John Edwards claims he is in contact with people who have died, Sylvia Brown claims she sees stuff that happened, The Pet Psychic claims she talks to dead pets. Are these people nuts? Are they just frauds? Do they have any sort of real ability in the areas they claim to? Why can’t we all do what they say they can do?
Well, if you chose to believe it (and, from what I can see, it’s up there with God for hard evidence atm), we all have it. You know that feeling that someone’s watching you - that’s your psychic part of the brain picking up their observation of you.
Let’s put it this way, Neisha… there’s a standing offer from James Randi to give $1,000,000 to whomever can demonstrate, under agreed-upon lab conditions, any sort of supernatural power. So far, nobody’s been able to succeed in that test.
Syliva Brown? John Edwards? They’re carnival showmen. They play guessing games and let the audience members fill in whatever meanings they want. For instance, a psychic might say, “I’m seeing something brown, some very strong feeling of brown.” This might make an audience member think of his father’s favorite shirt… so what does the audience member say? “Ooh, that’s my father’s favorite shirt!” Then the psychic goes from there… “Oh, a connection with your father? Was he a large man?” If the audience member says yes, then the psychic keeps guessing from ther. If he says no, then the psychic might try, “A friend of your father’s, perhaps?” and see where that leads.
It’s really quite cruel, in the long-term. It’ll give the believer happiness in the short term, but what happens when they find out that they were deceived?
They’re frauds who do it for the money.
John Edward (not Edwards) uses a combination of standard carnival tricks.
You can certainly learn to do what he does - it’s just not a ‘psychic’ ability.
Here is a clear explanation:
Bear in mind that these crooks are preying on vulnerable people, who have recently suffered the loss of a loved one, and are desperately seeking comfort.
The victims want to help the ‘psychic’ and volunteer all the information. Then, not realising what has actually happened, they gasp with amazement and come back for more.
It’s quite simple really to spot such crimes - you just need to avoid being emotionally carried away.
If I offer to make you rich through a pyramid scheme, just do the simple maths. All the money comes from people taking part. Once the crook has taken his cut, where is the ‘profit’ you were promised?
If a Nigerian banker offers to make you rich, provided you give him access to your bank account, just check the Internet. Americans lost millions of dollars to this fraud last year.
If someone claims to do something miraculous (e.g. sell you a perpetual motion machine) ask what proof he’s got.
Don’t accept anecdotes ‘John Smith of Boston says it really works!!!’.
What can psychics actually do?
They certainly take your money:
(from Edward’s website)
The official John Edward newsletter “Bridges” is published quarterly ( 4 issues) and contains the following information: John’s Lecture Schedule Ticket Information for Events Questions & Answers Guest Contributors Inspirational Stories Referral List Other spiritual related areas There will be information as to how to: *** Schedule Appointments *** Order Books & Tapes Information in the Newsletter may not appear on the website. The fee for the Newsletter is $24.95 for one year.
For this you basically get ‘Inspirational Stories’?
Visiting an event also costs money (you have to buy a ticket).
He gets paid by the TV network.
Personally I’d prosecute him and the Network for conspiracy and fraud.
*Question:*What Is Mental Telepathy/Psychics?
Answer: A fraud, created to separate the gullible from their cash, or to gain power & control over the lives of the timid & confused, or both.
I put it in big letters so you couldn’t miss it. or think my answer was ambigous in any way.
Don’t be fooled, don’t be scammed. It’s all a carny scam.
I see a few references here to James Randi, his $1m challenge and his description, on his website, of John Edward and the ‘cold reading’ process.
As an expert in this field, and as someone who has known Randi for longer than I care to remember, let me try to shed some illumination.
-
Neisha, your question is actually a difficult one to answer in a few words. The debate between people who think psychic ability does exist, and those who do not, has been going on for a very long time. If you were to read a lot of the relevant literature, which I’ve done for about 20 years, you would see that this debate never goes anywhere, and never will. The reason is that the two sides (believers, non-believers) play by different rules of evidence, and have different priorities.
-
For the skeptics, the main point is that there is no scientific evidence, at least, none that is non-controversial and widely accepted in the scientific community, which supports the claim that psychic ability exists. People have been trying to obtain scientific proof for ‘psi’ (psychic ability) since around 1890, when the Society for Psychical Research was founded. So far, every attempt to establish this kind of scientific evidence has either produced (a) no positive evidence fr psi or (b) positive results that were not repeated elsewhere, and which were subsequently considered by most of the scientific establishment to be the result of fluke, error or fraud - sometimes the fraud is on the part of the psychic, sometimes on the part of the scientist.
-
There are also philosophical objections to the notion of psychic ability, and you can read about them in philosophy textbooks, and a few common sense ones as well. If a psychic is willing to make money selling books and tapes and readings for tens of dollars at a time, why not just either (a) come up with some winning lottery numbers of the results of sports events and make a lot more cash a lot more quickly, or (b) prove their powers and win a Nobel prize.
-
The skeptical position on scientific testing is, however, deeply flawed, but they never admit it. Here’s why. A scientist designs a test to see if someone has ESP. The test is carried out, and no ESP is detected. Skeptics always maintain that this tells us something about ESP - specifically, that there’s no evidence for it. However, this is unfair and a logical leap too far. It is more correct to say that the outcome either tells us something about ESP or tells us something about the scientific test. If you take the former view, the outcome suggests ESP is like the Easter Bunny, and doesn’t exist. If you take the latter view, the outcome suggests that ESP is so subtle and elusive that the scientific test was not fine enough to detect it. There are hypothetical sub-atomic particles that scientific tests try to find and can’t.
-
James Randi has been many things, including a stage magician and escapologist. These days, thanks to an anonymous benefactor, he runs something called the James Randi Educational Foundation, or JREF. The JREF has a good website which explains what the million dollar challenge is all about. In essence, Randi says he’ll give a million bucks to anyone who can prove, under controlled conditions which eliminate the opportunity for fraud or error, that they have genuine powers of a psychic or paranormal nature. Nobody has ever won ths million dollars. Skeptics tend to crow about this a lot.
-
Psychics and their fans criticise the million dollar challenge for various reasons. For one thing, they are entitled to claim that they would rather be tested by reputable, qualified scientists than a former entertainer who chooses to call himself James ‘the Amazing’ Randi. Geller was tested by guys who had scientific patents to their name, and John Edwards has also been tested by scientists. Randi, of course, says that these scientists, and these experiments, are or were flawed and personally, I think the evidence stacks up in his favour. But the small point I’m making here is that not everyone considers the JREF to be the best or most suitable body to be telling everyone else how to test psychics. (Incidentaly, none of these scientific tests have ever established the reality of psychic power).
-
The million dollar challenge generates controversy, but not much illumination. For example, Randi says if the psychics can really do their thing, why don’t they take the challenge and give the money to charity of they wish? The psychics and their fans say if Randi has the million, why not give it to charity straight away and stop messing around? Randi says the psychics are chicken because they know they will fail the test. The psychics say the test is rigged to ensure they’ll always fail, no matter what. Randi says no, the tests (which are established and agreed ahead of time by both parties in respect of each psychic claim) are strictly fair and impartial, not rigged at all. The psychics and their fans say they don’t believe him. And so it goes on and on, without end.
-
There are two possible explanations for what John Edward does. One is that he’s psychic and can contact the dead. Unfortunately, close analysis of his ‘show’ does not tend to support this hypothesis, because the ‘misses’ he gets are inconsisitent with the ‘hotline to heaven’ hypothesis. The other explanation is that he’s using something called cold reading, which is a set of psychological strategies for seeming to know about someone even if you don’t. I know about this because I wrote the definitive book on it (and Randi fans, that’s Randi’s opinion too). I once wrote to the Straight Dope offering a free copy to help the Staff answer queries about psychics, but never got a reply.
-
The JREF site has some stuff about cold reading, but it’s flawed. It’s too superficial, and Randi himself has never given a test conditions demonstration that cold reading works. I have, for TV and the media, on both sides of the Atlantic. It does work, and it seems to me that John Edward’s show (which I’ve seen even though it doesn’t air here in the UK) is a combinatin of cld reading and what we call ‘warm reading’, which is cold reading spiced up with a little advanced information. Judicious editing helps too.
-
GB Shaw once said 'You cannot rationally argue out what wasn’t rationally argued in". Basically, people who believe in psychic powers do so not because of any strong and hard evidence that psi is real, but because they chose to believe and want to believe. They find they get something from it, and of course once you have adopted the belief system (e.g. astrology, tarot, any religion) it’s easy to hear some ‘inner voices and conviction’ that tell you what you’re in to is real. But that doesn’t actually make it real!
-
Some psychics are con artists. They know they’re fakes, and they’re in it for the money. Some are not. They sincerely believe they’re for real, even if rational analysis suggests otherwise. They may be deluded, but they are not con artists in any meaningful sense, and no amount of vituperative slander from Dopers will change this.
-
There is a simple way to prove to yourself, and to anyone who’s interested, that most psychic stuff is crap. It’s called the ‘false positive’ test. It works like this. Suppose you have a newspaper with 12 horoscopes in it. You have a friend who’s Libra. You read out the forecast for Libra and ask if it seems to fit, and maybe they’ll say yes, it does (this is quite likely to happen). For many people, this is a sign that astrology works. Not so fast! If you read out the horoscope for the wrong sign, you’ll get just as much agreement as for the right sign. In fact, try this. Get a pro astrologer to draw up detailed horoscopes for five friends, then give all five friends copies of all five horoscopes and ask them to find the one that supposedly applies to them. Thy will never do better than they would by chance alone.
The same ‘false positive’ test applies to any form of psychic divination or reading.
Big problem with this: If it’s too subtle and elusive to be detected scientifically, then it’s far too subtle and elusive to provide any help in finding the murder victim, or helping you with your love life, or in communicating with your dear departed Uncle Charlie.
I get the feeling you guys don’t believe in it.
Can you explain how some psychics actually do find a missing dead body or who killed someone?
I do believe in an invisible force that affects all of us on the planet. But you can test the existence of gravity for yourself…
Of course if you can find a cite from a police force that a psychic has helped them, that would be evidence.
But I don’t know of such a cite. It’s just another myth peddled by fraudsters.
I have some amusing correspondence with professional 'dowsers ', which I can publish if you want.
You never hear about the vast majority of their “attempts” because they fail. Once in a very great while, they seem to get a hit. This is due to chance and the vagueness of their “help”, just like John Edward. Oh, and the psychics lie about their “successes”, too.
I saw a tv show in which a law enforcement officer said his department listens to psychics. The reason is that they might know something factual about the crime but don’t want to get involved and are posing as psychics. Or the psychic might be the perpetrator him/herself, playing an egomaniacal game with the police. I hasten to add the officer didn’t mention any actual instances of either.
This is what I love about The SDMB. Someone posts about psi and we can drum up an expert who is willing to spend time telling us about it all (no sarcasm) 
.
Thanks ianzin
As an aside, my father met Yuri Geller and has his standard bent spoon™. More interestingly, he did the you-draw-I-guess test with him. My father drew a standard bubble-tree (childish trunk & roughly-spherical top), and Yuri also drew a tree. It even matched my father’s on the width dimensions, although I was impressed enough that he drew a tree. Okay, so maybe his brother was upstairs peeking through the ceiling (or whatever), but it was still impressive to me.
Oh, and Cronos. Without coming down on one side or another, I can see a flaw with your argument. Just because you can’t see bacteria, doesn’t mean that they aren’t there, just that you can’t see them.
Except that you’re not refuting Chronos’s argument at all. He said absolutely nothing about the forces being detectable to currently technology.
Just to make it clear… you are an expert what?
Magician?
Psychic?
I accept members of the Magic Circle as experts (I especially like Penn and Teller).
I have no evidence for any psychic ability, so won’t accept any ‘expert’ in that field.
Yes, no psychic ability has ever been observed under controlled conditions.
Of course some psychics claim that scientists project ‘negative psychic vibrations’, which nullify the psychic’s powers. According to these psychics, the fact they fail proves both psychic powers and ‘negative psychic vibrations’ exist.
Or indeed save lives by predicting tragedies. Psychics must be rather nasty people, since they refuse to do this.
Drat, that deeply flawed scientific method. Here we go, always asking for controlled conditions and repeated observations. Much simpler to take the psychic’s word for it. :rolleyes:
How about the tests that are designed by psychics? How come they always fail?
Surely you know that all of Randi’s $1,000,000 tests are agreed by the psychic as fair. For example, psychic dowsers are shown where the water is and try to ‘detect’ it. Only when they announce that their psychic powers are indeed working 100% is the water concealed.
Instantly the psychic ability drops to chance levels, or worse. But the only thing that changed is that the ‘psychic’ doesn’t know the answer.
Your deduction?
I also note that if you can’t detect a ‘hypothetical particle’, even though your theory says you should be able to, then it probably doesn’t exist and the theory needs changing.
Well crow is not the right word. I personally believe in growth and would be delighted to learn a new ability. I just don’t like giving money to fraudsters.
Did you know that Uri Geller is a magician?
Did you know that ‘reputable, qualified scientists’ can be fooled by his misdirection skills?
By all means have scientists (who of course have zero expertise in psychic powers) design a test. But please let’s have a magician, trained to detect skilful trickery, present as well.
Randi has published pictures showing ‘psychics’ cheating, while ‘reputable, qualified scientists’ are looking the other way!
So a test designed and agreed to by a psychic must be rigged if the psychic fails?
Could there be…an alternative explanation?!
Suppose that psychic powers don’t exist, but that people are gullible.
Would psychics cheat to make money? :eek:
Would those psychics fail every test?
Suppose I really can contact the dead. Assume it’s like a telephone conversation.
Would I really start with ‘Is there anyone here who has lost a loved one whose name begins with a J?’ (because the ‘spirit’ has just ‘said’ to me ‘Hello I’m dead. My name is…sorry, we’ve got a bad connection…hello…hello…my name is J(click)…please try again later, all our spirit lines are busy…’)
Since you’re an expert in cold-reading, please confirm that it starts with questions like ‘Is there anyone here who has lost a loved one whose name begins with a J?’
Do you believe in dowsing?
Indeed. And I think it was P. T. Barnum who said ‘there’s one born every minute.’
Cite?
I quote from a leading British ‘dowser’ (note that no dowsing ability has ever been observed in a test):
‘All of us have it in us to learn to dowse’
‘Cost? It depends where you do your course…’
‘What can you find with dowsing? The list is more or less endless, just some are water, mine shafts, oil, ore loads, gas pipes, electricity + phone cables, cellars, capped wells, water mains, voids etc. Dowsing can be used for healing work. Finding missing persons or animals. And many more…’
‘We are often asked - how is it you can’t win the Lottery? - the short answer is - you cannot dowse like that (we think it builds up a form of subconscious anxiety and your instruments will give useless indications)…’
‘like most responsible dowsers, I charge a nominal fee for my services’
‘I will NOT take part in any form of experimentation or other tests to see if the results are repeatable over X number of experiments…I don’t feel I have to prove anything to anyone’
‘The short answer is that $1,000,000 does not attract me at all - I prefer to remain true to my craft and myself’
Why not ‘all psychic stuff is crap’?
Note that astrologers charge money for readings, and are also paid by newpapers and magazines.
How many astrologers ‘sincerely believe they’re for real’?
How many astrologers ‘are not con artists in any meaningful sense’?
ianzin:
I occasionally hear reports of very small (though reportedly statistically signficiant) psychic effects being documented. Sometimes the reports use meta-analysis.
Sometimes they involve random number generators.
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
Then there’s the article in Journal of Conflict Resolution (1988), documenting changes in violence levels in Beirut following group Transcendental Meditation. http://www.tm.org/charts/chart_51.html (Warning: data on this page may fail the laugh test.)
Ian, what’s the Straight Dope?
What a great thread. I hope you are enlightened Neisha.
Why hasn’t anyone prosecuted these frauds as Glee suggests? Most people know they are frauds - surely it can be proven in court.
Speaking of fraud, what about those electronic insect/rodent repelling devices, which can clearly be proven not to be effective - why isnt legal action taken against the manufacturers of those devices?
Thanks glee and ianzin for the top read.
[repost]
glee- take a breather for a sec, mang. You’re using kind of accusational tones here, and jumping all over people who I think you agree with.
ianzin is saying that no psychic behavior has been demonstrated by a scientific test. And, further, that this may be because psychic behavior doesn’t exist, or because the tests are crap.
Remember, crow tastes terrible, and proven psychic phenomena could be just around the corner (bloody unlikely, but possible).
Finally, you hardly sound like a skeptic. Phenomena which may be attributed to psi have been observed in the lab, but either (a) other, more likely, causes were found, or (b) the phenomena could not be reproduced in another lab.
As somebody who has never experienced anything psi- it’s rude as hell to tell other people that they haven’t. And in fact, for many people, supernatural phenomena aren’t just the equivalent of saying they met God.
jb
[/repost]
Just FYI, it wasn’t. It was said about Barnum. Read all about it here!
Floater,
good research!
- I hope you mean ‘man’ …
- It’s true I do get a bit worked up about people exploiting bereaved victims for money. Also our motto is to stamp out ignorance.
But I do want to stay polite!
I’m all for exposing a crap test. But Ianzin wrote ‘the outcome suggests that ESP is so subtle and elusive that the scientific test was not fine enough to detect it…’
Psychics don’t claim their powers are ‘subtle and elusive’. When was the last time a John Edward TV show was cancelled due to psychic failure?
Well it would certainly be extraordinary if a single test of psychic power finally worked now.
For one thing, you would have to investigate why such powers had failed for so long.
It’s not a matter of Middle Age Europeans saying ‘If only we had better ships and maps, we could see if any land lies West of Spain…’
Psychics tell us their powers exist today. They explain what they can do. They assure us their powers work.
Yet, every time, they fail.
I hereby ‘claim’ the Loch Ness Monster plays quarterback for the Washington Redskins.
How would you prove this?
You’d watch a game and see if a 100 foot dinosaur came on to the field. (Now that’s an image to remember :eek: )
How many games would you watch before you decided I was ‘incorrect’? (I seriously want you to answer this.)
We’re not talking making a machine that needs incredible machine tool accuracy to build, or extreme chemical reactions to achieve (or sending a man to the Moon).
If psychic powers exist, it should be easy to observe them. Why can’t we?
If psychic powers don’t exist, we could expect all sorts of fraudsters claiming amazing things and robbing the public in similar ways. Would you like to join my pyramid scheme? Hello, I am a Nigerian Banker…
One sad example, say of ‘ESP’, tests is that after you have two subjects attempt to communicate, you can claim practically anything that is mathematically ‘significant’.
If they get more cards right than by chance, it’s ESP.
If they do really badly, then ESP exists and so does an ‘ESP interference’ force.
If you compare the sequence of cards selected with the card ‘before’, then it’s precognition.
If you compare…well you get my drift.
I like an experiment that proposes a hypothesis and then tests it. I am very wary of claiming a hypothesis after a test.
Well I’ve personally never met a pyramid scheme that made money for its victims. Is it ‘rude as hell’ to tell people I don’t believe in pyramid scheme?
If I sell tickets to Redskin games because the Loch Ness Monster is ‘on the squad’, would you prosecute me for fraud? (If not, I have a bridge I want to sell you…)
Since neither God nor psychic powers have ever been observed, I think my example was a fair one.
I’d never heard of John Edwards until this thread, and co-incidentally his TV series starts here tomorrow night. It will be interesting to take a look at it with this thread in mind.
Minor point - it’s Edward
Major point - watch for standard cold reading techniques, plus likely warm reading.