In May 2002, the medium Colin Fry complained about a statement made on this site. In a letter, written on July 11, 2001, it was stated that Colin Fry had offered to work with Psychical Research Involving Selected Mediums (PRISM) and that PRISM did not take up his offer.

Perhaps I might be allowed to clear up the confusion about the medium Colin Fry and his reported offer to work with PRISM (Psychical Research Involving Selected Mediums), of whose Council I have been a member since its formation in 1994. Colin has now reiterated his claim not to have offered his services to help in the objectives of PRISM, which represented an attempt to bring scientific precision and discipline into the investigation of mediums' claims. PRISM was created jointly by leading spiritualists and psychical researchers for this purpose. Among its earliest results was the two year long investigation of the physical mediumship circle known as the Scole Group, and which was the subject of a very lengthy, and positive, report published as part of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research in December 1999.

As will be seen from the first chapter of that report, earlier attempts via the chairman of its Spontaneous Cases Committee, Mr Maurice Grosse, to interest the Noah's Ark Society (for the revival and promotion of physical mediumship) in scientifically controlled investigations was declined. Colin was and remains a leading member of that Society, and as its journal shows, its most prominent spokesmen have strenuously rejected the idea of allowing scientists to intrude into their seances.

There is nothing wrong in this attitude, and nothing in Colin's reply to which one can properly object. There is not the least reason why anyone attending or conducting spiritualist sittings for the purpose of receiving or imparting communications with the deceased should wish to submit themselves to objective scrutiny, especially when the history of such investigations has so many examples of hostility and ignorance on the part of investigators whose mind-sets are incompatible with the subject, the phenomena and the people under investigation.

However, many mediums are eager to rebut the widespread belief that all their communications can be attributed to deception, cold reading, body language, prior knowledge, and the usual range of 'normal' explanations. Those who have studied the two major reports which Professor Gary Schwartz and his colleagues contributed to the SPR Journal last year will be aware of the manner in which this theorywas investigated and the extent to which it has been refuted. The work (which is continuing) of Tricia Robertson and Professor Archie Roy in the UK under the auspices of PRISM and with the financial support of the SPR in testing this 'normal' hypothesis has already been described in two technical articles in the SPR Journal; and their most recent results are due to be presented at the Society's International Conference in Manchester in August. Those results will show astronomical odds against attributing to chance any 'normal' explanation of the accuracy of mediums' statements. More than a dozen mediums have willingly collaborated in these experiments - most of them double blind - and a vastly greater number of members of the public, thereby helping to provide a data base which enables the most reliable, and impressive, probability calculations to be made.

Montague Keen

Response to a complaint made by the medium Colin Fry (May, 2002)

Psychical Research Involving Selected Mediums (PRISM) - Letter from Michael Roll to John Samson, member of The Society for Psychical Research, (July 11, 2001)