"Magician David Blaine has set a world record by holding his breath for 17 minutes and four seconds on Oprah Winfrey's US TV show in Chicago".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7376101.stm
and what do we think fellow sceptics?
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...v2GQwD90CAQGG0
The previous record according was:
Another long record was:The previous record was 16 minutes and 32 seconds, set Feb. 10 by Switzerland's Peter Colat, according to Guinness World Records.
http://thelongestlistofthelongeststu...om/long56.htmlGiancarlo Bellingrath for 12 minutes 47 seconds.
Notice they used pure oxygen before the attempt.
Looks like he may have done it.
It could be genuine but it just does not look right to me. I am going to look into this one further and get back to the boards later. Anyone else sceptical about it?
Yes, but I don't know what to think with him.Originally Posted by Bunny
I think it sounds like 17 minutes and 4 seconds of extremely boring TV.
Why can't he do it in a perspex box incased in ice buried underground, and do us all a favour?
Whilst it's impossible to argue against seren's observation, David Blaine's breath holding record still interests me (in principle, not watching it on TV). It seems to me that the media have just taken the story and I can't see any journalist asking the difficult questions. (I am sure that there will now be posts with links to all those articles that I have missed). I know this is often the media's raison d'être but it still needs challenging. To reiterate, I do not know that Blaine did not get the world record, he may have. My point is that since he is an illusionist it is not unlikely that the whole thing is a scam and as a sceptic I want the evidence before I will accept it as fact. If the media did the same, oh what a better world it would be.
I continue to see what I can find out about the science behind this but it is very difficult to track down. I started a thread on the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe forum http://skepchick.org/skepticsguide/i...c,10316.0.html and although several of the replies are sceptical, I have not seen any real evidence one way or the other.
Last edited by Graham Lappin; 3rd May 2008 at 04:09 PM.
My take on it is here:
http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=1347
Again, no evidence either way but I know enough about magic and Blaine...well, it's ballcock.
As I said before, my interest in this was the way that the media just seemed to take the story without challenge. Perhaps not surprising as this is the not the first time but it still does not excuse it. The illustrate my point, I did a 10 min search on the internet and found an expert on the subject of breath holding - Dr Michael Parkes at the School of Sport & Exercise Sciences at the University of Birmingham. I e-mailed him and he e-mailed back saying:
"I agree as an illusionist it must be treated with great caution. The hold time is a little unrealistic in the sense that I believe it was done in elevated oxygen levels and preceded with hyperventilation. I think under similar conditions the laboratory studies found the mean hold time was only
10.5 +/- 0.6se, range 6- 14 mins (Klocke et al, 1959). To me the more interesting question is why he still had a breakpoint and didn't just pass out!"
He is not sure but some red flags are going up. I really don't care if Blaine did or did not do what he claimed but this illustrates how easy it is to check the facts, something no-one in the press seemed to have bothered to do.
Michael Parkes took the time to reply to me, someone out of the blue. I am sure the BBC would have got a response as well.
Bunny, that's very interesting. Do you mind if I quote your post in my skepchick comments?
No of course not, please quote away. Do you want me to forward my original e-mail and the reply?
I have posted this on the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe Forum as well. The whole story of Blaine reminded me of the recent news item about someone's finger growing back. Ben Goldacre wrote about this one http://www.badscience.net/. He also made the point that the press just took the story as it was fed to them.
That would be cool, thanks :)
You can get me at tracy at ukskeptics dot com.
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