trickery, Taylor concluded metal bending had no paranormal basis. In an experimental study (Wiseman and Greening, 2005) two groups of participants were shown a videotape in which a fake psychic placed a bent key on a table. Participants in the first group heard the fake psychic suggest that the key was continuing to bend when it had remained stationary, while those in the second group did not. The results revealed that participants from the first group reported significantly more movement of the key than the second group. The findings were replicated in another study. The experiments had demonstrated that "testimony for PKMB [psychokinetic metal bending] after effects can be created by verbal suggestion, and therefore the testimony from individuals who have observed allegedly genuine demonstrations of such effects should not be seen as strong evidence in support of the paranormal". Methods Stage magicians use several methods of creating the illusion of a spoon bending spontaneously. Most common is the practice of misdirection, an underlying principle of many stage magic tricks; the performer draws the audience's attention away from the spoon for the brief moment during which the spoon is manually bent. The magician then gradually reveals the bend. At a 1998 Skeptics Society conference, investigator James Randi showed clips of Geller appearing on the Italian television channel Rai 3 and the BBC programme Noel's House Party, in which he apparently manually bent various metal objects before displaying them to his audience. When a spoon is physically bent or broken, it is usually at the point where the object would be easiest to bend by hand. The typical bend, where the bowl meets the handle, requires relatively little force. Another method uses a metal spoon that has been prepared by repeatedly bending the spoon back and forth, weakening the material. Applying light pressure will then cause it to bend or break. The magician then holds together the two halves of the spoon as if it were unbroken, then slowly relaxes their grip, making the spoon appear to bend before splitting in two. If a magician has control over the viewing angle, the trick can be done by using a spoon that is already bent at the start of the trick. The spoon is initially held with the bend along the viewing angle, making it invisible. The magician then turns the spoon slowly to reveal the bend. The magician Ben Harris published