hey! Is that the — isn’t that the guy who was in Anaheim? Pete! That’s the man who was in Anaheim that you said — that had arthritis. Do you remember that man? The way he was — let’s go on to the next! Get rid of him! Remember the guy who was on the news the other day? Remember that guy? When he went out — that was it! That’s the same guy who was in Anaheim! We’re gonna move to the other side. We don’t like this. There’s some funny bunnies out there.”
Many of the stock elements of the fake healing fraud are present here — the rented wheelchairs given to people who can walk, to make it appear to be a miracle when they get up out of a wheelchair they never needed in the first place; the fake claims that God is giving them information that is actually gained from talking to people, having them fill out prayer request cards and such; the way things are carefully orchestrated for maximum emotional impact.
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Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
May 10, 2012 at 9:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Link to the article?
Reginald Selkirk
May 10, 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also known as Steve Shaw, and a participant in Project Alpha, in which the incredibly lax experimental control at a prominent parapsychology laboratory was exposed.
unbound
May 10, 2012 at 9:55 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here is the link to the article – http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/05/opinion-randi-frauds/
Reginald Selkirk
May 10, 2012 at 9:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As revealed in Randi’s book The Faith Healers, one of his confederates in the infiltration of faith healing revivals was Genie Scott. That name might ring a bell for you.
jamessweet
May 10, 2012 at 10:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Funny bunnies”, ahhahahhah..
MikeMa
May 10, 2012 at 10:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Faith healing is, of course, the perfect cover. You already have an audience filled with the credulous god botherers. It is only a small step to make the conman seem divine.
EricJ
May 10, 2012 at 10:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I wish I had bookmarked it but there is a clip on the web from a Johnny Carson show where he did the same thing to Uri Geller. Randi instructed the show on how to prevent Geller from cheating. It’s priceless watching Geller squirm and offer lame excuses like “I’m just not feeling it tonight” or some such thing.
It’s probably on YouTube but I’m at work so I can’t search for it, but it’s worth watching.
Jon Stewart could learn a couple things from Carson about not letting guests take advantage of him and using his show (and reputation) as a platform to further their unethical agendas.
_Arthur
May 10, 2012 at 11:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Funny, all those tactics, the radio earphones, the courtesy wheelchairs etc… were shown in the 1992 movie “Leap of Faith” with Steve Martin.
I wonder if the Leap of Faith writers used Popoff as their model for bogus preachers, or if all fake faith healers use those tricks anyways.
lippard
May 10, 2012 at 4:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
_Arthur: Yes, Leap of Faith was based on Popoff:
http://www.broadway.com/buzz/161393/are-you-ready-for-a-miracle-how-leap-of-faith-jumped-from-the-movie-screen-to-broadway/
_Arthur
May 10, 2012 at 5:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here’s a clip from that movie, with the beautiful Debra Winger as the preacher helper.
tacitus
May 10, 2012 at 6:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The most depressing thing about all this is that Popoff’s business is still solvent — he’s still on national TV (BET) a dozen times a week. Sure, most of the shows are in the small hours, and no doubt they are nothing more than infomercials dressed up as religious programming, but the fact that he continues to be able to afford to pay for them to be on the air means that people are still being duped by his nonsense.