Magnetic People

There are a number of people around the world who claim to be magnetic.Let’s take a look at a short story of one such man:

If you read most of the comments,it seems this demonstration of his amazing ability has many people convinced,although there is much bickering about it. Some propose the old ancient Chinese stand by of “qi” as the mysterious force behind the ability. One person scoffed at the idea of it being qi with the more rational idea that it was actually magnetism generated by high iron content in the blood and controlled muscle spasms.Still,according to others,no one knows why this happens and its still a “mystery to science”.

It does seem quite convincing if you were to see this come up on your television at home-I mean,he DID pull a whole car.A search of you You Tube will result in a few different stories about people having magnetic powers.Some of these people are even so magnetic that objects not usually influenced by a magnet will be attracted to them;like glass ashtrays.

Here is another video of an entire magnetic family:

Let’s take a more skeptical view of this phenomenon of magnetic people and see what we can find just through a couple simple observations of the facts in the videos.

1. Objects are stuck to the body and remain there through some sort of force.
2. Objects are placed on the skin with no visible “attraction” taking place like you see with magnets.
3. Claimants never place an object on a parallel plain to the ground,they are always on a perpendicular surface.They should at least be able to stick the lighter objects to something like their arm and hang it upside down without it falling off.
4. Claimants tend to lean backwards slightly.This is very apparent at the end of the first video where the lean is seen to increase with the number of objects applied to the body.Why lean backward?
5. Non magnetic objects like glass and plastic stick to the body which shows the force is not magnetic.
6. All objects are stuck to bare skin only,never over clothing.If a magnetic field was strong enough to hold an iron to your chest with no shirt on then there should be no reason that even a small object,like a fork,should be able to stick to the body with even a thin shirt on.

Of course,the simple answer is that these people are not magnetic at all.Whats really at play here is bare skin and a little moisture.Anyone ever stick a spoon to their nose when they were kids? Same idea,different parts of the body.It accounts for all the known facts and evidence and is testable.If these people were to wear a thin shirt or even apply some powder to their skin to make it nice and dry they would find that their magnetic powers have magically disappeared. In fact,James Randi did test the man from the magnetic family video on TV and he was unable to make objects stick once a bit of powder was applied to his chest.

It’s still a neat little trick and maybe you can fool some friends and family with your amazing magnetic powers.