[2][3][4] Bird investigated spiritualist mediums such as Mina Crandon, John C. Sloan, Gladys Osborne Leonard, William Hope and Maria Vollhardt.

Bird has drawn criticism from magician Harry Houdini and the psychical researcher Walter Franklin Prince for his conduct in the investigation of Mina Crandon.

Houdini and Prince strongly suspected that Crandon was fraudulent, but Bird had endorsed some of her phenomena as genuine.

[6][7][8][9] In December, 1930 Bird was compelled to resign from the ASPR after he admitted he had known of fraudulent activity regarding Crandon from the start.

[13] More recently, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman have suggested that Bird had conspired with Crandon in "stage managing the séances and achieving a positive vote from the majority of the committee.