'There is absolutely no physical way you can bend a spoon with your mind'

After a healthy dose of online ridicule, the University of Alberta has cancelled a workshop at which doctors were supposed to learn to bend spoons.

With their minds.

When Tim Caulfield first spotted a poster for the event, he didn't understand what he was seeing.

"When I first saw the post I thought it might be a magic show," said the professor of health law and science policy at U of A. "But this wasn't being presented as that, or as satire, it was being presented as a real event where you're supposed to use the power of your mind to bend spoons."

The seminar, titled simply "Spoon Bending and the Power of the Mind," was arranged by the university's Complementary and Alternative Research and Education program or CARE, as part of the Pediatric Integrative Medicine Rounds, a series of monthly seminars presenting a specialist in the field of integrative medicine to a clinical audience.