Skeptics like to say that Uri Geller (and other putative psychics) don't do their performance in front of magicians and illusionists. Taken literally, this statement is false.
A lot of magicians have been witness of Geller's performance, and their opinions tend to vary (a few of them, like David Blaine, seem to think Geller has genuine paranormal powers, others are open-minded skeptics like David Copperfield and others like James Randi or Martin Gardner or Criss Angel are extremely hostile, agresssive skeptics regarding Geller's putative paranormal powers).
The above video is a rare video footage from the 70s of Uri Geller and David Copperfield together. Geller tried to do a psychic performance on Copperfield, and the result was... watch the video.
Geller is a controversial individual. Undisputably, he has used magician's tricks in many cases, for example as clearly shown in this video:
In the next one, Gellers appears to put something in the thumb prior to his moving of a compass (this is what magicians call the "compass trick"... it is curious that Geller's sleight of hands coheres exactly with what magicians do when performing the same trick):
But Geller has his contemporary defenders too. In the following video, the author argues that Geller actually WON the challenge put to him by magician Criss Angel:
My current opinion is that Geller is a clever magician, not a psychic. The evidence coming from magicians endorsing Geller's paranormal powers is ambiguous, if we lack a precise knowledge of the conditions in which such performance was done.
I think the scientific investigation and testing of Geller in the 70s had a number of methodological problems which preventsby any reasonable conclusion about his putative powers.
Certainly, by itself, the magicians' testimony endorsing Geller's powers counts in favour of Geller, but they have to be counterbalance by the clear evidence which shows that he does tricks. When this is done, the result seems to be agnosticism, perhaps with a slight leaning towards skepticism (which is my own position about this case).
Another possibility which is widely hold in the paranormal community: A psychic could use BOTH tricks (under some circunstances) and actual paranormal powers (under other circunstances). This argument is specially and widely defended by paranormalists regarding some mediums.
This argument is strongly rejected by skeptics, who consider such argument to be dishonest, ridiculous and extremely credulous, and argue that if fraud is proven one single time in a given psychic, then the presumption of fraud overrides the other cases in which fraud or trick was never found or proven in such psychic.
The skeptical argument is this: antencedent improbability of psychic phenomenon plus proven fraud plus not clear straighforward evidence of such powers plus methodological problems of such investigations plus psychic investigators having a vested interest and strong bias in proving the paranormal = strong presumption of fraud over the cases in which no fraud is found or proven.
Even some paranormal researchers, like Vitor Moura, tend to be extremely skeptical of putative psychics or mediums who have proved to use tricks or fraud in a single case.
I think if we agree or disagree with skeptics or paranormalists in this point will depend on our prior philosophical pressupositions about the antecedent improbablity (or probability) of the paranormal, and this has a lot to do with metaphysical considerations about the nature of reality.
A detailed critical examination of this problem is mainly philosophical, not parapsychological and goes beyond the purposes of this post.
Something is sure: Copperfield is a lot more spectacular magician than Geller, just watch this amazing performance:
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