So long John Edward....

[Marley23]

It has to do with freedom of expression. The freedom of speech and right of assembly. Surely you knew that?

John Edward has those. He doesn’t have the right to a TV show or the right to break the law by deceiving people.

[lekatt]

@vanilla

Millions of people believe in him.
Millions of people are wrong.

Notice he doesn’t have the guts to post HERE…

Is everyone wrong but you.

It isn’t a matter of guts, it is a matter of time better used in helping others.

Love

[lekatt]

@Lord Ashtar

You mean “debunked”? Yes, he is being debunked again, for about the millionth time.

Did you see this part in his disclaimer?

“The materials and opinions presented in this program by John Edward and other third parties, including statements, predictions, documents, photos and video footage, come solely from their respective third party sources and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the producer, are not meant or intended to be a form of advice, instruction, suggestion, counsel, or factual statement in any way whatsoever and are intended as entertainment.”

How many disclaimers say outright that the host of the show is lying?

Sorry, but that’s a logical fallacy. See argumentum ad populum.

I admit I’m rather jealous of John Edward. I’m jealous that I didn’t think of it first. I’d be wildly rich off the money of fools right now if I had.

I consider myself to be quite spiritual. Guys like John Edward trivialize my beliefs in a spiritual world and make others think less of me. That pisses me off.

Fine, but we’re not talking about near death experiences. This is about a conman.

Like I said, we’re not discussing a NDE. Feel free to start another thread, but I fear it will simply be a rehash of your James Praugh thread from a few months ago.

Huh?

Like other skeptics you pass over controlled scientific studies if they don’t agree with your opinions. The link http://www.newsnet5.com/station/2893543/detail.html

If you want more information after reading the above link, go to:
http://www.ndeweb.com/wildcard/
You may want to show your own links – only controlled scientific studies please. We have heard all of the skeptics opinions and value them nil.

Love

[Lord_Ashtar]

@lekatt

Like other skeptics you pass over controlled scientific studies if they don’t agree with your opinions. The link http://www.newsnet5.com/station/2893543/detail.html

If you want more information after reading the above link, go to:
http://www.ndeweb.com/wildcard/

You may want to show your own links – only controlled scientific studies please. We have heard all of the skeptics opinions and value them nil.

Love

Like I said before, I believe in an afterlife. I just don’t think that John Edward is talking to the inhabitants of it on a two way radio.

By the way, do you have any opinion on the fact that the Crossing Over disclaimer admits outright that the host is a liar?

[Marley23]

We have heard all of the skeptics opinions and value them nil.

Who is we? You and the dead people Edward is talking to?

[Meatros]

@vanilla

Millions of people believe in him.
Millions of people are wrong.

Notice he doesn’t have the guts to post HERE…

Also, millions MORE do not believe in him.

[Marley23]

So, with the show off the air, I guess he’s free to be Kerry’s VP candidate, eh?

[Zebra]

The thing is, could JE convince a jury that he could do it?

If he walked up and did his little show with the 12 member jury, he may be able to convince them that is doing what he claims.

[Meatros]

Ah, I see, so the ‘scientist’ that Lekatt is prepared to accept is Dr. Gary Schwartz.

For those who don’t know about Schwartz’s.

Is the Research Fundamentally Flawed?

Although never going so far as to claim his research methodology is ideal, he apparently believes it is adequate to justify his conclusions that his mediums are communicating with the dead. He writes, “Skeptics who claim that this is some kind of fraud the mediums are working on us have nonetheless been unable to point out any error in our experimental technique to account for the results” (p. xxii). Later he asserts, “The data appear to be real. If there is a fundamental flaw in the totality of the research presented in these pages, the flaw has managed to escape the many experienced scientists who have carefully examined the work to date” (p. 13).

These statements perplex me greatly. I have carefully itemized not one but several “fundamental” flaws in Schwartz’s afterlife experiments. I confronted Schwartz with this listing of flaws at two public meetings where we shared the same platform. I also brought them up again at the panel on cold reading that he convened. The other members of the panel also pointed to flaws. And Wiseman and O’Keeffe3 pointed to serious problems with Schwartz’s first two published studies in the areas of judging bias, control group biases, and sensory leakage. I would have to make this article almost as long as Schwartz’s book to explain adequately each flaw. Because any one of these flaws by itself would suffice to invalidate his experiments as acceptable evidence, I will discuss only a few of these here. First, I will list here the major types of flaws in the experiments described in his first four reports (I will deal with the fifth report separately below):

1.Inappropriate control comparisons
2.Inadequate precautions against fraud and sensory leakage
3.Reliance on non-standardized, untested dependent variables
4.Failure to use double-blind procedures
5.Inadequate “blinding” even in what he calls “single blind” experiments
6.Failure to independently check on facts the sitters endorsed as true
7.Use of plausibility arguments to substitute for actual controls

The preceding list refers to defects in the conduct of the experiments and in the gathering of the data. Other very serious problems appear in the way Schwartz interprets and presents the results of his research. These include:

8.The confusion of exploratory with confirmatory findings
9.The calculation of conditional probabilities that are inappropriate and grossly misleading
10.Creating non-falsifiable outcomes by reinterpreting failures as successes
11.Inflating significance levels by failing to adjust for multiple testing and by treating unplanned comparisons as if they were planned.

Other problems involve failure to use adequate randomization procedures, using only sitters who are predisposed to the survival hypothesis, inappropriate statistical tests, and other common defects that plague new research programs. Even if the research program were not compromised by these defects, the claims being made would require replication by independent investigators. Perhaps Schwartz’s most serious misconception is seen in his attempt to shift the burden of proof from himself to the skeptics.

The worst mistake made by Schwartz and his colleagues was to publish the results they have obtained so far. Instead, they should have first tried to gather evidence for their hypothesis that would meet generally accepted scientific criteria. By submitting their very inadequate studies to public scrutiny and by demanding that skeptics “explain away” their defective data, they have lost credibility. In addition, the journals that did accept these studies for publication and Schwartz’s panel of Friendly Devil’s Advocates have also suffered greatly in credibility.

Has Schwartz updated his methods any or is he still using the same shoddy methods as before?

[vanilla]

@lekatt

It isn’t a matter of guts, it is a matter of time better used in helping others.

you misspelled ripping people off.

[lekatt]

@Meatros

Ah, I see, so the ‘scientist’ that Lekatt is prepared to accept is Dr. Gary Schwartz.

For those who don’t know about Schwartz’s.

Has Schwartz updated his methods any or is he still using the same shoddy methods as before?

Of course I would expect “scientists” to question the methods of another scientist if he didn’t agree with them. That’s just human nature. How could it not happen. It is just a cop out.

Love

[Lord_Ashtar]

@Marley23

So, with the show off the air, I guess he’s free to be Kerry’s VP candidate, eh?

John Edward visits the UN.

He pauses, looks almost down at the floor, like he’s listening to something.

“Okay, I’m hearing something about WMB’s, or WMC’s. It definately begins with a WM. Does this mean anything to you?”

[UncleBeer]

Good link, Meatros. I was just going to make the point that Schwartz, according to the information in this story from his university’s newspaper, is not using a double blind technique. Here’s the relevant quote:

The medium receives messages from the dead and then relays them to the sitter, who tells Schwartz if the information is correct or incorrect.

If this “experiment” were truly scientific and used the proper double-blind method, the sitter would not only not be the judge of which information about his dead relatives is correct, the sitter wouldn’t even know anythingthat the medium had said. To be double blind, an impartial judge would be required. Schwartz’s technique isn’t even single-blind. The two parties performing the test appear to also be the judges of what is correct and what is not. Science says that the outcome of an experiment is not subject to interpretation - that everyone conducting the same tests, will get the same results. So why doesn’t Schwartz use persons other than the testees to judge the results? Simple, because his postive results would disappear if he were to do this. That, and that alone, makes these “experiments” not science.

But there’s more.

“I’m hopeful that there’s an afterlife so I can see everybody I’ve lost already,” said Vettore.

This is what one of the sitters for Schwartz’s medium has to say about the afterlife - one of the judges of the accuracy of the meduim. Anybody besides me see what might constitute a bias here? Somebody reporting seeing exactly what they wish to see?

And more yet.

From the same story:

In this process, he [Schwartz] rules out information that the medium got about the deceased before the experiment or that the medium got with clues from the sitter. Schwartz also rules out any information that may have involved cheating or fraud.

Right. And how the hell does Schwartz know what prior knowledge the medium had, or what clues the medium got from the sitter in the course of the examination? Also, this screening technique permits Schwartz to pick and choose which data he will make his statistical analysis from. This is totally inappropriate. The man is cherry-picking data obtained by simple cold-reading techniques. This is most certainly not science and of course course Schwartz is gonna get favorable results. He’s set up the experimental “controls” so that can’t get anything but.

This is utter horseshit and it’s contemptible fools like Schwartz that lend an air of legitimacy to frauds like John Edward and the rest of his deceitful ilk.

[Mr.Miskatonic]

More amusing was Schwartz’s “White Crow” experiments, where he was only able to have six subjects. He got a 66% rating, which was insignifigant for such a low number of subjects. So what did he do? He extrapolated the six into a magic 25 subjects, claiming that the ‘66%’ would hold up going to 25 subjects, therefore making it statistically significant.

Sorry, you’re not allowed to do that.

http://skepticreport.com/psychics/pseudo.htm

More recently, Schwartz’s work “Dream Detective” has been rejected by the very credulous Journal of the Society of Parapsycholgoical Research. Apparently, they are fed up with his gibberish and nonsense. Its the final decent of a woowoo when even your fellow believers can stomach your garbage.

[GodlessSkeptic]

Sorry if the link to Mark Mayer’s site did not contain the specific info abouyt his law suit. I picked up the story on CNN and then got my Skeptic mag email dispatch with a link to his web site which I could have sworn had information about his lawsuit but maybe he is not allowed to discuss it or something(I have no idea how Aussie law works in this regard).
Lekatt: I fully expected you to write off Edward’s cancellation by giving us some hooey about him wanting to spend time with his family or something but I did not expect you to DENY HIS SHOW IS CANCELLED?!? LOL! Sci-Fi channel announced more than a month ago that Crossing Over would not return DUE TO POOR RATINGS.
You can type “Crossing Over cancellation” or somesuch into Google adn no doubt get many hits on the story.

This is not about freedom of speech or any such thing at all. If Ford Motor Co. advertises a new type of automobile that cannot ever sink in water or explode on impact, should they be allowed to make these claims even if completely untrue?

Edward, Benny Hinn, Van Prague etc. are making very specific claims of being able to perform certain services for which they charge a great deal of money(so much for “helping others” right?). Since they are making the positive claim “I can do THIS if you pay me THIS MUCH” they are or should be obligated to substantiate their claims. This even applies to Benny Hinn who does not specifically “charge” money but does prey upon peoples’ religiosity and emotional frailties to solicit donations which he uses to buy HUGE houses/mansions, stables, massive garages etc.

Funny how Randi becomes the villain in the eyes of the anti-skeptic. What is this great crime Randi is perpetrating upon us? He is saying “Show me”. SHow me you can do what you claim you can do! SO far not a single paranormalist or supernaturalist has been able to do so adn it’s not because scientific tests are rigged. That is a cop out. A controlled experiement is simply one which eliminates the “mundane” as explanations for an observed phenomenom. Nothing more. If you claim to have remote viewing abilities so reliable that they should or even have been used by the military/CIA then it should be a simple matter for you to demonstrate these abilities in a double blind experiment.

Again, no one has…EVER!

[UncleBeer]

Another story about Schwartz and his afterlife “experiments” from the Arizona Wildcat newspaper may be found here: http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/92/152/01_2_m.html Let’s take a look at some of the facts in this story.

The research design, which Schwartz dubbed the “Russek paradigm,” was mostly the work of the lab’s co-founder Linda Russek.

And here’s some of Linda’s other work. You tell me if she’s exhibiting the proper skeptical attitude of a legitimate scientific researcher. Equally as damning is that our star researcher, Gary Schwartz is listed as co-author of this little gem.
http://www.enformy.com/$wsr02.html

Consciousness cannot be understood in isolation of the wide range of other phenomena that share a common ontological root. Hence, a comprehensive theory of consciousness must explain, not only self-awareness, intention, sensation, perception, memory, cognition, learning, creativity, curiosity, and altered states, but life per se, quantum entanglement, telepathy, precognition, energy healing, the evolution of species, and the homing behavior of pigeons and other animals.

Right. This is quite a carload of hogwash - and Linda & Gary appear to believe every bit of it - telepathy, precognition, energy healing. Hogwash. Is there anything this pair doesn’t believe?

Maybe not. Here’s more:
http://members.aol.com/SiWriterEH/soulmemoryenglish.html

Dr. Linda Russek, a psychologist, was the very person to crack open his mind closely shut for telling what he believed. She had faced a sudden and miserable death of her father, a renowned cardiologist. Since he was such a great father to her, his death for her was hard to swallow. Dr. Henry Russek, respected and admired by all the people surrounding him, was not only her father but also a friend and a colleague who shared the medical practice with her.

She was wondering if her father was living in this world in the form of spirit or consciousness. She even went further to want to contact his spirit which she believes not only existing but also evolving. Maybe because his presence was so overwhelming that she could feel that way. . . .

Dr. Linda Russek and Dr. Gary Schwartz, the two key figures in this book, are now working independently. Dr. Gary Schwartz is now a professor of psychology, neurology and psychiatry at State University of Arizona as well as a director of the Human Energy Systems Laboratories and the High Technology Biofield Medical Treatment Center. Dr. Linda Russek is now a head of the Cardiac Science Foundation, a non-profit entity. She is doing researches which include spiritual medications.

Again we have evidence that the conclusion these two are reaching from their test is exactly the outcome both of them have been desperately longing for. And look, another of Russek’s quack beliefs shows up - “spiritual medications,” whatever those may be. I’ll bet they’re not on the formulary of the prescription benefit of your health insurance. Yet more hogwash.

Wait, here’s the evidence we’ve been looking for It is now decided; Russek and Schwartz do indeed believe everything. This is from inside the jacket of Russek’s & Schwartz’s 1999 book, The Living Energy Universe.
http://www.heartsciencefoundation.com/book.htm

"From the subatomic to the cosmic, from cells and ideas to souls and God, all dynamic systems have memory. Using the tools of science, University of Arizona scientists Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek demonstrate that everything in the universe is alive, eternal and evolving. Their new model of life, the Universal Living Memory theory, is reconfiguring the scientific landscape.

“Schwartz and Russek usher the reader through new doorways to profound discoveries. Here is stunning but sober emerging evidence that every idea ever thought and every awareness ever generated is even now contained in the universe as information or memory, that consciousness survives death, that God exists - and is evolving.”

Yep. Everything is alive - and evolving - and eternal?. How the hell does that work? Living things evolve? That’s un-possible. One suspects they used the same “tools of science” to come to this conclusion that used for their afterlife experiments - which is to say, none.

Another little fact dropped in that newspaper story above:

Schwartz acknowledged that a few of the sitters were acquaintances of the mediums.

And he maintains that his tests were double blind? How can this be possible? Not only are the test subjects the judges, he admits they fucking already know each other? It’s absurd. I had thought it possible that perhaps Schwartz was merely fooling himself with his methods and truly believed his results were genuine. But this puts that notion to violent death. Schwartz is an outright fraud and a liar. And if using known acquaintances as your subjects is part of the “Russek paradigm,” which she probably is since this pair have a long history of working and writing together, she’s equally as culpable as her for perpetrating this fraud.

There were also several “jawdroppers” when the mediums revealed highly personal information or facts so obscure that the sitters themselves didn’t know them, he said.

Right. How does one then judge the correctness, or incorrectness of the mediums’ guesses? Well, the researcher must go outside his “controlled experiment” to find corraborative information - again allowing himself to cherry-pick data for the best fit and impose his own interpretation on the correctness of a guess. Yet another violation of double blind protocols and the scientific method.

[quoteIn one case, the medium revealed that the sitter had an uncle who had been killed during World War II. The sitter hadn’t known about the uncle, but later confirmed the story with relatives, Schwartz said.[/quote]

And I assume, since this is the only instance of a “jawdropper” noted in the article that it is the most “jawdropping” revelation made. But this would be an easy guess. The medium must merely make a reasonable estimate of the sitter’s age and if it fits within a few years where this person might have had uncles of the proper age to serve in WWII, then the odds of this guess being true increase by a very large margin. And again, the medium might not have even been guessing. The story doesn’t say whether the medium and sitter paired for this revelation were prior acquaintances. The medium could easily have researched something like this prior to the experiment.

The success of the mediums often depended on the sitters and their belief in life after death.

An all too common result of parapsychological “experiments” such as these. In keeping with Occam’s razor, I feel comfortable hazarding a guess why this might be true. Simple bias. These people see what they want so badly to see, and when given the opportunity to be the judge of the accuracy of results of such experiments, as these sitters were afforded, the results are foreordained. And that’s a prediction you can wager money upon.

I’ll also place here, in the interests of fairness and giving Dr. Gary Schwartz his say, his rebuttal to Hyman’s CSICOP article linked by Meatros above. It doesn’t, in my estimation, do much to resurrect the validity of his study, or my opinion that Schwartz is a fraud.
http://www.enformy.com/Gary-reHymanReview.htm

[UncleBeer]

[quote]
Sorry if the link to Mark Mayer’s site did not contain the specific info abouyt his law suit.[/quote[
I don’t think it’s actually a lawsuit. It appears that what Mayer actually did was file a complaint with Consumer Affairs.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/23/1077384671735.html

[Meatros]

@lekatt

Of course I would expect “scientists” to question the methods of another scientist if he didn’t agree with them. That’s just human nature. How could it not happen. It is just a cop out.

Love

Lekatt, I think we’ve been over this before, but I’ll repeat it anyway.

The fundmental nature of science is questioning; as such in every theory, in every branch of science, pretty much every method used in a scientific study is questioned.

That’s the scientific method Lekatt. It’s not a cop out. A cop out would be to handwave away comments towards a bad methodology by saying that it’s because scientists are jealous or just don’t want to agree with the findings.

[Meatros]

@GodlessSkeptic

Edward, Benny Hinn, Van Prague etc. are making very specific claims of being able to perform certain services for which they charge a great deal of money(so much for “helping others” right?).

Benny Hinn is a psychic? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I find his antics nausiating, but I didn’t know he claimed to be a psychic.

[Meatros]

@UncleBeer

Good link, Meatros.

Thanks! Although I must say, you thoroughly demolished Schwartz!