20/20 Downtown by Gary P. Posner, M.D. |
On May 31, 2000, I was flown to New York by Caron Shapiro, a producer for ABC-TV's 20/20, who
was preparing a report about medical studies that support the healing power of distant prayer -- even with
patients unaware that they were being prayed for. Dr. Michael Guillen, the network's science editor (and a
1997 James Randi Educational Foundation "Pigasus Award" recipient for his "indiscriminate promotion of pseudoscience and quackery"), would be the correspondent, and was
interviewing some of the participants himself. But Shapiro wanted to personally interview me. And when we
were done more than an hour later, before she treated me to dinner she told me that my open-minded-yet-skeptical
comments would serve as a "focal point" (or words to that effect) tying the elements of the piece together.
When I asked how she could be so certain that I wouldn't be chopped down to about 30 seconds, as is typically
the case with skeptics on such programs, she told me that she was also the story's editor, and that Guillen
would essentially be following her script.
Well, would you believe 20 seconds (plus 25 seconds of Guillen attempting to
summarize my views)? I could hardly -- when the story
finally aired this past August 13 [2001] on the 20/20 stepchild
called Downtown -- but in hindsight the clues had been there. Shapiro's report had been sitting
for a year, first tentatively scheduled for last fall on the more prestigious 20/20 with Barbara
Walters. When I last inquired of Shapiro on May 23 of this year, she reassured me that her work product was not
being reedited and sensationalized. From her e-mail: "Relax, it's [still] mine." But within two weeks she would
be leaving ABC (I suspect she was one of the many producers let go this spring as a cost-cutting measure).
More foreshadowing: The Good Morning America promos on air date were unsettlingly uncritical. As
the story began that night, someone other than Shapiro was credited as "Editor." Guillen immediately referred
to the prayer-advocating researchers as "skeptical scientists." And, as the program progressed, if anyone was
serving as a "focal point," it was paranormalist author Dr. Deepak Chopra, who even conducted a "stare experiment"
with Guillen, demonstrating how Chopra's concentrated bursts of silent prayer, from a distant room, had a
calming effect on Guillen's nervous system.
More than eight minutes into the 10-minute transcendental lovefest, enter the lone assassin. They didn't use
special effects to perch me on a grassy knoll, but they did use the least open-minded sound bite
that Shapiro had evoked from me (about "junk science"), followed several seconds later by my comment on "chance
alone." And how persuasive was my glorious appearance? Immediately thereafter, Chopra did acknowledge, "At the
moment I would agree that some of these studies are tentative [and] that we should be a little cautious in the
way we interpret the results
This commentary appeared as a "News and Comment" item in the Nov./Dec. 2001 Skeptical Inquirer.
Read ABC-TV's related article
Read Michael Guillen's response to the above (and my reply to him)
Read about Guillen's role in the Raelians-cloning media fiasco
here
and here.
Read about Deepak Chopra in The Skeptic's Dictionary
Return to Posner's Media/Community Appearances Page
Return to Posner's Prayer-Related Articles Page