Some redundancy in the title there, I agree.
Some good news. Apparently Sky TV (UK satellite TV), has a program called “Psychic Interactive”, which encourages its viewers to call in for psychic advice on premium phone lines. That’s not the good news. The good news is the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday has just exposed this as “a cynical sham” by calling in to the hotlines with made-up scenarios. The psychics all claimed they were “seeing” the fictional people the reporters were talking about:
Our reporter claimed to have lost her brother in a horrific car crash, and a psychic known as Inbaal was quick to say that she could see the dead youth and describe his 'cropped chestnutbrown hair, strong build and acne-free skin'. She added: 'He's very near you. I wouldn't be surprised if you can smell his aftershave.'
When the reporter asked a different psychic whether her fictional husband was having an affair, she was told that he was indeed being unfaithful - but that she could still save their relationship.
The psychic, who said she was gaining her insight from fortune-telling cards, advised the reporter that it would be possible to rebuild the marriage as the affair would be over quickly.
It is especially good to see a national media outlet exposing this nonsense, instead of reporting it as factual like they normally do. Kudos to the Mail.
No kudos to a number of the commenters to the news story. While a few understood the rationale of the article, several commenters will clearly believe psychics are real, no matter what. For example, the prize for missing the point goes to:
If you're going to ring with fictional cases, how do you expect to get real answers?
Yeeeeesss. Now just take these medications; the doctor will be in to see you shortly.
My favorite comment was:
Psychics being exposed as fakes - I bet they didn't see that one coming...
Hey, that sounds like something I would have written.
I'm skeptical. There's no such thing as a news organization that searches for the truth or applies critical thinking to its stories. This is all just a wonderful dream that's going to disappear as soon as my alarm clock goes off.
Posted by: BronzeDog | October 27, 2005 at 06:15 AM
However, I wouldn't get too hopeful about the Daily Mail as a champion of rationality. I suspect this is more about industry politics and market share. The Mail regularly features uncritical reportage of the latest pseudoscientific and New Age fads (for instance, it serialized The Bible Code) not to mention getting half the proceeds from the premium-rate astrology phone service run by its resident astrologer Jonathan Cainer (see here).
Posted by: Ray | October 27, 2005 at 09:05 AM