Тhose that have attended prestigious international scientific conferences held in Kyiv, Moscow or St. Petersburg must have witnessed some interesting scenes. After listening to a report by a colleague from Germany, the United States or France, a grey-haired Soviet-bred Doctor of Science would rise and declare he could not consider the study authentic because the author(s) had not taken into account the bio-fields.

Nerves frayed on the podium, with some of the CIS delegates clutching their heads and others trying to explain the situation to Western colleagues. The latter's expressions make it clear that nothing is clear at all. The audience is watching it all, enthralled.

After some time and the interpreters' brain-wracking effort, the foreign scientists finally understand that the matter at issue is parapsychology, all those mysterious bio-fields, a topic that has long ago stopped being discussed in all prestigious Western scientific quarters. It is interesting to watch the foreign researchers' faces showing a range of emotions, from amazement to barely disguised indignation.

All out to fight pseudoscience

The press has voiced suspicions that the wild outburst of parapsychology in the post -Soviet countries, starting with Kashperovsky's and Chumak's experiments, was actually initiated by the Soviet secret service. It was they that checked their mass-control developments in new conditions. I don't know, but one thing is certain; there is an army of professional parapsychologists (professional in the sense that these people live by this profession) operating throughout the CIS - and they appear to earn a very decent living.

Russian statistics point to persons with apparent ESP abilities earning over a million dollars a year. Their Ukrainian counterparts make many times the normal salary of a member of the Academy of Sciences. In other words, there is every indication that occult sciences have hustled aside academic knowledge only recently held in such esteem. A number of noted Ukrainian scientists, while keeping up academic appearances, earn on the side, assisting all kinds of parapsychological quacks. "We can 't help it, science doesn't pay enough," they try to explain shame-facedly.

The situation has not improved with time. A whole generation of Russians and Ukrainians have grown up, believing that passing hands over an ailing body can substitute qualified medical assistance, that levitation can replace aviation and a textbook pushed under the pillow for the night is the easy way to do one's homework. Russian scientists were the first to sound the alarm. They formed a committee under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences to combat pseudoscience. The Ukrainian National Academy (Ukr. abbr., NANU) responded to the Russian initiative. Journalists specialising in scientific subjects were recently invited to a NANU round table held jointly with leading scientists alarmed by inadequate media coverage of scientific work, but above all outraged by rampant pseudoscience in Ukraine, shoving academic sciences to the periphery of Ukrainian society...

Towards the end of the meeting it was proposed to mark the best and the worst features dealing with scientific subjects during the year. Those present were about to leave when the peaceful round-table atmosphere was disrupted by the appearance of people that represented that very pseudoscience...

Disconnect the ESP mike!

The first pressure from the ESP enthusiasts (operating under the auspices of the prestigious National Technical University) seemed to crush down the neat academic line, for the academics were not accustomed to this intellectual free-for-all. The MC, relying on the good old Soviet tradition, tried to cut the unwelcome guests short by disconnecting the microphone, but the battle-hardened ESP champions forced the speechless audience to hear them out. And what they had to say was not meant for the tender-hearted; some proposed to transform base metals into gold, others offered a clumsy (but patented!) hollow disc to ward off hazardous computer monitors and TV screen radiation, promising that the disc would also cure impotence and all kinds of other ills; still others were prepared to build a perpetual motion machine.

The ESP devotees were eager to describe how Ukraine would thrive and blossom after equipping motor-vehicles made of pure gold (most likely Zaporozhets models) with perpetual motion engines using their design (considering that the Ukrainian patent committee had issued the world's first perpetual motion patent), and how people would forget all about diseases with the aid of plastic pills (the author of this mind-boggling discovery admitted, strictly off the record, that he constantly had such a pill in each pocket and felt twenty years younger; he paused, gave an enigmatic smile and added, "My girlfriends think so, too; take my advice, never walk around with empty pockets!")

After relating all this breathtaking information, the innovating group proceeded to ask the Academy for money for research projects - oops! A bad mistake. The budget-underfinanced academicians reacted the way a pack of Dobermans does on hearing "Get them"! Instantly they switched from defence to offence. Some of the more cunning NANU veterans asked the upstarts, Why should you need money if you say you can turn any metals into gold?

Now it was the wizards' turn to show signs of confusion as the academic round table was getting increasingly like a reunion of retired brains trust competition players, as the ESP exponents obviously lacked the experience of parliamentary debate. Simple questions posed to the adversary allowed the academic team to quickly win back lost points, for the opponents could not produce a bar of gold materialised from thin air.

Let's bring us doubting Thomases to shame!

As it turned out, the academic team had something up their sleeve and announced it at the end. Smiling most cordially, Valentyn Shumakov, M.D. in cardiology, opened his briefcase and produced a statement by James Randi, a reputed US campaigner against pseudoscience. It was suggested that he had already dealt a heavy blow to Uri Geller who claimed he could mentally, stop Big Ben, or fix a watch anywhere in Great Britain.

The Britts like to have a laugh watching a smart operator, so they allowed Uri to demonstrate in public just how he made wheat and beans grow faster, passing his hands over the seeds, or bend spoons or forks with his powers, and lots of other incredible things...

Ukraine is no match. Why hasn't anyone used their occult skills to move that blasted column from Independence Square or stop the electronic clock atop the House of Trade Unions, even if for only a moment?

James Randi says "don't trust all those Britts, it's horse shit!" Well, James Randi is not a romantic Britt but a materially-minded Yank, whose mentality makes him dot all i's and cross all t's, and measure everything in terms of money. He set up a foundation (www.randi.org) and instituted a prize worth a million dollars to be conferred on whoever can publicly pull of an ESP stunt.

And so the challenge has been cast. And that's not mild British humour but hard American cash. And this challenge is deceitfully simple: show some of your ESP powers in front of an independent board of experts, like looking at a spoon or a cigar case and sending it flying, reading a text in a sealed envelope, making a plant grow quicker by sending waves with your hands. If you do, the million dollars is yours, come and get it.

If you can build a perpetual motion machine, discover the "rays of life" or send your thoughts over a distance, you are also eligible. In a word, you can bring the US Doubting Thomases to shame and get rich by taking advantage of his disbelief in ESP.

- P.S.: Somehow, I don't believe that James Randi is running a big risk with his prize. I have watched the parapsychology circus for the past thirty years, I have attended almost every conference and convention. Nothing has changed, perhaps except for the moth-eaten "mitogenetic rays" (or "rays of life") being replaced with bio-fields and then, seeing that the notion is getting tedious, renaming them torsion fields. Some discovery! And again I can see people touring this country with lectures, pretending to have Ph.D.'s in physics and mathematics, although in actuality lacking even a post-secondary education. They gather enthusiastic audiences at the Houses of Science and planetariums, composed of AWOL students and mothers-in-law seeking refuge from their brats of grandsons. After the lecture people applaud new attainments of domestic sciences that have once again proved superior to the West. Another miracle worked with talented human hands!