Skeptico

Law of Attraction not working for Joe Vitale

Yesterday I posted The “Law” of Attraction (Not) – a response to Joe Vitale’s blog post, Is Attraction a Law?  Short version – The Law of Attraction (LOA) is not a law like the Law of Gravitation that has predictable, repeatable (no exceptions) results. I posted a brief comment on Joe’s blog, linking back to my post.

Now, Joe is one of the luminaries who appears in “The Secret”, and he has clearly stated the “LOA does work every time - no exceptions”. If this is true, Joe must have attracted my attentions, and my skeptical responses and questions. Strangely though, Joe doesn’t practice what he preaches with regard to the LOA. Specifically, he resorts to the decidedly non-LOA method of holding all comments on his blog until he can read them and decide which ones he will allow to be published. Why does he need to do this? Surely if you can use the LOA to make checks appear in your mailbox instead of bills (one of the specific claims made for the LOA), you can use the LOA to make only complimentary comments appear in your blog? Or doesn’t Joe really believe in the LOA?

Check out the actual exchange of comments (reproduced below), and remember that Joe is not just some random LOA believer – he is one of the main proponents of The Secret and the LOA, and he actually appears in the film:

Skeptico: Joe, I don’t think you understand what a Law is and what it isn’t. I just posted a reply: The “Law” of Attraction (Not).

Joe Vitale: Ah, you might want to re-read my post. :)

While people are arguing if LOA is a law or not, others are using the principle/law/insight/method (choose what makes you feel ok) to create lives of happiness and abundance.

The choice is yours.

Note the avoidance of the issue. I point out the LOA is not a Law. Joe ignores this, and equivocates by saying many people are benefiting from it. Remember, his claim was that the LOA is a Law like gravity. I try to pull him back to what was, remember, the subject of this post on his blog:

Skeptico: Maybe they are. And I re-read your post. The Law of Attraction is still not a law, for the reasons I gave in my post.

Joe Vitale: The next time a cop pulls you over for speeding, be sure to tell him you don't have to obey that "law," either.

Joe avoids the issue again – this time equivocating to a different (lesser) kind of law – speeding. But a speeding law (made up by man) is not the same as a scientific Law: you can break a speeding law; you can’t break the laws of the universe. Remember, Joe is the one who, in his own post, compares the LOA to gravity. He can’t justify that and so he has to try to pretend this is now the same as a traffic law.

Skeptico: A Scientific Law is a precise description of how the universe works. A speeding law is a rule written by lawyers – it says if you break the law you get a fine. The universe can’t “break” the law of gravitation – that’s the difference.

The math for Newton’s laws works every time. That’s why it’s a law. The Law of attraction does not work every time, if at all – that’s why it is not a law.

Joe Vitale: Again, LOA does work every time - no exceptions.

Again, re-read my post.

Note – Joe again ignores my arguments for why the LOA is not a law like the Law of Gravitation that he compared it to. He just asserts he is right, with no evidence, and not one word to refute what I had written. Clearly the LOA is not working to Joe’s benefit, as I am still responding to his original post, making points that refute his claims - points he can’t refute. Here’s where Joe gives up on the LOA that he has just said, “does work every time - no exceptions”, because clearly it’s not working for him now. What is this non-LOA method for getting rid of me? Easy - he doesn’t allow my next comment to be published. This is the comment Joe didn’t want anyone to see:

Skeptico: No it doesn't. It's not a Law. And read my post.

That’s it. Those were the eleven words Joe was frightened you would read. The eleven measly words that the oh-so-powerful LOA couldn’t make disappear. This is the best that one of the main proponents of The Secret can come up with. Remember that when anyone tells you how profound The Secret and the LOA are.

I’m not going to comment any more on Joe’s blog – I’m not going to waste time on someone who holds comments for review and then won't publish those he doesn’t like. (You can see some other critical comments now after mine.  Did Joe attract those, I wonder?  Remember, some of those people might have replied to Joe with comments he didn’t allow.) But I’m going to ask him two open questions about this LOA that “does work every time - no exceptions”:

1. Suppose there is a traffic jam. Some of the people caught in that jam had been worried about being late, and so possibly attracted the jam. What about the other people caught in the jam who had been positive, and had been thinking about being on time? How is the LOA working for them?
2. Imagine two people with identical bicycles. One locks up his bike because he is worried about theft. The other one is not worried about theft, and leaves his bike at the same place, unlocked. If the bike thief steals the unlocked bike, how is the LOA working for these two people? Or are you saying the bike thief will only steal the locked bike and ignore the unlocked one? If you are saying this, what studies have been done to show that this actually happens?

You can reply in the comments, Joe. I don’t hold replies for moderation.

They never heard of Stargate?

Readers Kim, Jeremy and Tyler each emailed me a story of how the UK Ministry of Defence has spent £18,000 ($35,000) on experiments to discover if psychic powers exist and if they could put to military use:

Subjects were blindfolded and asked if they could "see" the contents of sealed brown envelopes containing pictures of random objects and public figures.

[…]

More than a quarter – 28 per cent – of those tested managed a close guess at the contents of the envelopes, which included pictures of a knife, Mother Teresa and an "Asian individual". But most subjects were hopelessly off the mark.

[…]

The MoD last night refused to discuss the possible applications of such a technique, but said that the study had concluded there was "little value" in using "remote viewing" in the defence of the nation.

Have they never heard of Project Stargate – the US government’s failed attempt from the 1970s through 1995 to look for exactly the same thing? They spent $20 million before they realized it doesn’t work and gave up. (At least the UK government only wasted $35K.) The PsiTech organization supposedly purchased the “technology” from the US government, and are having a similar consistent lack of success in being able to remote-view anything correctly.

One thing in the article caught my eye:

Defence experts tried to recruit 12 psychics who advertised their abilities on the internet, but when they refused they were forced to use "novice" volunteers.

Typical. As Randi knows, as soon as you want to test any “psychic” to see if they really can do what they say, they run for the hills. They must hate freedom.

Of course, if remote viewing really worked, we’d have captured bin Laden years ago.

The “Law” of Attraction (Not)

Cosmic Connie alerted me to a blog posting by Joe Vitale, apparently one of the stars of “The Secret”. Joe asks rhetorically, “Is Attraction a Law?”, and answers in the affirmative using this example, comparing the Law of Attraction to gravity:

The people who say attraction is not a law cite examples such as, "I know gravity works. When I drop a book off a skyscraper, it will hit the ground. That's proof of the law of gravity."

Agreed.

They then go on to say, "When I try to attract something, sometimes I get it and sometimes I don't. So it isn't a law."

Not agreed.

Here's why.

Saying you tried to attract something and failed is like saying you tried to drop a book from a skyscraper to hit a particular spot and you missed. Because you missed the spot, you say gravity doesn't exist.

Oh boy. Not agreed Joe – not even close. Your argument is a false analogy. Newton’s Laws of Gravitation do not say that when you drop something (like a book, for example), it will land on a particular spot. What the Universal Law of Gravitation actually says is:

Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

This force of gravitational attraction between the two bodies acts along the line joining their centres. This force is hence mutual.

And there are precise specific mathematical formulae that describe these relationships, for example:

Consider two bodies of masses m 1 & m 2 with their centers separated by r. let F be the force of gravitational attraction between two bodies. According to newton's law of gravitation,

[snip]

F = G Mm/R²

These formulae (and others I have omitted), describe gravitation, and they always work every time – that’s why they are Laws. As I wrote before, if you replicate Newton’s experiments, you will find that gravity accelerates objects at exactly the rate predicted by the Law. The so-called “Law of Attraction” simply does not work like this. Actually, it doesn’t work at all – simply wishing for something will not make it appear, and pretending that it does and that this is a Law like gravity, is naive childish gibberish.

The Secret

I wasn’t going to bother with this, but numerous people have emailed me to ask when I’m going to review The Secret, and as it seems to be everywhere I decided I should give it a look.

I’m not going to watch the entire movie, though. As I wrote here, I’ve seen enough to get an idea if something is worth bothering with before I even start. And I don’t have to read every book or watch every film someone tells me about if I don’t think the book or film’s premise makes sense. However, I found the first 20 minutes online for free (I’m definitely not paying to see this film), and I’m basing this review on that initial 20 minute segment. If you think I’ve missed some crucial part of the film by only seeing 20 minutes, you can tell me what I missed, in the comments.

So, what is the big Secret?

The Secret is what they call the Law Of Attraction – the idea that you become or attract what you think about the most. Or as one person expressed it:

“Thoughts become things.”

This is presented as a literal truth – a law just like the laws of gravitation. And it is stated that this:

“Always works every time”

Note: always. And every time. No exceptions. It’s a Law, you see.

Examples are given. A man is shown worrying about being late, and so he gets stuck in a traffic jam. Another man is shown locking up his bicycle, presumably because he is worried about it being stolen; he returns later to find it has been stolen. The absurdity of these examples should be obvious. Are we supposed to believe the traffic jam wouldn’t have happened if it were not for this one guy worrying about being late? And what about the other people in the traffic jam? Were they all thinking negative thoughts about being late? Were there no positive-minded people in the area, thinking about being on time? And if there were, doesn’t that debunk the “always works every time” mantra? And what about the guy getting his bike stolen? Are we to assume that if another guy had left an identical unlocked bike at the same location, the bike thief would still have stolen the locked bike of the person worried about theft? Has anyone done a controlled study on this? (Hey, these were the examples used in the film – don’t blame me if they make no sense.)

As with What The Bleep, it is implied that there is science behind these revelations. For example, there was this from the self-proclaimed "visionary" Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith:

"It has been proven scientifically now that an affirmative thought is hundreds of times more powerful than a negative thought."

Really? Proven by which scientists? And written up where? Because I couldn’t find it.

Not a Law

Of course, the basic flaw in all this is that the Law Of Attraction is not a Law like the Law Of Gravitation that they compare it to. Newton’s Law’s can be demonstrated by anyone – drop an object and its acceleration will be exactly as the Law predicts. And this really does “always work every time” – that’s why it’s a Law. The “Law Of Attraction” as they call it just doesn’t work that way. Although having a positive attitude, being confident, believing in your own success etc is a definite advantage, and should be encouraged, having positive thoughts will not send out magic brainwave frequencies that change reality around you. This brainwave “magnetic signature” as one person called it, never goes out, any time. Not in the real world.

Equivocation

As with What the Bleep, you should watch out for equivocation. Expect believers to point out that being positive, confident etc will make people react more positively towards you, will tend to make you more successful etc. And it will. But they are equivocating about a lesser version of The Secret – a lesser version that does not support the “thoughts become things” and “it always works every time” woo version.

The film featured some of the same luminaries as in What the Bleep. I noticed John Hagelin and Fred Alan Wolf. And the “you literally create your day with your thoughts” nonsense is pretty much the same as What The Bleep was trying to sell. It wasn’t in the first 20 minutes, but I’m sure that before the end, quantum mechanics would have been evoked to justify all the mystical conclusions.  Unfortunately, Quantum Mechanics, and even the Copenhagen Interpretation, does not say this is the way the universe works.

And that’s no secret.

Other articles

Mike’s Weekly Skeptic Rant has an amusing review.

Karin Klein in the LA Times - another amusing review.

The Skeptic’s Dictionary on the law of attraction.

The Secret of Delusion from The Second Sight.

Newsweek article Decoding “The Secret”.

Skeptico's follow-up post Feb 23, 2007 - The “Law” of Attraction (Not).

Skeptico's follow-up post Feb 24, 2007 - Law of Attraction not working for Joe Vitale.

Salon on Oprah's ugly secret .

The Secret of The Secret - A cult self-help DVD fleeces the credulous from ReasonOnline.

The Onion gets it right as usual.

The Village Voice on Shopping with The Secret.

Oprah's 'Secret' Could Be Your Downfall from AlterNet.

The Wrath of the Secretrons from the Skeptical Inquirer.

The Secret of The Secret's Success, by Steve Salerno in The American Spectator.

Think Negative! Oprah, it's time to come clean about The Secret.

World Sound Healing Day

As Orac wrote here, Wednesday February 14^th has been designated World Sound Healing Day. For five minutes on Valentine’s Day, “sound healers” and other Newage bozos will send “a Sonic Valentine to the Earth with the heart sound "AH" filled with the intention of Peace and Love!”. Note, it’s the “intention” that makes the difference, since:

Sound coupled with intention has the ability to heal and transform.

The sound alone is not enough – you have to have the “intention” to heal too! Now, I find this a little surprising. I could believe that certain sounds might be soothing, could perhaps reduce stress and the like. But why is “intention” needed? What would the mechanism be? “Intention” is basically just a wish. So how does this wish create healing? What is the mechanism that transfers this wish into action? It doesn’t say, so it must be magic.

And does everyone have to do this at the same time for it to be of any use? Well, no, because:

We have found that creating a Global Sacred Sound any time within a 24 hour period on the planet will create a coherent waveform that will affect the entire Earth.

Found how? And can I see your work? Aha, it looks like he’s referring to the pseudoscientific drivel of Masaru Emoto. See the slide of polluted water (right) “after Buddhist monks had offered a prayer over it. Through the monks chanting they were able to purify the water”. Yeeees – well, when Emoto can do this double-blinded, I might sit up and take note. Until then, I am under whelmed.

At least World Sound Healing Day is free. Check out the Healing Sounds Store – “Reiki chants” etc. I especially like the chakra tuning forks for $188.95. Hey, I think I finally get what their intention really is.

Our intention is to sell this crap for nearly $200.

Sylvia Browne – the bullying starts

It didn’t take a psychic to see this coming. Self proclaimed psychic spiritual teacher Sylvia Browne is trying to get the StopSylviaBrowne website closed down. Get a load of the absurd threatening letter the site owner just received. It seems all the spiritual love goes out the window the moment her money-making scheme is exposed for the sham it is.

Clearly Sylvia is feeling threatened, and sending a bullying letter from her lawyer is easier than just taking Randi’s challenge and proving she can actually do what she claims she can do. (Something she still refuses to do.)  Like all bullies, she’s a coward. You’ll note, the letter just refers to a supposed copyright infringement of Sylvia’s name – nothing that even suggests the Stop Sylvia site is wrong or that Sylvia can really do what she claims.

Nothing but insults from Sylvia

Just a brief post. Anderson Cooper (CNN) did a segment today (transcript) on Sylvia Browne – examining the “successes” she claimed and finding them to be somewhat wanting. Cooper then hosted a he-said she-said segment with Randi opposite Linda Rossi, Sylvia’s business manager.

If you want the details, read the transcript, I’m not going to bother to break down Rossi‘s drivel line by line. Although one thing you probably won’t get from the transcript is how Rossi interrupted Randi numerous times and tried to talk over both him and Cooper. Randi behaved impeccably. And Cooper was pretty good, not letting Rossi get away with several attempted red herrings. But I thought it relevant to note that Rossi decided to allot most of her speaking time to complaining about Randi being an atheist, rather than explaining why we should believe that Sylvia is a psychic. She was trying to make it all about Randi – how he was an “atheist” and a “magician” – rather than providing evidence that Sylvia is not a fraud. Regular readers will know that attacking the person this way, rather than their arguments, is a logical fallacy known as ad hominem. It’s the refuge of someone who hasn’t any real arguments to present. Or as Cooper put it (if you could hear him over Rossi interrupting):

That's like a high school debating tactic, to attack the guy who's asking the question, as opposed to answering the actual question.

Very well put!

Of course, you know that Rossi said Sylvia wouldn’t take Randi’s challenge because “[Browne] has nothing to prove to Randi”. Of course, the real reason she won’t take it is because she knows she would fail. And following this lame performance from Sylvia’s representative, of this there can really be no doubt.

Randi on TV tonight

From JREF:

Randi on CNN with Anderson Cooper, 10pm EST Jan 30

(Yes, this time it's for real! - So they say...)

Tonight, Randi will be on Anderson Cooper Live. The show starts at 10:00 PM EST. A missing person's case and missing identity. "360°" takes you inside the mind of a con woman. What makes her tick? Watch tonight 10 ET.

Set your TiVos

Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge

… and the frauds who won’t take it.

James Randi was on Larry King Friday, sparring with “international spiritual medium” Rosemary Altea (transcript). Among other things, Randi asked Altea if she would take his One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, prompting Altea to regurgitate the usual lame justifications for not taking it. I am reminded of this list of bogus reasons pretend-psychics have for not taking the challenge. Although I’m not going to repeat that whole list, I thought it would be worthwhile to address some of the more common reasons given for not taking the challenge. These are the ones I hear the most:

Claim: The million dollars doesn’t exist (Altea used this one). 

Reality: Yes it does!

Claim: I don’t need a million dollars and/or it doesn’t matter to me what Randi believes (Altea used this one too).

Reality: Don’t tell me you wouldn’t love to win just to rub Randi’s nose in it. If any one of these big name psychics really could do what they claim they can, they’d take it in an instant, and would revel in the publicity and in Randi’s humiliation. And they could give the million to charity if they don’t need it.

No – if you had the powers you claim, you’d take the test.

Claim: Randi can’t say before I apply, what the test will be (Altea implied this as well).

Reality: Each test has to be designed individually – a test for a dowser is different from a test for a psychic, which is different from a test for homeopathy. If there was only one standard test for all applicants, you’d soon complain that the challenge didn’t fit what you can do.

Claim: Randi rigs the test.

Reality: The test is designed so that the applicant is happy with it, and Randi is not involved in running the test. In addition there is no “judging” that would allow Randi (or the applicant) any wiggle room. The result will be clear – it’ll be either a pass or a fail based on the strict criteria agreed in advance.

The truth is that the test is designed to prevent cheating and to eliminate results due simply to chance – and that is the real reason frauds won’t take it.

Claim: The test doesn’t prove or disprove psychic powers anyway.

Reality: I call this the Loyd Auerbach defense. And it’s bogus.

Let’s be clear here – if anyone actually had real psychic powers, they would be able to ace the challenge. The fact that no one has won it, and that the big names are frightened to take it, is not proof that psychic powers don’t exist, but it is starting to be pretty good evidence that they probably don’t.

Changes to the challenge

Randi recently announced some changes to the Challenge, effective April 1, 2007. (There is no doubt some intentional irony in changes to a test of psychics taking place on April Fool’s day.) There are a couple of changes, namely:

First, any applicant will be required to have a media profile. By that, we mean that there must be some media recognition – a television interview, a newspaper account, some press writeup, or a reference in a book, that provides details of the claimed abilities of the applicant. […] The second requirement will be that the applicant must provide an endorsement of an academic nature. That means some sort of validation from an appropriately-qualified academic.

The reason for this change is to cut down on the time taken by Randi’s staff devising tests of little value. For example, Randi says that 80% of applicants are dowsers – and dowsing has been tested and has failed so often now it’s really about time we moved on to something new. In addition, some applications are clearly from people who are deranged or even mentally ill, and there seems little real point in proceeding with people like that. This new rule is designed to focus JREF staff time more productively.

Unfortunately, this new requirement will allow the frauds another excuse not to take the test. But the reality is this is not a valid excuse. Randi has said that a successful test by a local skeptics’ group would qualify – so get a local skeptics’ group to test you first. (Not really difficult – there are many groups who would love to do this.)

Of course, the big names like Sylvia Browne, John Edward and the like would already qualify, so this lame excuse wouldn’t apply to them anyway. (Incidentally, John Edward refused the test on the grounds that he won’t allow himself “to be tested by somebody who’s got an adjective as a first name”. Apart from the fact that this is a really lame excuse, I’m pretty sure that “The Amazing Randi”’s first name is a definite article, not an adjective.)

The other change to the challenge is a little more interesting:

Rather than merely waiting for applicants to present themselves, we will regularly and officially highlight well-known persons in the field and challenge them directly by name. Those challenged will then have a six-month period during which they may respond; during that period the JREF will heavily publicize the fact that such a challenge has been issued, we will issue press releases on the matter, and we will be frequently asking that those challenged make a response. Tentatively, we will begin by formally challenging Uri Geller, James Van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, and John Edward, on April 1st.

Randi goes on to say that the JREF will begin actively pursuing the possibility of legal actions being brought against prominent figures, to investigate whether or not any laws are being broken by false promises and the like. Direct challenges to named individuals, plus legal actions against possible frauds – this is going to be interesting.

Of course, we know the big names who knowingly use trickery, will still avoid the challenge. Just look at Sylvia Browne’s tactics to dodge the challenge, after she had agreed on Larry King over five years ago, that she would take it. But perhaps her continued refusal will start to get more publicity now that the mainstream news media is beginning to catch on.

One final point – there is now an online petition to get Sylvia to take Randi’s challenge. I don’t normally promote online petitions, since they’re generally of little use. Still, I’ll make an exception in this one case, since I think it would be fun to have an additional stick to beat Sylvia and Montel. However, using my own awesome psychic powers, and after consulting my personal spirit guide, I predict Sylvia still won’t take the challenge.

Unfortunately, I doubt this prediction would qualify for the million.

More Sylvia Drivel

Randi, in today’s SWIFT, replied line by line to Sylvia Browne’s lame attack on him following her recent blunders about Shawn Hornbeck. Most of Randi’s replies were pretty good (as you’d expect), but I think he missed a trick in this exchange:

Sylvia Browne: If the brilliant scientists throughout history had a James Randi negating every aspect of their work, I doubt we would have progressed very far in medicine or in any technology.

Randi: Very true. But any truly scientific work would be totally immune to reversal or negation, by definition. This appears to be an effort by Sylvia to take a seat beside "brilliant scientists" – and I suggest that she – or they – move to another table. You, Sylvia, have done absolutely zero to move ahead any knowledge of the real world; you have tried to keep the public back in the Middle Ages.

“Very true”? No, not true at all. In fact, Randi’s approach of demanding evidence for extraordinary claims, is the cornerstone of science. As I wrote in the appeal to be open-minded:

Bad ideas should be discarded - by weeding out bad ideas the good can flourish. An earlier version of this argument would have gone, “You’re closed-minded in saying that humors don’t exist” to justify bloodletting. But by focusing uncritically on bloodletting, germ theory would never have been discovered. Germ theory was discovered by skeptical scientists who insisted on evidence, not by new-agers with open minds.

It is because of skeptical scientists, using Randi-like skeptical thinking, that false ideas have been rejected in favor of true ones. Without the rejection of false ideas, how would we know which ones were true? It’s only by trying hard to disprove tentative theories, and discarding those disproven, that we can be reasonably confident that what is left standing is true. Of course, “the brilliant scientists throughout history” would have known this. The dreary pretend-psychics throughout history have added nothing to medicine or technology, nor have provided anything of any use whatsoever.  For evidence of this see Sylvia Browne’s 2006 predictions compared with what actually happened.

Randi on TV tonight

(Edit: Phil plait just posted that this segment has been postponed.  I haven't confirmed that, but I'm sure he has his sources - I'll post any revised dates as I get them.)

James Randi is due to appear on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 tonight (10pm Eastern / 7pm Pacific). Presumably he’ll talk about Sylvia Browne’s errors, the million dollar challenge, and stuff like that.

Apparently Randi was asked back because of a high volume response to his appearance last week. (Which shows the value of emailing shows like this to congratulate them.)

Anti-Sylvia going mainstream

I’m not making this blog the anti-Sylvia blog – honestly. (I’ll leave that to Stop Sylvia Browne.) And I hadn’t intended boring people with any more about Sylvia for a while. But it’s just great when anti-Sylvia articles are going mainstream. Following from CNN’s Anderson Cooper segment, is yesterday’s Chicago Sun Times article by Richard Roeper (he of the Ebert and Roeper movie reviews), that starts:

Remember that moment last year when it was announced they had come up with a vaccine that blocks nicotine addiction? How about when the troops began returning home from Iraq?

The Jennifer Aniston wedding -- that was something.

Not to mention the Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Lopez pregnancies, and the surprise defeat of Gov. Schwarzenegger in California.

What's that? You have no memory of any of those events taking place in 2006?

I suppose that's because they never happened -- despite the psychic powers of Sylvia Browne, who last January predicted all those things and many more events that did not occur.

To be fair, Browne did foresee the Britney Spears divorce. Pretty impressive, seeing as how the rest of the world was sure Brit and K-Fed would last forever.

I would say Roeper’s article gets two thumbs up, if the phrase wasn’t trademarked. So instead I just emailed Roeper to congratulate him on a good article.

Lame Sylvia excuses

Following up from Monday’s post on how Sylvia Browne was wrong about Shawn Hornbeck, and yesterday’s speculation on what we would see if even one psychic was real, I note the New York Daily News reports the story of Sylvia’s blunder, with what is apparently Sylvia herself offering some lame excuses and rationalizations:

"I'm terribly sorry that this happened," she told the Daily News. "But I think my body of work stands by itself. I've broken case after case."

"I think it's just cruel to jump on this one case in which I was wrong," she added defensively. "I've said thousands of times I'm not God."

I don’t think anyone expects her to be God. I would, however, expect her to be able to tell the difference between dead and alive. Seriously – isn’t that just about the most important distinction you can make? (What would you think of a doctor who couldn’t tell if someone was dead or alive?) Really, what is the point of asking a psychic if she can’t even get that right? And what did she give us – the body would be found “in a wooded area” – that’s about as generic as it gets. All that was missing was “near water” – another old standby of the pretend-psychic.  And don’t forget all the wrong guesses about the abductor – the Hispanic with dreadlocks, driving an old car with fins. A lot of use that was.

And her claim of having broken numerous cases is not substantiated by the facts. Of course, it’s easy to claim you’ve broken cases – not so easy to back up such a claim. The truth is, Sylvia’s history is one of blunders totally consistent with a cold reader making guesses and playing the odds. For example the Sago miners are alive. Or your mother is dead. Or, your boyfriend died “ in water”. It’s notable that Sylvia doesn’t list her actual supposed “successes”. So with this list of proven failures, why should we believe her?

Nobody is suggesting Sylvia has to be right every time, just that she should be right significantly more than chance. Of course, if she really was psychic, she could demonstrate that by honoring her agreement to be tested for Randi’s million dollars – something she has avoided for over five years now. It’s really no surprise she continues to avoid this one clear opportunity to have her psychic abilities tested in a way that controls for cold reading and guesswork. Meanwhile, Montel continues to tape shows with the old fraud. Shame on you.

If just ONE psychic was real

I wanted to follow up Monday’s post about how Sylvia Browne and James Van Praagh were totally wrong about Shawn Hornbeck. It’s obvious that those two jokers have no psychic powers, and are just playing the odds, but it is notable that no other “psychic”, as far as I am aware, was correct either. And it appears that Shawn’s parents did consult several. So I got to thinking what it would be like if there was even ONE real psychic in the world looking into this case. After all, anyone can be right most of the time by guessing the missing child is dead. What would be really spiffy and useful, if there was a real psychic, would be if they could zero in on the rare cases where the child is still alive after all this time. And if they could help find him or her.

For example, they could come up with something like:

I sense that Shawn is alive. He is being held in an apartment nearby, by a man who drives an old white Nissan pickup truck. He is a middle-aged white man with a beard. I sense that he works as a manager of a restaurant – possibly a pizza restaurant.

The psychic might even know something else, such as:

Shawn’s abductor has been in trouble with the police, and has been arrested for a traffic violation.

Don’t you think that would have been a real help?

Of course, additional details such as his name and address would be pretty useful too. Think that’s too hard? Well, if you watch TV’s “Medium” (featuring “Allison Dubois”) or “Ghost Whisperer” (“based on the work of James Van Praagh”, who is the show’s Co-Executive Producer), you would see crimes being solved with this degree of precise psychically derived information, every week. Surely in the real world it should happen at least occasionally?

It seems to me that if psychics were real, they would find some missing children in this way, on some sort of regular basis. And with the easy ability to check that these predictions were actually made in advance, wouldn’t these correct predictions be publicized widely? Wouldn’t we all know that such-and-such a child had been safely recovered due to the diligent predictions of a particular named psychic? I would have thought so. So why don’t we hear of this? Why don’t psychics tell us where all these missing children are? Could it be that they just don’t care? They know where the kidnapped children are but just couldn’t be bothered to let anyone know? Pretty mean of them.

Or alternatively, perhaps psychics and psychic powers just don’t exist. Isn’t that really the simplest and most likely answer?

Shawn Hornbeck dead. I mean, alive

From Stop Sylvia Browne we learn of yet another of Sylvia’s blunders. On October 6, 2002, eleven year old Shawn Hornbeck disappeared while riding his bike to a friend's house in Richwood, Missouri. His anguished parents went on Montel’s TV show on February 24, 2003, to try to learn from “psychic” Sylvia Browne what might have happened to their son. Playing the odds as usual, she told them Shawn was dead ("is no longer with us"), and followed this with several guesses about where his body would be found (in a “wooded area”).

Fortunately, as you may have heard on the news this weekend, Shawn and another boy who went missing just last week, were just found alive in an apartment in Kirkwood, Missouri. Shawn’s father is quoted as saying, after Browne’s reading in 2003:

I don't know what to think any more. The information from different psychics doesn't match up.

No, I imagine it didn’t.

Nor does anything else Sylvia said, match up. Like for example, that Shawn’s abductor was:

…a dark-skinned man, he wasn't black -- more like hispanic [with] long, black hair that he wore in dreadlocks and was really tall.

Somehow, I don’t think that description would have been much help in capturing the man shown on the right – Shawn’s actual abductor. Nor would Browne’s description of the abductor’s car:

an older model blue sedan, a car with fins like in the late 1950's and early 1960's Chevrolets

… have been much help in capturing this driver of “a rusty Nissan pickup truck”.

And while we’re on the subject, James Van Praagh’s description of:

a person who worked in a railroad car plant was involved and the body might be concealed in a railway car

… wouldn’t have been much use either in catching this pizza parlor manager. Van Praagh is the moron who bleated on Larry King last January that “the emphasis should be on [skeptics] to prove it to us this is not real …”, and “Prove that we're wrong though. Prove that we are wrong”. OK, done and dusted – you’re proven wrong you scumbag.

Psychics were of no use at all. I am reminded of how PsiTech played the odds the same way and guessed that Elizabeth Smart was dead while all the time she was alive. A lot of police time and resources were wasted that time searching the locations where her dead body was supposed to be buried. I am also reminded of the time Browne pontificated on how the miners are alive based upon early (false) news reports that they were alive. And yet you know she will be on Montel again this week, dishing out her wisdom to the credulous. Montel should be ashamed.

Who knows how much police time was wasted following up the lame guesses of these millionaire pretend-psychics? Certainly the family of this missing boy were treated cruelly and cynically by these vermin. The comments below are open for the apologists for these liars to post their lame justifications for their heroes’ continued failures to be of any use to anyone in any way. Don’t disappoint.

Follow up posts

If just ONE psychic was real

Lame Sylvia excuses

2007 Predictions

I was looking over Mondo Skepto’s list of Sylvia Browne’s predictions for 2007 and considering how so called “psychics” play these guessing games for the credulous. They sometimes play the odds and sometimes just make vague predictions that they will probably be able to claim as a hit no matter what. They also make a few outlandish claims that, if correct, will make them look really good. Then at the end of the year they make a big fuss of the few things they get right, knowing that confirmation bias means their fans will forget the greater number of wrong predictions. Anyway, I thought I should have a go, if only to see if I can do better than Sylvia.  So, for your New Year’s Day amusement I present Skeptico’s psychic predictions for 2007. As with the professional “psychics”, I have included some obvious predictions, some vague, and a few off the wall ones (if one comes true I can claim a big hit). At the end of the year we will be able to see how many accurate predictions I can claim while ignoring the ones I got wrong. Bet you can’t wait. Here goes.

Politics

President Bush will announce more troops to be sent to Iraq to control the insurgency, but it will not work. There will continue to be calls to bring the troops home but Bush will not heed them.

President Bush will not be impeached.

John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama will announce their candidacies for President. Rudy Giuliani will announce he is not running.

Donald Rumsfeld will publish his memoirs.

Condoleezza Rice will be hospitalized for a serious illness, but will make a full recovery.

Dick Cheney will be hospitalized with heart problems.

Pakistan – there will be an assassination attempt on President Perez Musharraf that will leave him injured.

Cuba – Castro will remain alive and in power but his public appearances will be rare.

England – Tony Blair will step down as Prime Minister. There will be a contest for the leadership that will eventually be won by Gordon Brown, who will be the new Prime Minister. Browne will lead his Labour party in the general election in 2008 but will lose.

Palestine – President Mahmoud Abbas will step down due to ill health.

Disasters

There will be a major typhoon causing much damage and loss of life in SE Asia.

There will be a higher than normal number of strong hurricanes in the Atlantic. The mainland of the US will escape the worst of these storms but there will be serious damage and loss of life elsewhere.

There will be a significant earthquake Northern California, but no lives will be lost. There will be a major earthquake in China that will result in loss of lives.

There will be no Bird Flu pandemic in 2007, although some limited human cases will be reported.

There will be terrorist attacks against US interests in Africa and Asia. Australia should expect a terrorist attack from Islamic extremists.

US residents should avoid terrorist acts during the month of May.

Celebrities etc

Snoop Dogg will be acquitted of charges for drug and gun possession on a technicality, but he will be found guilty and will get probation for possession of a night stick.

Paris Hilton will get engaged again but will not go through with the marriage.

Britney Spears’ new album will have disappointing sales.

“Bobby” will win the Oscar for Best Picture.

Tiger Woods and his wife will announce they are expecting a baby (note – I wrote this several days ago – it was announced as true 12/30/06), and it will be a girl. Christina Aguilera will also announce she is expecting a child.

Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz will announce their engagement, although it won’t last.

“Brangelina” will stay together and will adopt another child, but they will not get married.

Kirk Douglas, Lady Bird Johnson and Zsa Zsa Gabor will die of natural causes.

Miscellaneous

Sylvia Browne, John Edward and others will continue to appear on shows such as Montel and Larry King Live, pretending to talk to dead people. Sylvia will still not make good on her promise to try for Randi’s million.

Allison Dubois will still not solve any of her backlog of 200 murder cases she claims to be helping the police with.

Autism rates will not fall in 2007, despite the lack of thimerosal in childhood vaccines. However, this will not prevent the anti-vaccination groups from continuing to claim that vaccines are a cause of autism.

Randi’s million will remain safe.

Stop Sylvia Browne

I thought I should publicize Rob Lancaster’s new site, Stop Sylvia Browne. You may remember Rob is the driving force behind Stop Kaz, and now Kaz has apparently if not “stopped”, at least slowed down, Rob has turned his attentions to Sylvia.

Of course, actually stopping the juggernaut that is the Sylvia Browne Corporation might not be possible, but the site is nevertheless a great first stop for all skeptical information on Sylvia. The links alone are worth checking out, but he also has multiple articles and links to videos of Sylvia’s numerous blunders. If you have any information yourself, or want to write an article, I’m sure Rob would be pleased to hear from you.

Allison Dubois no help in catching killer

According to this CNN report, Phoenix police believe they have captured the “Baseline Killer”:

Police said Thursday they have caught the Baseline Killer, the gunman responsible for nine slayings that spread terror across the Phoenix area for nearly a year.

Police Chief Jack Harris said investigators are recommending that Mark Goudeau, a 42-year-old construction worker who has been in jail since September, be charged with 71 counts, including nine murders -- most of them random shootings committed on the street at night.

Of course, Goudeau has not faced trial yet and deserves the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Still, we can say two things for sure, namely:

1. The police believe they have a strong case against him, and
2. Celebrity Phoenix “psychic” Allison Dubois had nothing to do with catching this man. In fact, the CNN report cites “a tip from the public”, not psychic powers, as leading them to Goudeau.

Not that Dubois didn’t try to make a preemptive strike. As I wrote in July, Dubois made several vague guesses (excuse me, gave psychic impressions) about the killer, none of which were of any use, and most (as far as I can tell), were completely wrong. For example:

Dubois said: “the Baseline Killer is not from Arizona”

But: “Goudeau was born Sept. 6, 1964… and grew up in a Phoenix neighborhood near 12th Street and Southern Avenue.

Last time I looked, Phoenix was in Arizona. Dubois 0 for 1.

Dubois said: “he's ready to bolt, if he hasn't already… I would look in California if I were [the police]”

But: Goudeau was caught in Phoenix.

Of course, Dubois didn’t say anything so definite or falsifiable as “he has moved to California”. She phrased it so that wherever he was found her “impression” would fit. However, it would seem unlikely for this married man with family connections in Phoenix to run to California. In any case, Dubois’ “information” about him being “ready to bolt” was clearly wrong and of no use to the police. Dubois 0 for 2.

Dubois said: “He didn't have a father in the household.”

But: Older brother Oscar told The Republic that their upbringing was uneventful, at times idyllic. There was no violence in the house growing up, he said, although he admitted that their father was a strict disciplinarian.

Dubois 0 for 3.  Admittedly the report says his parents divorced, but the above comment directly contradicts there being no father around when he was growing up. And that’s doubly true when we look at the next of Dubois’ “impressions”:

Dubois said: “He had a mother he didn't respect but that he, on a strange level, loved and is a little protective of when somebody says something about his mother. It's a love-hate which he has for her… “

But: “An older brother said [Goudeau’s Mother] died in 1976, when Goudeau was 12…”

Dubois missed his Mother dying when he was a child. Dubois 0 for 4. This is my favorite:

Dubois said: “I see [the killer] tucking his hair up in his hat to hide his hair."

But CNN says: “Police have said the killer… wore disguises, which included a wig of dreadlocks and a fisherman's hat.”

See the picture – not much hair to tuck up into his hat. Of course, he could have recently cut it, but I’m going to bet he always wears his hair this short. I could be wrong, but I have a very strong feeling I’m not. (Call it a psychic impression if you like.) Now, I’m sure Dubois wouldn’t have read the reports of the dreadlocks and the hat, and tried to make her psychic impressions fit this description, oh no. She used psychic powers, I’m sure. But she was still wrong and still no help to the police. Dubois 0 for 5.

Dubois said: “[The killer] was in and out of juvenile (detention) as he was growing up.

But: although Goudeau has been in jail, trouble didn’t begin for Goudeau until “1982, when he was 18. He and one of his brothers were accused of raping a young woman.”

So no juvenile trouble at all – nothing until he was 18. Dubois saw nothing of his adult crimes or the 13 years he spent in adult jail. More completely wrong and worse than useless information from Dubois. Dubois 0 for 6.

Did she get anything right? Well, she did say the killer knew the area well and that his luck would run out. Whoopie doo!

Now might be a good time to remind everyone of the TV program “Medium”, which features a character called Allison Dubois who lives in Phoenix and solves crimes every week using psychic powers. I watched this program a few times (as a service to my readers – so you won’t have to), and I can report that this TV “Allison Dubois” not only sees exact names and/or faces of people involved in crimes, exact locations of evidence (for example – exactly where a gun was hidden), but also has conversations with dead people – including, at times, murder victims. And I’m talking complete sentences – questions asked and answered in detail. None of this “I’m getting a J connection” drivel you see on Larry King. Did I say she solves crimes each week that would otherwise have been unsolved, using only her psychic powers? I did?

I must stress again that police do sometimes arrest the wrong person and that Mark Goudeau should be considered innocent of all these crimes until proven guilty. I just ask you to remember the above analysis of what Dubois said compared with the actuality, when and if Dubois ever claims that her lame “impressions” were right, and whenever you read of her repeated claims that she helps the police solve crimes. One thing I do know – if Goudeau was innocent of these crimes, the TV “Allison Dubois” would quickly prove him innocent and lead police to the real killer. Over to you, real Allison Dubois.

Other reading:

The Two Percent Company’s Allison Dubois week.

CSICOP on How Not to Test Mediums.

September 8, 2007 – Update

Goudeau found guilty on 19 counts of sexual assault. 

Earth to be hit by ultraviolet pulse beam from higher dimensions!

No really. It’s going to happen for 17 hours starting approximately 10:17 am on October 17th (that’s today):

We have a rare Cosmic event occurring on October 17th and 18th that will give us a jump-start in manifesting the things we would like to cocreate in our own lives and on this planet. There is going to be an ultraviolet pulse beam from higher dimensions than we have previously been able to experience crossing the path of Earth.

We will be held in the embrace of this highly charged ultraviolet beam of Light for approximately 17 hours. The energy emanating from this beam resonates with Humanity's 5th-Dimensional Solar Heart Chakras.

The Beings of Light are revealing that during this 17-hour period the ultraviolet pulse beam will have the effect of amplifying our thoughts and emotions ONE MILLIONFOLD. This will be the case regardless of what our thoughts and emotions are expressing. Needless to say, it is imperative for all of us to be Peace Commanding Presences during this auspicious time.

Not sure I’ve got 17 hours to spare to sit around and absorb an ultraviolet pulse beam – even one from a higher dimension. Still, if it’ll amplify my thoughts one millionfold (excuse me, ONE MILLIONFOLD), it might be worth a try. I guess half an hour would increase my thoughts 29,000 fold – still significant. Anyway, I thought I should give you all a heads-up. You might want to consider extra sunscreen before you leave home.

Hey, if any Aussies are reading this – it’s already happened for you. Perhaps you could post a comment to let us know what to expect. It should take you a millionth of the time it normally takes.

Update Oct 21, 2006

Funny, I didn’t notice anything. Last Tuesday I emailed Patricia Diane Cota-Robles, the author of the “cosmic event” prediction:

To: Patricia Diane Cota-Robles:

It is now just after 5:10 p.m. on October 17th, seven hours into the ultraviolet pulse beam, and after its "peak time", according to your website.  However, I have not noticed any amplification of my thoughts and emotions as I was expecting, nor have any of my friends.  Can you suggest why this would be?   Did I get the date or time wrong?

Yours in confusion and disappointment,

No reply. And the prediction of this supposed “cosmic event” is still up on the website. Clearly correcting false predictions is not taking place a million times faster than normal. I’ll let you know if she replies, although there’s nothing to stop anyone else from clicking the email link and asking their own questions.

Update November 11, 2006

The website has been updated to show “what should we expect now?”, which starts:

Last week the Earth was bathed with a colossal influx of 5th-Dimensional Ultraviolet Light. This shaft of Light interpenetrated every electron of precious Life energy for approximately 17 hours.

That’s right – she states this ultraviolet pulse beam from higher dimensions, that no one noticed, really happened. Talk about delusional. The rest is essentially 1800 words of drivel of the “if you felt nothing it was your fault” and or “if you felt nothing you will in the future” kind. You can read it if you want, but I really don’t recommend it.

Chopra Woo

I realize “Chopra Woo” is redundant. Still, Orac today coined the phrase Choprawoo, and I think this meme needs spreading.

He’s at it again. In January I wrote “It seems Deepak Chopra has an endless supply of meaningless drivel to churn out when anyone gives him a forum”. He proved me right again a week ago with some drivel about genes that PZ took to pieces. This week he continues with more things about genes he doesn’t understand. Fortunately Orac took this one apart for us.

October 17, 2006 – Edited to add:

More Choprawoo – today the ignorant one posted part three of his drivel about genes. Orac fisked that load too.

Abducted by aliens? Sue!

A lawyer in Germany is offering to help people abducted by aliens to get government compensation. Of course, the US is the world headquarters for litigation, but perhaps American lawyers know they won’t get anything out of the US government. In Germany the state is more generous in paying out money to victims:

"These people could appeal for therapies or cures," he said.

Lorek, 41, is pinning his hopes for success on a German law which grants kidnap victims the right to state compensation.

When the lawyer was asked if he was worried people would laugh at him for such a ridiculous stunt, he apparently said:

"Nobody has laughed about it up until now."

Well, consider yourself laughed at now.

If you had read my review of Susan Clancy’s work or my report of Clancy’s interview, you would know that most alien abductions are likely the results of sleep paralysis, rather than an actual alien abduction. Aha – I think I see how US lawyers could get in on this. The makers of Ambien should expect a class action lawsuit any day now.

Deepak Chopra again

Deepak Chopra was peddling more of his drivel in the Huffington Post last week. The basic gist is that since scientists don’t know all there is to know about DNA and genetics, we should be “using our own mind and body as healing agents”. Fortunately PZ Myers at Pharyngula debunks Chopra’s ignorance paragraph by paragraph. For example, there is this, in response to Chopra’s implication that the benefits of gene therapy have been oversold:

OK, this is another worthwhile point—there has been a lot of hype, and the ease of translating basic research into applied therapies has been oversold. Again, this is material that could make for an interesting paper.

Instead, though, what we get is the maunderings of a third-rate mind with no understanding of even decades-old ideas. Instead of revealing any working knowledge of biological thought, Chopra gives us a list of questions about the gene that he is wondering about, and also claiming that no one else understands, and babbling foolishly. Some of these would be good questions coming from a student who seriously wanted to learn, but coming from an M.D. who routinely pontificates on how your body works, and stated with such a stunning certainty that because he doesn't know, no one else does either, this is an infuriating list.

More specific rebuttals to Chopra’s errors at the link.

Panda Psychics wrong

A month ago, a couple of “psychics” did the usual trick of playing the odds and predicted (using psychic powers of course) that a panda at Atlanta zoo would be pregnant:

Atlanta-born psychic Helene Frisch reported she telepathically connected with Lun Lun using "tone vibration," the release said. Frisch said she discerned that not only is Lun Lun pregnant, but she will likely bear a male cub by Sept. 4.

Remember that this prediction wasn’t really that much of a stretch since the panda was artificially inseminated last March: artificially insemination increases the odds of pregnancy.

Nevertheless, they were correct that the panda did turn out to be pregnant, and not that far out guessing September 4th: the cub was born two days later on September 6th. Playing the odds to be sure, but a good guess.

Nothing special so far then – playing the odds guesses worked out OK. Until today. In her guess about the sex of the cub, she had a 50% chance of getting the right answer with her “male cub” guess. Except, we learn today that the cub is female:

The 19-day-old panda cub at Atlanta's zoo was determined Monday to be a girl.

While new mom Lun Lun was in another den, veterinarian Maria Crane weighed the cub -- 1.4 pounds -- and discovered she was a female, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The tiny cub's sex had been unknown because her mother held her so close, the newspaper said.

The “psychic’s predictions” have now been revealed for what they really were – guesses. Don’t expect the psychic to remember this error when she reports she correctly forecast the result.

It’s a boy! Girl!

Henrik Jensen Loser

I just love the snotty emails I get from people who don’t agree with something I’ve written, and who obviously think they are actually going to put me down with a few choice insults. These emails are always nothing but angry assertions (usually that I am some kind of ignoramus for not appreciating their favorite piece of woo), combined with a total lack of any evidence to back up a single thing they say. Standard woo, in other words. I commented about one such piece of pseudo-psychological babble here.

Well today a joker called Henrik Jensen sent me the following piece of blather. (Edited to add: it was in response to my review of What The Bleep Do We Know.)  Feel free to engage with him in the intelligent debate that’s sure to follow as he responds further in the comments. Prepare to be unimpressed:

In response to you (sic) BLOG on your website I would like to make the following observations...

My blog is my website, it is not on my website. Not a very intelligent start Henrik.

First of all... clearly you are NOT an educated person... especially in quantum physics... you have not a fraction of understanding or insight to (sic) such matters as the people in the movie....

First off, all my comments on quantum mechanics were reviewed by this PhD Quantum Mechanics professor with this list of QM papers to his name. (The link was on the original post – not that hard to find, Henrik.) Perhaps you would like to email him and tell him how little he understands his subject – I’m sure he would be appreciative of your insights.

Second, I note Henrik was unable to describe a single thing I might have misunderstood or got wrong – surprising if I really understood it so badly. SOP for this type of woo.

Clearly your article is a declaration of your own ignorance in this regard. That’s why no one has bothered to so called (sic) criticize your "article", nobody wants to waste their breath on your stuff…..

Patently false, since Henrik wants to waste time on it. Not very good at this, are you Henrik?

But if you want to brace yourself and gloat about how “bright” (stupid) you really are than fine by me. This most probably goes for the film makers too…. Who cares about your “stuff” on this topic….

You do, obviously.

I bet you 100% that you wont (sic) have the gust (sic) to post this on your precious BLOG in response to your forum….

Lost that bet then didn’t you. That makes you a LOSER.

Many responded to your BLOG on this… that means thar (sic) you too have followers like the organizations you hate so much.

I have no followers, but I do think my readers like to be exposed to rationality and critical thinking. You should try it.

My advice to you is this….. go learn about what you don’t know before you talk…. Don’t talk when you don’t know…..

Have a nice life in your comfortable ignorance….

And that is also my advice to you – word for word. Especially if you want to comment below without making an even bigger idiot of yourself than you already have.

Madonna solves nuclear waste problem

Good news! Disposing of nuclear waste from nuclear power stations used to be a problem. No more. Pop icon Madonna says it can be cleaned up with a dash of Kabbalah water:

MADONNA and her husband Guy Ritchie have been lobbying the government and nuclear industry over a scheme to clean up radioactive waste with a supposedly magic Kabbalah fluid.

The couple, both followers of the Jewish spiritual movement, approached Downing Street, Whitehall and British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) promoting a “mystical” liquid tested in a Ukrainian lake.

Madonna and other Kabbalahists believe water can be given magic healing powers through “meditations and the consciousness of sharing”. Sure it can. Here’s an example of the meditations and the consciousness of sharing in action:

Undercover reporters who attended a Kabbalah Centre dinner in London described how Madonna and Ritchie were among guests who turned east towards Chernobyl and began shouting its name.

There – and you thought this made no sense. And not only does the magic water clean up nuclear waste, it can also fix gynecological problems in cows and sheep. Is there anything it can’t do? Here’s Madonna with the scientific explanation:

“I mean, one of the biggest problems that exists right now in the world is nuclear waste,” she said. “That’s something I’ve been involved with for a while with a group of scientists — finding a way to neutralise radiation, believe it or not.”

Er, not.

One un-named British official summed this up with the only reasonable response:

“… the scientific mechanisms and principles were just bollocks, basically”.

Well, yes. That was nothing though. If you thought that made no sense, listen to this:

“I can write the greatest songs and make the most fabulous films and be a fashion icon and conquer the world, but if there isn’t a world to conquer, what’s the point?

Madonna has made fabulous films? Now she's really talking bollocks.

Gentle Wind Recants

Wow! File this under “I would never have believed it!”

Remember the Gentle Wind Project (GWP) – manufacturer of those magic plastic cards, designed by aliens to cure all problems? Get this:

In a consent decree filed in York County Superior Court last week, the directors of the Gentle Wind Project admitted that they made false claims about their products, which they said could cure anything from alcoholism to paralysis. They admitted making false claims on their Web site, at public appearances and in written literature that the instruments had been scientifically proven to be effective.

Board members also admitted that they breached their fiduciary duty as officers of a charity by using donations for the purchase and upkeep of houses purchased in their own names and for other illegal transactions.

Once the consent decree is approved by a judge, the houses and all other assets will be sold by a receiver, with the money used to provide refunds to any Gentle Wind customer who bought a healing instrument since 2003.

Wow – they’ve admitted their little pieces of plastic do nothing. Not often you get to hear things like that. What’s next? Homeopaths admit their magic water is just placebo? Allison Dubois admits she’s just guessing and playing the odds? Yes I know, I’m dreaming, but it’s just so rare to hear any of these scammers have to admit their stuff is crap.

It’s also good news for Judy Garvey and James Bergin, the ex-members of GWP who were being sued by them. GWP's board members have admitted the truth of most of Garvey and Bergin’s statements, which would seem to end any change GWP had of winning their case.  Congratulations to Judy and James.

Technically, it seems the judgment only applies in Maine, but GWP’s admission that their little pieces of plastic (at up to $5K a pop!) don’t do anything, should make it harder for them to claim credibility anywhere else, and in any case the group’s assets anywhere in the US are forfeit.

Chalk this up as one for the good guys.

Reference:

The Maine Attorney General’s statement:

What – you mean this doesn’t do anything? 

Another psychobabbler

In Monday’s post about a psychobabbler, I said I would soon post about another one. Well, here it is. And unlike Monday’s post, where the guy really wasn’t that bad, this guy is the genuine article: a card-carrying woo of the highest order. And not just that, but a Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) trainer to boot (more on that at the end). Prepare to be amazed. Marvel at the psychobabble word games he most likely uses to effect in his NLP day job – word games he clearly thought would give me what-for. Just make sure you’re not drinking any liquids as you read his emails to me – I will not be responsible for damaged keyboards due to coffee spat out while laughing.

Regular readers may remember my review of Gregg Braden’s book, “Awakening to Zero Point”. Braden’s fans don’t like my treatment of this pseudoscientific book, or my exposure of Braden’s manipulative writing, and several have emailed me over the past four years or so to tell me so. Usually they fold when asked to back up their complaints, but occasionally one goes a couple of rounds with me first. So meet Darrell Brown, who as I discovered, “travelled (sic) into the mountains of Tibet with Gregg Braden” as part of an expedition called "In search of Original Wisdom". Well, talk about being “invested” in being right about Braden… I thought, finally - someone who actually knows Braden and goes on trips with him. Finally I have a worthy opponent. I thought. I was wrong. His complaints turned out to be nothing more than the usual New Age psychobabble. The following is our email exchange – first his email to me that started it all off:

Hi Richard,

I have only just read your appraisal of Gregg Bradens (sic) book "Awakening to Zero point". (Dec 2002) As it was 4 years ago I was wondering if you were still so (sic) misinformed as the report you wrote then?

As much of what Gregg predicted back then now seems to be proven correct by our own academic institutions it appears science is finally catching up with what most of us intuitively new (sic) then.

The world no longer needs the "sceptic's" (sic) who are holding up our evolution as a species. Especially as we are now in so much trouble. Its (sic) time for you to let go of your need to be right, and start being effective.

But I'm sure by now you know that already (sic),

your family needs you to finally show up - so do we,

kind regards

Darrell Brown

Note the “need to be right” maneuver again. (I think I’ll trademark that.) As I pointed out Monday, I don’t have a need to be right; rather I use critical thinking to try to arrive at what is right – a crucial distinction. (There must have been some New Age memo detailing this “need to be right” criticism. I guess I’m not on the list.) Also note the dig about my family. Highly manipulative wording, to be sure. I don’t care though. You’ll note his email contained two claims, namely (1) my review was misinformed, and (2) Braden’s predictions have proven right. Well, I just love claims, and I expect people to be able to back them up, especially when they come from someone who goes on camping trips to Tibet with New Age gurus, so I shot this back to him:

Darrell:

Perhaps you could tell me what parts of my review were "misinformed"? And please show your work.

Also, perhaps you could tell me exactly which of Braden's predictions have proven correct?

Best regards,

Richard aka Skeptico

Pretty easy to do, you would have thought? After all, if he didn’t know the answers to those questions, why would he have made those claims in the first place? Apparently it was too much for him though. After over a week I had had no reply.

It’s at these times that I employ an old rhetorical trick – I flip my opponent’s words around and send them back to him. (You have to make a few minor changes for it to make sense.) The point is to show the other person that his words were vacuous – without any meaningful content. (You can only play this trick if the original words were empty claims; try it with factual wording backed by evidence – it doesn’t work.) So I flipped his words around and played them back at him (with grammatical errors and incorrect apostrophe use corrected):

Hi Darrell:

I have just re-read your comments on my review of Gregg Braden’s book "Awakening to Zero Point".  (July 29, 2006.)  As this was over a week ago I was wondering if you were still as misinformed as the email you wrote then.  I note you have been unable to answer either of my two simple questions relating to your claims.  Clearly it’s easier to make claims than it is to back them up.  Thanks for playing though.

As nothing of what Gregg predicted in his book seems to have been proven correct by our own academic institutions, and since everything I wrote is still true, it appears science confirms what most of us knew then, namely that Braden’s book is a load of pseudoscientific nonsense.

The world no longer needs credulous “new-age bozos” who are holding up our progress as a species. Especially as we are now in so much trouble.  It’s time for you to let go of your need to be right, and start being effective.

But I'm sure you knew that already.

Your family needs you finally to show up – no one else cares.

Best regards,

Richard aka Skeptico

That obviously annoyed him. By return I received this:

Hi Richard,

What's it like to live with so much anger?

If you were to truly look deeply at the work of Gregg Braden, past all the scientific analysis, the left brain analytical details and past your own scepticism you would reach a place we call compassion.

Like most people in the world of academia Richard you continue to make the same mistake. The answers to the worlds (sic) problems will never be found on a spread sheet. It wont (sic) be until you take you (sic) thinking out of your head and steer it towards your heart that you will lose the scepticism that holds you back.

"Scepticism" is simply a label which for you has become a filter to your world.  The observer will always effect what is being observed. Its (sic) the one flaw in your rush to be right. Your (sic) using an ineffective filter.

I obviously hit a nerve in you that has been festering for a while. My invitation to you Richard is to simply ask yourself. "What is the gift in his message that I am yet to recieve (sic)?

love and light

Darrell Brown

First, note the psychobabble again. There is the opening manipulative comment about my “anger”- the exact same word used by Kaz in Monday’s post. Of course, (as with Kaz’s comment), it doesn’t matter I if am angry or not (actually I was having too much fun to be angry, but that’s just me). Note also the “need to be right” maneuver again, and note the manipulative “I obviously hit a nerve”. Here’s the thing – these were his words used back against him, so if they showed anger, a need to be right, or hit a nerve, then he is describing his own emotions when he wrote his original email to me. What a dummy to fall for that.

The rest of the email consists of various different lame fallacious appeals to other ways of knowing. Darrell’s better method for understanding the world (better than science) seems to involve taking my thinking out of my head. Well, I suppose if your mind is so open your brains have fallen out, that is what you would have to do. I doubt it’s very reliable though. Note also the fallacious appeal to quantum mechanics – “the observer will always effect what is being observed”. Standard woo to invoke poorly understood (read not understood) quantum mechanics to justify any wacky idea they believe in without good reason. You’ll note though, still no answer to my questions about his two claims in his first email.

I replied:

Darrell:

Wow – so many words; so little content.

Apparently you didn’t notice I used your own words against you – I just made a few minor changes and they applied just as well to you as to me (better actually). So if my words contained “anger”, or if you think you “hit a nerve”, you are describing your own outlook, not mine. Here’s the thing: you can only work that trick with content-free writing; you can’t do it with factual content backed by evidence (try it – it doesn’t work). You started this exchange, obviously thinking you were going to put me down with your lame psychobabble, but you failed: you could not provide one word of why Braden is right or why my review of his absurd book is wrong. How embarrassing for you.

I asked you two questions that arose from your claims. It’s a sign of intellectual honesty to answer reasonable questions that arise from your own claims, so are you intellectually honest, or dishonest? Let’s see. Your two claims were: 

1. The review I wrote was “misinformed”, and
2. Much of what Braden predicted back then now seems to be proven correct by our own academic institutions.

So, answer my questions: what was “misinformed” in my review and which of Braden’s predictions have proven correct? And please show your work. Answer the questions please or don’t bother to respond – no more drivel.

If your answers continue to display sufficiently good examples of fallacious reasoning I will not bother to reply but will feature them instead on my blog as examples of how not to present an argument.

And this was all I received in reply:

I wish you well on your journey Richard,

love and light

Darrell Brown

That’s it? This traveling companion of the great Gregg Braden, this Neuro-linguistic Programming trainer and life coach - that’s all he’s got? Despite the snotty email he sent me that he clearly thought would put me in my place, he couldn’t think of one thing – not one sentence – that was wrong with my review of Braden’s book, nor could he think of one solitary thing Braden got right. What a lamer. Well, I think we have the proof that my opinion of Braden was right on the money. Not that we needed any more proof.

Still, I would just like to point out that Darrell’s last reply is an example of passive aggressive behavior: a "pervasive pattern of passive resistance to demands for … performance." (Hey, this psychobabble stuff is easy. And fun!)

So what’s all this about Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), you ask? Well, my search also discovered Darrell is an NLP Master Practitioner and Associate NLP Trainer. Now, I don’t know much about NLP but Bob Carroll has obviously done a bit of research on it. See this lengthy SkepDic article on Neuro-linguistic Programming:

Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) is one of many New Age Large Group Awareness Training [LGAT] programs. NLP is a competitor with Landmark Forum, Tony Robbins, and legions of other enterprises which, like the Sophists of ancient Greece, travel from town to town to teach their wisdom for a fee.

Aha – now I do know something of Landmark, having known several people who have been on the courses. I do know these LGAT courses can be highly manipulative, that attendees are often not allowed to question what they are being told, and that group-think is rewarded. Very cult-like.

While it is difficult to find a consistent description of NLP among those who claim to be experts at it, one metaphor keeps recurring. NLP claims to help people change by teaching them to program their brains.

Aha – this is the look “past all the scientific analysis, the left brain analytical details” drivel. Wow – people pay Darrell money to hear him spout this drivel at them.

However, do not contact this organization if you want detailed, clear information about the nature of NLP, or DHE (Design Human Engineering™ (which will teach you to hallucinate designs like Tesla did), or PE (Persuasion Engineering™) or MetaMaster Track™, or Charisma Enhancement™, or Trancing™, or whatever else Mr. Bandler and associates are selling these days. Mostly what you will find on Bandler's page is information on how to sign up for one of his training sessions. For example, you can get 6 days of training for $1,800 at the door ($1,500 prepaid). What will you be trained in or for? Bandler has been learning about "the advancement of human evolution" and he will pass this on to you. For $1,500 you could have taken his 3-day seminar on Creativity Enhancement (where you could learn why it's not creative to rely on other people's ideas, except for Bandler's).

Darrell not only practices this stuff, he is currently designing his own courses in it. I suggest anyone thinking of going on a NLP course, and especially one given by Darrell Brown, should read the above exchange and decide for yourself if you could possibly benefit from anything this lame twit has to tell you.

2012 Mayan Prophesy on History Channel

This Thursday August 3^rd, 9 pm, the History Channel (US) is showing “Decoding the Past; Mayan Doomsday Prophecy”. According to this University of Central Florida (UCF) article, it’s going to be a rational article featuring UCF professor Arlen Chase who has been studying the Maya for several decades and has written more than 100 articles about the subject:

Some of the prophecies left behind by the Maya indicate that when a 4,000 year cycle in the Maya calendar closes, Armageddon will be upon us.

“But nothing is going to happen,” Chase said. “The show is very well done, showing different points of view. It’s very interesting and the graphics are fantastic, but that doesn’t change the fact nothing is going to happen Dec. 21, 2012. I think some people are misinterpreting the Maya.”

During the hour-long program, Chase talks about the complex calendar from Chichen Itza, the heart of the Maya civilization deep in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Clear graphics, stunning landscape from several ruins and dramatic re-enactments take the viewer through a lively look at the doomsday myth and potential warnings for avoiding it.

Well, I hope he’s right and that the “show is very well done”, as he says. More often than not these pieces play for the woo ratings; the fact that there is to be “a group of archaeologists, astrologers, and historians to speculate on the meaning of the 2012 prophecy” (astrologers?) is not encouraging. Nor is the program’s title, or the look at ways to avoid “doomsday”. Still, let’s hope this program lives up to its skeptical promise, and that they allow scientists like Chase more than the usual two sentences.

(Note: the Mayan calendar doesn’t “end” in 2012 any more than the western calendar “ended” on January 1^st 2000 – the count just starts again. Boring but true.)

Medium guesses about serial killer

I wasn’t going to bother with this but The Two Percent Company’s piece yesterday on Allison Dubois changed my mind. In this ridiculous interview headlined Medium describes serial killer, Allison Dubois plays the usual guessing game, pretending to get “psychic” impressions of a serial killer in her home town of Phoenix, although her guesses seem even lamer than normal. Strangely, Phoenix police have not asked Dubois for her help in their investigations. Strange because Dubois claims to have helped catch criminals in the past, and does so regularly on TV – why haven’t they jumped on the chance this time when the killer is in her home town? I’d like to think it’s because the police know what a waste time this fraud’s playing-the-odds guesses would be. For example, get a load of these lame “psychic impressions”:

Dubois believes [the killer] knows local areas by scoping them out

Wow, you mean he doesn’t pick a place he knows nothing about at random?

his victims "are in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Note to any potential victims: if you’re planning to be at the wrong place, make sure it’s not at the wrong time.

I do feel he's getting nervous." She feels "like he's ready to bolt, if he hasn't already."

Well, he’s either bolted or he hasn’t, so that would cover all options. Awesome psychic powers, Allison!

If the killer does leave Arizona before police catch him, Dubois says, "I would look in California if I were them."

If? If? How are the police to know if he leaves Arizona? (And as an aside, is it likely he will leave Arizona after they catch him?) But thanks for the tip about California. Would never have thought of that. It’s only the nearest state to Phoenix. Now, if the psychic could only tell us if he has actually left or not. And where in California.

I see him tucking his hair up in his hat to hide his hair."

Some actual information. But followed by:

A composite sketch police are using shows a man with a hat and long hair, perhaps in dreadlocks.

Although I’m sure Allison received this information psychically. I’m sure she didn’t see the police sketch in the newspaper, oh no.

"I believe (he) was in and out of juvenile (detention) as he was growing up. He didn't have a father in the household. He had a mother he didn't respect but that he, on a strange level, loved and is a little protective of when somebody says something about his mother. It's a love-hate which he has for her, which is why it's easier for him to kill women, more so than men, who would be more of a challenge."

C minus for amateur psychology. Please try to be more original next time.

But as for the Baseline Killer, Dubois says, I think he's been real lucky up till now actually. I think a lot of what he's gotten away with has been luck. But his luck will run out."

Which describes virtually all criminals who have not yet been caught. (And most “psychics” for that matter.)

And that’s it. This is the “Medium” who solves crimes every week on TV (“based on a true story”). The talent confirmed genuine by Gary Schwartz of Arizona University. You’ll note there’s nothing useful like, oh I don’t know, the killer’s name and address. No wonder she has a backlog of 200 murder cases to solve. If this is a demonstration of her skills, her backlog is unlikely to get any smaller.

The interview is credited to someone called Bert Sass who has the title “Special Projects Producer”. This must be a new definition of “special” that means “lame-ass garbage”. He should be ashamed. We know Allison has no shame.

I’m not a phony but I play one on TV

Allison Dubois – worse than you thought!

Yes it’s possible. My opinion of Allison Dubois just got even lower. Read The Two Percent Company’s piece today on Allison – they have a story there from someone who had the misfortune of actually knowing Allison. See how Allison manipulated the story of this woman’s sister’s death to her own ends. Allison has no class and no shame.

More Skeptico on Allison Dubois:

Medium guesses about serial killer

Allison Dubois no help in catching killer

A walking, camera-strutting, fake-ghost-talking joke

Secretary to the dead

Burden of proof

The Two Percent Company on Allison Dubois

Allison Dubois Week

Allison DuBois - Even More of a Hypocrite Than Previously Thought

Adam the Healer

Reader Jake alerted me to last Thursday’s ABC Primetime Live on Adam the DreamHealer – a 19 year old from Canada who claims special healing powers. I decided to watch it to see what this guy was claiming and how ABC dealt with it. The program wasn’t as bad as it might have been. And one part was so (unintentionally) funny it had me howling with laughter. (More of that near the end.) Ultimately though, it was rather sad.

Adam’s story begins around the age of 15, where he claimed he began to experience telekinetic events such as pencils flying into his hands, although apparently no one but Adam actually witnessed these events.  More importantly, it is claimed he cured his Mother of MS. That clearly convinced his family, and his parents now work full time on Adam’s business of lectures, tapes, books etc. (He couldn’t cure his sister’s acne though - “I wasn’t about to waste any energy on a little pimple”. Don’t bother this guy with trivial stuff.) But his fame grew after he cured musician Ronnie Hawkins of “inoperable pancreatic cancer”. He achieved this through a series of long distance treatments (ie he stared at a picture of Hawkins), over eight months, after which, Hawkins’ tumor had gone. Powerful stuff. As further proof we were introduced to a teacher called Linda, who had been suggested to ABC by Adam’s family as a typical success story. Linda had (also) been diagnosed as having “inoperable pancreatic cancer”, and it was claimed her tumors had also “gone”.

The heart of the ABC program was to follow four people who hoped to be healed by Adam. The four were: 14-year-old Lucy, whose knees constantly dislocate to excruciating pain; 22 year old Christina who had a tumor on her lung; Dawn, a champion ballroom dancer with MS; and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who had suffered a horrible blow to the back of his head with an axe, apparently leaving him unable to move or speak. I’ll return to these four at the end.

We were shown Adam in action at one of his seminars. With infra-red cameras, we could see Adam supposedly manipulating the auras or “quantum holograms” as he calls them of the people in the room. His actions were compared to Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report, who moved images in this way. To me he looked more like a kid pretending to do some kind of Kung Fu or Jujitsu moves he’d seen on TV. I’m not surprised he wanted the lights out – I don’t think I’d want anyone to see me doing anything as daft as that either. Still, Adam claims to be able to see auras, detect what is wrong with a person and manipulate brainwaves with these techniques:

“As a kid, hide ‘n’ seek was not a game that I enjoyed . . .. I just couldn’t figure out the point of the game. Someone might be hiding behind an object such as a tree, but they would still be visible to me. Their aura would show beyond the tree’s outline. It was as ludicrous as a large man trying to hide behind a broomstick,”

(Snip)

“I look at someone’s picture. Exactly what happens, I really don’t know — I think it’s just something I was born with. All of a sudden, I totally disconnect from everything around me in the room, and I see these images of the person in front of me. And then, from there, I can see what’s wrong with the person. When I change around these images in front of me, it influences the person’s health,”

(Source – my bold)

And according to Adam’s own webpage, there have been scientific studies with EEG:

A total of 4 EEG brain maping (sic) studies were recently carried out on 4 different patients. These are all certified scientific methods of measuring brain wave activity. All 4 showed sigificant (sic) brain wave activity once Adam connected as if doing a healing.

I’m sure any one of those three skills would qualify for a certain conjuror’s Million Dollar Prize, but for this program we had to make do with ABC’s John Quiñones. He wasn’t that bad in the job. First, Adam was filmed “visualizing” what was wrong with a couple of people. We saw him diagnosing one woman as having back and shoulder problems. The woman said Adam was “right on the shoulder” problem (she didn’t mention anything wrong with her back), but had missed her lung and breast cancer.  Quite a big thing to miss, you’d have thought. Adam had the explanation rationalization ready – what he sees isn’t what the person thinks is most important. Funny, I’d have thought it important that “I can see what’s wrong with the person” would include cancer if it were there, but one out of three counts, apparently. Next, Quiñones was asked to pick someone at random for Adam to diagnose. Quiñones did so, and Adam watched this woman walk from her seat in the room, up the aisle, up the stairs and across the stage – and correctly diagnosed she had problems with her knee. Luckily she didn’t have cancer as well!

Adam attempted to replicate his EEG successes, this time with Quiñones as the subject. Quiñones was fitted up with 19 electrodes to his head, while Adam attempted to change Quiñones’ brainwaves. The result, unlike the successes claimed on Adam’s website, was "inconclusive". (Translation – it didn’t work.) Again, Adam had the explanation – the other people had had something wrong with them that Adam was trying to fix. (Note: that’s not what it says on his website – see my bold in the cite above.) Well, of course. I’m sure it couldn’t possibly have been due to the “independent EEG expert neurologist” hired by ABC, or what appeared to be some kind of blinding (it looked like Quiñones didn’t know when Adam was doing his pretend Jujitsu moves in the next room).

Whatever the reason, it looks like Randi’s million could be safe for a while longer.

No program like this would be complete without the obligatory reference to Quantum Mechanics as an explanation for all the magic woo we have been seeing. Fortunately we were treated to Bob Park telling us “physicists shudder when they hear this”, along with some other gems. I’m sure that wouldn’t have convinced the woos watching, but it was good to hear anyway. Park was pretty good in his two or three brief appearances.

But the truly hilarious piece was the explanation of where Adam got all his scientific knowledge. If you didn’t see the program, I promise you that I did not make up what you are about to read. Asked how Adam is so sure what he does is real, he recounted how, when he was 16 he had a dream telling him to go to an island to meet a large black bird. Apparently this dream impressed his parents so much that the next day they went with him to the island named in the dream. (What understanding parents!) There, on what appeared to be acres of forest or wild land, Adam found (drum roll) – A BIRD. Amazing! What are the odds? It gets better. Adam’s parents were so impressed with this bird they took a picture of it (get this):

“as it locked eyes with Adam and … imparted to him complex scientific information about the universe”.

Note, not just any kind of information – “scientific” information. And not the regular stuff - “complex” scientific information if you please. Who knew a random blackbird would be an expert in Quantum Physics?

Don’t believe it? Don’t have to – here’s the picture they took of the bird to prove it: 

(My caption.)

I have to admit, it took me fully a couple of minutes after that before I could stop laughing enough to hear what followed.

The conclusion was less mirthful though. We revisited our four hopefuls. The 14 year old with the terribly painful knee problem had to have emergency surgery to repair the bone that had not healed properly after an earlier surgery. Her final comment, “Adam healing didn’t help the pain at all” was heartbreaking.

The MS sufferer was shown doing a (slow) dance routine, and appeared to be doing well. But MS:

…is cyclical and unpredictable […] Spontaneous recovery from symptoms can occur and last for months or years.

The 22 year old with the tumor on her lung discovered that the “tumors barely grew at all”, which presumably means they had grown a bit. They hadn’t gone anyway, and it wasn’t clear what other medications she was taking that might have helped.

The army vet was the sorriest case. He was clearly much sicker than Adam was used to seeing and I actually felt embarrassed for him as he went through his Kung Fu moves in front of the sad immobile man in the wheelchair. Adam asked if he could feel anything – “most people feel tingling in their head” he suggested helpfully – but there was no response. Adam seemed to blame skeptical people in the room (read “doctors”, “nurses”), for this failure. At the very end of the program we were told the vet had been able to say one word (this was some time later, presumably), and his wife (I presume she was) was convinced Adam had something to do with this. Of course, it is impossible to know what would be the situation if he had never seen Adam, but the likelihood is things would not have been much different.

It gets worse. Remember the teacher we met at the beginning whose cancer had vanished?  Well, at the end of the show we learned her cancer was back and the woman had started radiation treatment. And remember Ronnie Hawkins? Well apparently he might never have had cancer in the first place. It was revealed he had had three biopsies but all had been “inconclusive”.

People most likely think Adam’s healing methods work for the same reasons people usually think woo therapies work, namely:

• Placebo
• Misdirection
• The cyclical nature of the illness (gets worse/gets better/gets worse/gets better…)
• Incorrect diagnosis to start with
• Temporary mood improvements due to the personal nature of the treatment
• Psychological investment of the patient in the success of the therapy
• Other medicines the patient is taking
• The illness just goes away by itself.

We saw most of those in this program.

Of course, if Adam really could see auras, diagnose illness by looking at pictures, alter brainwaves – this could easily be demonstrated in scientific tests. It will be interesting to see if this is ever done by independent testers. I predict now that it never will be, and this is a pity, because if Adam really had the abilities he claims, they should be studied. I also predict he will never apply for Randi’s million dollar challenge, although someone with these skills would ace it. However, do I predict there will be reports of further successes in scientific tests on Adam’s DreamHealer web page. Such results, not independently verified or replicated, will unfortunately be worthless.

I anticipate the objections to my comments. What’s the harm? Perhaps the power of positive thought Adam instills might bring a cure. Well, I’m not convinced that the power of positive thought can make much difference in serious illnesses such as cancer. For example, this summary of 26 studies finds no such link. That said, I accept that there might be some benefit with some illnesses. But you have to set that against the false hope and ultimate disappointment given to people such as 14 year old Lucy. Does their ultimate let down and despair counter any alleged benefits received by others? And what about those, like 22 year old Christina, who decided not to proceed with surgery at least partly based on her faith in Adam? What if she gets worse, but the surgery she refused could have saved her life? And what about the damage done in general to the ability of people to think critically, when they are taught it’s OK to believe in fairy tales? In my opinion, magic therapies such as this do more harm than good, for the above reasons. I recognize this is just an opinion though, and some may disagree. I certainly wouldn’t want to tell the brave and hopeful wife of the Afghan war vet that she believes in fairy tales - let her keep her faith if it gives her some comfort. But I can’t help thinking she will ultimately feel let down.

Maine files suit against Gentle Wind

Remember the Gentle Wind Project – sellers of magic plastic cards that you hold in your hands to achieve “physical and emotional balance” in the face of traumatic events? Well the Maine Attorney General's Office has filed a lawsuit against them:

The Gentle Wind Project designs and sells what it calls "healing instruments" that it said solve a variety of physical and emotional ailments.

Others said the group is a scam.

The attorney general's office accused the group of falsely claiming that their products had healing qualities and of considering the income from their sale as charitable donations rather than sales proceeds.

Prosecutors want the Gentle Wind Project to liquidate its assets, pay the state's legal fees and refund anyone who bought items between 2000 and the present.

“Others said the group is a scam”. Those “others” would include me, of course. I wish the Maine Attorney General's Office success in their lawsuit.

Psychics didn’t foresee their arrests

Stupid psychic tricks are always good for a laugh. Three so-called psychics in Queens, NY were charged with accepting money for fortune telling.

According to the Queens district attorney's office, one of the psychics promised to rid one of the officers of evil spirits for the price of a mere $1,000.

"The defendants are charged with preying upon vulnerable individuals seeking advice for their problems to swindle money for their own benefit," District Attorney Richard Brown said.

According to state law, it is illegal to bill yourself as a fortune teller capable of using occult powers to answer questions, give advice or get rid of those pesky evil spirits. That is, unless it's stated that your services are for entertainment or amusement only.

Interesting that in New York State the authorities apparently don’t believe psychics are real. Wonders will never cease. Even more encouraging is that the cops in that state seem to know what is really going on at these “psychic” readings:

The defendant had the officer tie three knots on a string, which were allegedly gone when the psychic rolled the string up into a ball. If the knots disappeared, it meant that God's will wasn't present. But, the complaint said, the undercover saw the psychic switch the string.

That guy should be on Larry King. As guest host.

Anyway, it is obvious they weren’t real psychics – if these were real psychics they would have known their clients were undercover police officers.

Equivocation

The logical fallacy of equivocation is committed when someone uses the same word in different meanings in an argument, implying that the word means the same each time. For example, someone asserts that I have “faith” in science, and then implies this is the same as religious faith. This argument (that I have to refute with the same friend, periodically), seems to be saying that since I have not personally performed every single scientific experiment ever performed, by every scientist, in the history of the world – since I haven’t personally performed them all - I can’t know for sure that they have been performed at all. Therefore if I believe what I read about science, I must have “faith” in science. This is the same as religious faith, and therefore science is my religion.

Of course, the correct word to describe my view of science is “trust”, not “faith”. I have trust in science because (1) I have evidence that science works (look at all the products of science around you), and (2) there is evidence that science is self-correcting, and that if some scientist just made something up to con the rest of the world, another scientist would eventually expose the fraud. Of course, I can’t prove that all scientific experiments actually took place as described, and perhaps that’s where my friend’s confusion lies. But I do have evidence; therefore accepting science is not faith. The fallacy is to say that trust, based on evidence, is the same as blind faith based on no evidence at all. The ploy is to use the word “faith” for both of these definitions, but then to imply they both mean religious blind faith.

Recently it struck me that New Agers (and other woos) employ a slightly more subtle version of equivocation. You can see an example in this comment by author Daniel Pinchbeck. He is replying to my criticism that his book appears to center around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it. He wrote:

"The world as we know it" ending in 2012 is flap copy - but it is probably true in any case, Mayan Calendar or not, when you combine the effects of climate change, resource depletion, and the increasing toxification of the environment, plus proliferation of WMDs etc. Species extinction is also passing a critical threshold, so that if we don't make an ecological u-turn in the next few years, it may be irreversible.

Note the double speak – how he’s trying to have it both ways? He backs away from the Mayan prophesy because he knows it’s nonsense, and instead introduces things he thinks are more believable – climate change, extinctions, etc. The idea is I’ll be drawn in (because I can’t deny global warming, etc), and I have to agree with him. Just like I “have” to agree with my friend that I can’t personally prove the big bang happened and therefore I have faith in science. So I agree the world is in crisis and then Bazam! - I’ve just agreed to the premise of his book, namely that the Mayan prophesy is real.  (And despite the weasel words about “flap copy”, that is one of its premises.) Sneaky. Clever though.

I experienced this fallacy at a dinner party recently. Some people were talking about the absurd What The Bleep Do We Know!? film: specifically the “Indians didn’t see the ships” myth. For those who haven’t heard about this, a premise of the film is that we can create our own reality with the powers of our minds only. It’s standard Newage drivel drawing on distorted interpretations of quantum mechanics among other things. Anyway, one example given in the film, to support the premise, is how when Columbus first arrived in the West Indies, the natives were literally unable to see his ships.  Why?  Because they had never seen ships before, so ships did not exist in their reality.

When I pushed these people on the absurdity of this claim, they started to retreat to lesser versions of the myth. For example, they suggested perhaps the Indians just didn’t realize they were large ships containing people. Or, perhaps they didn’t realize the significance of the ships – that they contained colonizers who would steal their lands and kill most of them off. See how the story has now been downgraded to something believable? But this was the same shtick as with the Mayan prophesy. Surely I must agree the Indians might not have realized the significance of the ships? How could I not see this might have been true? And the moment I agree to this possibility - Bazam! - I’ve just agreed to the absurd premise of the film, and all my other criticisms of it have been refuted. They have got me to agree to a lesser, more believable version of the story, but are using acceptance of that lesser version to show the premise supported by the woo version is true.

Debating people like this can be frustrating - a bit like trying to nail jelly to the wall. Just when you think you have nailed the absurdity of something they say, their story slips almost imperceptibly to something less woo, and you find you have to agree with them. You have to be focused to prevent them from claiming victory as they slide back to the woo point that started the argument. Specifically, you have to be clear about the different versions of the story that are now being discussed, and you have to push them to say which ones they believe. If they believe the woo version, then ask them for the evidence. If they are equivocating about a lesser version, point out that this lesser version does not support the premise that they want to prove. Keep a clear head as they slide between the different versions of the story. Point out they are equivocating – using different versions of the story but implying that both support the woo premise.

An interesting question is do they realize they are doing this? My view is that most of them don’t: their thought processes are so muddled that they really don’t see they are equivocating. After all, if they could think clearly, they wouldn’t believe the stuff they do believe, would they?

Edited to add:

Check out this comment that in an incredibly timely manner, demonstrates again equivocation around the “Indians didn’t see the ships” myth. As I said – muddled thinking.

Why I won’t read your book

People are always telling me I have to check out this or that book or this or that film that will change my worldview, prove skeptics wrong or whatever. It’s usually backed by some claim that “scientists” support or have produced the information they want me to look at. It started years ago with Gregg Braden. A friend told me it contained all this amazing stuff, all confirmed by scientists etc etc and I shouldn’t criticize it unless I read it. Well OK, so I read it and it was the worst book of its kind I have ever read. Worst in that not only was it nonsense, but the manipulative style of the author made it clear he knew he was writing pseudo-scientific drivel to impress the scientifically naïve. It was so dishonestly bad it compelled me to write a review of Gregg Braden’s book – a review that I think has stood the test of time.

Then I was in a debate with someone about reincarnation. This guy said I should read the works of Ian Stevenson – a doctor who had documented cases that were very strong evidence for reincarnation, and I shouldn’t criticize it until I had read some of his work. So, I bought one of Stevenson’s books and I found it to be very unconvincing. His work is merely a collection of anecdotes: all the “past life behavior” had been witnessed before the author met any of the “reincarnated” children and so the veracity of the stories was hard to determine. In addition, in the later chapters Stevenson made several statements and drew conclusions that cast doubt on his ability to evaluate these kinds of claims critically. I thought this book was so bad that I wrote a review of Stevenson’s "Children Who Remember Previous Lives” and a general overview of Stevenson’s credulous outlook.  I have since read skeptical reviews of Stevenson’s other work in Skeptic magazine and elsewhere, that mirrored my thoughts.

I then had a discussion with a Reiki practitioner who said I should read Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion that somehow proved Reiki worked (except it did no such thing). The same person said I should read another book called “Spiritual Healing” (ditto and ditto). Later still, various people told me I must see What The (Bleep) Do We Know!? What a waste of nearly two hours that was.

There have been many other examples.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It was interesting reading all those books and films, and it certainly gave me something to write about. And I learned a lot. For example, I think I can say with some degree of confidence that Ian Stevenson’s work is not good evidence for reincarnation. And since his work is considered to be some of the best evidence there is for reincarnation, I can say with some confidence there is probably no good evidence for reincarnation. I wouldn’t be able to say that if I hadn’t read his book. Likewise, while deconstructing What The Bleep for my review I became pretty clear about the flaws in each part of that absurd film. It’s comical now listening to true What The Bleep believers twittering to each other over dinner about the amazing things they found in this film. I can say this sure in the knowledge that I have seen it and examined it carefully with an open but critical mind and found it seriously wanting.

But enough is enough. I’ve seen enough now to get an idea if something is worth bothering with before I even start. I don’t have to read every book someone tells me about any more, if I don’t think the book’s premise makes sense. I was prompted to write this post after reading this comment apparently from Daniel Pinchbeck, after I wrote about Pinchbeck’s book here. (I wrote something on what his book appeared to be about, and how it looked like a load of 2012 / Mayan Calendar woo.) He made the point in his comment that he’s not going to defend his book if I’m not prepared to read it. And he’s quite right – why should he? But likewise, I see no need to invest time in a book that appears on the surface not to be worth the effort.

Don’t get me wrong. There may well be woo-ish books or films that I decide to look at, and maybe write reviews of in the future. It depends if the material looks interesting enough and if enough people are talking about it to make it worth the effort. But don’t expect me to read every book you found fascinating that you’re sure proves skeptics wrong, unless there is a very good reason for me to potentially waste days of my time. Sorry. No offense but been there done that.

As for Pinchbeck’s book – I haven’t read it so I can’t say for sure if it’s any good, but a book that (according to amazon.com) centers “around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it”, comes under the heading of “this book’s premise makes no sense”. But don’t take my word for it – read it yourself if you want. Just don’t blame me if you think it’s woo.

My 2012 woo beats your 2012 woo

There is a problem with believing in stuff that can't be validated by independent evidence (ie, the stuff skeptics refer to as “woo”), namely that you don’t know where to stop. I was reminded of that reading this description of a recent book signing by Daniel Pinchbeck. Pinchbeck has a new book out about what is supposed to happen in the year 2012, which is (not) the end of the Mayan calendar. According to Amazon’s editorial review:

Pinchbeck… has set out to create an "extravagant thought experiment" centering around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it, "the conclusion of a vast evolutionary cycle, and the potential gateway to a higher level of manifestation." More specifically, Pinchbeck's claim is that we are in the final stages of a fundamental global shift from a society based on materiality to one based on spirituality.

This is followed by numerous credulous five stars “awesome” type customer reviews. LOL – I haven’t read the book but it sounds just like Gregg Braden’s nonsense – made-up drivel leading up to a big secret the author is going to clue you in on. Apparently one of Pinchbeck's big deals is “synchronicity”. New agers define this as being where different, seemingly unconnected, events are meaningfully related; skeptics use the word “coincidence” to describe the same thing.

Anyway, this guy is clearly getting tired of all the out-there woo beliefs of his fans. This is how he started off his book signing:

“It would be great if you didn't pontificate" when asking questions, Pinchbeck told the 50 or so listeners, noting a tendency of his audiences to use the Q-and-A sessions as a sounding board for their own cosmological outlook.

(Snip)

A number of audience members, many already clutching their own jade-green copies of "2012" to be signed, recognized the concept of synchronicity and wanted to offer their own versions (one such instance included buying Pinchbeck's new book and then discovering that the author was coming to Portland).

Pinchbeck, however, had heard plenty of these stories of late. "Now I get a little bored -- people come up to me, 'Oh, I had this amazing synchronicity. . . .' Yeah, whatever."

Translation – don’t bother me with your made-up woo when I’m trying to sell my made-up woo. Priceless.

Edited November 27, 2006

See Brian Doherty's review of Pinchbeck's book in Reason Online.

Pretty soon…

Compare and contrast the following.

The Society for Psychical Research – “the first of its kind to examine allegedly paranormal phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way” - was established in 1882. (Remember that date.) Success was claimed in its first test of “psi” when the psychic powers of the Creery sisters and their servant girl were supposedly proven. Of course, we now know the girls cheated (they were secretly signaling to each other). However, you’ll be pleased to know that 124 years later the society is not defeated in its aims:

Today the Society continues with its aim of understanding events and abilities commonly described as 'psychic' or 'paranormal' by promoting and supporting important research in this area.

Yes, I guess they think that pretty soon they’ll have good evidence that psychic powers exist and will be able to make some use of it – surely it’s only a matter of time, right? Right. That’s what some people believe, anyway.

Around the same time – in the 1890s - Morse code began to be extensively used for radio communications. Shortly after, on Christmas Eve 1906, the world's first radio voice broadcast was made. The early ship bound Morse operators didn’t believe it when they first heard a human voice on their equipment, but it really was there and radio would soon be extensively used whether they believed in it or not.

In the early 20th century, J. B. Rhine coined the term "extrasensory perception" (ESP) to describe the apparent ability of some people to acquire information without the use of the known senses. Using Zener cards, he claimed he had proven the existence of ESP, although it was later discovered that Rhine was leaving out negative results from his results on the basis that persons who disliked him guessed wrong to spite him. To my knowledge, no practical use has ever been made of Rhine’s work, although I’m sure some people think that will change pretty soon.

As a young boy I learned the Russians had put a satellite into space. It was called Sputnik and I remember my friend and I watching it with our naked eyes as it passed over our town at night. You could listen to it on your radio too. Soon after, Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, and my friend and I played at being astronauts. Not all that long afterwards (in the grand scheme of “long”), we all saw pictures of the first Moon landings. It didn’t matter if you believed it or not, space travel was real, and we could see it beamed back to us in real time.

In the 1950s S.G. Soal experimented on 160 psychically gifted people to see if they could determine through psychic means which one of five Zener cards had been turned over by a “sender” in another room. After some data mining, Soal claimed he had proven the existence of psi, although it was later shown he had cheated. Funnily enough, Soal’s work didn’t add any new knowledge or provide any more utility compared with what Rhine had already found (or more accurately, “not found”), and for some reason, forced choice Zener cards are not used in psi experiments any more. Instead, more subjective tests requiring judging (and therefore allowing more wiggle room) are used. Pretty soon, using this less rigorous method, we’ll have the proof that psi is real and is of use. Or so some believe.

Meanwhile scientists had invented color TV. I remember it well – our next door neighbor, who was wealthier than us, got one of the first color TVs and we went to his house to watch a football match. For the first time you could easily tell which team a player was with because each team’s shirts were in different colors. You had no choice about believing it or not – color TV worked and was a vast improvement over black and white.

As a teenager, I read that someone called Nostradamus had managed to predict the future 500 years ago. Surely this was proof of psychic powers? But then I got hold of a book containing the entire Nostradamus Centuries and I realized Nostradamus’ predictions were useless unless the thing being predicted had already taken place. To me, that didn’t seem to be much use. Believers in Nostradamus said I was closed minded, but I had examined the evidence and I just didn’t believe in Nostradamus or see any use in reading his predictions any more.

My (older) brother-in-law who worked “in computers” took me to his workplace. He showed me the big stacks of punch cards that he had to feed into the massive computer (it took up a huge room) to make it work. Apparently he ran the overnight batch jobs.  A few years later, someone developed a small computer that can sit on your desk, and even later a way of connecting all these computers in the world in what became known as the Internet. I’m writing this piece on a one of these small computers now, and you’re reading this on one too, over the Internet. It works whether you believe in it or not.

Someone called Rupert Sheldrake claimed he had proven that people can tell when somebody is staring at them. When this was investigated by skeptics it was found that the sequences used in Sheldrake's research were not properly randomized: when random sequences were used people can detect staring at no better than chance. Believers still dispute this, and Sheldrake is on the verge of coming up with a use for this phenomenon pretty soon. If you believe Sheldrake, anyway.

I remember when the first mobile phones appeared. The first person I saw talking on one in the street looked ridiculous with the huge headset and battery back slung over his shoulder. But now my cell phone is so small I don’t even notice it is in my pocket. And I have a tiny headset that fits in my ear and connects wirelessly to the cell phone in my pocket – I don’t even have to hold the phone to my ear with my hand any more. And I can dial just by saying the name of the person I’m calling. And it works whether I believe it or not. (Most of the time, anyway.)

From 1975 through 1995 the US government funded investigations into remote viewing to the tune of $20 million, in what was known as the Stargate Project. Despite all the time and money, nothing useful ever came from Stargate and the US government dropped it. A private remote viewing organization calling itself PsiTech claims it purchased this (useless) “technology” from the government, and claims to this day to be able to perform remote viewing. Their recent successes include divining the location of Elizabeth Smart’s dead body. Unfortunately for PsiTech but fortunately for Elizabeth’s family, Elizabeth appeared some months later, quite alive. This didn’t faze the President of PsiTech who emailed me bleating “This is still a young technology”. Hey, tell that to the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882.

Last year, scientists managed to decode a two-watt signal from a spacecraft on one of Saturn’s Moons, a billion miles away. Although the signal was never meant to be transmitted to Earth, it was received anyway and 100% of the scientific data was extracted successfully. That happened whether you believe it or not.

Meanwhile, I turn on the TV and I see a clown called John Edward asking a caller on Larry King if they know a J or a G-sounding name. (Note – Edward asks the caller – wouldn’t a real psychic tell the caller this information?) The same Larry King also features on primetime worldwide TV a moron called James Van Praagh who actually says “skeptics … use this thing about taking a test and proving it, the emphasis should be on them to prove it to us this is not real”. According to him this stuff, which is of no use at all anyway, is real unless we can prove it isn’t. The next day Sylvia Browne tells listeners on the "Coast to Coast" radio show that the miners trapped in a West Virginia mine would be found alive. That was just after the news broke they had been found alive but just before the revised news they were actually dead.  And people still believe this old phony.

Oh sure, Gary Schwartz claims to have validated John Edward and Allison DuBois, but Schwartz hasn’t published his data and no one has been able to replicate it. (The fact that he validated John Edward should be enough to tell you his research stinks.) And even if it were true, no use has come from these bozos other than “acknowledging” and “validating” passed loved ones, whatever that means. In 124 years, psi research has progressed to no more than a carnival guessing game act on TV.  But it’s not just that the evidence for psi has not gotten any better over the last 124 years compared with advances in science, although that is notable. The real lesson is that even if psi were real, in 124 years we still haven’t found an actual use for it – no psi communications devices, no accurate predictions of the future, no military use, nothing.

Compare that with the real world of science. We started this post with Morse code, but now I can now access computers anywhere in the world from the color screen of my small cell phone. And it all works whether you believe in it or not. Where are the equivalent unambiguously real and useful psi applications? Oh I get it: they’ll be here pretty soon. My question is – how much longer do we have to wait for some use to be made of psi before we can all agree it doesn’t exist?

Dead letter box

I wonder what Allison DuBois thinks of this story:

'Ghost' helps acquit murder suspect

Two letters said to be dictated by a ghost helped acquit a woman of murder in Brazil.

The letters, written by a medium who claimed they were from the victim, were used as evidence in a murder trial in Viamao.

The medium claimed the spirit had revealed that the woman accused of his murder was innocent.

A jury declared Iara Marques Barcelos, 63 not guilty of the killing Ercy da Silva Cardoso.

Mr Cardoso was shot dead in his home in 2003. Mrs Barcelos was accused because she was the victim's lover and was angry he wanted to leave her.

The defence lawyer told Folha de Sao Paulo: "The letters were a low blow and they were decisive to the verdict."

A court spokesman said the letters were accepted as evidence because the prosecution lawyers made no objection.

Letters dictated by a ghost? Surely Allison is the secretary to the dead? And I’ll bet John Edward is jealous – the only letters he gets from dead people are R, J and M.

But at least we now have evidence that psychics and mediums can get people off charges for committing crimes. Of course, we’re still waiting for any evidence that any psychic (including the one in this story) can determine who did commit a crime, or find the dead bodies, or in fact tell us anything useful. But it’s a start, I suppose.

No, I said R or J or M. J!  Write it down.

Secretary to the dead

That’s what Allison DuBois claims she is – “I'm a secretary to the dead. I take notes and I pass them on. I'm a bridge”. These mixed metaphors brought to you courtesy of last Monday’s Paula Zahn Now.

Unlike some of her colleagues on CNN, Zahn at least tries to give the skeptical side some airplay, although in an extremely courteous way and with a major concession to the credulous that I’ll cover at the end. But first, let’s have a look at DuBois’ customary claims. From the transcript:

ZAHN: …One of the first cases that DuBois says she worked on, which also became the pilot episode for "Medium," was the abduction of a six-year-old girl in Texas.

DUBOIS: Where she was abducted from, I was taken right to that house.

ZAHN: DuBois says she was contacted by the Tarrant County sheriff's office in conjunction with the Texas rangers. Law enforcement had convicted a man for kidnapping the girl, but had not been able to find the child's remains.

DUBOIS: And they drove me by the car that he had switched into after he had abducted the child… I put there was horseback riding near back stables. And then I put the horses get spooked in the areas of this child's remains. I also kept seeing small planes, so there had to be a landing strip nearby.

ZAHN: DuBois says she also told investigators that the remains of the child would be found within five years of the girl's disappearance. The child's remains were found four years and nine months after her abduction. Authorities say on the side of a horseback riding trail, in an area next to a military air base. DuBois points to these elements, among others as proof she was able to give useful information to the rangers.

Even if all this were true, it seems to me this is pretty underwhelming. If DuBois really was psychic and could see these things, why didn’t she direct law enforcement to the location of the body? By her own account the body was not found based on DuBois’ information, it was found some years later, so what use was DuBois really? And that’s even if her story were true. But as The Two Percent Company found, DuBois’ claim was not true. They asked the Texas Rangers about this claim, and they replied “the Rangers have not used psychics, including Ms. DuBois”.

To Zahn’s credit she does bring this up with DuBois:

But despite DuBois's claims, the Texas rangers deny ever having worked with her.

(on camera): We couldn't find one single person within the Texas rangers who would even admit to having talked with you. They said never happened.

DUBOIS: I know. The last thing they wanted was for it to be made national or world news where they have to answer for it.

ZAHN (voice-over): But a member of the Tarrant County sheriff's office did confirm part of DuBois's story. Sergeant Bobby Adabere (ph) told us that he not only met with DuBois about the case, but that he was put in contact with her through the Texas rangers.

DUBOIS: I wasn't lying I guess is what it tells you.

ZAHN (on camera): But Sergeant Adabere (ph) also downplayed your efforts. He ended up saying that any information you gave him was pretty darn generic and wasn't that helpful.

Also to her credit there was a brief snippet with Joe Nickell, explaining how “psychics” fit their generic guesses to the facts. But why did she have to spoil a reasonable attempt to report on this with integrity, by ending with:

ZAHN: We've got one more thing to add here. We did speak with another well-placed law enforcement official in Phoenix who said DuBois's information has helped on at least a half dozen cases. Her employer, though, wouldn't allow us to identify her, but this is exactly what she told us. "DuBois has been specific enough in details that it seems impossible that she would know this information any other way."

So just because this unnamed person, who can’t be questioned, says she can’t see how DuBois would have known what she remembers DuBois as knowing – just because this one person couldn't figure it out - DuBois must be psychic. The problems with this statement must be obvious. We don’t know:

• If this anonymous person is telling the truth.
• What it is she claims DuBois knew. They could have been generic guesses and there could have been many wrong guesses the woman has forgotten about.
• If she remembers correctly what really happened. Just ask Elizabeth Loftus – memories are unreliable.
• What other explanations there could be for DuBois knowing things that this person is just too credulous or unimaginative to think of. Just look at John Edward’s lame guesses that seem to fool callers on Larry King.
• What other ways DuBois would have of knowing things.

In other words, Zahn went for ratings at the end.  Lame.

How come Randi’s million hasn’t been won?

That’s what I was wondering this morning while reading this article about psychic powers:

More than half of Britons believe in psychic powers such as mind-reading and premonitions, a survey suggests.

Of 1,006 adults polled for Readers Digest Magazine, 43% reported reading others' thoughts or having theirs read.

More than half had had a dream or premonition of an event before it happened and 26% said they had sensed when a loved-one was ill or in trouble.

A fifth said they had seen a ghost and 29% believed near-death experiences were evidence there was an afterlife.

Of those questioned, 43% claimed to have tapped into other people's thoughts or to have had their own minds read by someone else.

Mind power

More than two-thirds said they could sense when someone was looking at them and 62% could tell who was ringing before they picked up the phone.

More than 10% thought they could influence machinery or electronic equipment using their minds.

One in 10 said something bad had happened to another person after they had wished for it to happen.

(My bold.)

With all those people who can tap into the minds of others, sense when someone was looking at them, or influence machinery with just their minds, it’s Amazing! (haha) that Randi still has his million. Think about it: surely at least one of these psychic prodigies would by now have applied for and easily won all that money?

John Edward Re-revisited

A few weeks ago Randi in his commentary analyzed a portion of one of John Edward’s “Crossing Over” talking-to-the-dead scam TV shows from December 2000. Randi figured Edward got three guesses right out of 23 – pretty abysmal considering the show is edited to make him look better than he really is.

This reminded me that a few years ago, for a friend I analyzed a transcript of Edward’s cold reading guessing game on Larry King Live, from June 19 1998. Since re-cycling old work takes less time than writing something new, I thought I would reproduce the analysis below for your amusement. You’re going to have to count the hits v misses yourself, although I’m pretty sure the ratio is similar to what Randi found. Worse probably – the live TV show allows no editing.

First, for those unfamiliar, a few of Edward’s cold reading techniques:

1. Make a lot of guesses. To start with, guess common initials – J (James/Jimmy), R (includes Bob, Robert), M (common especially among older women). Can’t go wrong with these in America.
2. Guess “chest area” as cause of death – covers all heart attacks as well as lung cancer. At a pinch can cover for a car accident too. Also, guess “cancer” – someone in the family must have died of it sometime.
3. Ask about “father figures” or “mother figures” – covers a multitude including older brothers/sisters, aunts/uncles – the caller will supply the actual answer that Edward can pretend he got.
4. Allow caller to “help”, This is a big part of the psychology of cold reading – the caller feels it is his or her fault if Edward guesses wrong and so the victim caller, if possible, will try to turn Edward’s miss into a hit.
5. Ask questions such as (for example) “who died in a car accident”. If you are lucky, someone will fit the guess and you look like a hero. If you are wrong you have not actually said anyone died in a car accident, and so cannot be accused of being wrong. Everyone will forget the wrong guesses. (Remember, confirmation bias is your friend.)
6. Ask “do you understand”. Caller will reply “yes” – they understand what Edward is saying and it appears they agree with him. But “I understand” is not the same as “you are correct”.
7. If your guess is wrong, insist the caller, not Edward, is wrong. The caller just doesn’t realize he had the older brother that Edward incorrectly guessed he had. Always sound supremely confident especially when you guess wrong – caller will think their knowledge of their own family is incorrect.

With those tricks in mind, let’s go to the transcript. Incidentally, this transcript does not appear to be on CNN’s website anymore, although I can verify I copied it verbatim when it was up. For fun, you could try analyzing a more recent transcript yourself. All bold is mine to emphasize the cold reading tricks and features.

CALLER 1
CALLER: I'm calling about my mother.
EDWARD: OK, stop right there. Your first name?
CALLER: Linda.
KING: Just give us your name and who you're asking for.
CALLER: My mother.
EDWARD: OK, Linda, the first thing I want talk about is, I know you're looking for your mom but I'm getting an older male who's also there on the other side. I feel like this is somebody who would be above you, which means it's like a father-figure, or an uncle, and he passes from either lung cancer or emphysema, tuberculosis; it's all problems in the chest area. OK, that's the first thing. And I feel like there's a J or a G-sounding name attached to this.

“CHEST AREA” Covers about 50% of causes of death in America. Also, the “J” name makes its first appearance (didn’t take him long).

CALLER: That's my mother.
EDWARD: She's got a very dominant personality.
CALLER: That's my mother. Her first name starts with G and she had emphysema.

Edward had said the “chest area” person was the “older male”. Caller recollects this ailment is her Mother. Note how caller accepts this as a hit. (The first call and already the caller is working with Edward to turn a miss into a hit – see # 4 above.)

EDWARD: Hold on. Does the month of August have a meaning for her, or the 8th of a month?

Fishing question.

CALLER: Not that I know of.
EDWARD: OK, I want you to write this down, because she's telling me to say "eight" then. I have to tell you that this is coming through so strong there's a male, it's got a very dominant energy, but this is how I'm interpreting it, and she's telling me to talk about "eight." "Eight" to me would indicate that the month of August has a meaning, or that the eighth of a month has a meaning. She's telling me that there's a father-figure that's there, so I don't know if your father's passed but there's a father-type figure...

Fishing to see if her Father was dead. If caller had replied yes, Edward would then have milked this one. But think about it: if he’s talking to her Mother and other dead people why does he have to ask if her Father had passed?

CALLER: No, my father-I just spoke to him on my son's phone and he wanted me to ask...
EDWARD: Wait a second.

EDWARD CUTS OFF THE CALLER’S QUESTION – doesn’t want anything too specific that he couldn’t answer.

KING: He's nodding, yeah, your mother was tough.

Shut up Larry

EDWARD: There's a father-figure...
KING: I can see your father, yeah.

What does Larry King think he is seeing now?

EDWARD: ... who's with her, from what she's showing me.
CALLER: Her father?
EDWARD: It's not her father. It's connected to you. So I don't know if there's a father-in-law for you who's passed, but there's a father-figure who's there. It's a male figure who's there.

The guess of “8” didn’t come to anything. Or August. Or this “father figure”. Nothing.

KING: But the important thing is, how is she doing?
EDWARD: Your mom is fine and I think it's important that you know that she was around-somebody missed seeing her from what she's showing me, and she's telling me to let you know that.

She’s “fine”. That’s OK then. Pity he didn’t let the caller answer the question she wanted asked. And there is no “older male” figure: the caller said her Father was alive.

CALLER 2

KING: Old Bridge, New Jersey, hello.
CALLER: Hi. This is Peter.
KING: Hi, Peter.
CALLER: I'm looking about-asking about my brother Michael.
EDWARD: OK, hold on Peter. Again, I get a lot of information through dates. The first thing that's coming through is I'm getting the feeling that April or the fourth of a month holds some type of a meaning. In the family does April have a meaning? Birthday or anniversary?

Fishing questions.

CALLER: No.
EDWARD: On your mom's side of the family, Peter. They're telling me "April."
CALLER: Not that I know of.
EDWARD: Hold that thought. On your mom's side of the family there's an older female who has crossed over. It's either her aunt or your grandmother. There's an M-sounding name that's attached to this, besides your brother, who you said is Michael,

And now the “M” makes an appearance. Only the second caller and already we’ve had J and M (plus a G for luck).

CALLER: Mavis.
EDWARD: And they're telling me that there's something to do with the fourth month or the fourth of a month, and I'm also getting the feeling of being out of state, so I don't know if your brother was away from you or at a distance from you, but I see something as being debilitating and affecting the body.

From someone who died? No way!

But I think your brother is OK.
CALLER: That's good to know.
EDWARD: All righty. Also, there's a congratulations going out to the family, which is either a happy birthday or some sort of a wedding thing that's coming out.

Someone in the family is having a birthday or a wedding. What are the odds?

KING: Now that comes through you how?
EDWARD: I see pictures. Like the pink rose on the video is their way of expressing their love. When I see like a white flower, that means happy birthday or congratulations.

Fourth month OR fourth of month (or ANY four connection) was wrong, as was out of state. And he sees “something as being debilitating and affecting the body” Wow, from someone who died? Again, what are the odds?

Sum total of this reading – his dead brother is “OK”.

CALLER 3

KING: Easton, Pennsylvania, hello.
CALLER: Hi, this is Cindy. I would like to talk with my grandfather and ask him a question.
KING: Can she ask him a question?
EDWARD: She can if he comes through.
KING: What's the question?
CALLER: I just want to know if he can see if we're going to have any kids in the future.
EDWARD: The first thing that I'm seeing is they're talking about-and don't get alarmed, I think this has already happened-they're talking about something burning. I don't know if there was a burning thing or if somebody had a fire in their house, or this is going back a few years. But they're telling me to talk about something that I would see as being like a fire or a barnfire or some type of a fire- type thing. Is there anything that used to happen in the backyard or something that he used to do?
CALLER: No.
EDWARD: Some type of outside fire or a fire thing?
CALLER: No.
EDWARD: OK. This is what they're showing me, so remember what the symbol is to me, I'm interpreting this as being some type of fire, or like fire-thing, but that's what's coming through. As soon as you-as soon as I listened to your voice, and I'm tuning into your vibration, this is what's coming through.

“Don’t tell me there wasn’t a fire. That’s what the dead people are telling me”

And I know you're asking me about kids, but I'm seeing boxes, and when they show me boxes it's their way of telling me that you're moving. Or that there's a move that's coming up.
CALLER: Uh-huh, yes, we just moved.

Who hasn’t moved, or is going to move, (home or work), or knows someone who is. “Boxes”, I’m underwhelmed.

EDWARD: OK, so that's a confirmation of what they're telling me.
KING: But his-her late grandfather couldn't tell her if she's going to have children or not.
EDWARD: I'm not getting...
KING: Or could he?
EDWARD: He could. He could.
KING: The spirits would know that.
EDWARD: They could come through and say stuff like that.
KING: We'll be back with more of John Edward on LARRY KING LIVE. Monday night, Leon Panetta, Bob Schieffer, Stuart Taylor, on the investigation of the investigator. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

One hit in this reading – “Boxes”.

CALLER 4

KING: By the way, this is John Edward's videotape, called "One Last Time: After-Death Communication." A lovely rose on the cover and that's available at 1-800-967 -- don't call here -- 1-800-967-4100. There's a book coming, same title, this fall. Northport, New York, hello.
CALLER: Hi, Jackie; I'm looking for my grandmother.
EDWARD: Hey Jackie, how ya doing? Um, the first thing I'm getting is I'm getting an M-sounding name; that's maybe like a Mary or Marie. Is that on
your mom's side of the family?
CALLER: Um, no.

He’s really milking that “M” tonight. M, J, G, R – the most common initials. Still, there is no “M”.

EDWARD: No, I'm saying is this the grandmother on your mom's side of the family?
CALLER: Augustine.

Caller supplies the name without having to be asked.

EDWARD: No, is this your grandmother on your mom's side of the family?
CALLER: yes it is; I'm sorry.
EDWARD: OK. Connected to her,

He had to ask if it was her Mom’s side. (50% chance of getting it right.)

she's talking about M-A-R. That's maybe like a Mary or Maureen, a Margaret; it's an M-A-R sounding name.
CALLER: OK.

“OK” is not “yes I know a MAR name.” M is a very common initial for a woman, especially older one. He still got it wrong though.

EDWARD: She's also telling me that there's a younger male figure who has crossed over who is there also. I don't see if this is a cousin or-it's a younger male figure who's passed.
CALLER: She had a baby that died.

A baby is not a “younger male figure”. Note caller accepts this as a hit.

EDWARD: OK, well she's got him who's with her. Um, she's also waving a flag at me, so I don't know if she passed around July 4th, or there's some type of governmental holiday that she passes around, 'cause I don't think she's buried with the flag. But she's waving a flag around me, so I want you to know that. And what it symbolizes to me would be that the person passes around something significant like a Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, Labor Day, there's some type of like a governmental holiday that she's showing me.

Caller has no clue what he’s talking about here. Complete MISS, but you can bet your life caller will not remember this miss.

Now, does your-is this-this is your mom's mom?

He’d already confirmed this

CALLER: My mom's mom.
EDWARD: Is there an Anne in that family?
CALLER: Yes.
EDWARD: Who is the Anne?
CALLER: Her niece.
EDWARD: OK, do you know if she just miscarried or if somebody's just lost a baby there?

Fishing question

CALLER: Not that I know of.

Wrong. If he had been right, though, believers would trumpet this as proof Edward is genuine.

EDWARD: OK, 'cause they're making me feel like, besides the child that she was talking about, there's another child who's also over there in that side of the family. Please let them know the child is OK.
CALLER: OK.

Caller agrees to pass on message that this non-existent child is OK.

EDWARD: And they're also talking about November or the 11th, something about the 11th. 'Cause she's showing me "11."
CALLER: OK.

Again “OK”, does not mean “yes she died on the 11^th”. 11 means NOTHING to caller.

EDWARD: But she's telling me to let you know that she's OK, and let your mom know.

Another dead person who is OK. Along with the child the caller doesn’t know about.

KING: Do you see a miscarriage, or do you feel it? How could you come up with miscarriage?
EDWARD: OK, my background-I used to work in a hospital-so a lot of my health care information comes through very, very clear to me from different parts-from seeing different parts of a hospital. And it's just an image of something that I see that I can identify with.
KING: And how did Anne come into you?
EDWARD: I saw my aunt.

Translation – it was a lucky guess. I suppose he deserved one after all the other wrong guesses.

CALLER 5
KING: To Morrisville, Pennsylvania, hello.
CALLER: Hi. My name is Toni and I'm trying to contact my mother.
EDWARD: OK, Toni, the first thing I want to talk about is I'm seeing pink roses and I see thorns on these roses. Now bear with me, here. When I see pink roses it's their way of expressing their love to you. When I see thorns on it, it lets me know that there are issues that were not settled or complete before your mother passed, OK.
CALLER: OK.

Again “OK” not “yes”. Wrong guess.

EDWARD: I'm also feeling that there is a something that affects her mind that would either stop her from being able to communicate with you in the way that she needed to, or something that would affect your being able to communicate with her, OK. This is what's being told -- this is what's being shown to me.

Caller doesn’t even OK this one. Another wrong guess. (BTW, my guess is that the “thing” that is stopping the caller’s Mother from being able to communicate with the caller in the way that she needed to would be that she is DEAD, but that’s just me.)

They're also talking about either Josie or Joey or something with a J-O sounding name. Is that connected to her?
CALLER: Yes.

That “J” word again. Isn’t that the second time? Connected in what way? Vague.

EDWARD: OK. Does she have a brother who's passed?
CALLER: A long time ago.
EDWARD: OK, 'cause she's telling me to tell you that she was greeted by the brother.

Stop right there. This caller’s Mother is apparently talking to Edward, but Edward had to ASK if her brother had died. When this was conformed, then he said that the brother had met her on the other side. If she was telling him “tell you that she was greeted by the brother” why did Edward have to ask this question? This is a perfect example of Edward asking a question, and if the answer was in the affirmative Edward tries to make out he knew this all along. If the answer had been “no”, he would have gone a different route.

Also, somebody's missing a finger or had a deformity attached to a finger; do you understand that?
CALLER: Yes.
EDWARD: OK, is that your dad?
CALLER: No.
EDWARD: It's an older male though; who is this?
CALLER: Possibly could be an uncle.

“Possibly” – so caller has NO IDEA if anyone was missing a finger. But caller confirmed it by a yes anyway.

EDWARD: OK, she's also talking about the male who had the drinking problem, because she's showing me a beer mug. Whenever they shows me that, I always joke around and say "They're hanging out at the Other Side pub."
CALLER: That was my brother.
EDWARD: OK. Is he also there?
CALLER: Yes.
EDWARD: OK, can you please know that your mom, your brother, her brother; they're all coming through together. Did somebody there commit suicide?
CALLER: Yes.
EDWARD: OK. 'Cause they're telling me to let you know that they're OK also. And to tell me to wish you a happy birthday. Is your birthday coming up in the next week?
CALLER: Not mine, my sister's.

Someone in the family is having a birthday or some kind of celebration soon.

EDWARD: OK, they're jumping up and down about this birthday. They're saying Linda or Lindy or Leslie; who's this L name?
CALLER: No L name.
EDWARD: OK. When they show me L, it's gonna be like an L- sounding name, like Lisa or Len or-when they come through with names, it's either who they are, who they're with, or "Please say hello to."

The dead people say there is an L name, so go argue with them.

They're also-they also have a, you'll laugh, but they're making me hear a dog, so that means there's a dog who's passed also. So your mom's telling me to let you know that the dog is with her.
CALLER: She had a dog that passed.

What family (or extended family) never had a dog or a cat?

EDWARD: All righty. But your mom's great.
KING: Thank you. What a phony; he got everything wrong there. Missed everything. All right. We'll keep him with us. John Edward is the guest. More phone calls after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

For once King makes some sense. Pity he was being sarcastic.

CALLER 6

KING: By the way, when you order that tape, in the tape comes information as to where John Edward is lecturing and where you can reach him. To Coram, New York, hello.
CALLER: Hello.
KING: Go ahead.
CALLER: Yes, my mother passed away, quite a while ago, and I'd like to get in touch with her.
KING: What's your name?
CALLER: My name is Karen.
EDWARD: OK, Karen, the first thing that's coming through is not your mother, but I want to tell you that there's another female figure who is older than you, who's making you feel like she either helped raise you, or was around when you were growing up-is coming through. And she tells me she either passed from breast cancer or lung cancer. I see blackness in the chest area, but I don't think that this is related to you. I think that this might be either a friend's mother or a mother-in-law-I don't feel like there's a blood connection here.
CALLER: My stepmother.

Mother passed “quite a while ago” and so Edward guesses caller was raised by someone else.

EDWARD: OK, because I don't feel like there's a blood connection-is she passed?

Edward tells the caller what caller had just told him.

CALLER: She just passed away recently.
KING: From what?
CALLER: Lung cancer.
EDWARD: OK. Please, you need to-this is important. I feel like somebody is questioning the medical care that this woman received, and they're saying that there was nothing wrong here. OK, this is what's being shown to me. Now, is there a Ganette or a Janet-
CALLER: Janet.
EDWARD: Who's this?
CALLER: That's my step-sister.
EDWARD: OK. She's living, though?
CALLER: Yes, she is.
EDWARD: She's out of your state?
CALLER: She's out-of-state.
EDWARD: Can you please let her know that mom came through? I feel like there is a lot of tears and a lot of crying over-either missing seeing her before she passed, or not getting a chance to say good-bye, which is very, very important. But I think what we need to do here is clean the slate for her; and there is an issue about relationships, or about being involved with the wrong person, or not liking her husband or something like that. I don't know what this is, but I feel like you need to let go of all this stuff, and let her know that she's OK;

A lot of waffle, unconfirmed by caller

and that she's got Maggie or Margie, or some sort of M-G-sounding name, who's with her, and know that she's OK.
CALLER: OK, I'm not sure about the MG.

That “M” name again – isn’t that the third time? Still, caller says there is no M name

EDWARD: Remember what I said-it's an M-G-sounding name-not just Mary-it's like Margie or Maggie.
CALLER: OK.

Edward: yes there is.

EDWARD: All rightie. Thanks for calling.
KING: Maybe she liked monosodium glutanate.
(LAUGHTER)

CALLER #7

KING: Secaucus, New Jersey. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, my name is Julie, and I'm trying to contact my mom.
EDWARD: OK, Julie, the first thing that's coming through is not your mom. Sorry, sometimes I gotta talk to them; I'm not an operator; I can't place calls. What is coming through is a younger male figure, who is passed over, and I feel like he passes because of a car accident, or because of an impact to his body-something that impacts his body. He's telling me, "He's connected to R"-like Rich or Richie or Robbie; and he's connected to somebody beneath you. So I don't know if you have a son, and this is a son's friend who's trying to come through to his family. But there's somebody younger coming through like this; and it's in your area, it's not out-of-state. It's not far away-
KING: Do you know anything about that?
CALLER: No, I don't.

Multiple fishing guesses. Also that “R” name again. Complete miss this time on all guesses.

EDWARD: I want you to remember this. This is really important, because many times clients come to me and you wind up becoming the medium; you become the messenger. But it's important that you let the family know that he's with the older male, which is either his father, but most likely going to be his grandfather. And I think-to let you know this-they either died in the same month or their birthday's-there is a parallel between dates or months, which would mean-he died in the grandfather's birth month, or vice versa, or something connected like this. But the biggest connection is the R-like Richie or Rickie-or there's that kind of R connection that comes up.
CALLER: OK.

Edward insists he is right. Still complete miss, but caller says OK.

EDWARD: When you find this out, you can-you know-let them know here, or let me know, but-
KING: What about her mother?
EDWARD: I'm not getting her mom. That's what is coming through.

Translation – the guess didn’t work this time.

CALLER #8

KING: Elizabeth, New Jersey, Hello.
CALLER: Hi, my name is Kathy, I'd like to talk to my mother.
EDWARD: Kathy, did your mom pass from congestive heart failure?
CALLER: No.

Heart failure one of the main causes of death in America – guess doesn’t work this time though..

EDWARD: I'm seeing congestive heart failure, filling up with fluids, a lot of problems in the chest, but it's heart-related. That's what's coming through.
CALLER: Probably, yeah; towards the end.

Edward won’t accept his guess was wrong. Caller wants Edward to be right and looks for a way to help him – so she now agrees with Edward even though she said he was wrong 5 seconds before.

EDWARD: OK. Did they have to make it-was there-this is strange -- did they have to make a split-decision at the end, whether or not to treat her -- or something?
CALLER: Yes.
EDWARD: OK. She's telling me that-they didn't do this, correct?
CALLER: They did.

A miss, I think. Answer was ambiguous.

EDWARD: This is incomplete, from what she's making me feel, like something was not done or something was not completely done; and she's telling me it's OK. She's telling me either Ellen or Helen, or Eleonore-it's like an Ellen-sounding name; and she's making feel like it's either-hello to -- or it's who she's with-or some type of connection to this name, from what she's acknowledging. Do you understand this?

CALLER: Yes.

Caller understands what Edward is saying. She is not confirming the Ellen, Helen, guesses. (Although Ellen/Helen leaves the door open to any H or E names – two initials for the price of one guess.)

EDWARD: She's also showing me my birthday, which is in October, so it's something symbolic to October for her, from what she's also acknowledging; all rightie, so I don't know if there's a birthday-I think it's around the 16th or the 6th, from what she's showing me.
CALLER: OK.

I think “OK” means “no”, except caller doesn’t want to say this.

EDWARD: Write the date down. It's October-it's around the 6th or the 16th. OK. It's the 10th month, and it's around the 6th. She's fine, and I feel like she's OK.

Edward: I’m determined this October guess will be HIT, so write it down goddammit. (It’s still a MISS though.)

(Snipped load of softball questions from King and rationalizations by Edward.)

CALLER #9

CALLER: Hello, my name is Dennis, and I lost my father three months ago.
EDWARD: OK, Dennis, hold on. Was he in a different country from you?
CALLER: No. He was in a distant city.
EDWARD: OK-I'm sorry, did you say he was away from you?
CALLER: He was in a distant city, yeah.
KING: A distant city?
EDWARD: What's coming through is I'm feeling that there is a distance, but I feel like it's a pretty big distance. That's why I thought it might have been a different country. This is going to sound really strange: did anybody around you pass like in a plane crash or in an accident that they were up high and then fell down-or was high and then went low?

Fishing – trying to find SOMETHING that sticks

CALLER: No.

But fails. This is an example of the sort of outlandish guess that if correct can seem like compelling evidence. If wrong though, no one remembers it.

EDWARD: I want to you remember this-because I'm getting it really strongly-they're making me feel somebody being up high, passing because of an impact, and then falling. There's normally to me what I perceive to being a plane crash.

But doesn’t give up. Caller must be wrong.

KING: What about his father?
EDWARD: I'm not getting his father.
KING: OK. We can't do everyone. Fallon, Nevada. Hello.

CALLER #10

CALLER: Hello. This is Pam, and I'm calling about my grandfather, who passed away about 50 years ago.
EDWARD: Okay, Pam, there's somebody more recent, who also crossed over-about three years-three or four years ago-and I feel this is somebody, to the side, someone like a husband, a brother, a brother-in-law. It's a male figure, that I feel has crossed over. He passes because of something that affects his head area. It's either brain tumors, or an aneurysm, or an embolism; something that goes to the head. It's more physiological, from what they're showing me. Do you understand this?

“Head Area”. Along with its good friend “chest area”, virtually all causes of death can be explained.

CALLER: Uh-huh.

Is that yes or no?

EDWARD: OK. It's important that his family hears from him, because they keep teasing him: well, if you were there, you'd be able to do this. And he's telling me: he's trying to do this. They're not listening. So if you can get that message across to them; there is something regarding a phone-I think he's trying to do something with them, either over an answering machine, or a phone. But it's got his likeness, so it's probably and answering machine. Pass that on. Is Jimmy connected to you, or is that to that family?
CALLER: No, un-huh.

Again, Jim, Jimmy or James makes an appearance. But caller doesn’t know him.

EDWARD: It sound like they're saying: Jimmy, I'm going to leave that with you, but put it to that family. Again, when it comes (INAUDIBLE)
KING: Not her mother?
EDWARD: I'm not getting-I'm not getting who she's looking for.
KING: There's no explai-explanation of that?
EDWARD: No, there's-
KING: It's on her dime.
EDWARD: That's right. It's a party line.

CALLER #11

KING: New Milford, New Jersey, hello.
CALLER: Yes, hello. Hi, john.
EDWARD: Hi. How are you?
CALLER: This is Charlene, and I'm trying to reach my mom.
EDWARD: OK, Charlene. Is dad also passed?
CALLER: Yes.
EDWARD: OK. Did dad go first?
CALLER: No.
EDWARD: Dad is coming through first.
CALLER: OK.
EDWARD: Dad is telling me to talk about-does he have a badge, or do you have a badge?
CALLER: No.
EDWARD: Who has got the shield or the badge-who is in the police? Or there's some sort of badge that they're showing me.
CALLER: No one that I'm aware of.
EDWARD: Yes, you do. They're showing me the father figure, and they're telling me to talk about the badge.

YES YOU DO. The dead people tell me there is a badge goddamit. What’s wrong with you?

Is there a second father, like is there a father-in-law who has also crossed?
CALLER: A grandfather.
EDWARD: No, like a father-in-law-or an uncle who has passed? It's an older male, but not that old?
CALLER: Older male, but not that old, with a badge.
EDWARD: Who had the leg missing?
CALLER: Nobody that I know.

A leg missing? A pretty major thing to get wrong. Imagine if the guess had been right, though.

EDWARD: Yes, you do. There's somebody coming through, and they're making my leg feel like it's not here.
CALLER: OK, well-well, my aunt is still living, and she did have a problem with her leg, almost losing it when she was younger.

That was classic – Edward insisting caller is wrong and Edward’s guess is right. Note how caller desperately tries to find a connection – ANY CONNECTION – that will help Edward. Someone somewhere had a bad leg, allrighty then.

EDWARD: That's not what I'm seeing. This is a male figure, who has crossed over; he's talking about the leg, which means it's either not here, or he was paralyzed and couldn't use it. He's talking about being an older male, which is above you; which is like a father, a father-in-law-he's telling me to show you the badge. Like, the badge is the clue here. The badge is the thing that's supposed to validate who he is. That's what's coming through. However, you're looking for you mom, but these are the people that are coming through with her.
CALLER: OK.

“OK” Translation: “I have no idea what you’re talking about”

EDWARD: Do you have roses, or something, a flower that's pressed of hers?
KING: Hello? I don't know what happened to the call. I'm sorry-I didn't cut you off, so I don't know what happened.

CALLER 12

Point Pleasant, New Jersey, hello.
CALLER: Hi, John. How are you? My name is Gene; I'm looking for my mother and my brother. I'm a little nervous.
EDWARD: That's OK. Makes two of us.

Don’t blame him with this record.

Is there a Katherine or Kathleen connected to you?
CALLER: My brother's name was Keith.

See how caller tries to help? “Kathleen” is accepted as a hit for “Keith”.

 

EDWARD: I'll take that. Sounds the same to me.

 

He’ll take anything he can get. This was closer than most of his guesses I suppose.

Do you guys have the same birthday or something?
CALLER: Mine was in January; his was in November.

LOL – they both have “r”s in them I suppose.

EDWARD: What's the similarity in dates-that he's showing me?
CALLER: I don't know. Mine was-his was November 9th; mine is January 2nd.
EDWARD: Nope, that's not it. There's a similarity-there's a parallel between dates. I similarities between-between you and your brother, from what' being acknowledged to me. Is his middle name with a J?
CALLER: His middle name was Michael.

“J” again – isn’t that the fourth time? WRONG though.

EDWARD: Who's got the J name?
CALLER: My wife's name is Joan.

Someone in the family MUST have a name beginning with J – finally something he can claim as a hit.

EDWARD: Is she new to the family from when one of them passed? Hold on. Let me just say this. They're welcoming somebody to the family, like they need to welcome somebody; and they want you to know that they see this person as being part of the family now, and they're connecting this to a J. It's a J-sounding name. Did somebody just have a baby or something?
CALLER: No, but neither one of them knew my wife-or met my wife -- before they passed-well, my brother did.

Caller helps Edward by saying the dead people didn’t know caller’s wife. Well, except the ones who did know her.

EDWARD: OK. I want to tell you that they're acknowledging your wife, but they also want to tell you congratulations; because there's a baby coming.
CALLER: That's surprising.
EDWARD: They're rocking a baby for me, which means that there's a baby that's coming to the family-and they're telling me DN-like Donna or Dan -- or something, like Diane. There's a DN-sounding name that coming through.

Caller does not even “OK” this guess.

Who had cancer?

QUESTION. Let’s find out who died of cancer and work that one. It is the most common cause of death in America and so there must be someone.

CALLER: My mother.
EDWARD: Was she misdiagnosed?
CALLER: Yes.
EDWARD: OK. She's telling me she had it twice; she's telling me it was in two separate parts of the body. Is this true?
CALLER: Yes. Yes. She had it in her back, and then she had it in her breasts.
EDWARD: OK. She's telling me to tease about you the slippers. I don't know if you have her slippers-or if you bought her, like, funky slippers -- like pull-over's, or something. But she's showing me something about slippers or feet, and it's like a funny thing; and she's, like, trying to be humorous with me. She's got a very comical feeling; she's very light-hearted.

Caller has no idea about the slippers, apparently. Is too polite to say so, though.

She letting me to let you know that she's OK, and that she also acknowledges your wife; and your wife's father, I believe, is there. Is that true?
CALLER: No, he hasn't passed. No.

Obviously there is an imposter on the other side claiming to be the guy’s wife’s father.

EDWARD: There's an older male on your wife's side of the family, connected to the J, who is there.

Edward is determined he is right.

CALLER: I don't know.

Caller tries to help Edward all he can – the answer is “no” but he can’t just say “no”, apparently.

EDWARD: Remember, I said this: the guy passes from either a vascular thing, like a stroke, or it's an ambulysm.
KING: Well, you were nervous when you called in. Right?
CALLER: I'm even more nervous now.
KING: Why? You're going to be a father. I think you ought to go tell her.
CALLER: All right. OK?
KING: And name the kid with a J. What the hell? Or the kid'll be born on the 9th. Who knows? We'll be right back with John Edward. Don't go away.

Why not? So you won’t miss any more of Edward’s blunders? To see if he guesses a “J” name for a fifth time?

There were actually several more callers after this but I got bored and I’m sure you are too.

The transcript I really want is the LKL show from September 10^th, 2001. Edward bombed so badly they never even put the transcript.

November 23, 2012 edited to add:

Reader Luke sent me a link to the September 10^th, 2001 transcript. It was as bad as I remembered it. The most notable thing was how often he used the "yes you do" response - ie when Edward makes a completely wrong guess, he just insists that he is right and the caller wrong. Without going back and counting, I think it was somewhere between 5 and 8 times. Amazing he gets away with that.

More Chopra drivel

Where does he get it from? It seems Deepak Chopra has an endless supply of meaningless drivel to churn out when anyone gives him a forum. His latest piece of verbal diarrhea can be found here on the Huffington Post blog, that haven for anti-science screed. Let’s dip in and see what gems he has to share with the unwashed:

Some concept of a "subtle body" is accepted widely throughout the East, but it hasn't made major headway in the West for one obvious reason: Whatever is invisible has little standing in a materialistic culture where reality is defined by science.

Yes, science has no time for invisible things like radio waves, atoms, MRIs etc. – all things discovered by science incidentally, not by drips like Chopra. Of course, what he means is that science is only interested in things that have a measurable effect – things that can be tested. If something has no measurable effect (for example, this "subtle body" he’s talking about), then it might just as well not exist. So does his "subtle body" have a measurable effect or is it just too damn subtle to measure?

This is really a fallacious appeal to other ways of knowing. Other ways than science, that is. But science has proven to be the most (only?) reliable method we know for evaluating claims and figuring out how the universe works. If Chopra is claiming that there is a better method, it is up to him to explain what that method would be: something he hasn’t done.

On the periphery of official wisdom, if we can use that term to describe orthodox ways of thinking, millions of people have experienced and believe in the following propositions:

(Snipped list of woo beliefs)

What these diverse things have in common -- besides being excluded from official wisdom -- is that they imply an invisible connection.

No, what most of them have in common is that there is no evidence that they are real.

By which I don't mean a mystical one. Just as the material world is connected invisibly at the quantum level, the subtle world is connected by a field of consciousness. A prayer, a desire to be healed, a wish for peace, hope for reassurance about the dead -- each impulse enters the field of consciousness and is responded to, just as every material event enters the quantum field and is responded to, down to the least quark and photon.

Meaningless gibberish with the word “quantum” thrown in (twice), as well as a quark and a photon for good measure. This is standard Chopra: he quotes quantum mechanics safe in the knowledge that that few people will know he’s talking garbage. In reality, he just wants to hijack the mantle of science to give this gibberish some respectability. It’s sold a lot of books.

So much evidence exists already about everything on the list

Yes, evidence that they are nonsense, don’t exist or don’t work.

that there is no longer a need to try and adapt to the scientific world view as if it were the only valid one.

Another appeal to other ways of knowing. He still hasn’t explained his better way though. Wonder why not?

Consciousness is still a cottage industry. As such, there is a wild mixture of truth and speculation, projection and verification. Anyone's experience could be real or imaginary. Anyone's explanation could be valid or eccentric.

I suppose that paragraph is technically correct. Meaningless though.

This is the best one of the lot:

For a new world view to emerge it must be coherent. It cannot be built up from entirely personal experiences, because sometimes these experiences are so intense that we can't see beyond them.

You know, he’s right. We need a method to evaluate the claims of this “new world view”, a way to objectively test these “experiences” so that we don’t fool ourselves into thinking something is true when it is not. A method where others replicate and confirm our results before they are accepted. A reliable method with a proven track record of success. If only we had such a method.

Imagine being in a room where a clairvoyant medium, a channeler, a faith healer, and an acupuncturist are trying to reach agreement while all around them radios blare messages about UFOs, alien abductions, reincarnation, near-death experiences, etc. The Babel of voices is so intense as to be unintelligible.

Yes, I imagine that a room with a clairvoyant medium, a channeler, a faith healer, and an acupuncturist all babbling together would be pretty unintelligible. Rather an obvious statement to make though.

The first steps have to be taken, however, despite this welter of confusion. A culture of consciousness is possible. In fact, present-day science is such a culture, although it is based, ironically enough, on the premise that consciousness has no validity except as an emergent property of matter. One can foresee the next culture of consciousness based on connections, which would overturn the whole scientific prejudice against the subtle body, invisible realities, and the primacy of consciousness in general.

Maybe. But I don’t foresee Chopra leading us there with this load of waffle.

Sylvia Browne - Miners are alive!

Er, dead. According to Randi yesterday, millionaire “psychic” Sylvia Browne appeared on the "Coast to Coast" radio show Tuesday proclaiming the miners trapped in West Virginia would be found alive. That was just after the news broke they had been found alive and just before the news they were actually dead. She could almost be working for PsiTech with this degree of accuracy.

Browne’s performance wouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with her usual lame cold-reading act.  First, the (erroneous) news came in that twelve of the thirteen miners had been found alive, and so Browne, not to miss a trick, claimed she’d always known that they would be found alive.  Standard practice. Later, after it became clear that these earlier reports were wrong and only one was alive, Browne seamlessly changed her story to "Yes, I just don't see anyone alive there – well maybe one." What a sleaze.

Fox News has a transcript of sorts:

Browne: "No. I knew they were going to be found. I hate people that say something after the fact. It’s just like I knew when the pope was dead. Thank God I was on Montel’s show. I said, according to the time, it was 9-something and whatever Rome time was. And I said he was gone, and he was."

But the situation was fluid, something Browne — ahem! — obviously didn’t sense despite her claims of being able to speak to the dead, among other things. She couldn’t have imagined that within a short time, the entire story of the miners would change completely — and make her look very foolish indeed.

Noory soon announced that there were new reports that all but one of the miners was dead.

Browne — who was still in the studio taking questions from listeners — had to say something. Now she was just riffing: "I don’t think there’s anybody alive, maybe one. How crazy for them to report that they were alive when they weren’t!" Then she added: "I just don’t think they are alive." She cleared her throat, and there was a deafening pause.

Noory went to a commercial.

All the slimy cold-reading tricks are there, but for once clearly exposed for the fakery they are. Usually the mistaken guesses are turned into “hits” by the believers who’ll find some way for the cold reader’s blunders to be correct. But even if they don’t, the experienced cold reader can usually bluff it out. You can see here how Browne hardly missed a beat as the news came in that the people had actually died – but this time even she couldn’t pull it off.

Of course, it won’t stop her or her fans. The credulous will still believe she is psychic. And Noory will have her on again.

One more thing: don’t expect John McCain to run against John Kerry in the next presidential campaign – apparently Sylvia predicted that too so it’s a fair bet it’ll never happen.

“Cough cough, you can’t prove air, cough.”

Gentle Wind lawsuit dismissed

Remember the Gentle Wind Project (GWP) – the makers of the magic alien-designed plastic cards you hold in your hand to solve all life’s problems? Two former GWP members, Jim Bergin and Judy Garvey, had set up the Winds of Changes website to expose GWP’s racket. Ironically, the GWP brought a racketeering federal lawsuit against Bergin and Garvey, in an attempt to gag them. Bergin and Garvey filed a Motion for Summary Dismissal.

Bergin and Garvey have just won their Motion for Summary Judgment – all charges have been dismissed (.pdf file). Clearly the judge saw through the ridiculous racketeering charges.

A victory for free speech on the web, as well as a victory for the good guys against the woos. Clearly those magic pieces of plastic have their limits.

Opportunity Missed

Last Wednesday night Larry King hosted a show entitled “Are Psychics for Real?” (Transcript.) After watching the show I can say for certain they are real – real morons. Sorry, but after a couple of day’s reflection that’s the only conclusion a sane person could come reading their lame half-assed justifications for what they do.

Rockstar wrote about this on Friday – his report should give you an idea of the general inanity involved. I reported on just one of the more stupid fallacious arguments presented, on Thursday. This is a more detailed reflection.

Here’s the set-up. It was billed as a debate of psychics v skeptics, except that there were three psychics and only two skeptics, so not quite even. Actually there was really only one skeptic, but more on that later. 

The three “psychics” were Sylvia Browne, James Van Praagh and Char Margolis – three cold readers who have bluffed their way through Larry’s show before. The two skeptics were Dr. Bryan Farha and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Farha is the guy who got through to the Larry King show on the phone 18 months ago and managed to ask Brown why she hadn’t made good on her promise to be tested for Randi’s million dollars.

The Psychics

There were many problems with the way this show was set up and run. First, it was a really badly adjudicated by King, who allowed the psychics constantly to interrupt each other and the skeptics, and thus avoid answering questions. For example, there was one point where Farha got to question Browne about her no show for Randi’s test. Brown made the usual excuses about Randi cheating, refusing to pay out etc. She mentioned the Yellow Bamboo incident, and “Zerbrowski”. I don’t know what Zerbrowski is but I do know the Yellow Bamboo people cheated (they used a stun gun) – Randi certainly did not “run away”. Farha may have been going to explain all this, but we will never know because King never gave him a chance – the psychics all piled in interrupting each other with their dopey rationalizations until the Rabbi got in again. (January 13, 2006 – Edited to add: Randi commented on this today. He essentially confirmed my comments.)  Van Praagh was the worst of the lot. Worst in that he was undoubtedly the most stupid, which is quite an achievement in this company. Don’t believe me? Try this for size (my bold):

VAN PRAAGH: The skeptics … use this thing about taking a test and proving it, the emphasis should be on them to prove it to us this is not real …

KING: You're making the claim. They're not making the claim. You're making the claim.

VAN PRAAGH: Prove that we're wrong though. Prove that we are wrong. The things we get people understand.

KING: You can't prove a negative.

Wow! Out-argued and out-skepticed by Larry King! You might as well give up and go home after that. (Except he didn’t.)

But Van Praagh was also the worse in the way he constantly butted in with a diversion whenever a skeptic would ask Browne a good question. Ah what the hell – they all did it. King, of course, was useless. And he wouldn’t shut up. Why didn’t he get Farha to ask some more questions instead of trying to ask some dumb supposed “skeptical” questions himself?

The Rabbi

A major problem I had with the program was the Rabbi. No Rabbi, priest, mullah or any other religious person has a right to call themselves a skeptic. Oh sure, the Rabbi was skeptical of the three psychics’ brand of woo. But in reality he was just annoyed they were interfering with his brand of woo. This allowed Margolis what I thought was actually a valid point:

MARGOLIS: even in the Jewish faith just because you can't prove it...it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You know how do you know that God exists? Now, I believe that during Passover the Angel of Death came and protected the Jewish boys from being slaughtered. Do you believe that? Do you believe there was a real angel?

The Rabbi followed with some rationalizations about why his brand of woo was better. But Margolis was right – the Rabbi also believes in stupid crap although he has no evidence for it, so how can he criticize these three psychics? Why are his fairy tales any better? It is moronic beyond belief to have set up the show allowing the psychics such an easy and valid out. Was there really no one else available? What about Michael Shermer, Penn Jillette or Randi? Weren’t any of these available?

And to make matters worse the Rabbi then tried a bit of cold reading on a caller. Bad idea, doomed to fail. For one, the three professional cold readers have had years to hone their skills – they make millions out of this scam, how is an amateur going to compete? More importantly, the callers are going to give the “psychics” more leeway – they’re going to look for hits and “help” the psychic when they guess wrong.  That is the psychology of the cold reading game – if the “psychic” guesses wrong the mark thinks it’s his fault for not understanding the psychic’s message, rather than the more parsimonious conclusion that the psychic just guessed wrong. But they’re not going to play that game for a debunker who has admitted he is guessing.  He just ended up looking stupid.

The lone skeptic

Farha was the only good guy there. I liked that he called Browne on not taking Randi’s test – he had a copy of the notarized document showing Randi’s $1million really exists. That was the highlight of the show. But he seemed generally inexperienced in how to present himself on TV and at times looked thoroughly bored by the whole thing. He missed a lot of tricks – for example Margolis’ failed cold reading demonstration that Larry declared a hit. But he was at a major disadvantage not being in the same studio. There seemed to be a time delay before he heard what was being said, and several times he obviously wanted to say something but with the time delay and the three babbling morons interrupting he didn’t stand a chance.

Conclusion

I suppose King deserves some credit for at least having some skeptics on the show, but with one Rabbi and an inexperienced guy with a bad link, they were set up to fail. A better setup would be for Larry to have Michael Shermer, Ian Rowland or even Banachek on for a full hour by themselves. Or Randi. Certainly the skeptical movement has to get its act together and train people how to present themselves on TV before they go up against professional fraudsters like Browne, Van Praagh and Margolis. These people make millions out of this kind of thing. There is a reason they are able to do that – they’re professionals. The skeptics who go up against them are already smarter.  They need to be as polished.

Stupid Psychic Tricks

I’ll finish with a few of the more inane remarks from the "psychics". I offer no extra comment except to say they remind me of some of the oldest and lamest arguments put forward by believers on places like JREF and the comments sections of this blog. Read this lot and consider these are the best arguments these best selling psychics can think of. Breathtaking.  Possibly the most inane is “you can’t prove air”, but it is a tough call.

Here you go:

VAN PRAAGH: To a certain degree and it has been tested there are certain percentages of it that have been proven to a certain degree in percentage certainly but there are certain scientific methods which also have not been invented yet or come up with a method that they can actually measure something like this.

BROWNE: Well, I don't think anybody really cares what's going to necessarily happen tomorrow.

VAN PRAAGH: Two- thirds of Americans have had experiences where, telepathic experiences where they thought about someone. Five minutes later the phone rings and it's that person. This is a sense that every single person has experienced. Then they cannot negate that and they (INAUDIBLE).

VAN PRAAGH: Just because things cannot be proven scientifically in the scientific method or the way you choose it to be in your paradigm, your way of thinking, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

VAN PRAAGH: If that was the way it is germs, bacteria they wouldn't have existed if we didn't find them and prove them. Look at the planet Pluto. Pluto, we would not have known it existed until we discovered it. That does not mean it does not exist.

KING: What about his point about the tsunami? Why didn't you feel it? BROWNE: But I -- but I did predict a terrible, terrible hurricane and everything else that was going to hit… And in India and that is documented. If the other gentleman would have looked up my -- I said it was going to be.

VAN PRAAGH: I also said it's a way of thinking. It's a way of living. It's a way of knowing this. It's another language. So you can't again, he's applying three-dimensional laws, third dimensional laws into energy which is different.

BROWNE: Why is it you have such a, pardon the expression, hard on for me? I mean what is it with you and I when we're both Jewish people.

MARGOLIS: You know I agree with James. Just because you can't prove something it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

BROWNE: You can't prove air.

VAN PRAAGH: The skeptics … use this thing about taking a test and proving it, the emphasis should be on them to prove it to us this is not real

VAN PRAAGH: Can I just say that a tactic of skeptics, which is evident right here, is that they will use one example like that, very general. What about the other examples? Like I did a reading for Florence Henderson the other day on "E.T. Insider" and her brother Joe came through and said she has a prayer card in her purse. And that was there since 1958. Does that mean -- yes, is that general? I don't think so.

VAN PRAAGH: I think it's been tested, Larry, that thoughts are real things. That thought is energy.

BROWNE: I know, because I've worked with 300 doctors. Do you want their names and addresses and telephone numbers?

VAN PRAAGH: If there's a blockage in the energy in a certain part of the body, she'll intuit that. She'll see that and she'll give out what she sees.

BROWNE: What a miserable life you must have.

Susan Clancy interviewed

Reason online has an interview with Susan Clancy, author of Abducted : How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens. I wrote about Susan Clancy here: she is the researcher with controversial experimental results about repressed memories among both alleged victims of child sexual abuse, and alien abductees.

The interview starts with Clancy’s view of how people “recover” memories of alien abduction at the therapist’s office (with all emphasis mine):

Clancy: It doesn't happen overnight. Nobody wakes up and says, "Holy shit, I was abducted last night, they took me, there were rotating vibrating devices and then they extracted my sperm." People say, "I have these weird experiences. I wonder what it could be?" They look for explanations and at some point they'll say, well, maybe I was abducted. …

Reason: And the memories are recovered later on?

Clancy: Either by choice, or because it kind of happens that way, some end up in an abduction researcher's office or a psychotherapists office to talk about their concerns or beliefs. I never met a single subject that had detailed autobiographical memories of what happened to them until they ended up under hypnosis.

Of course, this is fairly standard stuff to skeptics who follow this sort of thing. Perhaps more controversial is Clancy’s view of whether repression (and recovery) of memories happens at all:

Clancy: All of the scientific research shows that repression is just preposterous. But most therapists believe that repression exists. And most people in the world believe that the concept of repression is real. I think that's because of movies and Hollywood, we see it depicted, it's just culturally out there.

Reason: But in the scientific community—

Clancy: It's dead. Dead, dead, dead. For five decades we've known that memory is reconstructive in nature; we've known that memories can be created. The whole issue of repression didn't become a hot topic until the 90s. And for the past ten years scientists have been arguing that repression is preposterous.

Reason: You deny the existence of recovered memories; how do you explain the fact that adults do sometimes suddenly remember being abused, and the accounts turn out to be accurate and traumatic?

Clancy: Ninety-five percent of child sex abuse cases are non-traumatic events, traumatic in the sense of being life threatening or physically painful. If you look at the data, what is most likely to happen to victims involves touching and kissing. It's not something that requires medical attention. The average age of sexual abuse victims is seven. You take a young kid who does not know about sex—no kid under ten is able to understand what sex is—you have a child who doesn't know about sex, and somebody they love and trust is touching them in a way that is not painful. Put yourself in the perspective of the victim. There is no way to understand what is happening to you is a crime. They just don't know. It becomes one of the millions of experiences kids have that they don't understand. And it's not surprising to me that many kids simply don't think about it until later on in life. At some point, later on, when they hit puberty in high school or college, they put two and two together, and they realize that it was wrong. It was abusive. And people refer to that as "I remembered."

I have to admit, I thought that some repressed memories were possible, just that it wasn’t as common as some therapists claim. She seems to be saying it doesn’t work like that. I imagine many therapists disagree with her. Nothing new there then.

A walking, camera-strutting, fake-ghost-talking joke

Who? Why, Allison Dubois of course!

The headline is a quote from The Two Percent Company’s latest rant on the streaky-haired one’s recent drivel-puff interview with msnbc. Yes, just when you thought Dubois couldn’t be more vacuous or scummy she proves us wrong by preying on the sad Natalee Holloway disappearance in Aruba. Allison assures creduloid news-hack Rita Cosby that “you have the right suspects. They‘re completely guilty”, referring to the suspects the local police have questioned. Allison says she knows they are guilty because “I always did see them near the water with her”. The Two Percent Company nail this one to the bullshit board with nine inch steel ones:

She sees them near the water? Yeah, it was all over the news that they went to the beach the night Natalee disappeared. Not to mention which: Aruba is an island. Wow. We have to say, seeing Allison stoop so low brought a smile to our faces.

The rest of her interview with Rita is equally vacuous. She fails to provide a single specific detail of the case while at the same time warning people not to utilize psychics who are unable to reveal specific details of a crime. This apparent juggling act aside, Allison basically just parrots some news items and generally well-known speculations to fill out the rest of the interview. Truly sad for a diva of Allison's caliber.

Read the rest of their article: it’s fine and pithy.

As for Allison: a transparent case of playing the odds. The suspects the police clearly believe were involved are “completely guilty”. Good call! And something happened “near the water”. Wow! On a small island devoted to beach vacations. How does she do it? What a wonderful person she is. And what a dumbass Rita Cosby and all the other so-called journalists are for letting her get away with this drivel.

Of course, inquiring minds could Email Rita and ask her why she gives this obvious nonsense such credence. Not that I would encourage that kind of thing. Oh no.

Allison must have “tapped” my head

Gentle Wind Project

There is a lot of crazy stuff out there. For example, I have recently been looking at the Gentle Wind Project website. As far as I can tell, these people offer little plastic cards that you hold in your hands to achieve “physical and emotional balance” in the face of traumatic events such as the tsunami. They were supposedly designed by benevolent “non-physical entities living outside the Earth's physical and astral systems” who communicate telepathically with the project’s leader, John Miller.  No kidding.

Here’s one of the cards. Apparently they’re in laminated plastic. The detailed instructions for use are on the card.  (Er, you hold it between your hands.)

And this piece of plastic, sorry “instrument”, can not be “bought” for money, oh no. They are offered in return for suggested “donation requests” that range from $650 for the card to $10,000 for a thorough overhaul from the “New World System V 2.2”. What a deal.

And if you don’t believe they work, check out these pictures of satisfied customers who are tsunami survivors (I refuse to copy the pictures of these people to my site). Look at their happy faces. I’m sure those little pieces of plastic were a great comfort to them.

An “instrument” more advanced than the card is this healing hockey puck. Carnegie Mellon Professor Dave Touretzky has acquired pictures of these devices (suggested donation $300 to $450, although he says new models go for $5,850) taken apart. This is what the puck consists of: a round plastic container housing a printed computer art design and a small amount of sand.  That's it!

This is what its deconstructed components look like:

Impressive huh? But don’t forget, it was designed by aliens so it will provide “physical and emotional balance”, even if humanity isn’t ready for an explanation for how this pile of sand and plastic works. (No refunds.)

How do they work? Well, it’s a secret:

The way they work is extremely complex and cannot be understood by anyone in humanity at this time.

Told you. It gets better:

Remember - most people have no idea where their electricity comes from, how their radios, televisions, how their auto engines run, computers work, or satellite GPS systems work, let alone the complexity of high frequency temporal shifting matrixed with millions of predefined etheric modifications operating in a vertically and horizontally oriented polarization. If this sounds complicated and confusing - it is. This ultra complex process is set in motion by our Healing Instruments which are essentially a "Key." A temporal and spatial gate is created when a Healing Instrument is held. This "gateway" or window enables an individual's entire etheric system to interface with a very large, complicated, partially automated, predefined healing process. The more complex the Instrument the wider the "opening" and the deeper the penetration into the human system. As you can see, the Healing Instruments are only a small part of the entire process. Our healing technology incorporates an elaborate sentinel system which prevents anyone from "breaking into" or corrupting the system in any way.

Because some people don’t know where electricity comes from, this card works. I’m convinced. And um, well yeah, if it has high frequency temporal shifting matrixed with millions of predefined etheric modifications operating in a vertically and horizontally oriented polarization, it must be good.

Unfortunately for the very curious, this is the best explanation, shallow as it is, that we can provide right now. Some day in the future when humanity is ready, we will explain in more detail how the Instruments and the total system works.

Ha so grasshopper – one day you will understand. Just not yet. (In 2012, perhaps?)

It’s total pseudoscientific nonsense, of course.

A Cult?

Of course it’s nonsense, but (as someone once said) there’s nothing so dumb you can’t get someone to believe in it. A more serious criticism of the Gentle Wind Project from former members Judy Garvey and her husband Jim Bergin is that they are a mind-control cult. The Wind of Changes website details their 17 year involvement with the group, including claims of sexual manipulation, as well as financial ruin. (The description fits the bait-and-switch profile of other cults.) Bergin describes how little by little the organization gained more control over his family’s life and life savings:

It happened so slowly and subtly that I was not cognizant of the process at the conscious level. Had someone asked me early on whether I would submit to handing over a large part of my income and life’s savings, give up a nurturing and valued relationship with my wife, take a back seat to seeing and parenting my children, sell the business I loved, and live in greatly reduced circumstances, I would have laughed at the idea. But, as I will describe here, the process was deceptively subtle, pervasive, and persistent.

The Gentle Wind Project denies these claims and has filed a defamation lawsuit and a RICO (racketeering!) Federal lawsuit, claiming punitive damages.  Bergin and Garvey have filed a Motion for Summary Dismissal (.pdf file). The lawsuit is continuing, with a trial (if there is one) not slated until at least February 2006.

Rick Ross, who runs a database of cults, destructive cults, controversial groups and movements, has several articles on the Gentle Wind Project. Rick states "in my opinion the group appears to parallel the criteria for a destructive cult”.

It’s all tax free!

It gets better. The Gentle Wind Project is registered as a not-for-profit organization. Translation: it’s tax free.  The most recent 2001 tax returns (.pdf file) linked on their website show revenue of almost $1.57 million against expenses of $1.53 million. These “expenses” include $67K for “boat”, $89K for “electronics” and $66K for “shop”. They state “the majority of our funds have been spent on education and research” – research into boating, shopping and enjoyment of electronics, apparently.

Rick Ross has their 2003 tax returns (.pdf file) showing “donations” adding up to quite a tax-free (Gentle) Windfall:

As a private, nonprofit corporation known as "Gentle Wind Retreat" the project is exempt from federal income taxes, much like a church, a hospital or a private college.

…

The latest Form 990 filing shows GWP net assets of $2,077,324 as of August 31, 2003, up from $1,918,205 the year before. Revenue for the 2002-03 fiscal year totaled $1,969,923, with expenses totaling $1,810,804.

(My bold.)

You can buy an awful lot of sand and plastic (and electronics), for $1.8 million. The aliens must be living it up on their yacht.

References:

Gentle Wind Project

Wind Of Changes

Rick Ross Institute for the study of destructive cults, controversial groups and movements

Dave Touretzky

Now Magazine

Rip Off Report  and another Rip Off Report

Healthwatcher.net

More on Allison Dubois

Allison Dubois takes hypocrisy to new depths, according to this superb article from The Two Percent Company. Just read it.

Bogus psychics

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.