# Need a book refuting Silvia Brown **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 17, 2006, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511 "2006-12-17T16:26:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/919ad9/32.png) [@rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rabbit)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/1 "2006-12-17T16:26:02Z")
ok, I need a book that basically destroys what Silvia Brown has written, BUT… it can’t be obviously antagonistic and it has to be both easy to read and at least mildly entertaining/interesting. I have a good friend who is enamoured of Brown’s work and I am unable to provide counterarguments in a manner she can process/accept. Any help? ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/2 "2006-12-17T16:33:07Z")
Hehe. Are you freakin’ kidding? ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/3 "2006-12-17T16:34:11Z")
[Helpful link.](http://www.sylvia.org/home/index.cfm) ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/4 "2006-12-17T16:55:45Z")
[QUOTE=rabbit] ok, I need a book that basically destroys what Silvia Brown has written, BUT… it can’t be obviously antagonistic and it has to be both easy to read and at least mildly entertaining/interesting. I have a good friend who is enamoured of Brown’s work and I am unable to provide counterarguments in a manner she can process/accept. Any help? [/QUOTE] How could a book destroying or even accurately portraying Sylvia Brown’s “work” not be antagonistic? And, however easy to read, I doubt that anyone enamored of her is capable of reading a book at all. You and your friend will be much happier if you just agree to let this one go. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/5 "2006-12-17T17:07:42Z")
[QUOTE=Operation Ripper] [Helpful link.](http://www.sylvia.org/home/index.cfm) [/QUOTE] Just have a poke around her own website and let Sylvia poker herself in the eye. How much of the [following](http://www.sylvia.org/home/2000pred.cfm) came true? > [@](#): > > 1. Interest rates will rise very slowly until Spring and then will level off and begin to go downward. > 2. Stocks stay pretty steady. The NASDAQ fluctuates up and down wildly in March, but the Dow stays pretty solid. > 3. Building everywhere from all corners of the State (CA) is at an all-time high. > 4. There will be a lot of purchasing of property in foreign countries by Americans and for the first time at such an all-time high. > 5. There is going to be a shake-up at American Airlines during January and February. American will also merge with Alaska Airlines. > 6. TWA is hanging on by a thread and will probably not last until the end of the year. > 7. Unemployment will be very low. There will be another acceleration of the minimum hourly wage by mid-year. > 8. New electronic companies are in the making now, but will really burst on the scene by late Fall. This is as a result of not only technical advances but also genetic research. > 9. The beginnings of a surge for a flat tax will be bantered around and come to some conclusion before the next election that will take us into 2001. > 10. Air travel reaches an all-time high, but because of overbookings and poor service, the airlines will need to revamp their scheduling practices. > 11. As in the 1940’s and 50’s, we are going to see a lot of small businesses flourish like the old Mom and Pop operations. > 12. There is a big upsurge in the population looking for more antiques and handmade articles than things that are mass-produced. > 13. There will be extensive monitoring of the internet that will be imposed to govern and reduce indiscriminate pornography. This will be drastically different from the filtering software available now, along with harsh regulation. > 14. There will be a definite crackdown by the Federal Government regarding frivolous lawsuits. This has been bantered around for a while, but now a definite crackdown is imposed. > 15. Sorry to say there will be three hurricanes that hit in rapid succession in the Fall, again around the Bahamas, then Mexico, Florida, and the Carolinas. > 16. Tornadoes touch down in Ohio in April and a devastating one touches down in Brownesville and San Antonio, Texas in the Spring. > 17. An earthquake hits around the Niagara Falls area, small but significant because of where it is. > 18. There will be small earthquakes that hit around the Northern California area in January and February, nothing of significance. > 19. Los Angeles registers a 5.3 earthquake in and around the valley in late March. > 20. Seattle area, around Olympia, gets a 4.9 earthquake around June. None of these earthquakes above are devastating. > 21. The warming trend continues and climates begin to change drastically even more than we have seen in the last ten years. Temperatures along the East Coast become milder and along the West Coast colder and more damp and also due in part to the polar tilt. > 22. NASA finally cuts back on the space program realizing that every time they send up a space vehicle they are tearing the ozone layer. > 23. The midwestern U.S. has a big uprising because of some kind of polluted waste hazard. This has not been recognized at this point, but begins to surface around Branson. > 24. There is going to be a very definite detection of mines and some bombs that have not been detonated off the coast of Hawaii. > 25. Train wrecks will occur in France and England causing quite a bit of devastation in May. > 26. In June a major airline disaster is averted. > 27. An airline high-jacking is thwarted out of Florida in August. > 28. Democrats will win the election with Bill Bradley, with close competition from the Reform Party. > 29. New York crime continues to be at an all-time low, and crime across the country, including crime in schools seems to reach an all-time low. > 30. The one thing that is very frightening as we go into the millennium, and even though spirituality is at an all-time high, is that we will see more occult groups arising and people professing to be the Messiah. > 31. Organized religion becomes gentler and kinder and more liberal, which goes along with spirituality and in keeping with Christ’s words. > 32. We are approaching an age of innate goodness and acceptance and the philosophy of living and let live. People become more conscious of others like it was in the 1940’s and 50’s; e.g., when someone dies, people come together to help with a more community-like lifestyle. Families begin to band together as they once did. > 33. Elizabeth Taylor ends up back at the Betty Ford Center. > 34. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston get married, but it lasts for only a short time. > 35. Gwyneth Paltrow marries an older man who is in the entertainment business, but not as well known as she. > 36. David Letterman decides to call it quits from his nightly late show after this year. > 37. John Travolta has to be very careful flying his plane in February. > 38. Donald Trump buys another large hotel and goes into partnership with someone very well known in a production company. > 39. Neither Warren Beatty nor Donald Trump has any success in politics. > 40. Courtney Cox will get pregnant this year and have a baby boy. ---
**Author:** ![rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/919ad9/32.png) [@rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rabbit)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/6 "2006-12-17T17:08:56Z")
[QUOTE=Bill Door] How could a book destroying or even accurately portraying Sylvia Brown’s “work” not be antagonistic? And, however easy to read, I doubt that anyone enamored of her is capable of reading a book at all. You and your friend will be much happier if you just agree to let this one go. [/QUOTE] Sorry, the overall irritation I feel towards brown is colouring my thought process. My friend is WILLING to be persuaded, is smart enough to understand that what brown says is probably not all correct, but she’s quoted some of Brown’s pseudo science and she lacks the academic background about such things to be able to tell that its all crap and why. Writers like Brown gain the following they do because they write about stuff in a way which SOUNDS plausible if you don’t know better. I have an incredible lack of skill in explaining things or teaching (I go into too much detail and I generally loose my audience halfway through). SO… what I’m looking for is someone that explains why silvia brown is full of crap better than I can do so. ---
**Author:** ![rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/919ad9/32.png) [@rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rabbit)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/7 "2006-12-17T17:12:45Z")
one final thing, she doesnt beleive in the fortune telling bits, so that’s not really important. Its the stuff she tries to pass off as “facts” that Im trying to tear down. The example that triggered this particular posting is a claim that the Atlantis legend exists in all religions worldwide and therefore there has to be some truth in it. (That is, Atlantis exists). ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/8 "2006-12-17T17:28:55Z")
[QUOTE=rabbit] My friend is WILLING to be persuaded, is smart enough to understand that what brown says is probably not all correct [/QUOTE] Hehe, come on. Is “smart” the word you want to use here? ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/9 "2006-12-17T18:58:44Z")
You’re searching for unicorns. First of all, you cannot rationally argue out what wasn’t rationally argued in. There are no facts or rational arguments supporting the type of assertions (e.g. ‘Atlantis exists’) you are referring to, and hence you cannot ‘argue’ their merits in any sort of rational or logical manner. You are talking about statements and assertions that exist outside of rational debate and reasoning. Secondly, you are unlikely to find one book or source that will address all of the things that Sylvia talks about. She covers a lot of topics, and ‘irrational drivel’ is a broad subject. There are books that address many different kinds of pseudo-scientific beliefs, and that can help the reader to understand, in a general way, how to start evaluating whether things are worth believing in or not. Here are some good ones: Flim-flam, by James Randi. The New Apocrypha, by John Sladek. Irrationality, by Stuart Sutherland. Why People Believe In Weird Things, by Michael Shermer. The New Age, by Martin Gardner. Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds, by Charles Mackay. The Skeptics Guide To The Paranormal, by Lynne Kelly. But if your friend is the kind of person who thinks that ‘Atlantis is real’ might be worth considering as fact, without any other supporting evidence, it is unlikely he or she will be inclined to learn much from any of the above. You say your friend isn’t swayed so much by the psychic / fortune-telling side of the Sylvia Brown persona, but just in case you want to know more, remember there was a [Staff Report](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcoldreading.html) on this very subject. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2006, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/10 "2006-12-17T22:22:18Z")
Johathan Edwards was skewered in an episode of South Park. Get that and show her. You can google it. It was the biggest douche in the universe episode. It gets at him and the people whio blindly follow too. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/11 "2006-12-18T03:15:11Z")
I had no idea who she was before checking out this thread, but I did find [this video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dU0Q208HKI) of her getting skewered on Montel Williams (she tells a woman her husband’s death was water-related… before learning her died in the WTC on 9/11). Painful. Some people would bathe in snake oil if they could afford it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/12 "2006-12-18T03:24:08Z")
[QUOTE=rabbit] The example that triggered this particular posting is a claim that the Atlantis legend exists in all religions worldwide and therefore there has to be some truth in it. (That is, Atlantis exists). [/QUOTE] Try [_Lost Continents_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Continents) by L. Sprague de Camp. Or just show her a topographical map of the Atlantic seabed. Ya see anything there that might be a sunken continent?! (Actually Atlantis **was** real, as you can learn from [revealed holy scripture,](http://www.amazon.com/Revelation-Apocryphon-Hidden-Teachings-Deuterocanonical/dp/1560259558/sr=8-2/qid=1166412176/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-5733463-8947052?ie=UTF8&s=books) but we don’t necessarily want the Pinks to know that.) ---
**Author:** ![sci\_girl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@sci\_girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sci_girl)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/13 "2006-12-18T03:33:35Z")
\*\*22. NASA finally cuts back on the space program realizing that every time they send up a space vehicle they are tearing the ozone layer. \*\* !!! Actually, this may be the origin of some of my relatives’ stranger views about atmospheric physics. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/14 "2006-12-18T04:25:07Z")
Relevant ongoing [Pit thread.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=400372) ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-book-refuting-silvia-brown/384511/15 "2006-12-18T12:03:04Z")
Incidentally, since it seems relevant to the OP, let me pass on a tip about ‘discussing’ Sylvia Brown and other ‘psychics’ wiht true believers. If you try to disagree and criticise, you will get nowhere. It just becomes a pintless heat-butting contest between their beliefs and your ‘facts’. People are naturally very protective of their beliefs, and tend strongly to resent anyone trying to ‘take away’ or harm their belief system. The key is to **agree** and to **praise**. And the to dangle the carrot of ‘inside information’. The following might be rather idealised, but this is how to massage the conversation. Believer: ‘I think Sylvia Brown is amazing, she knows so much and she’s so accurate and she helps so many people’. \*You: ‘Oh yes, I agree, I’ve seen her to. She’s really good at it. All those in the know say she’s one of the best when it comes to cold reading. You can tell she’s been doing it a long time. She’s really convincing. I bet it takes ages to learn to do it so well’. \* Believer: ‘Yeah, I saw her once and… excuse me, what did you say? Cold what?’ _You: ‘I was just saying, she’s really really good at cold reading. Definitely one of the best. Really convincing. Her act almost had me fooled for a while! All credit to her, she really knows what she’s doing’._ Believer: ‘What do you mean? ‘Act’? What are you taking about? You don’t think she’s for real?’. _You: ‘No no no, she is for real. Of course. That’s what I’m saying. She’s really good and skilled at cold reading’._ Believer: ‘I don’t understand. What’s cold reading?’ \*You: ‘Cold reading? You haven’t heard? That’s what she’s doing. That’s how it’s done. How she does the whole ‘psychic’ thing. That’s why she’s so convincing. Because she’s really good. I admire her technique.’ \* Believer: ‘I don’t get it. You saying she’s not psychic?’ _You: ‘Well, I’m saying she looks psychic. And she does it very well. Like I said, she had me well and truly fooled for a while, so all credit to her. And even now when I know how she does it, I still say she’s one of the best at cold reading.’_ Believer: ‘There you go again with this ‘cold reading’. What the hell are you talking about?’ \*You: ‘Look it up. It’s all over the internet. Just google on ‘cold reading’, and you’ll find it all explained. How you can talk and look like you’re psychic. Anyone can learn it. But like anything else, it takes time to learn how to be really good. And Sylvia is pretty good at it. It’s amazing when you know how it’s done.’ \* Or something along those lines. Now, as it happens, Sylvia Brown - whatever other merits she may have - is _not_ actually very good at cold reading, and her technique is appallingly poor. But that’s beside the point. I know the OP said the friend was not primarily interested in the ‘fortune-telling’ aspect of Sylkia’s work, but the above is a pretty good generalised template for handling any discussion of anyone who uses cold reading techniques on TV. It gets a lot further than the ‘yes it is’ ‘no it isn’t’ type of discussion. Professional psychis know how to handle attacks and criticism. Praise is far harder to handle.