Pseudoskeptics and Psychic ability

[polomontana]

I think the pseudoskeptic uses skepticism as a crutch to protect his or her belief system. Skepticism is supposed to help a freethinker find the truth.

Psychic ability is subject to human error because this information is coming through a human medium. The pseudoskeptic expects the psychic to be correct 100% of the time and this is silly. If a psychic helps a detective in 4 cases but gets it wrong in 2 cases the pseudoskeptic will yell fake.

This is because they tie the term supernatural to it and to them supernatural means it has to be perfect. Supernatural means it's information coming from outside of our observation through a natural medium and therefore it will be prone to human error.

If you were to go back 3,000 years ago and clone a sheep, it would be labled as a supernatural event by the people of that time period.

The way you tests psychic ability is you have a control group of people who don't have psychic ability and through guesses they might be right 15% of the time. You then take a group of psychics and if they are correct 40 or 50% of the time on average then more needs to be explored.

You also look at the people vouching for the psychics.

At the end of the day, psychic ability is real beyond any reasonable doubt.

http://veritas.arizona.edu/

http://noreenrenier.com/index.htm

These are just a couple of links and there's many more. Again, psychics will not be correct 100% of the time because it's information coming from outside of our observation through a natural medium.

Science has shown that there are things outside of our observation like virtual particles, dark matter, dark energy. Look at parallel universes and the multiverse along with quantum computing. M-Theory and string theory. All of these things point to energy outside of our observation and psychics say they are connecting to a persons energy.

[wahrheit]

If a psychic helps a detective in 4 cases but gets it wrong in 2 cases the pseudoskeptic will yell fake.

Which four cases are you referring to? I am not aware of any "psychic" ever successfully helping police resolve a crime.

[polomontana]

Have you ever seen the show psychic detective? Police officer after police officer vouch for the psychics who help them with cases. Are they all lying?

Edit to remove Rule 4 breach. Text taken from here:
http://noreenrenier.com/testimonials.htm
Remeber to accredit sources, provide links, and do not quote in full
Here's testimonies from Noreen Renier's website. Are these people lying to? Is the pseudoskeptic saying that these psychics just dupe these professionals? LOL!!

[Czarcasm]

I think it is impolite to expect us to use NewSpeak words like "pseudoskeptic", and I hope no one here responds as if this word means anything, except maybe "someone who believes in everything except the scientific process."

[Loss Leader]

If a psychic helps a detective in 4 cases but gets it wrong in 2 cases the pseudoskeptic will yell fake.


Please list even one confirmed case where a psychic provided useful information to the police.


The way you tests psychic ability is you have a control group of people who don't have psychic ability and through guesses they might be right 15% of the time. You then take a group of psychics and if they are correct 40 or 50% of the time on average then more needs to be explored.


Please list even one properly-controled experiment where a psychic performed three times better than chance.


You also look at the people vouching for the psychics.


Please explain why you would do this. Scientists do not assume that because Hawkings pronounces something true, that it must be true. They do not ask for affidavits from Edward Witten's friends as to whether he's a normally upstanding guy. Nor do they ask other scientists to write in to vouch that some experiment was done properly. Instead, they demand repeatable experiments with consistent results.

So why should parapsychologists be allowed to consider which people are "vouching" for psychics?


At the end of the day, psychic ability is real beyond any reasonable doubt.


If that were the case, it should be no trouble at all to design a proper, repeatable experiment. Yet, so far no one has been able to do so.


Science has shown that there are things outside of our observation like virtual particles, dark matter, dark energy. Look at parallel universes and the multiverse along with quantum computing. M-Theory and string theory. All of these things point to energy outside of our observation and psychics say they are connecting to a persons energy.


Look at all the countries in the world that are islands - Australia, Great Brittain, Taiwan, Japan, etc. There are so many countries in the world that are islands that we can observe. So, when I say that I live in a country that is also an island, you cannot doubt me.

Sorry, but there is no reason why the existence of some things necessitates the existence of your thing.

[Madalch]

The pseudoskeptic expects the psychic to be correct 100% of the time and this is silly. If a psychic helps a detective in 4 cases but gets it wrong in 2 cases the pseudoskeptic will yell fake.

Nope. Any test that I've been aware of has been designed to see if the "psychic" does better than chance, not perfectly.

However, the researchers have to apply an elementary knowledge of statistics. Guessing which Zener card is being held up 5 times out of 5 is better than chance, but doing it only once is statistically possible, and is unimpressive. If someone could get the right card 3 times out of 5 -consistently-, then that would be impressive.

[wahrheit]

Have you ever seen the show psychic detective?
Polomontana, a TV show is _not_ a reliable source for _anything_. TV shows are produced to entertain and have a lot of audience, which will in turn raise profits of advertisement. And that's about it. They do not care in the least if it is "true" or not what they show in such a program.

[... Lots of Noreen Renier stuff and anecdotes ...]

I suggest you start reading about those psychic detective fantasies at these links:

http://www.skepdic.com/psychdet.html
http://members.aol.com/garypos/Renier_list.html



Are these people lying to?

Nobody in this thread ever accused them of lying. You are making this up.

Is the pseudoskeptic saying that these psychics just dupe these professionals? LOL!!

If you keep referring to people here as "pseudoskeptics" and LOL at them, the discussion might be quickly over.

[polomontana]

Let me get this right,

A skeptic can use words like pseudoscience but they are thin skinned when it comes to the word pseudoskeptic. A pseudoskeptic is not looking for truth, thet are just using skepticism to back their pre-existing belief system.

[Civilized Worm]

Perhaps you could give some examples of these "pseudoskeptics"? Most skeptics I know would be pretty damn impressed by a 50% success rate.

[wahrheit]

Let me get this right,

A skeptic can use words like pseudoscience but they are thin skinned when it comes to the word pseudoskeptic. A pseudoskeptic is not looking for truth, thet are just using skepticism to back their pre-existing belief system.

You failed to address any of the above replies in your thread.

The only thing you did so far was copy & paste an entire web page (http://noreenrenier.com/testimonials.htm) from a self proclaimed "psychic". This will not do it.

[Lrrr]

Let me get this right,

A skeptic can use words like pseudoscience but they are thin skinned when it comes to the word pseudoskeptic. A pseudoskeptic is not looking for truth, thet are just using skepticism to back their pre-existing belief system.

Dictionary.com defines pseudoscience as "any of various methods, theories, or systems, as astrology, psychokinesis, or clairvoyance, considered as having no scientific basis".

How would you define pseudoskepticism? Any of various methods, theories, or systems, as astrology, psychokinesis, or clairvoyance, considered as having no skeptical basis???

[Czarcasm]

Please give us one real example of what you consider to be "pseudoskepticism."

[Lrrr]

Have you ever seen the show psychic detective? Police officer after police officer vouch for the psychics who help them with cases. Are they all lying?

the Bureau has used Renier strictly in an academic setting, to expand the thinking of police officers. We have, however, given her name to law enforcement people who want to try a psychic. And some of them have said she's solved cases."
— F.B.I. Special Agent Robert Ressler, New York Post, June 4, 1988

"Noreen's incredible insight helped close our case by providing the macabre details of our victim's murder which, when presented to our suspect, caused him to negotiate a confession. She also identified two other accomplices to the crime."
- Joe Uribe (Montana DCI Agent - Retired)

You definitely opened many eyes to the potential investigative tool of the psychic. Obviously, many a doubting Thomas had to revise his ideas concerning this somewhat esoteric area."
— Daniel Grinnan. Jr. Bureau of Forensic Science Commonwealth of Virginia

"I asked Noreen if she would come and address the Illinois Coroner's and Medical Examiner's Association at their Spring meeting. We had worked with Noreen on a homicide case in our county and she was a great help to us. I felt it was important to let members of the Association know what a valuable tool a Psychic may be in working those troubling cases. She was both informative and entertaining."

— Marlene A. Lantz, Coroner McHenry County. 2007

"Noreen never could have known this stuff beforehand and she was so accurate it was chilling."
— Retired Lt. Commander. R. Krolak, The Times Union, February 11, 1992

"I was skeptical until Noreen said on the phone from almost 1OOO miles away that there was something wrong with my friend's leg. He had been hobbling around on crutches for a week, and there was no way for her to know that."
— David Rogers, National Council of Churches Interreligion Task Force for Criminal Justice

"It was kind of scary when we did find it, and it was almost exactly as she described it. I wouldn't say I'm a total believer, but I don't throw out anything they say."
— Lt. Robert Miller, Port St. Lucie Tribune, May 19, 1991

"In a lot of the cases new information comes forth as a result of Noreen's consultation. She has established a formidable track record for honesty and professionalism..."
— Rod Englert Forensic Consultants April, 1990

...She helped to locate a plane containing the body of a relative of an FBI agent."
— Retired Special Agent, Robert Ressler. Whoever Fights Monsters, St. Martin's Press

"Without Noreen Renier we would not have located Norman Lewis. I'm extremely impressed with her abilities. She told us things that she would have to have been an eyewitness to have known."
— Olin Slaughter, Chief of Police, Williston Police Department Williston Pioneer, June 27, 1996.

"Your presentation on right brain processes as they relate to psychic ability and awareness was germane to our topic of left-brain/right-brain activities, and your discussion and demonstrations contributed to the participants' overall understanding and appreciate of WHOLE-BRAIN processes."
— Clairette T. Murray Training Specialist, Martin Marrietta, Orlando, Florida

Here's testimonies from Noreen Renier's website. Are these people lying to? Is the pseudoskeptic saying that these psychics just dupe these professionals? LOL!!

That page had a lot of testimonials, which makes sense as it is basically an advertisement for her services. What I didn't see was a single example of a case she helped police on - dates, location, people involved, etc. Anecdotes from people that may or may not exist (I'm too lazy to search for all these people and I have no reason not to believe they exist, I' m just saying "maybe") are not evidence.

[polomontana]

Again,

The pseudoskeptic subsitutes their opinion for evidence and that's silly.

Take this one example:

"Noreen's incredible insight helped close our case by providing the macabre details of our victim's murder which, when presented to our suspect, caused him to negotiate a confession. She also identified two other accomplices to the crime."
- Joe Uribe (Montana DCI Agent - Retired)

Now the pseudoskeptic will have you believe that Joe Uribe is either a dummy or he was duped by Noreen. This is the backwards logic of the pseudoskeptic.

Was the skeptic in the in the room when this information was presented to the suspect? Did the skeptic know what information that Joe Uribe knew?

This is just one case out of many but the pseudoskeptic will never accept these things because they are not looking for the truth but they are looking to back up what they already believe.

There is no answer to these things except psychic ability exists and is part of the natural order. Psychics are getting information from outside of our observation and this information is coming thru a human medium.

[MageLite]

Was the skeptic in the in the room when this information was presented to the suspect? Did the skeptic know what information that Joe Uribe knew?

Were you? Did you? How exactly do you know this is reliable evidence?

[Madalch]

Again,

The pseudoskeptic subsitutes their opinion for evidence and that's silly.

Take this one example:

"Noreen's incredible insight helped close our case by providing the macabre details of our victim's murder which, when presented to our suspect, caused him to negotiate a confession. She also identified two other accomplices to the crime."
- Joe Uribe (Montana DCI Agent - Retired)

Now the pseudoskeptic will have you believe that Joe Uribe is either a dummy or he was duped by Noreen. This is the backwards logic of the pseudoskeptic.

Or that Noreen made up the quote and ascribed it to a fictitious person.

[wahrheit]

This is just one case out of many but the pseudoskeptic will never accept these things because they are not looking for the truth but they are looking to back up what they already believe.


1) This is _not_ "one case out of many", it is nothing but a bit of copy & paste from a psychic's web page.

2) I think it is other people here who are ignoring facts and evidence to back up what they already believe.

3) You still did not answer all the replies above.

[polomontana]

If the skeptic is making the claim that Joe Uribe is lying, they have to provide evidence to support this claim.

Just saying it is not evidence. Again, the pseudoskeptic subsitutes their opinion for evidence.

[Civilized Worm]

There is no answer to these things except psychic ability exists and is part of the natural order.


You already gave us two more probable explanations.


Now the pseudoskeptic will have you believe that Joe Uribe is either a dummy or he was duped by Noreen.


Both those possibilities are far more plausible than invoking the supernatural. Ever hear of Ockham's Razor?

[polomontana]

The case was on Psychic Detectives but if the skeptic is making the claim that Joe Uribe is lying, then they have to provide evidence to support their claim.

[wahrheit]

The case was on Psychic Detectives but if the psychic is making the claim that Joe Uribe is lying, then they have to provide evidence to support their claim.

Huh?

Ah, Edith says you fixed that. Yet, don't you think the onus is on the psychic to provide evidence in the first place? Apparently, this has never happened to date. Some random quotes of anecdotal character are not evidence.

[Civilized Worm]

I'm not making any claim, I'm saying you have to rule out all the more likely explanations before accepting such an improbable one.

[GoodGuysEatPie]

Again,

The pseudoskeptic subsitutes their opinion for evidence and that's silly.

Take this one example:

"Noreen's incredible insight helped close our case by providing the macabre details of our victim's murder which, when presented to our suspect, caused him to negotiate a confession. She also identified two other accomplices to the crime."
- Joe Uribe (Montana DCI Agent - Retired)

Now the pseudoskeptic will have you believe that Joe Uribe is either a dummy or he was duped by Noreen. This is the backwards logic of the pseudoskeptic.


Can you give us a real example of a "pseudoskeptic", rather than this hypothetical situation? Your attempt at a straw man isn't really working for me.

~GGEP

[Moochie]

I don't know any pseudo skeptics, since almost everyone is skeptical about something. There are apparently thousands of pseudo psychics, though. Like, all of them, even.


M.

[polomontana]

I'm not making any claim, I'm saying you have to rule out all the more likely explanations before accepting such an improbable one.

An improbable explanation is a subjective opinion and this is my point.

The skeptic substitutes their opinion for evidence.

Why is it an improbable explanation? It's improbable because of your pre-existing belief about psychic ability. This is the fallacy of the pseudoskeptic.

[Madalch]

If the skeptic is making the claim that Joe Uribe is lying, they have to provide evidence to support this claim.

Just saying it is not evidence. Again, the pseudoskeptic subsitutes their opinion for evidence.

And what of your claims that psychics are real, and that these pages of testimonials are something other than pure fiction created as an advertisement for a fraud? Are you going to provide any evidence to support your claim, or do you expect that you should be considered correct until proven otherwise?

[JoeTheJuggler]

The case was on Psychic Detectives but if the skeptic is making the claim that Joe Uribe is lying, then they have to provide evidence to support their claim.
I just checked carefully through the thread, and nobody here said that Joe Uribe is lying.

If you are making the claim that psychics have helped police solve crimes by means of psychic abilities, it is up to you to provide evidence.

Copying testimonials from a psychic's website simply isn't sufficient for such an extraordinary claim. I'd at least want links to new stories, and then I'd want to be able to verify those stories with the police and other records.

[Civilized Worm]

An improbable explanation is a subjective opinion and this is my point.

The skeptic substitutes their opinion for evidence.

Why is it an improbable explanation? It's improbable because of your pre-existing belief about psychic ability. This is the fallacy of the pseudoskeptic.


No it is improbable because there is no prior evidence to suggest the existence of such things.

If I claimed to own a unicorn would you consider that probable? Would it be because of your pre-existing belief about unicorns? Or would you be skeptical of my claim do to the lack of pre existing evidence of unicorns?

[polomontana]

No it is improbable because there is no prior evidence to suggest the existence of such things.

If I claimed to own a unicorn would you consider that probable? Would it be because of your pre-existing belief about unicorns? Or would you be skeptical of my claim do to the lack of pre existing evidence of unicorns?


Sorry but your analogy with unicorns doesn't make sense.

Unicorns don't have 20 year police veterans vouching for them.

It's called reason and we use it to weigh the evidence.

So pink unicorns flying in my backyard could not be compared to psychic ability because psychic ability has police officer after police officer vouching for the psychic and that has to be taken into consideration as the evidence is being weighed.

Bad analogy.

[Civilized Worm]

OK lets pretend I had a bunch of police officers who seemed to think I had a unicorn, would you then accept it? Or you think maybe there is still a more probable explanation?

[fingersmith]

Sorry but your analogy with unicorns doesn't make sense.

Unicorns don't have 20 year police veterans vouching for them.

It's called reason and we use it to weigh the evidence.

So pink unicorns flying in my backyard could not be compared to psychic ability because psychic ability has police officer after police officer vouching for the psychic and that has to be taken into consideration as the evidence is being weighed.

Bad analogy.

How about if I have Nessie, or Bigfoot or some aliens in my garden would that analogy suit you better? There are years of people willing to vouch for these.
Evidence is what is required here.

[polomontana]

OK lets pretend I had a bunch of police officers who seemed to think I had a unicorn, would you then accept it? Or you think maybe there is still a more probable explanation?

Now your asking me to "pretend." In a hypothetical like that, I'm not sure what I would accept until the evidence is in front of me.

With psychic ability, we don't have to "pretend." Police officer after police officer is vouching for the psychic now and the evidence is in front of me.

Here's another case to chew on:

In 1989, Rachel Lombera was murdered in her apartment in Selma, California. She was beaten to death with a boombox and a chair. The police investigated the scene, and found no evidence of forced entry. Rachel new her killer and willingly let the person inside. The police found fingerprints but were never able to match them to a suspect.
She was last scene at a local bar dancing with a man the night before her murder. A witness was able to provide the police with a composite sketch of the man. The sketch was publicised, but the leads that came into the police were all dead ends.

Rachel's family convinced the police to seek the help of a psychic. The police called psychic Kay Rhea. Kay only asked for a photograph of Rachel, nothing more. From the photograph, she was able to determine that the suspect worked in a "big factory," and was also romanticaly linked to Rachel. Kay called a sketch artist friend and was able to provide a sketch of her own.

The police were skeptical, and set the sketch aside. Twelve years pass. In 2002, the unsolved case was given to Detectives Brandon Shoemaker and Gary Gass.

While looking through the case file, the dectectives find Kay's sketch and decide to contact her. Kay remembers the case, and tells them that the suspect has left the area and is probably somewhere south, like San Diego or San Bernadino. The detectives decide to publisize Kay's sketch, and two months later they get a break in the case. They recieved a tip about a man who used to live in Selma who matches Kay's sketch. As the detectives investigate their new suspect, they discover that he worked at the same plant as Rachel, and moved to San Diego shortly after the murder. They interrogate him, and he admits to the crime.

Kay Rhea also said he killed her because she was about to spill the beans. When he admitted to the crime he said he killed her because she threatened to tell his wife about their affair.

The article even contacted a skeptical police officer and this is what he said:

We tried to contact Detective Shoemaker, which was a task in itself. After being redirected several times, We finally talked to a secratary who said that he was currently serving in Iraq. However, she gave me the number of his partner, Detective Gass.

We first asked Detective Gass if he believed in psychics, and he told us he did not. We asked him about how Kay could have easily rationalized that the suspect was "angry" while killing Rachel, due to the fact that he beat her to death with a boombox and a chair. He told us that "she could have easily guessed that he was angry, it wasn't something new to us."

However, the thing that stunned him was the sketch. When we asked him about the sketch, he said, "Damn, if it wasn't just so close." He said that it was "scary". He told us that he had no idea how Kay could have gotten that information so accuretly. He went on to talk about the purpose of sketches, that they were used to "eliminate everyone else." Kay's sketch wasn't used like that, it was a direct hit. We finally asked him if they could have solved the case without Kay, and he told us that, "without using the psychic, we probably would have never solved the case."

Now is everyone lying in this case also?

http://www.angelfire.com/theforce2/psych/PortraitofthePast.html

[wahrheit]

<------

[GoodGuysEatPie]

Now your asking me to "pretend." In a hypothetical like that, I'm not sure what I would accept until the evidence is in front of me.

With psychic ability, we don't have to "pretend." Police officer after police officer is vouching for the psychic now and the evidence is in front of me.


So, are you saying that in our hypothetical case, you would want evidence in front of you, but that in your case, anecdotes suffice?

Evidence for psychic ability is something that should at least: be examinable by everyone (including skeptics), be consistently reproducible (by means other than trickery), should have a success rate that well exceeds that which is achievable by chance, and have more than some psychic's website or somebody's angelfire page to support it. Until the psychics give us this, I say: *yawn*

~ggep

[Frankenstyle]

It drives me up the wall every time I see a Unicorn hugger pouting about how skeptics are all closed minded fairy slayers bent on robbing the world of magic and beauty. In their minds these people twist the act of requiring a reasonable measure of proof, into some sort of "denial of the greater reality" due to fear of the unknown.

OP, I'll step out on a limb here and say that there is not a single person reading this thread that wouldn't love to be the individual that finally discovers absolute proof of the supernatural. Anyone to prove the existence of ghosts, aliens, ESP, or even dowsing, would be credited with the greatest discovery in human history. Who wouldn't want to be remembered throughout time in the company of names like Einstein and Edison?

Requiring evidence of a claim is not denial, it's simply reason. And if any evidence existed that this "psychic detective" could live up to her own promotional material, she'd be a bigger household name than Jesus.

[NobbyNobbs]

However, the thing that stunned him was the sketch. When we asked him about the sketch, he said, "Damn, if it wasn't just so close." He said that it was "scary". He told us that he had no idea how Kay could have gotten that information so accuretly.

Now scroll up a few paragraphs....

A witness was able to provide the police with a composite sketch of the man. The sketch was publicised, but the leads that came into the police were all dead ends.



Gee, I wonder how she managed to get her sketch so close......

[Locknar]

Claptrap. If you (polomontana) want to convince folks you need more then just hearsay stories. Until the/a psychic submits to a controlled test as proof, that is all it will ever be - hearsay stories.

Now...just why, I wonder, don't these psychics ever submit to controlled tests...hummmmm.

[Jimbo07]

Unicorns don't have 20 year police veterans vouching for them...

psychic ability has police officer after police officer vouching for the psychic and that has to be taken into consideration as the evidence is being weighed...



You should really stop maligning police officers...

:mad:

[Frankenstyle]

Now is everyone lying in this case also?


No, the person who wrote the article you quoted is the only one who needs to be lying. Do a little digging using the names of the victims or detectives in this thinly veiled advertisement. You'll find that the only instances that tie this crime to "psychic powers" either point right back to the article at hand, this very thread, and a couple of other sites which are referencing this same piece. Nowhere is there an instance of some small town reporter who gets wind of a history making scoop jumping on the story. There isn't even a substantial body of unreliable anecdotal evidence to prop up the claims being presented.

If you're putting this forth as evidence, then you're asking us to believe that the article is true because the author claims it is. That's not much of a case.

[Susan Gerbic]

Have you read any of the articles on www.stopsylviabrowne.com?

He has asked over and over for just one person to stand up and say that Browne was correct, and 18 months later no one has come forward. Yet person after person is writing to Lancaster with evidence that she is a fraud. That does not keep people from throwing money at her though.

If the woman you quoted earlier about solving a case is a true psychic, why didn't she give some solid details like a last name? An address? A phone number? Something that could really be checked?

Polomontana - I sense that you want to be a believer, you are up on all the current TV shows, and are swayed by them. Maybe you are a clever person and something is gnawing at the back of your brain, you sense something isn't right with these TV shows but you can't see where the problem lies. Taunt some skeptics and maybe they can see the problem, you could have asked nicely and you would get a polite response.

Sometimes things are simpler than they seem at first. People write all kinds of things on the Internet, just because it looks official (listing names and dates) you know doesn't mean it is real. What does the psychic get out of listing all these claims on her site? Fame maybe? Money surely? Who knows? But it is easy to make claims, almost no one will ever check up on these stories, names and dates.

If there is one story out there that has been checked please let us know, most if not all the skeptics on the JREF would love to find out physics are real.

Susan

[Rodney]

If there is one story out there that has been checked please let us know, most if not all the skeptics on the JREF would love to find out physics are real.

Susan
Both physics and psychics are real, but physics is more of an exact science. ;) Consider this testimonial that former police detective and polygraph expert Jerry Lewis sent me about a 1988 murder case, which involved psychic Nancy Weber:

"Some of the cases in the book [Psychic Detective] I had worked on. One was the murder of a woman in Mt. Olive. She was stabbed in the throat while she slept. The apartment was locked, with no apparent forced entry. The knife which was used was taken out of the kitchen. The only other person in the apartment at the time of the murder was the victim's daughter, who was apparently sleeping. Due to the lack of forced entry and the murder weapon being taken from within the home, the daughter was definitely a suspect. On the advice of an attorney, she refused to submit to the polygraph. I polygraphed twelve other possible suspects and cleared them. Nancy's book states that she had met with the police and told them a stranger had watched from outside the building, then removed a screen from the kitchen window, entered through the window, and killed the woman. She was adamant that the daughter was not involved. In fact, she was mad that the police were treating her as a suspect. What she did not know was that about 6 months after the murder, the daughter wanted to come in and take the polygraph to prove her innocence. She also hoped that she might remember something during the intensive interview that would aid the investigation. I called her truthful and recommended that she be cleared as a suspect. I remember that on one of the days I was conducting a polygraph on this case, the detectives told me that they had been in contact with a psychic (Nancy Weber) who gave them the initials of the murderer. I remember asking them what the initials were. They were 'N.M.' I remember this because I then went through my files of all the people I had tested on the case to see if any of them had those initials. None did. Months after that, and 9 months after the murder, I picked up the paper and read that a man from Netcong was arrested for the murder. He was being arrested for burglary and a subsequent search of his apartment revealed a stack of articles about the Mt. Olive murder. His fingerprints were checked against an unidentified print on the kitchen window and matched. He was arrested for the murder and is currently serving his time in prison for it. His name is Nicholas Muscio. He was a stranger to the victim. He had just been watching her through the window. He removed the screen, entered through the window, took the knife out of the sink there and stabbed her." See http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2955608&postcount=251

[Babbylonian]

Polo, every single piece of "evidence" you provide is simply an appeal to authority (assuming, of course, that said authority exists apart from blurbs on a psychic's website).

If a veteran police officer told me that there was strong evidence that leprechauns had robbed my house, how should I take that? By your reasoning, it seems that I should accept it because, well, after all, it's a veteran police officer and he must know all about crime, evidence and leprechauns.

There's got to be a better way to prove that one has psychic powers than by short quotes from people who might not know a cold reading from a hot one...

[polomontana]

Both physics and psychics are real, but physics is more of an exact science. ;) Consider this testimonial that former police detective and polygraph expert Jerry Lewis sent me about a 1988 murder case, which involved psychic Nancy Weber:

"Some of the cases in the book [Psychic Detective] I had worked on. One was the murder of a woman in Mt. Olive. She was stabbed in the throat while she slept. The apartment was locked, with no apparent forced entry. The knife which was used was taken out of the kitchen. The only other person in the apartment at the time of the murder was the victim's daughter, who was apparently sleeping. Due to the lack of forced entry and the murder weapon being taken from within the home, the daughter was definitely a suspect. On the advice of an attorney, she refused to submit to the polygraph. I polygraphed twelve other possible suspects and cleared them. Nancy's book states that she had met with the police and told them a stranger had watched from outside the building, then removed a screen from the kitchen window, entered through the window, and killed the woman. She was adamant that the daughter was not involved. In fact, she was mad that the police were treating her as a suspect. What she did not know was that about 6 months after the murder, the daughter wanted to come in and take the polygraph to prove her innocence. She also hoped that she might remember something during the intensive interview that would aid the investigation. I called her truthful and recommended that she be cleared as a suspect. I remember that on one of the days I was conducting a polygraph on this case, the detectives told me that they had been in contact with a psychic (Nancy Weber) who gave them the initials of the murderer. I remember asking them what the initials were. They were 'N.M.' I remember this because I then went through my files of all the people I had tested on the case to see if any of them had those initials. None did. Months after that, and 9 months after the murder, I picked up the paper and read that a man from Netcong was arrested for the murder. He was being arrested for burglary and a subsequent search of his apartment revealed a stack of articles about the Mt. Olive murder. His fingerprints were checked against an unidentified print on the kitchen window and matched. He was arrested for the murder and is currently serving his time in prison for it. His name is Nicholas Muscio. He was a stranger to the victim. He had just been watching her through the window. He removed the screen, entered through the window, took the knife out of the sink there and stabbed her." See http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2955608&postcount=251


Good post Rodney.

Psychic ability is not fully understood but there's plenty of evidence to support it.

Science tells us that there's a natural order that's outside of our local observation and we can't directly observe it because of decoherence.

This in a sense would be supernatural to us because it's beyond our perception but it still exists.

We are connected to the supernatural or the natural order that's outside of our local perception because of things like entanglement and non locality.

Some of us will have a stronger connection to these things and they are psychics.

The zero point energy that's contained within every particle that makes up your body doesn't die when you die and your energy states don't die when you die.

When you get married, thats an energy state. When you travel to Cancun, that's an energy state. These energy states still exists even when you die. This is why psychics say they are connecting to a person's energy.

[JoeEllison]

Another sad person attacking reality in order to bolster their stupid belief in psychics? Really? And, then you branch out into other stupid and unsubstantiated beliefs? Sweet!

You might as well have painted a giant "kick me" sign on your back.

[Frankenstyle]

Good post Rodney.

Psychic ability...natural order...local observation...decoherence.

supernatural...natural order...local perception...entanglement...non locality.

zero point...particle...energy states...energy state....energy state...energy states...a person's energy.



Just because they says it's a discongurity in the harmonic vibrational frequency modulation dissonance, it dosen't make it true.

But seriously, that post is a meaningless string of largely unrelated words with little in common beyond their proximity to each other. Are you slyly admitting that you've just been kidding around, or were you trying to say something?

[slyjoe]

I believe the man who was embroiled in a lawsuit with Noreen Reiner and her books is a member here (John Merrill). I just can't remember his screen name off the top of my head. Go to http://www.amindformurder.com/ to see how well some of her claims hold up.

That would be the skeptical thing to do.

[Madalch]

The zero point energy that's contained within every particle that makes up your body doesn't die when you die and your energy states don't die when you die.

The energy may not die, but that doesn't mean that it remembers you, or contains your spirit.

I've heard people claim that an afterlife is basically proven by the law of conservation of energy- the "life-energy" can't be destroyed, so it must live on. This is claptrap- energy cannot be destroyed, but it can be transformed into other forms (and the second law of thermodynamics mandates that it get transformed into less useful forms of energy).

If a singer sings the world's most beautiful song, the energy contained in that song will continue to exist, but the song won't. The energy gets dissipated, and eventually converted into random thermal energy. You cannot resurrect the song, or reincarnate it, or listen to it again. It will be gone, and will exist only in memory.

And so will we.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I believe the man who was embroiled in a lawsuit with Noreen Reiner and her books is a member here (John Merrill). I just can't remember his screen name off the top of my head. Go to http://www.amindformurder.com/ to see how well some of her claims hold up.

That would be the skeptical thing to do.

And if you don't believe John and the US court system, how about Marie Parker, friend of and advocate for missing Audrey May Herron?

See: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=182132273

As for Kay Rhea...We had done a taped session with her by phone. She gave us various details in which we all had thought would help Audrey's case. We paid a $300 fee and were waiting desperately for the tapes to arrive....They came, and to my horror they were blank! When I called her to obtain another, she scrambled to even recall our session. She did not know anything she did before, and in fact gave a totally different "vision". She did not refund our money, and from that point on I believe that was the beginning of the end for me as far as psychics go. I no longer was going to "pay" to have my hope of finding Audrey fulfilled with people who make a living by playing with my emotions.

So Kay Rhea has some faint excuse for existing -- she is so bad that she can disconvince a believer.
:mad:

[polomontana]

Just because they says it's a discongurity in the harmonic vibrational frequency modulation dissonance, it dosen't make it true.

But seriously, that post is a meaningless string of largely unrelated words with little in common beyond their proximity to each other. Are you slyly admitting that you've just been kidding around, or were you trying to say something?

Let me break down what I'm saying a little more.

Science has discovered things that our beyond our local perception.

Dark energy would be "supernatural" because it's energy outside of our perception and we don't fully understand it.

When you look at things like parallel universes, quantum computing, quantum entanglement and the multiverse, these are things that show energy can exist outside of our 3 dimensional perception yet we are still connected to these things.

Psychics are connecting to energy that is beyond our local perception and we get a glimpse of it and can sense it through ghost sightings, near death experiences and psychic ability.

It's like Plato and the Allegory of the Cave. People within our 3-dimensional cave are blinded and they believe their local perception is all that there is because of decoherence.

When an enlightened person tries to help the blind see so to speak, the people in the cave insist the cave is all that there is.

[JoeEllison]

Let me break down what I'm saying a little more.

Science has discovered things that our beyond our local perception.

Dark energy would be "supernatural" because it's energy outside of our perception and we don't fully understand it.

When you look at things like parallel universes, quantum computing, quantum entanglement and the multiverse, these are things that show energy can exist outside of our 3 dimensional perception yet we are still connected to these things.

Psychics are connecting to energy that is beyond our local perception and we get a glimpse of it and can sense it through ghost sightings, near death experiences and psychic ability.

It's like Plato and the Allegory of the Cave. People within our 3-dimensional cave are blinded and they believe their local perception is all that there is because of decoherence.

When an enlightened person tries to help the blind see so to speak, the people in the cave insist the cave is all that there is.

No. Incredibly no. You can't just make things up, even though that is what you're attempting to do. There's no substance to your ridiculous and unfounded claims.

[gelatin]

What? Cops don't lie?

[blutoski]

I think it is impolite to expect us to use NewSpeak words like "pseudoskeptic", and I hope no one here responds as if this word means anything, except maybe "someone who believes in everything except the scientific process."

Not to defend polomontana's goofy ideas about the paranormal, but 'pseudoskeptic' (and [pseudoskepticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism)] is not newspeak. The word was actually coined by [Marcello Truzzi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcello_Truzzi)] when he was a member of CSICOP, and they are an element that genuine skeptics need to consciously defend against.

Basically, pseudoskeptics are people who say they're skeptics, but don't use skeptical methodology to weigh evidence objectively and fairly from an initial position of neutrality. They always seem start with the conclusion and work their way backwards.

polomontana is a classic pseudosckeptic in the Truzzi sense. For example, (s)he quotes testimony of police as superior evidence of the paranormal. A true skeptic would recognize fallacy of argument from questionable authority, neglect of memory plasticity, &c.

[schlitt]

Once you put aside your desire for psychic ability to be real, and look at the situation objectively it is extremely apparent psychic ability does not exist.

For starters, if psychic ability existed there would be no doubt. After the 100,000 – 200,000 years humans have walked this planet, the general consensus among those who have studied the area, remains that it contradicts what is possible within the laws of nature, and does not exist. This would not be the case if genuine psychic ability did exist, there would be reasonable proof and verifiable evidence. However no respected scientific study, independently verified has ever conclusively given evidence of psychic ability.

Watching a supposedly psychic medium operate is identical to watching a magician give a psychic reading, now if you think about why that is, the answer is obvious. They are both using the same, non psychic techniques.

Those who believe in psychic ability generally have not taken the time to look at the situation objectively, and educate themselves.

Believers incorrectly think that skeptics of psychic ability do not have the same desire as themselves for the phenomena to exist. Most skeptics would love it if psychic powers had supporting evidence, however this is sadly not the case. Until the evidence transcends the category of dubious anecdotal accounts, or fails to elevate itself above other plausible explanations, then it will be correctly met with a conclusion of low probability of being real.

If psychic ability existed, even in the shakiest and most unreliable of sense, it would still after continual testing show results above chance. However this does not happen, and indeed has never happened in a respected, controlled scientific study. In spite of this fact, believers still insist it exists, because of a few unverifiable personal accounts.
Imagine if we used this type of logic with other facets in life:
“Scientific testing of this particular pharmaceutical product shows no effective results… Oh well… lets use it anyway”
“Science tells us that gravity will pull us towards the earth if we jump off a 100 foot high building, Oh well, lets ignore science and do it anyway, I want to float…”

People are not willing to use this kind of logic when it comes to things which carry immediately recognisable negative consequences, yet they so readily throw away common sense when it comes to magical beliefs which they have a desire to be true, and do not carry negative consequence if the belief is wrong.

The typical believer takes dubious evidence into account, and ignores what science, rigorous study, logic and reason have to say. They take one account from a police officer that can in no way be verified as not being corrupted by memory fallibility, retrofitting, lying or even coincidence. Yet they ignore the thousands of other times supposed psychics have meddled with police affairs and been wrong (the psychic circus surrounding Madeline McCann a good recent example). They ignore the thousands of man hours, science has spent on evaluating psychic claims, and the fact there has never been any conclusive evidence for psychic ability. They fail to educate themselves in both sides, reading only what they think confirms their precious belief, and ignore the other side of the argument. They fail to educate themselves in the sciences to try and understand how what they claim exists, would exist, and they blatantly ignore the fact their claims contradict the very laws of nature themselves.
Then they have the audacity to claim those who are interested in actual repeatable, verifiable, conclusive evidence are the ones being unreasonable. What a sad state of affairs the human species is in that so many of these flawed thinkers abound.

We are at the forum of a foundation dedicated to offering a one million dollar prize to those why can design a test to show the paranormal exists. No one has successfully done so, and so many have failed. It is not hard to understand why.

[Tricky]

I wonder why none of these psychics who have solved crimes for the police ever apply for the Randi Million Dollar Challenge. It is apparent from their websites that they sell their services, so it can't be that they don't need money. Even if they didn't, they could give the money away. Even if Randi somehow weasled out of paying them, they would have the satisfaction and publicity reward of proving Randi wrong. Yet they don't even apply. Solving a crimes would be such an easy test too.

Instead, they rely on testemonials, rumors and a vast number of credulous people who will give them money for doing nothing.

Why don't you aske them, polomontana? Why won't any of the psychics agree to show their skills under properly controlled conditions? Can you answer this question without telling lies about James Randi?

[buzz lightyear]

It's like Plato and the Allegory of the Cave. People within our 3-dimensional cave are blinded and they believe their local perception is all that there is because of decoherence.

When an enlightened person tries to help the blind see so to speak, the people in the cave insist the cave is all that there is.

Good analogy polomontana, although I doubt if you will have any luck with this crew.

Its a bit like discussing the bronze age with Neanderthals, its comming but they will never see it

[Frankenstyle]

Science has discovered things that our beyond our local perception.


No. Science hasn't discovered anything that cannot be directly or indirectly measured. (Science does often discover things previously unobserved, but theoretically predicted, which is still pretty much the same thing.) Basically, science can't discover something that doesn't exist.


Dark energy would be "supernatural" because it's energy outside of our perception and we don't fully understand it.


Dark energy is a theoretical cause to explain an observable effect. Where's the supernatural in that?


When you look at things like parallel universes, quantum computing, quantum entanglement and the multiverse, these are things that show energy can exist outside of our 3 dimensional perception yet we are still connected to these things.


You've invoked a potpourri of subjects that range from neat ideas to mathematical possibilities, and that would take more time than I want to spend clarifying. So I'll cut to the chase and What you've got here is a some sort of multi layered non sequitur lasagna.


Psychics are connecting to energy that is beyond our local perception and we get a glimpse of it and can sense it through ghost sightings, near death experiences and psychic ability.


Well, if there's energy there then we can either directly or indirectly detect it. Or we can observe an effect which could be caused by this theoretical (but as yet undetected) energy. Hey! That's a lot like your point about dark energy, but in reverse! Since there is no observable effect, then there is no need to postulate the existence of a hypothetical cause (which you have inspired me to dub "Dark Thought"). Parsimony totally rocks, dude!



It's like Plato and the Allegory of the Cave. People within our 3-dimensional cave are blinded and they believe their local perception is all that there is because of decoherence.


Decoherence is all about quantum systems interacting in a thermodynamically irreversible way and causing the appearance of wave function collapse. It does not apply to Plato's cave people not having night vision goggles. Or more simply, "A drop of water does this, an ocean does that".


When an enlightened person tries to help the blind see so to speak, the people in the cave insist the cave is all that there is.


Amen, brother.

Look though, reading back over this, I know it seems to reek of hubris. But that's not my point here, I've just got a bad habit of sounding like a jerk. I'm sure you're a perfectly nice and sincere guy. What my point actually is, is that you seem to have absorbed a lot of misinformation along the way. Which is why I picked your post apart like I did, to show you that the concepts you're invoking don't actually apply like you've been told they do. No one here is trying to shoot you down, or make you feel stupid. Not even me, believe it or not. What people are doing is providing examples of how to examine claims in a critical light, so as to be as well informed as possible and therefor be in a position to make the most informed life decisions as possible.

Anyway, I'm going to stop because I'm starting to sound like a hippie.

[UnrepentantSinner]

Claptrap. If you (polomontana) want to convince folks you need more then just hearsay stories. Until the/a psychic submits to a controlled test as proof, that is all it will ever be - hearsay stories.

Now...just why, I wonder, don't these psychics ever submit to controlled tests...hummmmm.

Getting back to the claim about how police are being helped by psychics, I'd be satisfied - as a base level - with seeing, instead of anecdotes about how police were help by a psychic, a press release by a law enforcement entity stating that the case was cracked by the psychic or that the psychic provided the key evidence for solving the case.

Once it's established that police actually are being helped by psychics, we can start putting those claims to the test.

As yet, I'm not satisfied that the claims about psychics helping solve cases is anything more than anecdote and hearsay.

[Jimbo07]

What? Cops don't lie?

Not as often as polomontana and Rodney are making them out to...

:mad:

[Dragoonster]

When an enlightened person tries to help the blind see so to speak, the people in the cave insist the cave is all that there is.

But in this case if pyschic detectives are real, they'd have a measurable effect on the people in the cave. Though they couldn't understand the why or how, properly skeptic cavedwellers would accept evidence that it exists. Skeptics should properly view overwhelming evidence as fair proof of the effect, moreso than the burden of the pyschic explaining how the effect works. But the evidence is lacking, that's the whole problem.

Personally I'd love, really love for pyschic phenomena to be true. I've tried little coin-flipping experiments, or staring at the back of someone's head and trying to force them to look around, etc. I've even had a couple of possible procognitive experiences when I wasn't trying at all. But not even that experience has lead me to believe that it actually exists (beyond a chance of other factors and in context with the weak value of like evidence).

My current belief (or rather almost agnostic conclusion) is that if it exists it has a very small or uncontrollable effect, else neutral third-parties would have verified it.

As to your specific claim, I'll echo others in that I'd like to see a more controlled experiment. Unlike others I do think even sketchy or highly questionable anecdotes form a very weak form of evidence, or that a theory shouldn't have to begin only with very strong, lab-tested evidence.

Also, blutoski made a very good post. Even if some people you think are pseudo-skeptics are indeed pseudo-skeptics, you may be one yourself. Your claims or beliefs wouldn't be confirmed even if every member of JREF forums was a ravening pseudo-skeptic with an anti-pyschic agenda. We didn't force claims to only be anecdotal, or unsourced, or unverified. The claimants have to keep in mind the strength of what they're offering, to any objective evaluater. If it's very high evidentiary strength, psuedo-skeptics wouldn't even matter.

[Silly Green Monkey]

amindformurder is the screen name of the member who knows Renier.

[SillyGreenMonkey] is absolutely truthful--believe her in all things. Albert Einstein

See, now you have to believe me. Would Einstein lie?!

[polomontana]

No. Science hasn't discovered anything that cannot be directly or indirectly measured. (Science does often discover things previously unobserved, but theoretically predicted, which is still pretty much the same thing.) Basically, science can't discover something that doesn't exist.



Dark energy is a theoretical cause to explain an observable effect. Where's the supernatural in that?



You've invoked a potpourri of subjects that range from neat ideas to mathematical possibilities, and that would take more time than I want to spend clarifying. So I'll cut to the chase and What you've got here is a some sort of multi layered non sequitur lasagna.



Well, if there's energy there then we can either directly or indirectly detect it. Or we can observe an effect which could be caused by this theoretical (but as yet undetected) energy. Hey! That's a lot like your point about dark energy, but in reverse! Since there is no observable effect, then there is no need to postulate the existence of a hypothetical cause (which you have inspired me to dub "Dark Thought"). Parsimony totally rocks, dude!




Decoherence is all about quantum systems interacting in a thermodynamically irreversible way and causing the appearance of wave function collapse. It does not apply to Plato's cave people not having night vision goggles. Or more simply, "A drop of water does this, an ocean does that".



Amen, brother.

Look though, reading back over this, I know it seems to reek of hubris. But that's not my point here, I've just got a bad habit of sounding like a jerk. I'm sure you're a perfectly nice and sincere guy. What my point actually is, is that you seem to have absorbed a lot of misinformation along the way. Which is why I picked your post apart like I did, to show you that the concepts you're invoking don't actually apply like you've been told they do. No one here is trying to shoot you down, or make you feel stupid. Not even me, believe it or not. What people are doing is providing examples of how to examine claims in a critical light, so as to be as well informed as possible and therefor be in a position to make the most informed life decisions as possible.

Anyway, I'm going to stop because I'm starting to sound like a hippie.

Sorry Frankenstyle, you misunderstood a few things.

Science has discovered things that cannot be observed like virtual particles. You can just measure the effect of virtual particles just like you can measure psychic ability. Check out http://veritas.arizona.edu/

There's alot of ways to test psychic ability plus psychic ability has alot of credible eyewitnesses to back up the claims. You can come to know the truth through reason. Twelve people do it everyday in court.

Dark energy is energy that cannot be directly observed. This is energy beyond our perception. The supernatural is just things we don't fully understand and they are beyond observation from the view of our 3-dimensional cave.

I don't think you understand decoherence, it sounds like you have learned to repeat a professor but you don't know what it means.

In quantum mechanics, quantum decoherence is the mechanism by which quantum systems interact with their environments to exhibit probabilistically additive behavior—a feature of classical physics—and give the appearance of wave function collapse. Decoherence occurs when a system interacts with its environment, or any complex external system, in a thermodynamically irreversible way that ensures different elements in the quantum superposition of the system+environment's wavefunction can no longer interfere with each other. Decoherence has been a subject of active research for the last two decades.

Decoherence does not provide a mechanism for an actual wave function collapse; rather it provides a mechanism for the appearance of wavefunction collapse. The quantum nature of the system is simply "leaked" into the environment so that a total superposition of the wavefunction still exists, but exists beyond the realm of measurement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence

The key points:

1. in the quantum superposition of the system+environment's wavefunction can no longer interfere with each other

2. The quantum nature of the system is simply "leaked" into the environment so that a total superposition of the wavefunction still exists, but exists beyond the realm of measurement.

Again, the Allegory of the Cave does apply.

Decoherence means part of the total superpositition of the wave function is beyond the realm of measurement. This is the whole crux behind quantum computing. Part of the superposition of the wave function of a sub atomic particle is in parallel universes and we will use this increased computation to solve things like Shor's algorithm.

So because of decoherence, people are blinded to other parts of the wave function that can be found in parallel universes and other dimensions. So some people in the cave think the cave is all that there is.

Frankenstyle let me suggest you read up on these things:

M-Theory
String Theory
Inflation
The Multiverse
Many Worlds Interpretation
Quantum Cosmology and imaginary time vs. real time
Holographic Principle
Quantum Computing

I could suggest some books for you to read as well.

Then study:

The Bible
Tao Te Ching
Metaphysics

You will began to take a step out of the cave and realize there's more to us and this universe than our perception of our local reality.

[yairhol]

Polomontana,

There is this guy. Maybe you've heard of him. His name is Uri Geller. He has been giving 'evidence' of his supernatural abilities for 20+ years. There are thousands who have seen him perform his 'miracles' live and will swear that he is genuine.
That is their opinion. Yet you say:


The pseudoskeptic subsitutes their opinion for evidence and that's silly.


I expect you to say the same regarding believers of psychics and their anecdotal evidence made up of people's opinions regarding the psychic ability.
If you doubt Uri Geller regardless of the anecdotal evidence, why would you not doubt the psychics? Uri Geller has much more evidence than do the psychics. Or maybe you think Geller is genuine?

Regarding the existence of Unicorns from the previous page (post by Civilized Worm). It is an excellent analogy to your psychic story in my opinion. But you say it isn't:

Sorry but your analogy with unicorns doesn't make sense.
Unicorns don't have 20 year police veterans vouching for them.
It's called reason and we use it to weigh the evidence.

Oh but he does! And not just officers but grocery store owners, gardeners and others.

Joe Black, Kentucky, USA: "Worm's unicorn is amazing. I had never would have believed it if I had not seen it".

Lara Boil, New York, USA: "Civilized Worm has a unicorn in his garage. I swear I have seen him ride it at nights especially when it is foggy."

James Lee Schnitzel, Santa Monica, USA: "It's just beautiful. Now whenever I hear someone doubting unicorns I tell them to go visit Civilized Worm".

And there are lots more….So now you have people who are vouching for the unicorn and it is in black and white in Worm's internet site. I don't expect you to doubt it as you don't doubt the police officers in the example you posted.

You have stated:

With psychic ability, we don't have to "pretend." Police officer after police officer is vouching for the psychic now and the evidence is in front of me.

I would like to change it to:

With Civilized Worm's unicorn, we don't have to "pretend." Person after person is vouching for the unicorn now and the evidence is in front of me.

Or

With Uri Geller's supernatural powers, we don't have to "pretend." Person after person is vouching for his powers now and the evidence is in front of me.

You also said:

There's alot of ways to test psychic ability plus psychic ability has alot of credible eyewitnesses to back up the claims.

I would like to change it to:

There's alot of ways to test the existence of Worm's unicorn existence plus the unicorn has alot of credible eyewitnesses to back up the claims.

or

There's alot of ways to test the existence of Uri Geller's supernatural powers plus he has alot of credible eyewitnesses to back up the claims.

if you don't agree, can you tell me why not?

[schlitt]

Science has discovered things that cannot be observed like virtual particles. You can just measure the effect of virtual particles just like you can measure psychic ability. Check out http://veritas.arizona.edu/


I realize this was not addressed to me, but I could not refrain from commenting due to the absolute astonishing corruption of logic on display here.

Firstly, you mention psychic ability can be measured (which I would agree with, if it existed), and fail to recognize that it never has been under controlled testing. The mind boggles.



There's alot of ways to test psychic ability plus psychic ability has alot of credible eyewitnesses to back up the claims. You can come to know the truth through reason. Twelve people do it everyday in court.


You claim to know that something exists with certainty. Your proof for this is supposedly credible eye witnesses, and you wonder why the scientific community does not take you seriously.
Again, the mind boggles.
By your logic we should be taking, bigfoot, flat earth theory, alien abductions, demon possesion, etc etc seriously too.

Science has brought us such things as medicine, electricity, air travel through verifiable, repeatable evidence. Until such time as this evidence is produced for psi, the reasonable position is to remain skeptical. There too many variables that are not ruled out from anecdotal accounts alone.



Dark energy is energy that cannot be directly observed. This is energy beyond our perception. The supernatural is just things we don't fully understand and they are beyond observation from the view of our 3-dimensional cave.


You statement here is so far off the logical mark it is astonishing. Dark energy is a hypothesis which has been worked towards through examining empirical evidence, and formulating a conclusion which fits with natural, verifiable laws. Going by your statement however, I could make up any theory I like, call it supernatural and beyond understanding, and "Hey presto!" I have a legitimate claim.
Well why not? Ok... Lets see; floating around us right now is one trillion invisible jellyfish, each called Dave, and they live off the dead skin cells that flake from our bodies. Don't believe me? You pseudoskeptic you! Don't you realize its supernatural dude? Beyond your understanding dude!

Someone’s anecdotal account does not rule out the plethora of alternate explanations that could have happened in their supposedly psychic anecdote. Ask yourself why the evidence for psi is always the same as evidence for bigfoot. Never verifiable evidence elevating itself to the status of near certainty with no other explanations.


As for the rest of your post, the fact you mention holographic principle is predictable.
Michael Talbot has a lot to answer for.

Also, may I suggest you read "The unconscious quantum" - by Victor Stenger, since you seem to be so interested in QM.

[devnull]

fail.

[Mashuna]

The way you tests psychic ability is you have a control group of people who don't have psychic ability and through guesses they might be right 15% of the time. You then take a group of psychics and if they are correct 40 or 50% of the time on average then more needs to be explored.



This seems like a reasonable test. As far as I know, no psychics have ever acheived this kind of success. Do you have any information on some well-designed tests that have shown this?

[CFLarsen]

Have you ever seen the show psychic detective? Police officer after police officer vouch for the psychics who help them with cases. Are they all lying?

I have not only seen the show, but also have most of the shows recorded. So I not only can, but will, check anything you say.

What do you mean by "help"?

[Mojo]

Here's another case to chew on:

In 1989, Rachel Lombera was murdered in her apartment in Selma, California. She was beaten to death with a boombox and a chair. The police investigated the scene, and found no evidence of forced entry. Rachel new her killer and willingly let the person inside. The police found fingerprints but were never able to match them to a suspect.
She was last scene at a local bar dancing with a man the night before her murder. A witness was able to provide the police with a composite sketch of the man. The sketch was publicised, but the leads that came into the police were all dead ends.

...




I'm getting a strange feeling of deja woo (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2791405#post2791405).

[Locknar]

There's alot of ways to test psychic ability....<snip>
Yep, there are a lot of ways to test psychic ability. Now all we need is a psychic that is willing to be tested via credible scientific means.


In quantum mechanics, quantum decoherence is....<snip>
I'm suprised you didn't bring up quantum discussions earlier...after all, it is so relevant to your claims about psychics.

It is simply a diversion from the topic at hand...your claims about psychic/paranormal abilities.


I could suggest some books for you to read as well. Speaking of suggested reading, perhaps you should find some on scientific research methods.

Bottom line…there is no scientific proof of anyone possessing any type of psychic/paranormal powers.

What you have presented is “cherry picked” anecdotes from situations which lacked proper controls or protocols, and witnesses of undetermined credibility; hardly conclusive evidence of anything.

You will began to take a step out of the cave and realize there's more to us and this universe than our perception of our local reality.The same old “hand waving” argument “woo woo’s” bring up to cloud the fact they have no credible scientific proof to support their claims.

[fls]

There's alot of ways to test psychic ability plus psychic ability has alot of credible eyewitnesses to back up the claims.

I agree that there seems to be ways to test psychic ability. I've participated in helping design tests for the MDC, and if the subject is sincere, it is possible to come up with designs that allow the subject to easily perform as claimed while removing the effects of chance, fraud, wishful thinking and various biases that would serve as alternate explanations for any positive results. Unfortunately, under those circumstances, the subjects' performance is what you'd expect if they didn't have psychic powers.

Eyewitness accounts serve as tests in the presence of cognitive and other biases. If tests in the presence of bias are positive, and tests in the absence of bias are negative, doesn't that tell you the real source of the apparent effect?

You can come to know the truth through reason. Twelve people do it everyday in court.

The twelve people in court are given a far simpler job. They are asked to judge events for which we have independent evidence of their existence. How well do you think they would do if they were asked to decide on the guilt of a person who is charged with committing a murder, if there was no evidence that either the victim or the murderer even existed in the first place?

You will began to take a step out of the cave and realize there's more to us and this universe than our perception of our local reality.

It's sorta ironic that you say this. The idea that there is psychic ability comes solely from our perception of local reality and assigning fairly naive explanations to our observations. Removing our dependence upon our own perceptions, through the development of the scientific method, was the tool that allowed us to step out of the cave.

We would all like to believe that our perceptions can be trusted, that reason and sincerity are adequate protection against wishful thinking. And even though that idea has thoroughly been proven wrong, it is hard to let go.

Linda

[fls]

I am willing to consider it reasonable that police officers can confirm whether or not a person was helpful in a particular case. But determining whether no normal explanations account for that help requires specialized study. And there are no indications given that police officers, generally or specifically, even have the requisite knowledge and experience to undertake that study, let alone that they perform it. Instead, as far as I can tell, they seem (like most people) to be blissfully unaware of the need.

Linda

[JoeEllison]

This thread is a bust... so, instead of trying to reason with an unreasonable person, why don't we simply catalog the ways that this person is a near-perfect example of the woo delusional mindset?

The first thing is the use of scientific terms with zero understanding of what they mean. The second I see is the appeal to the moronic notion that lack of evidence is proof that we're "blind", not that there's just no evidence. Any others?

[Frankenstyle]

Sorry Frankenstyle, you misunderstood a few things.

Science has discovered things that cannot be observed


If you meant to say directly observed, that is correct. That’s what I said before.


You can just measure the effect of virtual particles just like you can measure psychic ability.


Yep. And no one has come up with a positive when testing for scary mind powers, directly or indirectly.


There's alot of ways to test psychic ability


There sure are. You’d think they’d have found something by now, if it was there to find.


plus psychic ability has alot of credible eyewitnesses to back up the claims.


Apparently not, all things considered.


You can come to know the truth through reason.


Yes, it’s worked pretty well so far.


Dark energy is energy that cannot be directly observed. This is energy beyond our perception.


Good! I’m so happy you understood my point.


The supernatural is just things we don't fully understand and they are beyond observation from the view of our 3-dimensional cave.


Or not. Again, if there is something there, it can be tested.


I don't think you understand decoherence


Oh come on now, I didn’t have to copy and paste from Wikipedia just to give a quick overview. Give me a little credit here.


Decoherence means part of the total superpositition of the wave function is beyond the realm of measurement. This is the whole crux behind quantum computing.


Just the opposite, decoherence is the bane of quantum computing and may mean that such devices are not possible to construct.


So some people in the cave think the cave is all that there is.


No matter how many times I run the math, I do not come up with “decoherence = cave dwellers in denial". Can you show your work?


Frankenstyle let me suggest you read up on these things:

M-Theory
String Theory
Inflation
The Multiverse
Many Worlds Interpretation
Quantum Cosmology and imaginary time vs. real time
Holographic Principle
Quantum Computing


I already have that covered. Why, what do you want to know?


Then study:

The Bible
Tao Te Ching


I’ve read both of these, more than once. I even have a funny story about how the Tao Te Ching greatly helped improve my racquetball game. Have you read the Tao of Pooh? It does a neat job allegorically explaining Taoism using examples from Winnie the Pooh. Wait, on second thought maybe you shouldn’t read that.


You will began to take a step out of the cave and realize there's more to us and this universe than our perception of our local reality.


Yes there is. So much in fact, that I really don’t see the need to convolute reality by cluttering it up with Unicorn mounted Bigfeet (Bigfoots?) , and quantum Pixies.

[alfaniner]

...
There's alot of ways to test psychic ability plus psychic ability has alot of credible eyewitnesses to back up the claims. You can come to know the truth through reason. Twelve people do it everyday in court.


You must have missed the verdict in the Trial of the Century about 10 years ago, then.

[fls]

This thread is a bust... so, instead of trying to reason with an unreasonable person, why don't we simply catalog the ways that this person is a near-perfect example of the woo delusional mindset?

The first thing is the use of scientific terms with zero understanding of what they mean. The second I see is the appeal to the moronic notion that lack of evidence is proof that we're "blind", not that there's just no evidence. Any others?

We each need a bingo card. The first person to get five-in-a-row in any particular thread wins a free Nomination. Other suggestions welcome.

Linda

[fls]

Frankenstyle let me suggest you read up on these things:

M-Theory
String Theory
Inflation
The Multiverse
Many Worlds Interpretation
Quantum Cosmology and imaginary time vs. real time
Holographic Principle
Quantum Computing

I could suggest some books for you to read as well.

Then study:

The Bible
Tao Te Ching
Metaphysics

You will began to take a step out of the cave and realize there's more to us and this universe than our perception of our local reality.

I'm not Frankenstyle, but I have read up on each of those topics (some books (examples - The Elegant Universe, Fabric of the Cosmos, The Road to Reality, Hyperspace (Kaku)), some articles) and I have read the Bible, Taoist and Buddhist I Ching, and a few other religious texts (I'm not counting Discworld ;)). Yet I still don't have your perspective. In particular, it has not taught me to be credulous, but rather to greatly appreciate how much value incredulity has brought to my ponderings.

So I'm not sure your advice to Frankenstyle will have the desired effect.

Linda

[Senex]

Check out this site if you want to know about Renier.

http://www.amindformurder.com/NoreenRenier.htm

and

http://www.amindformurder.com/runwaypart1.htm

And this one if that's not enough.

http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v04/n12/psychic.html


If you can learn to use an Internet search engine as well as you use that TV remote control you might not buy into such obvious fraud.

If there are psychic detectives out there why do we bother with real ones? Why do we need predator drones or spy satelites? Police and military intelligence sure are stupid for missing the cheapest and most reliable way to find missing people.

[polomontana]

I am willing to consider it reasonable that police officers can confirm whether or not a person was helpful in a particular case. But determining whether no normal explanations account for that help requires specialized study. And there are no indications given that police officers, generally or specifically, even have the requisite knowledge and experience to undertake that study, let alone that they perform it. Instead, as far as I can tell, they seem (like most people) to be blissfully unaware of the need.

Linda

This is a key post.

What is a normal explanation? This is the crutch of the skeptic.

When a psychic gives the police a sketch of the criminal before they have a suspect, what's the normal explanation?

When the police test a psychic and put 3 pictures face down and ask her to identify the murderer and she stops her hand over the murderers picture and turns it over and the police are amazed. They then use her on the case and her information helps them?

What is the normal explanation when the police use info from the skeptic to get a confession from the criminal?

What is the normal explanation when the psychic gives the police the initials of the suspect, tells them where he lives and describes him, the guy passes the polygrath and the psychic insist he's the one. They bring him in for more questions and he confesses to the murder?

I can go on and on with examples.

The problem here is the pseudoskeptic starts with the priori that psychic ability can't be a "normal explanation." This is using skepticism as a crutch to protect your pre-existing belief system.

A true freethinker will start off by including psychic ability as a possible explanation. A freethinker is seeking the truth even if it disagree's with something they already believe.

There is no other explanation for these things unless you think all the police officers are lying or stupid.

The smart thing to do is to explore how these things are attached to the natural order. There's not enough research into these things because of the fear of the pseudoskeptic.

If psychic ability exist then the worldview of the pseudoskeptic about things like life and death will be shattered and they rather protect their belief system rather than follow the truth wherever it leads.

Like I said, we know there's energy beyond our perception so dark energy would be immaterial to our material universe. We can't observe it and we don't know what it is. You can have a body made of dark energy/matter within your material body that survives death.

The pseudoskeptic will say, this is IMPOSSIBLE!! The freethinker will say let's explore this and follow it wherever it leads.

This is just one example that we could look into.

Psychic ability can be tied to synapses. As you go from child to adult your synapses degrade and you become more self aware. Children are open to many things that psychics tell us exist.

Young children have about 10/16 synapses (10 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates for adults vary from 10/15 to 5 × 10/15 (1-5 quadrillion) synapses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse

Because of the uncertainty principle, a certain number of adults will not have a full decline of their synapses and they will be more aware than the average adult.

These people could be psychic and this could be tested in the lab.

The pseudoskeptic already knows the answer and this truly does a disservice to logic and reason.

[JoeEllison]

:rolleyes:

Another thing we can note from polomontana's posts is that he considers his intellectual superiors to be "pseudoskeptics." We can also see that no lack of evidence will ever sway him from his silly belief in psychics. Look at the construction of his latest post:

What is a normal explanation? This is the crutch of the skeptic.Here he pretends that his betters are using logic and rational thinking as a "crutch."

When a psychic gives the police a sketch of the criminal before they have a suspect, what's the normal explanation?There's no evidence that this has ever happened.

When the police test a psychic and put 3 pictures face down and ask her to identify the murderer and she stops her hand over the murderers picture and turns it over and the police are amazed. They then use her on the case and her information helps them?
There's no evidence that this has ever happened.

What is the normal explanation when the police use info from the skeptic to get a confession from the criminal?There's no evidence that this has ever happened.

What is the normal explanation when the psychic gives the police the initials of the suspect, tells them where he lives and describes him, the guy passes the polygrath and the psychic insist he's the one. They bring him in for more questions and he confesses to the murder?
There's no evidence that this has ever happened.

I can go on and on with examples.
Look, he can keep listing imaginary situations without ANY supporting evidence! We should be impressed?

The problem here is the pseudoskeptic starts with the priori that psychic ability can't be a "normal explanation." This is using skepticism as a crutch to protect your pre-existing belief system.

A true freethinker will start off by including psychic ability as a possible explanation. A freethinker is seeking the truth even if it disagree's with something they already believe.I guess a "true freethinker" should also explore the possibility of government conspiracies, alien brainwashing rays, and the possibility that we all live in the Matrix? Why not add all that stupidity to the psychic stupidity?

There is no other explanation for these things unless you think all the police officers are lying or stupid.First off, there's little evidence of any police officers having ANY positive encounters with "psychics" outside of television shows and known con artists' claims. Add to that the fact that we ABSOLUTELY KNOW that there are stupid and dishonest people, and why shouldn't we consider that the most likely explanation?

The smart thing to do is to explore how these things are attached to the natural order. There's not enough research into these things because of the fear of the pseudoskeptic.

If psychic ability exist then the worldview of the pseudoskeptic about things like life and death will be shattered and they rather protect their belief system rather than follow the truth wherever it leads.
Here's that common lie that "psychic" frauds and their willing dupes like to spread around. Note, however, that the dupes believe 100% in psychic mumbo jumbo, and reject the ideas of evidence and rational thinking. They are the ones unwilling to investigate before making a judgment.

Like I said, we know there's energy beyond our perception so dark energy would be immaterial to our material universe. We can't observe it and we don't know what it is. You can have a body made of dark energy/matter within your material body that survives death.

The pseudoskeptic will say, this is IMPOSSIBLE!! The freethinker will say let's explore this and follow it wherever it leads.

This is just one example that we could look into.

Psychic ability can be tied to synapses. As you go from child to adult your synapses degrade and you become more self aware. Children are open to many things that psychics tell us exist.

Young children have about 10/16 synapses (10 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates for adults vary from 10/15 to 5 × 10/15 (1-5 quadrillion) synapses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse

Because of the uncertainty principle, a certain number of adults will not have a full decline of their synapses and they will be more aware than the average adult.

These people could be psychic and this could be tested in the lab.Real skeptics ignore "what if" scenarios when there's no evidence to back them up. Woos and dupes say if there's a "what if" scenario, then everyone should accept their stupidity as true. It is up to us to disprove their stupidity... because we all know they aren't willing or able to do any research themselves.

The pseudoskeptic already knows the answer and this truly does a disservice to logic and reason.This is such a reversal of reality that it is truly mind-boggling. People who believe in psychics without evidence are the protectors of "logic and reason"?

Really?

[Locknar]

I can go on and on with examples.
Yes...I suspect you could go on, and on, with non-credible examples of "woo woo"; your point?

So why the reluctance from the psychics to be tested in a controlled setting, with proper protocols in place in keeping with scientific research?

[yairhol]

Thank you for not paying attention to my post above.

[blutoski]

What is a normal explanation? This is the crutch of the skeptic.

Yep. You brought up a lot of examples. You're asking us to explain the examples as if they'd been verified as what actually happened. A skeptic isn't even there yet. We don't have to explain things that aren't verified as true. There is a normal explanation for why people say that things are true even when they are in fact false: selective memory, lying, reconstructed memory... that's the first round of normal explanations.

Skeptics like Nickell spend a lot of time digging into these examples, and they start to fall apart. Sometimes the example is so vague that it's impossible to verify anything about it at all. Sometimes the details turn out to be completely false - the location does not exist, or the location exists but there has never been a police officer by that name, or the police officer says he has never heard of this psychic, or the police officer says that the psychic did not do what they said they did in this case, &c.

We're waiting for *one* good case that survives investigation in light of above normal explanations.

To answer your question about nominal explanations in more detail, see: [Police Psychics: Do they Really Help Solve Crimes? (http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/police-psychics.html)]





The pseudoskeptic already knows the answer and this truly does a disservice to logic and reason.

Yep. That's the definition of a pseudoskeptic.

Fortunately, these cases were investigated by skeptics instead. Many have written books about their exhaustive research on individual cases. See: Psychic Sleuths: ESP and Sensational Cases by Joe Nickell, Prometheus Press, 1994.

[CFLarsen]

What is the normal explanation when the psychic gives the police the initials of the suspect, tells them where he lives and describes him, the guy passes the polygrath and the psychic insist he's the one. They bring him in for more questions and he confesses to the murder?

That would be the case of John Reese.

The psychic, Nancy Weber, claimed the murder weapon was a hammer. It wasn't.

How do you explain that?

These people could be psychic and this could be tested in the lab.

So why don't they get tested in the lab?

[polomontana]

Joe Nickell?

His last name sums up what his opinion is worth.

All he offers is opinion after the fact.

Who should be given more weight, the skeptic who just offers an opinion or the police veteran who was actually there?

It's obvious to the freethinker, the police officer but the skeptic will accept anything that fits there pre-existing belief system no matter how silly it sounds.

Joe Nickell, James Randi and Michael Shermer are professional skeptics who make there money off of skepticism. The pseudoskeptic followers of these people see their motives as pure but you let a psychic make money and there fake.

The skeptic can make money from being a professional skeptic and that's fine. That makes no sense.

James Randi always goes after easy targets like Sylvia Browne, Uri Gellar or John Edwards.

Michael Shermer actually used Miss Cleo as a basis for psychics when he was talking about psychic ability.

Joe Nickell concedes my point. He said police vouch for psychics in the article you posted Blutoski, then he gives a vague example of how psychics help when they give police specific information like a sketch of the criminal or they show the police where the criminal lives before the police even have a suspect.

Lets see Joe Nickell go into a case and try to do the same thing the psychic does. He can't, police are not stupid. They run into fake psychics all the time and they know the difference between real information and bogus information.

To the pseudoskeptic, the police somehow become stupid when they get help from a psychic. This makes no sense.

[JoeEllison]

See what I mean? Reality makes no difference to the believers... woo is real, and scientists and rational thinkers are "pseudoskeptics." The complete lack of real evidence doesn't sway believers at all. Police can never be mistaken or dishonest when it comes to "psychics", while all skeptics are assumed to be stupid and/or dishonest.

[polomontana]

That would be the case of John Reese.

The psychic, Nancy Weber, claimed the murder weapon was a hammer. It wasn't.

How do you explain that?





Easy CFLarsen,

As I said in my first post, psychics will not be 100% correct.

This is the red herring offered up by the skeptic. The information is coming through a human agent so it will be prone to human error.

Let me ask you a question, why should psychics have to be 100% correct?

[Frankenstyle]

This is a key post.

Children are open to many things that psychics tell us exist.



The irony is making me a little light headed.

Children also believe in Santa, tooth fairies, and most anything else an adult endorses. Once I jokingly told a nephew that a trailer for Starship Troopers was actually an ad for a documentary about life in eastern Pennsylvania. Weeks later he asked me if I was afraid that the bug monsters were going to eat his grandmother. Of course I explained that I’d been kidding.

Children have a remarkable ability to absorb information, but lack the life experience to examine that information critically. Isn’t it more reasonable to assume that as they grow some children don’t develop those skills as much as others, rather than to imbue them with magic mind powers?

I could be wrong, but I say my credentials of being an ex-cop / FBI agent cowboy neurosurgeon add some hefty weight to my claims.

[polomontana]

See what I mean? Reality makes no difference to the believers... woo is real, and scientists and rational thinkers are "pseudoskeptics." The complete lack of real evidence doesn't sway believers at all. Police can never be mistaken or dishonest when it comes to "psychics", while all skeptics are assumed to be stupid and/or dishonest.

Joe, you illustrate my point.

To say police are mistaken or dishonest whenever they disagree with your pre-existing belief about psychic ability is pseudoskepticism at it's worst.

There are crooked cops but the majority of them protect our lives on a daily basis and it flies in the face of reason that all these cops who vouch for psychics are mistaken or dishonest just because they disagree with you.

[polomontana]

The irony is making me a little light headed.

Children also believe in Santa, tooth fairies, and most anything else an adult endorses. Once I jokingly told a nephew that a trailer for Starship Troopers was actually an ad for a documentary about life in eastern Pennsylvania. Weeks later he asked me if I was afraid that the bug monsters were going to eat his grandmother. Of course I explained that I’d been kidding.

Children have a remarkable ability to absorb information, but lack the life experience to examine that information critically. Isn’t it more reasonable to assume that as they grow some children don’t develop those skills as much as others, rather than to imbue them with magic mind powers?

I could be wrong, but I say my credentials of being an ex-cop / FBI agent cowboy neurosurgeon add some hefty weight to my claims.

Couldn't it be that children will easily accept these things because they are more aware of things that surrounds us than adults do to the decline of synapses?

This could also correlate to the psychic if the psychic has more synapses firing than the average adult and this could be tested in a lab.

Of course the pseudoskeptic will belittle this before it's even looked into because in their mind psychic ability can't or doesn't exist and this is freethinking?

[Pixel42]

it flies in the face of reason that all these cops who vouch for psychics are mistaken or dishonest just because they disagree with you.
You have yet to produce real evidence of a single cop who sincerely believes that a psychic was responsible for solving a crime. As has been patiently explained to you shows like Psychic Detectives are almost entirely made up, nor can the claims made by psychics themselves be trusted. Attempts to investigate them rarely even find a real detective with the name given. I suspect that the number of such cops who really exist can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And anyone can be fooled, including an honest cop.

[polomontana]

You have yet to produce real evidence of a single cop who sincerely believes that a psychic was responsible for solving a crime. As has been patiently explained to you shows like Psychic Detectives are almost entirely made up, nor can the claims made by psychics themselves be trusted. Attempts to investigate them rarely even find a real detective with the name given. I suspect that the number of such cops who really exist can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And anyone can be fooled, including an honest cop.

Sorry Pixel, Blutoski's skeptic Joe Nickell disagrees with you. This is from the article that Blutoski linked us to:

"But what about testimonials from experienced homicide detectives who have actually used psychics?"

He admits that "experienced homicide detectives" vouch for psychics. His silly claim is that they protect us and solve crimes most of the time but when they are working with psychics they become Forrest Gump. This makes no sense.

These people are professional skeptics who make money from skepticism, why should I trust the word of Randi, Nickell or Shermer?

They have a huge financial stake in this and ghosts could be in their houses every night but why would they tell you? You buy their books and magazines and to you their motives are PURE!!

GIVE ME A BREAK!!

[godless dave]

Couldn't it be that children will easily accept these things because they are more aware of things that surrounds us than adults do to the decline of synapses?

What decline of synapses? Adults have more synapses than children.

[Moochie]

Sorry but your analogy with unicorns doesn't make sense.

Unicorns don't have 20 year police veterans vouching for them.

It's called reason and we use it to weigh the evidence.

So pink unicorns flying in my backyard could not be compared to psychic ability because psychic ability has police officer after police officer vouching for the psychic and that has to be taken into consideration as the evidence is being weighed.

Bad analogy.


Why do you give credence to "20 year police veterans" who don't have any real evidence either? Police can be just as delusional in their thinking as anyone else, although I would hope such people don't graduate from the academy.


M.

[Frankenstyle]

Couldn't it be that children will easily accept these things because they are more aware of things that surrounds us than adults do to the decline of synapses?


Why? I mean, what is happening to warrant such a blind leap? What effect so desperately needs to be explained that requires us to consider such a hypothesis? What unknown mystery are you trying to solve here? This isn’t just a case of grasping at straws, you’re grasping at straws for no reason whatsoever.


This could also correlate to the psychic if the psychic has more synapses firing than the average adult and this could be tested in a lab.


Stick with me here. You’re saying that because you proposed a random idea for no reason, it therefore supports a secondary and otherwise unrelated presumption. That’s not “free thinking”, it’s beating on a piano with a sledgehammer while blindfolded, believing that if you do it long enough you’ll eventually perform the collected works of Chopin.


Of course the pseudoskeptic will belittle this before it's even looked into because in their mind psychic ability can't or doesn't exist and this is freethinking?

Nope, see? I looked into, and came up with nothing. Keep beating that piano, though. Surly you've got to be getting closer, right?

[fls]

This is a key post.

What is a normal explanation? This is the crutch of the skeptic.

I will paraphrase Hume on this. An explanation whose falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact it endeavours to establish.

When a psychic gives the police a sketch of the criminal before they have a suspect, what's the normal explanation?

That would be things like the psychic saw the suspect, the psychic saw a picture or sketch of the suspect, the sketch looked like a great number of people.

When the police test a psychic and put 3 pictures face down and ask her to identify the murderer and she stops her hand over the murderers picture and turns it over and the police are amazed. They then use her on the case and her information helps them?

If the tester knew which picture was of the murderer, they may have provided non-verbal cues (Clever Hans as the prototypical example).

What is the normal explanation when the police use info from the skeptic to get a confession from the criminal?

What is the normal explanation when the psychic gives the police the initials of the suspect, tells them where he lives and describes him, the guy passes the polygrath and the psychic insist he's the one. They bring him in for more questions and he confesses to the murder?

I can go on and on with examples.

Some of these are recognizable, since you are already covering the same ground as Rodney. The details are always so vague that nothing prevents it from being the result of retrofitting, and the usual biases re-working the memories as the story grows with each re-telling.

The problem here is the pseudoskeptic starts with the priori that psychic ability can't be a "normal explanation." This is using skepticism as a crutch to protect your pre-existing belief system.

A true freethinker will start off by including psychic ability as a possible explanation. A freethinker is seeking the truth even if it disagree's with something they already believe.

Most of this does not seem relevant to what I said. However, it is a simple matter of logic that one cannot prove something by assuming it to be true.

There is no other explanation for these things unless you think all the police officers are lying or stupid.

Actually, these things are easily what we'd expect to find based on our current understanding of memory and other cognitive processes - especially in intelligent, honest people (who tend to vastly over-rate their immunity to the usual cognitive biases).

The smart thing to do is to explore how these things are attached to the natural order. There's not enough research into these things because of the fear of the pseudoskeptic.

If psychic ability exist then the worldview of the pseudoskeptic about things like life and death will be shattered and they rather protect their belief system rather than follow the truth wherever it leads.

None of this is relevant to our conversation.

Like I said, we know there's energy beyond our perception so dark energy would be immaterial to our material universe. We can't observe it and we don't know what it is. You can have a body made of dark energy/matter within your material body that survives death.

Dark energy is a proposal that explains specific observations - none of which have anything to do with this conversation.

The pseudoskeptic will say, this is IMPOSSIBLE!! The freethinker will say let's explore this and follow it wherever it leads.

This is just one example that we could look into.

Psychic ability can be tied to synapses. As you go from child to adult your synapses degrade and you become more self aware. Children are open to many things that psychics tell us exist.

Young children have about 10/16 synapses (10 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates for adults vary from 10/15 to 5 × 10/15 (1-5 quadrillion) synapses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse

Because of the uncertainty principle, a certain number of adults will not have a full decline of their synapses and they will be more aware than the average adult.

Because of the uncertainty principle? I think you just outed yourself. I will admit you had me going a little bit with your paragraphs on decoherence, but now I'm guessing that was a cut and paste job?

These people could be psychic and this could be tested in the lab.

Yes. That is what I would like to see.

The pseudoskeptic already knows the answer and this truly does a disservice to logic and reason.

I agree.

Linda

[CFLarsen]

Easy CFLarsen,

As I said in my first post, psychics will not be 100% correct.

This is the red herring offered up by the skeptic. The information is coming through a human agent so it will be prone to human error.

Let me ask you a question, why should psychics have to be 100% correct?

Why wouldn't they be?

If you allow them to be less than 100% correct, how is that different from cold reading?

[polomontana]

What decline of synapses? Adults have more synapses than children.

Wrong Dave.

Young children have about 10/16 synapses (10 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates for adults vary from 10/15 to 5 × 10/15 (1-5 quadrillion) synapses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse

At the age of 2 to 3 years old, children hit their peak with 10x the synapses and 2x the energy burn of an adult brain. And it’s all downhill from there.

http://jurvetson.blogspot.com/2004/10/celebrate-child-like-mind.html

The increase in synaptic density plus expansion of total cortical volume leave no doubt that the postnatal period is one of very rapid synaptogenesis in human frontal cortex. By age 2 years, synaptic density is at its maximum, at about the same time when other components of cerebral cortex also cease growing and when total brain weight approaches that of the adult. Synaptic density declines subsequently, reaching by adolescence an adult value that is only about 60% of the maximum.

http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/05.html

This should be explored. We even see it in popular culture, the child is always the one that sees dead people. Where did that come from and does that point to why you have psychics?

Is this tied to the decline of synapses as you go from childhood to an adult? Does this tie into the uncertainty principle? Are children and psychics more aware and adult more self aware?

Of course the pseudoskeptic will not take any of these things seriously because they already have the answers, this is freethinking?

[polomontana]

Why wouldn't they be?

If you allow them to be less than 100% correct, how is that different from cold reading?

Because their human CFLarsen and they are not perfect. It's really simple, I know why the skeptic wants the psychic to be 100% correct because when they get one thing wrong they can scream fake. Why would psychic ability be perfect coming through an imperfect vessel?

[Neutiquam Erro]

You've invoked a potpourri of subjects that range from neat ideas to mathematical possibilities, and that would take more time than I want to spend clarifying. So I'll cut to the chase and What you've got here is a some sort of multi layered non sequitur lasagna.




That's not how I remember the quote, but I actually like that better than the way Strother Martin (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061512/) said it.

[JoeEllison]

Joe, you illustrate my point.

To say police are mistaken or dishonest whenever they disagree with your pre-existing belief about psychic ability is pseudoskepticism at it's worst.

There are crooked cops but the majority of them protect our lives on a daily basis and it flies in the face of reason that all these cops who vouch for psychics are mistaken or dishonest just because they disagree with you.

Show some evidence, or give it up. Insulting your betters just shows how deluded your position is. I know for a fact that police officers have made mistakes and told lies. You have ZERO EVIDENCE that police officers have actually been helped by psychics.

Any reasonable and rational person can see that your position is inferior by definition.

[JoeEllison]

Why wouldn't they be?

If you allow them to be less than 100% correct, how is that different from cold reading?

There's no difference. There's no evidence for psychics, and tons of evidence against them. The believers will ignore both the lack of positive evidence, and the mountains of negative evidence, and assert that we're at fault for not accepting stupidity as readily as they do.

The truth is that skeptics don't ask psychics to be 100%, and polomontana is lying. Skeptics aren't rejecting psychics who are 99% accurate, or 80% or 65% accurate. To my knowledge, psychics are pretty much complete failures, and their results are indistinguishable from a Magic 8-Ball.

[Frankenstyle]

That's not how I remember the quote, but I actually like that better than the way said it.

Well that’s a good example of selective memory. I haven’t seen that movie in over 10 years, and thought I’d just made the term up.

Or…am I connected by unseen forces to the Ubermind?

[JoeEllison]

Anyone else waiting eagerly for polomontana to post "you can't disprove psychic powers" or something similar?

[Finnegan]

This should be explored. We even see it in popular culture, the child is always the one that sees dead people. Where did that come from and does that point to why you have psychics?

Could you break this down into english?

How on earth is the child 'the one that sees dead people', and why are you inserting popular culture into the debate? Are we discussing reality or The Ring?

[Frankenstyle]

Anyone else waiting eagerly for polomontana to post "you can't disprove psychic powers" or something similar?

You are a bad person.

Every time I’ve checked this thread I’ve said to myself, “Yes! At least no one’s had to go on another tedious explanation about the impossibility of proving a negative”. Then you have to start feeding him ideas.

On the up side, if he does go there I’ll have "Bingo".

[JoeEllison]

Could you break this down into english?

How on earth is the child 'the one that sees dead people', and why are you inserting popular culture into the debate? Are we discussing reality or The Ring?

Maybe because only bad Hollywood fiction can be brave enough to tell the truth about child magical psychic ghost detectors?

[JoeEllison]

You are a bad person.

Every time I’ve checked this thread I’ve said to myself, “Yes! At least no one’s had to go on another tedious explanation about the impossibility of proving a negative”. Then you have to start feeding him ideas.

On the up side, if he does go there I’ll have "Bingo".
:D:D:D:D:D:eek::D:D:D:D:D

[Frankenstyle]

Could you break this down into english?

How on earth is the child 'the one that sees dead people', and why are you inserting popular culture into the debate? Are we discussing reality or The Ring?

What? This is an embarrassment to modern science! Seriously, “The Ring”? Clearly he’s referring to “The Sixth Sense”, the greatest proof of the supernatural ever filmed.

Ask yourself, if there are no ghosts, how could Bruce Willis know how to act like one? Hunh?

Do you even want to be taken seriously?

[godless dave]

Wrong Dave.

Young children have about 10/16 synapses (10 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood. Estimates for adults vary from 10/15 to 5 × 10/15 (1-5 quadrillion) synapses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse

At the age of 2 to 3 years old, children hit their peak with 10x the synapses and 2x the energy burn of an adult brain. And it’s all downhill from there.

http://jurvetson.blogspot.com/2004/10/celebrate-child-like-mind.html

The increase in synaptic density plus expansion of total cortical volume leave no doubt that the postnatal period is one of very rapid synaptogenesis in human frontal cortex. By age 2 years, synaptic density is at its maximum, at about the same time when other components of cerebral cortex also cease growing and when total brain weight approaches that of the adult. Synaptic density declines subsequently, reaching by adolescence an adult value that is only about 60% of the maximum.

http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/05.html


I was wrong on the details but right about the big picture:

In a baby, the brain over-produces brain cells (neurons) and connections between brain cells (synapses) and then starts pruning them back around the age of three. The process is much like the pruning of a tree. By cutting back weak branches, others flourish. The second wave of synapse formation described by Giedd showed a spurt of growth in the frontal cortex just before puberty (age 11 in girls, 12 in boys) and then a pruning back in adolescence.

Even though it may seem that having a lot of synapses is a particularly good thing, the brain actually consolidates learning by pruning away synapses and wrapping white matter (myelin) around other connections to stabilize and strengthen them. The period of pruning, in which the brain actually loses gray matter, is as important for brain development as is the period of growth. For instance, even though the brain of a teenager between 13 and 18 is maturing, they are losing 1 percent of their gray matter every year.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/work/adolescent.html

[Moochie]

Did they have the Interwebs in the 16th Century?


M.

[Finnegan]

What? This is an embarrassment to modern science! Seriously, “The Ring”? Clearly he’s referring to “The Sixth Sense”, the greatest proof of the supernatural ever filmed.

Ask yourself, if there are no ghosts, how could Bruce Willis know how to act like one? Hunh?

Do you even want to be taken seriously?

Interestingly enough, my own psychic abilities were discovered when watching that film. I just knew what the ending was going to be.

[Ersby]

IThe way you tests psychic ability is you have a control group of people who don't have psychic ability and through guesses they might be right 15% of the time. You then take a group of psychics and if they are correct 40 or 50% of the time on average then more needs to be explored.

Exactly this has been done with regards to psychic detectives:

RHETORIC IN 'PSYCHIC DETECTION'
by CIARÂN O'KEEFFE and LAURENCE ALISON
ABSTRACT
This study examined the differences between the account-giving styles of psychic detectives compared with a control group. It was hypothesised that psychics would employ many devices commonly associated with known cold reading strategies, a distinct style of account-giving or 'psychic rhetoric'. Eight psychics and twelve controls examined 3 objects from 3 crimes and were asked for their opinions about the likely characteristics of the offender. Although independent t-tests confirmed that psychics were no more accurate than controls, content analysis confirmed the hypothesis that psychics relied more heavily on a variety of rhetorical devices. Key words: psychic detectives, rhetoric, cold reading.

Journal of the Society for Psychical Research Vol. 64.1, No. 858

[Lrrr]

To say police are mistaken or dishonest whenever they disagree with your pre-existing belief about psychic ability is pseudoskepticism at it's worst.

I don't think it has to be as black and white as this. I believe people here are saying anecdotes are not evidence. Maybe they are wrong, maybe it could be evidence. However, at best it would be anecdotal evidence and hearsay and should not be taken as the truth without the ability to question the person. Do you believe that a jury would have convicted the person if the only testimony was from the police officer, his only testimony was "the accused is guilty because a psychic said so" and the defense was not allowed to cross examine them? I don't think you do, but I have been in the past.

Oh, and you never responded to the early posts about your definition of a pseudoskeptic. You only provided examples of behavior you would define as pseudoskeptical. Not the same thing!

[Pixel42]

Sorry Pixel, Blutoski's skeptic Joe Nickell disagrees with you.
No he doesn't, actually. I didn't say there were no experienced detectives who credited psychics with solving specific crimes, I said there weren't anything like as many as you seem to think. As Nickell says:

knowledgeable police officials resist the temptation to employ psychics. They know that psychic claims lack any scientific verification and that, in fact, psychics do not solve crimes

Unfortunately desperate people whose loved ones are missing want to try every possible way of finding them, and many detectives indulge them. An FBI agent on the Penn & Teller programme on psychic detectives who'd worked on dozens of missing person cases had seen them try and fail to help dozens of times. He added the chilling statement that in a couple of serial killer cases so much time and effort was wasted chasing down worthless leads provided by so-called psychics that the killer had time to kill again.

Please read what this father of a murdered child, who now runs a support group for parents of missing children, has to say about psychic detectives:

http://www.klaaskids.org/pg-mc-hazards.htm

[Lrrr]

Sorry Pixel, Blutoski's skeptic Joe Nickell disagrees with you. This is from the article that Blutoski linked us to:

"But what about testimonials from experienced homicide detectives who have actually used psychics?"

He admits that "experienced homicide detectives" vouch for psychics. His silly claim is that they protect us and solve crimes most of the time but when they are working with psychics they become Forrest Gump. This makes no sense.


This is my problem with your argument. Testimonials and vouching for someone may be anecdotal or hearsay evidence, but THEY ARE NOT PROOF. There is no opportunity to question these people and their recollection of the incident. I don't doubt the people involved believe in the "help" that the psychics provide, but they could be victims of cold reading techniques. This is not to say they were fooled because they were not smart. A professional con artist can fool their victim without the victim ever knowing it.

[Jimbo07]

Police can never be mistaken or dishonest when it comes to "psychics",

gngngn... They're not! Except, they're usually right from the other angle, i.e. psychic = quackjob alert! If a member of the public comes forward, they are under a certain obligation to be polite, but what goes on behind the scenes and at parties...

Officer #1: So, the other night I took a 911 call about ghosts (rollseyes)
Rest of the party: HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Assuming that the posts here don't contain deliberate lies, those officers could have been mistaken, or wanted to get their faces on T.V. or any one of a number of explanations. Moreover, I'm reminded of the lists of 'scientists.' Oh, gee, you have list of 20 police officers... there are over 60,000 in Canada alone!

Again... please stop maligning police officers.

:mad:

[blutoski]

Because their human CFLarsen and they are not perfect. It's really simple, I know why the skeptic wants the psychic to be 100% correct because when they get one thing wrong they can scream fake. Why would psychic ability be perfect coming through an imperfect vessel?

Related question: if psychics are human and humans make mistakes... is it possible that self-acclaimed psychics could be mistaken about their abilities?

Related question: if police are human and humans make mistakes... is it possible that police who credit self-acclaimed psychics with solving crimes could be mistaken about their abilities?

Again: pay attention to our list of normal explanations. None of these included 'stupid'. I'd say that the normal explanations for misremembering or misinterpreting what psychics do can be summed up in one phrase: "Ordinary human error."

[JoeEllison]

gngngn... They're not! Except, they're usually right from the other angle, i.e. psychic = quackjob alert! If a member of the public comes forward, they are under a certain obligation to be polite, but what goes on behind the scenes and at parties...

Officer #1: So, the other night I took a 911 call about ghosts (rollseyes)
Rest of the party: HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Assuming that the posts here don't contain deliberate lies, those officers could have been mistaken, or wanted to get their faces on T.V. or any one of a number of explanations. Moreover, I'm reminded of the lists of 'scientists.' Oh, gee, you have list of 20 police officers... there are over 60,000 in Canada alone!

Again... please stop maligning police officers.

:mad:
Bag it, Tigger. :cool:

[schlitt]

Joe Nickell?


Here is my psychic prediction: You have not actually read his book "Psychic sleuths". You have read derogatory comments about it from woo folk like yourself and write it off because it does not fit with your desires.

I wonder how psychic I am?

It doesn't really matter if I am wrong anyway though does it? Because it is such a fleeting ability and so inexact. Being wrong doesn't mean a thing. :rolleyes:

[Jimbo07]

Bag it, Tigger. :cool:

:cool:

...

Put it another way...

The police officers I happen to associate with are of such suspicious personalities that I don't feel too out of line conjecturing about their mindset in this:

If a so-called "psychic" came in with a little too much accurate information about a crime, these officers' suspicions would be raised in an altogether different manner than psychic fans would like...

[JoeEllison]

:cool:

...

Put it another way...

The police officers I happen to associate with are of such suspicious personalities that I don't feel too out of line conjecturing about their mindset in this:

If a so-called "psychic" came in with a little too much accurate information about a crime, these officers' suspicions would be raised in an altogether different manner than psychic fans would like...
Yeah, but no doubt there's a few dozen of them somewhere who would say anything for $3000 and some TV time.

[Jimbo07]

Yeah, but no doubt there's a few dozen of them somewhere who would say anything for $3000 and some TV time.

Yeah... but for enough money, I might! :eye-poppi

[JoeEllison]

Yeah... but for enough money, I might! :eye-poppi

Under the "right" circumstances, I would pretend to be a cop, AND lie about psychic stupidity... it is called "acting". :D

[blutoski]

:cool:

...

Put it another way...

The police officers I happen to associate with are of such suspicious personalities that I don't feel too out of line conjecturing about their mindset in this:

If a so-called "psychic" came in with a little too much accurate information about a crime, these officers' suspicions would be raised in an altogether different manner than psychic fans would like...

There is at least one example of this, where a psychic located a body. She was arrested for suspicion, and eventually cleared because she explained that she came about the information through normal means after all (overheard the criminals in a bar).

But this goes to show: normal explanations can themselves be hard to reverse-engineer. I mean: what are the odds? Well: the odds of such a coincidence appear to be more likely than psi.

[Senex]

What do police call someone with preternatural knowledge of a crime?


A) A psychic
B) A medium
C) A sensitive
D) A suspect

[Little 10 Toes]

This should be explored. We even see it in popular culture, the child is always the one that sees Santa Claus. Where did that come from and does that point to why you have psychics?

Is this tied to the decline of synapses as you go from childhood to an adult? Does this tie into the uncertainty principle? Are children and psychics more aware and adult more self aware?

Of course the pseudoskeptic will not take any of these things seriously because they already have the answers, this is freethinking?
(bolding/editing mine)
See, I can make leaps in logic as well!

(Sorry for being late to the party)

[JoeEllison]

What do police call someone with preternatural knowledge of a crime?


A) A psychic
B) A medium
C) A sensitive
D) A suspect

D?

[Rodney]

You have ZERO EVIDENCE that police officers have actually been helped by psychics.

(1) "Police in Nelson, B.C., have found the body of a young woman who disappeared last March, and they credit a local psychic for pointing them in the right direction. Kimberley Anne Sarjeant was last seen walking alone in a popular hiking spot near Nelson.

"Police say they used every tool at their disposal to try to find her, including search dogs, helicopters and infrared heat detectors.

"When none of the standard techniques seemed to work, Sgt. Steve Bank called on a local psychic for help." See http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=91501&highlight=norm+pratt

(2) "Pacifica Police sergeant Fernando Realyvasquez said that using a psychic was something that had never entered his realm of thinking -- until the family of Dennis Prado, who had been missing for more than two months, asked him to call in a psychic.

"Prado, 71, had gone missing on May 14, 1997. His car had been left at his apartment, along with his wallet and other personal items. The home showed no signs of a break-in. Though Prado had some issues with neighbors in the apartment complex and he had been threatened with eviction if the problems did not stop, there were no signs of foul play.

"'I had exhausted the leads that came my way as much as I could,' Realyvasquez said. 'I would make flyers on a weekly basis, and the family had also been making their own efforts. The family came to me after a family meeting and asked if we would consider bringing a psychic into the case.'

"The detective said that he had been skeptical of psychics and the like for most of his career. Keeping an open mind, he said he first went to his captain, and then to the chief of police in Pacifica to get permission.

"'The chief said that if it was something that was going to make the family feel better, to do it,' Realyvasquez said.

"Realyvasquez first ran a background check on [psychic Annette] Martin before contacting her, he said, including checking in with Keaton in Marin to get a read on her credibility. When the psychic passed the mini-investigation, Realyvasquez met Martin at her Campbell office. She held a photograph of Prado in her hands, and then looked at a map of the area around his apartment complex, including the 2,000-acre park that ran behind it. Martin said Prado had gone for a walk in the wilderness area. Taking the map, she drew a small circle, and said that Prado would be found in that area.

"Realyvasquez said he remained skeptical since the area had been combed by search-and-rescue teams. He shared Martin's information with Roberta Hauser, a search-and-rescue volunteer on Tuesday, July 15, 1997. The following Saturday, July 19, 1997, Hauser went to the area that Martin had pointed out -- and within an hour had found Prado's decomposing body.

"'The fact of the matter is that he had been missing for nearly three months,' Realyvasquez said. 'I am still a little bit skeptical, but on the other hand, in this particular case, we probably wouldn't have found him if it hadn't been for Annette Martin.'" See http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2933516&postcount=193

(3) "Some of the cases in the book [Psychic Detective] I had worked on. One was the murder of a woman in Mt. Olive. She was stabbed in the throat while she slept. The apartment was locked, with no apparent forced entry. The knife which was used was taken out of the kitchen. The only other person in the apartment at the time of the murder was the victim's daughter, who was apparently sleeping. Due to the lack of forced entry and the murder weapon being taken from within the home, the daughter was definitely a suspect. On the advice of an attorney, she refused to submit to the polygraph. I polygraphed twelve other possible suspects and cleared them. Nancy's book states that she had met with the police and told them a stranger had watched from outside the building, then removed a screen from the kitchen window, entered through the window, and killed the woman. She was adamant that the daughter was not involved. In fact, she was mad that the police were treating her as a suspect. What she did not know was that about 6 months after the murder, the daughter wanted to come in and take the polygraph to prove her innocence. She also hoped that she might remember something during the intensive interview that would aid the investigation. I called her truthful and recommended that she be cleared as a suspect. I remember that on one of the days I was conducting a polygraph on this case, the detectives told me that they had been in contact with a psychic (Nancy Weber) who gave them the initials of the murderer. I remember asking them what the initials were. They were 'N.M.' I remember this because I then went through my files of all the people I had tested on the case to see if any of them had those initials. None did. Months after that, and 9 months after the murder, I picked up the paper and read that a man from Netcong was arrested for the murder. He was being arrested for burglary and a subsequent search of his apartment revealed a stack of articles about the Mt. Olive murder. His fingerprints were checked against an unidentified print on the kitchen window and matched. He was arrested for the murder and is currently serving his time in prison for it. His name is Nicholas Muscio. He was a stranger to the victim. He had just been watching her through the window. He removed the screen, entered through the window, took the knife out of the sink there and stabbed her." See http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3722704&postcount=41

You can start with those three.

[Jeff Corey]

Looks like BS to me. No valid documentation.

[JoeEllison]

Looks like BS to me. No valid documentation.

Never has been, probably never will be. Would be cool if psychics existed, because we could put them to work QUICK towards saving kidnapped children.

[Rodney]

Looks like BS to me. No valid documentation.
What would constitute valid documentation?

[Jeff Corey]

I tell you, if one of those evil scumpuppys ever tried to butt into and interfere with an investigation of someone missing that I loved, I would stop them in any legal way I could.

[Rodney]

I tell you, if one of those evil scumpuppys ever tried to butt into and interfere with an investigation of someone missing that I loved, I would stop them in any legal way I could.
Was there any interference by a psychic in the three cases that I cited?

[Jeff Corey]

No. They were fiction.

[JoeEllison]

No. They were fiction.

"Fiction" implies that everyone knows it isn't true. "Lying" is probably more accurate.

[blutoski]

(1) "Police in Nelson, B.C., have found the body of a young woman who disappeared last March, and they credit a local psychic for pointing them in the right direction. Kimberley Anne Sarjeant was last seen walking alone in a popular hiking spot near Nelson.

"Police say they used every tool at their disposal to try to find her, including search dogs, helicopters and infrared heat detectors.

"When none of the standard techniques seemed to work, Sgt. Steve Bank called on a local psychic for help." See http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=91501&highlight=norm+pratt

The BCSkeptics investigated this story, and we don't feel that it's an example of how a psychic 'helps' police. Bank engaged him on a personal level because he's a true believer, but the police hadn't "called off" the search. That part is absolutely false. The community and police continued the search normally and found the body in due course. They were not following Pratt's advice when they actually found the body (it was actually in a location he explicitly said it would *not* be found), although they did find an article of clothing while he was in the search party. That's about it.

ie: the psychic has a very different (and changing) story than the police dpt, which has a different story than Bank, whose story keeps changing too, and ultimately just seems to be trying to be supportive of his pal Pratt, which I can understand.

Again: the same old problems. Different versions of the story by different participants, the story by one participant changes over time, and it's pretty hazy as to what exactly the person did that counts as 'help'.

People find lost bodies all the time by just slugging it out. If he had put a pin in a map and said "it's within 10m of this spot" that'd be novel, and it would get my attention.

Instead, we get "Well, they'd been looking a long time and found nothing, so I suggested they look elsewhere, and she was in a place they hadn't looked yet." Well, no **** Sherlock.

[JoeTheJuggler]

They were not following Pratt's advice when they actually found the body (it was actually in a location he explicitly said it would *not* be found)

A pretty significant detail, that.

:)

[Gord_in_Toronto]

If you assume that there is something to psychic detecting, you have to ask why it has not been accepted by the police departments of the World. The police are a pretty pragmatic bunch. If psychics actually provided useful information they would be on staff.

I went looking for some parallel in the history of policing and checked out the acceptance of finger prints in the solving of crimes. Looking at: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/cole-simon.htm
I see that using fingerprints in criminal investigations went from a paper in NATURE in 1880, to its use in courts around 1900, to "and by 1930 fingerprint evidence was routinely accepted by judges and juries in every state". That's fifty years, more or less. How long have the "pyschic" "detectives" been around?
:rolleyes:

[polomontana]

Here's another duped police officer:

Delaware, Wilmington Police Department had no more leads in its attempts to capture serial rapist. Detective Ingraham under the supervision of Capt. Nathaniel McQueen sought the services of a gifted psychic Nancy Myer. Nancy was able to give the police information to capture, arrest and get the criminal to confess to the crimes he committed. The criminal was a serial rapist. The gifted psychic Nancy led the police where the criminal actually lived. She pointed to the actually building. There she said – I see him in my mind – coming and going. Nancy was not paid any money for her psychic service. Col. Irvin Smith of Wilmington Police Department stated for the camera for all the world to watch and hear, “Nancy Myer made an outstanding contribution to law enforcement.” Special thanks also went to Capt. Nathaniel McQueen, Lt. Joseph Aviola Jr., DE Stat Police, Troop 2. The police want results in their investigations. Gifted psychics are making a huge contribution in this regard. Well done Nancy Myer! Very well done!

Nancy Myer is very good and I will post other cases that she helped with.

[Frankenstyle]

Lt. Joseph Aviola Jr.


I was just on the way to bed, so I didn't do much digging. But I will say that as the Delaware State Police Spokesperson, Lt. Joseph Aviola Jr. has his name attached to a pretty large number of press releases covering everything from busting drug rings all the way down to single vehicle traffic accidents with only minor injuries.

I find it odd that nowhere in his career of handling the press could I find a single instance of a reporter interrupting a press conference asking for confirmation of police involvement with our psychic overlords.

Of course that's probably because the press are all about covering up the greatest secret never not told, right? I mean what member of the mass media would possibly have a desire for wealth, power, and limitless airtime on every network on the planet?

That'd just be crazy.

[polomontana]

Sorry Frankenstyle,

It wasn't Lt. Joseph Aviola Jr. who thanked her it was Col. Irvin Smith. Where does it say he released a press release about the case?

Here's some more about Myer and Col. Smith from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

She started pursuing them in the mid-1970s after several members of the Delaware State Police attended her seminar at the Delaware Technical and Community College in Wilmington.

"When are you going to work for me?" Col. Irvin B. Smith asked.

Myer wasn't interested. Later in the day when she was demonstrating psychometry — the reading of objects — she picked up so many personal images from his ring that he asked her to stop disclosing the information.

He called her every morning for weeks and said, "I won't go away until you show me that it doesn't work."

It worked.

She provided information for three cases, one of them the brutal murder of Leonetta Schilling. Myer went through 42 mug shots to pick out the suspect, who was later convicted. Her accuracy convinced one of the skeptical cops assigned to work with her on "The Sherlock Squad" that she was authentic.

Here's some more:

That distinction is nothing new for Myer, 57, who in the past 32 years has assisted detectives in nearly all 50 states and abroad.

In more than 500 cases, she has provided information that augments criminal investigations and often leads to arrests and convictions.

Here's a case she helped with in Japan.

On his day off from driving a taxi in Hirosaki, Japan, Mitsuhiro Kobayashi allegedly held up people in an office building and set it on fire.

Five perished and four others were injured in that tragedy on May 8, 2001.

The suspect remained unidentified until this spring, when Nancy Myer, of Derry Township, "saw" him spreading gasoline in the building's stairwell.

Myer, an internationally known psychic consultant and author, picked up images when a Japanese television crew took her to the scene of the crime.

A composite drawing of his description aired March 2 on Nippon TV's "Super Special Psychics."

Kobayashi, 43, was arrested the next day. According to an account in the Tooku Nippo newspaper, he had purchased a can of gasoline just days before the crime.

"The composite that you worked on looked so much like the arsonist," wrote Yukiko Iwadate, the television station's production coordinator and researcher who booked Myer through Idea Network LA Inc. in Los Angeles. "You are officially a famous psychic detective in Japan."

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_82293.html

[UnrepentantSinner]

What would constitute valid documentation?

How about a press release from the police department stating that the case was cracked or solved by the psychic? That would be a start.

[Hawk one]

Speaking of unicorns, some centuries past, there was -a lot- of people vouching for their being real, including people oh high status and some authority. The kind of people polomontana would be appealing to if he lived back in those days. I'm sure that you could easily find at least 20 experienced policemen (or the equivalent of) back then who'd swear that unicorns existed.

And hey, it gets even better. The reason all these people believed there were unicorns was because someone kept supplying them with unicorn horns. How on earth could anyone doubt their existance when you have the actual horn right there in front of you? I mean, that's some really strong evidence. If there were any doubters, I bet they got stepped upon by the kind of people with the same mindset as polomontana.

Of course, the reality about the unicorn horns was that they weren't in fact horns, but teeth. To be specific, that long tooth of the narwhale that, to the untrained eye, would look so very much like a horn when cut off. And since no other beast had that kind of horn, it wasn't hard to convince people that it simply must be unicorn horns. The ones that weren't fooled were those who actually knew about the narwhales (of course, most of these people were the ones hunting said whales down, so don't imagine they'd spill the beans that easily), a knowledge that eventually became widespread as zoology became more of a mainstream science.

So, the unicorn analogy as presented on page 1 is indeed very relevant. Unicorns were a scam that had enough "evidence" to fool those who wished to believe in them, but that didn't change it from being false.

[yairhol]

This is getting ridiculous. Polomontana has given everybody the reason not to take those police officers' words as fact:

The information is coming through a human agent so it will be prone to human error.


He said this regarding the psychics but it stands just as well towards the officers.

Oh and Polomontana, you didn't reply to my post #62 regarding Uri Geller and the thousands and thousands of alive young, old, middle-aged, police officers, grocery store owners, gas station workers etc. who will swear that he has supernatural powers. Should we regard him as having those powers because many people said so?

[Pixel42]

Here's another duped police officer
For every police officer you can find who's been convinced by a psychic, there are dozens who are equally convinced that they're either deliberate frauds or deluded. If you're using argument from authority - i.e. saying that our wonderful police are clever and incisive and wouldn't be fooled - then why accept the authority of the small number who endorse psychics rather than that of the far larger number who dismiss them?

There are policemen who credit psychics and policemen who abhor them, so one or other group must be mistaken. On what basis do you assume that it's the latter group rather than the former?

[JoeEllison]

Why is it that nearly every case of a "psychic"(fraud) is linked to a TV show or book? In every case, the "report" of these frauds comes along with someone selling something. They are almost never written about in a serious or convincing way.

[fagin]

Maddie = deafening silence from psychics.

[Mojo]

What would constitute valid documentation?


An affidavit from school superintendent, several years after the event, lacking in specific detail and containing factual errors, and commenting on matters outside his areas of expertise?

Perhaps not.

[fls]

What would constitute valid documentation?

Valid documents would be recordings of the entire readings and the police file on the case.

Documenting the assistance of the psychic would require an analysis - preferably by someone blind to the outcome, as to whether any statements were specific enough to direct further investigation (for example, "a dark-skinned man" would not count as assistance (even if the suspect turned out to be black)) or specific enough to rule out a known suspect (for example, the initials "NM").

If someone made statements that were of assistance, then determining whether that assistance was psychic in nature would require further analysis. It wouldn't be psychic if it was information that was already available, or easily guessed (for example, that a suspect entered through a window when there were no signs of forced entry at the door).

That's a start. However, considering that these cases are always selected a posteriori, they have to be considered in the context of all statements made by that particular psychic and all statements made by psychic detectives. It seems to me that the numerator must be very large, making lucky guesses more common than you would expect from considering individual cases. For example, often initials are given (single or double or multiple choices) in these readings. I wouldn't be surprised to find hundreds of matches just based on guessing.

Linda

[CriticalSock]

Why don't the psychics ever warn victims Before the event? Surely that would be more useful.

I enjoyed reading the Tau of Pooh, but I prefered "Domus Anguli Puensis" - The house at Pooh Corner in latin. "Remedium mae um sumpsit!" is all I can remember though... and I've no doubt spelt that wrong!

[CriticalSock]

Oh no! I duplicated my post, but now I can't work out how to delete the dupe! Now I feel ashamed. :(

[Frankenstyle]

Sorry Frankenstyle,

It wasn't Lt. Joseph Aviola Jr. who thanked her it was Col. Irvin Smith. Where does it say he released a press release about the case?




So, selective reading comprehension extends to your own examples of “evidence”?

From the article you posted:


Col. Irvin Smith of Wilmington Police Department stated for the camera for all the world to watch and hear, “Nancy Myer made an outstanding contribution to law enforcement.” Special thanks also went to Capt. Nathaniel McQueen, Lt. Joseph Aviola Jr., DE Stat Police, Troop 2.


Now I admit it’s an assumption on my part, but I’m thinking that the “special thanks” given to officer Aviola would be as a result of some direct involvement in the case at hand, and not just an unrelated accolade for his outstanding ability to “color inside the lines” or something.

Because of his involvement in the case, and his position as the voice of the Delaware State police, is it really a stretch to assume that the press might be inclined to inquire about his at least cursory involvement in an investigation that proves psychic powers, and thus causes a paradigm shift that alters the very future of mankind?

Then again, maybe he was sick that day.

[alfaniner]

Oh no! I duplicated my post, but now I can't work out how to delete the dupe! Now I feel ashamed. :(

No need -- that's a common problem on the Forum at the time. If it takes too long to post, just Copy your text (just in case), and hit Refresh. Chances are it posted anyway.

[JoeEllison]

Why don't the psychics ever warn victims Before the event? Surely that would be more useful.

Because psychics don't exist?

[wahrheit]

Because psychics don't exist?

B b b but they can't contact the victim before the crime, because they talk to the dead!

The person must be dead so that the psychic can get the info from them. Like e.g. Shawn Hornbeck. Had he been alive, Sylvia Browne could not have contacted him and ... Oh, wait...

[JoeEllison]

Valid documents would be recordings of the entire readings and the police file on the case.

Documenting the assistance of the psychic would require an analysis - preferably by someone blind to the outcome, as to whether any statements were specific enough to direct further investigation (for example, "a dark-skinned man" would not count as assistance (even if the suspect turned out to be black)) or specific enough to rule out a known suspect (for example, the initials "NM").

If someone made statements that were of assistance, then determining whether that assistance was psychic in nature would require further analysis. It wouldn't be psychic if it was information that was already available, or easily guessed (for example, that a suspect entered through a window when there were no signs of forced entry at the door).

That's a start. However, considering that these cases are always selected a posteriori, they have to be considered in the context of all statements made by that particular psychic and all statements made by psychic detectives. It seems to me that the numerator must be very large, making lucky guesses more common than you would expect from considering individual cases. For example, often initials are given (single or double or multiple choices) in these readings. I wouldn't be surprised to find hundreds of matches just based on guessing.

LindaPart of the problem is that we're always hearing about this "psychics" years after the actual event, and usually third or fourth hand. And, surely, all of us who have been skeptics for more than a few weeks know how absolutely shoddy memories are, even in the most fundamentally honest people. After the fact, memories of the facts of a case would very easily become jumbled with the much more vague claims of a psychic... and that is much more likely than magical powers that can never be tested in real time with any success.

[JoeEllison]

B b b but they can't contact the victim before the crime, because they talk to the dead!

The person must be dead so that the psychic can get the info from them. Like e.g. Shawn Hornbeck. Had he been alive, Sylvia Browne could not have contacted him and ... Oh, wait...

Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense... and the dead often know the identity of the strangers who killed them, but can only relate initials or "sounds like Mike or Mark or Mick" to the psychic. They can also tell you where their bodies lie, give or take 1000 miles... "near a body of water."

[blutoski]

Valid documents would be recordings of the entire readings and the police file on the case.

Documenting the assistance of the psychic would require an analysis - preferably by someone blind to the outcome, as to whether any statements were specific enough to direct further investigation (for example, "a dark-skinned man" would not count as assistance (even if the suspect turned out to be black)) or specific enough to rule out a known suspect (for example, the initials "NM").

If someone made statements that were of assistance, then determining whether that assistance was psychic in nature would require further analysis. It wouldn't be psychic if it was information that was already available, or easily guessed (for example, that a suspect entered through a window when there were no signs of forced entry at the door).

That's a start. However, considering that these cases are always selected a posteriori, they have to be considered in the context of all statements made by that particular psychic and all statements made by psychic detectives. It seems to me that the numerator must be very large, making lucky guesses more common than you would expect from considering individual cases. For example, often initials are given (single or double or multiple choices) in these readings. I wouldn't be surprised to find hundreds of matches just based on guessing.

Linda

I personally endorse the view that these are 'interesting' but can never be used as proof.

Even with full documentation, normal means may only be tripped over by total accident, and if they're actually lying, they'll make an effort to defeat this process of discovery. Once we're in the realm of documents, testimony, &c, we are not engaged in science, and we are not investigating a phenomenon - we are investigating stories about a phenomenon.

For example, there was a case in the netherlands in the 1960s that was held up as a 'best case' for quite awhile: it was a psychic who fingered a burglar. Truzzi (who was a psi advocate) investigated this one and it took eleven years for the smoking gun document to turn up when the person who was hiding it passed away and the estate turned it over to the police.

Basically, the victim was robbed, the psychic came up with a list of stolen items, specifically a checkbook. The victim searched the house and said "amazing! my checkbook *is* missing!" which Truzzi originally took to be supportive.

It turns out that the victim had already reported the checkbook as one of the stolen items. Further, the psychic had been given the list of stolen items from the list handwritten by the victim. Which he pocketed. And everybody involved forgot about it. And for some reason, he kept it.

But the point is that exhaustive investigation would not have revealed this.

[Senex]

I remember that on one of the days I was conducting a polygraph on this case, the detectives told me that they had been in contact with a psychic (Nancy Weber) who gave them the initials of the murderer. I remember asking them what the initials were. They were 'N.M.' I remember this because I then went through my files of all the people I had tested on the case to see if any of them had those initials. None did.

Why didn't she just give them the entire name instead of just the initials? Did she say the month of June had a special meaning to the murderer as well? Did the name Joe (Joesephine, Jody... something like that) have special meaning?


Yes! "D" was the correct answer. Police consider preternatural knowledge a reason to suspect that person with guilt rather than possessing psychic power. Has anyone tried to explain away knowledge they shouldn't have possessed at a point in time as psychic knowledge in front of a jury?

[CriticalSock]

Thanks alfaniner, this modern technology is so confusing sometimes!

Polomontana, why haven't any of the pyschics who you are using as examples applied for the million dollar challenge? I think that question was asked earlier in the thread but you didn't answer it.

If I had a great power like that I'd want it to be proved to the world categorically so that people would never be able to accuse me of being a fake again.

Mind you I thought that psychics could see through time and make precognitive statements about things that were going to happen. I didn't realise they just talked to dead people...

[polomontana]

The pseudoskeptic keeps saying it's a TV show so we have to doubt everything that's being said. This makes no sense..

So, the cops on Forensic Files, The Investigators, The First 48 hours on A&E are all lying?

This is the pseudoskeptics backwards logic.

The police on shows like Psychic Detective and Psychic Investigators are lying, stupid or mistaken but the cops on Forensic Files are telling the truth?

It's because the cops on shows like Psychic Detectives are working with psychics which goes against your pre-existing belief system so naturally these cops are idiots to you.

This is the fallacy of the pseudoskeptic and this is why they are at the opposite end of freethinking.

Why are the cops on Psychic Detective idiots, but the cops on Forensic Files are telling the truth?

Or will the pseudoskeptic go so far to back their pre-existing belief that they will say all cop shows are fake :).

The excuse that you can't accept what the cops are saying because it's a TV show doesn't make sense because you would have to apply this same standard to all TV shows about police officers and crime.

[Lance Manion]

...you should look in or near a body of water.....woooooooooooo........

[JoeEllison]

The excuse that you can't accept what the cops are saying because it's a TV show doesn't make sense because you would have to apply this same standard to all TV shows about police officers and crime.

We do. No one here is claiming that the police always tell the truth about ANYTHING... that's another one of your blatant lies.

[Drudgewire]

Is this pseudo-not-crazy-person for real? :boggled:

[polomontana]

So now I have watch Forensic Files and the whole time I have to say the police officers are fake, lying, mistaken or stupid and the only way that I can accept what the police are saying if I do a thorough investigation into each and every case LOL.

Can't you see the dogmatic nature behind pseudoskepticism?

A freethinker will follow the truth through reason wherever it leads. The pseudoskeptic has to malign and tear down everyone that doesn't believe as they do. That doesn't make sense.

[blutoski]

The pseudoskeptic keeps saying it's a TV show so we have to doubt everything that's being said. This makes no sense..

So, the cops on Forensic Files, The Investigators, The First 48 hours on A&E are all lying?

This is the pseudoskeptics backwards logic.

The police on shows like Psychic Detective and Psychic Investigators are lying, stupid or mistaken but the cops on Forensic Files are telling the truth?

It's because the cops on shows like Psychic Detectives are working with psychics which goes against your pre-existing belief system so naturally these cops are idiots to you.

This is the fallacy of the pseudoskeptic and this is why they are at the opposite end of freethinking.

Why are the cops on Psychic Detective idiots, but the cops on Forensic Files are telling the truth?

Or will the pseudoskeptic go so far to back their pre-existing belief that they will say all cop shows are fake :).

The excuse that you can't accept what the cops are saying because it's a TV show doesn't make sense because you would have to apply this same standard to all TV shows about police officers and crime.

I think we've explained our position already, and at this point, you're ignoring it.

Nobody said 'lying'. We said "Ordinary human error." The police can misremember, forget, &c. They police themselves could have been deceived.

Very sincere people can be very mistaken.

There is a lot of research about this, especially where court testimony is concerned. The research tries to understand how people are so sincere on the stand and yet so completely mistaken.

There is research showing that memory accuracy depreciates with age, with time (obviously) and that there is no relationship between how certain a person is that something is true and how true it actually is.

Testimony about past events is demonstrated to be unreliable in every situation imaginable, and in no way could it be considered scientific.

[wahrheit]

So now I have watch Forensic Files and the whole time I have to say the police officers are fake, lying, mistaken or stupid and the only way that I can accept what the police are saying if I do a thorough investigation into each and every case LOL.

Can't you see the dogmatic nature behind pseudoskepticism?

A freethinker will follow the truth through reason wherever it leads. The pseudoskeptic has to malign and tear down everyone that doesn't believe as they do. That doesn't make sense.

You say that you are getting The TruthTM from TV entertainment programs and the websites of psychics. That's ridiculous and has absolutely nothing to do with reason.

[JoeEllison]

You say that you are getting The TruthTM from TV entertainment programs and the websites of psychics. That's ridiculous and has absolutely nothing to do with reason.

Hey! What, do you think we should trust scientists with their degrees and facts and knowledge or whatever? TV producers are clearly the best source for integrity and information!

[polomontana]

I get it Blutoski,

The police become Forrest Gump when they work with Psychics.

Again, you are saying the Police Officers in each of these cases don't know the differenge between bogus information and information that helps there case and only the pseudoskeptic can tell the difference.

This is backwards logic used to reinforce your pre-existing belief system not search for the truth.

Are all these cops mistaken because they are talking about areas that disagree with you? This is dogmatic thinking not freethinking.

Are the psychics helpful when they show the police where the killer lives and what he looks like before the police have a suspect?

Are the psychics helpul when they have a sketch drawn of a criminal before the police have a suspect?

Are the psychics helpul when they tell the police how a person was killed and where they are buried before the police even have a body?

Freethinking is accepting things that might not agree with what you already believe. The pseudoskeptic is at the opposite end of freethinking.

The police on Psychic Detectives are mistaken but the police on The First 48 hours are not? Why?

It's because your guided by belief not reason.

[polomontana]

Hey! What, do you think we should trust scientists with their degrees and facts and knowledge or whatever? TV producers are clearly the best source for integrity and information!

I see the logic now.

I can't trust anything the cops are saying on Dateline, Forensic Files or The Investigators because it's on TV.

The reason you can't see the fallacy behind this is becuse of dogmatic skepticism.

[blutoski]

So now I have watch Forensic Files and the whole time I have to say the police officers are fake, lying, mistaken or stupid and the only way that I can accept what the police are saying if I do a thorough investigation into each and every case LOL.

You don't have to do anything.

You don't have to do a thorough investigation. I doubt there is such a thing.

Skeptics have been discussing this for almost fifty years, and our conclusion is that based on what we know about testimony's lack of reliability, and how difficult it is to get full information on old cases, that these anecdotes are not very useful to investigating psi.



Can't you see the dogmatic nature behind pseudoskepticism?

Of course. By definition, pseudoskepticism is dogmatic. However, our suggestions are not pseudoskepticism.



A freethinker will follow the truth through reason wherever it leads. The pseudoskeptic has to malign and tear down everyone that doesn't believe as they do. That doesn't make sense.

Only somebody who says they're a skeptic and then goes and acts unskeptical. The best evidence we have about testimony is that it's very unreliable at best. As Dr. Novella said last week to the New York Skeptics: human memory is a crappy mix of stuff that happened differently and stuff we imagined happened. That's just the way it is. It's not dogmatism: it's reality.

To insist that we need to reject all the scientific evidence about memory and incorporate *stuff seen on a TV show* as reality is pretty far from being skeptical.

[JoeEllison]

I see the logic now.

I can't trust anything the cops are saying on Dateline, Forensic Files or The Investigators because it's on TV.

The reason you can't see the fallacy behind this is becuse of dogmatic skepticism.

Keep on lying chum, we're all laughing at you. :D

[polomontana]

Blutoski,

Your whole premise is faulty.

Your saying all these police officers are guilty of faulty or mistaken memory because they disagree with what you already believe.

All these cops would have to become Forrest Gumps as soon as a psychic walks through the door.

Are all the cops on Forensic Files guilty of faulty or mistaken memories?

Are all the cops on The First 48 hours guilty of this mass case of amnesia among cops also?

Or is it just the police officers that disagree with your pre-existing belief?

This is pseudoskepticism.

[JCL]

I read the first page and this page. Is polomontana any more responsive in pages 2-4 than he/she is in what I have read?

polomontana, if you want to be taken seriously stop ranting, and start reading the responses you have been given. Try digging a little deeper into the subject than only looking at the side you agree with.

I would venture that most of the other posters on this thread have looked at both sides of this issue. The findings tend to be pretty conclusive, skeptics offer consilient evidence across several lines of investigation, psychic make outlandish claims with nothing to back them up.

[Senex]

I have a thought that will shut up all these skeptical rascals once and for all. Those of you who know whom to believe in should share information on an on-going investigation your hero psychic is participating in or share the most recent success they have had so the police officers in question are still employed and can be questioned. What are your heroic psychics working on now? If they are working on an unsolved crime that they solve I will become a believer -- and I bet many others will.

[fls]

I personally endorse the view that these are 'interesting' but can never be used as proof.

Yeah, I didn't make that clear. It was meant to illustrate an approach to document that there is even anything there to catch our interest, and to point out how far away the usual accounts and testimonials are from what would be considered a valid investigation.

Linda

[polomontana]

Here's another case of the "Forrest Gump" detectives being duped by a psychic.

A serial killer is loose in Baton Rouge. Police believe they're looking for a young, white man driving a white pick up truck. Forensic Consultant Ann Williams contacts psychic Jeanne Borgen for help. After a series of visions, Jeanne describes the killer as a light-complexion African American, with a round face and a goatee. Ann thinks Jeanne has it wrong, until she learns that one of the victim's neighbors had reported an African American man lurking in the bushes days before the murder. The neighbor's description matches Jeanne's. Meanwhile, the serial killer strikes again. Authorities get the break they need when a peeping tom is reported in a nearby town.

Everyone was looking for a white male but the psychic said he's black.

[Finnegan]

Here's another case of the "Forrest Gump" detectives being duped by a psychic.

A serial killer is loose in Baton Rouge. Police believe they're looking for a young, white man driving a white pick up truck. Forensic Consultant Ann Williams contacts psychic Jeanne Borgen for help. After a series of visions, Jeanne describes the killer as a light-complexion African American, with a round face and a goatee. Ann thinks Jeanne has it wrong, until she learns that one of the victim's neighbors had reported an African American man lurking in the bushes days before the murder. The neighbor's description matches Jeanne's. Meanwhile, the serial killer strikes again. Authorities get the break they need when a peeping tom is reported in a nearby town.

Everyone was looking for a white male but the psychic said he's black.

This (http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/05/28/louisiana.kiilings/)is the only Baton Rouge killer I can find.

No (http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/baton_rouge/2.html) mention (http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/derrick_todd_lee/index.html)of a psychic outside of your source. Care to point to us to places that will substantiate your claims?

[Frankenstyle]

So now I have watch Forensic Files and the whole time I have to say the police officers are fake, lying, mistaken or stupid and the only way that I can accept what the police are saying if I do a thorough investigation into each and every case LOL.


Apples and oranges. Forensic Files and Psychic Detectives are both entertainment programs. As such I have little doubt that neither are 100% accurate on the fine details, but that’s about as far as the similarities go.

Forensic Files focuses on police investigations where crimes are investigated using thoroughly scientifically tested methods developed as the result of years of independent testing and research. While it’s true the methods are not flawless and can be manipulated to seem to support incorrect results, at the core it remains true that with correct application the methods have be proven to produce accurate results. Certainly the producers of the show are free to twist a story to their own ends, why should they bother when the premise of the show is to feature reliable methodology. The show is dependent on viewer’s interest in the subject matter motivating them to tune in and generate advertising dollars.

Psychic Detectives focuses on solving crimes by employing individuals who claim to possess magic powers for which there is no evidence. The show supports the existence of these powers with hearsay and anecdotal evidence. The producers of the show are dependant on viewer ship to generate advertising dollars, so their best interest is served by encouraging the viewers to believe in magic powers. There is a built in agenda to encourage the manipulation of the truth.

[Hellbound]

To paraphrase Frankenstyle, Forensic Files focuses on known, scientifically proven techniques that are not extraordinary. Psychic Detectives proposes untested, unproven techniques that are based on extraordinary claims.

And, contrary to your ignorance polomontana, there is an objective definition of what makes a claim extraordinary or not within science; it's not a subjective decision. That fact that you do not realize this confirms my belief that you have not research any real science in regards to psychics, or more general in regards to the process of science, logic, and/or reason. Your reason is based on your subjective assessment of evidence, rather than on the rules used in science that place certain categories or types of evidence above others: something that helps one to recognize and account for the amazing ability of humans to fool not only others, but ourselves as well.

[blutoski]

Blutoski,

Your whole premise is faulty.

'whole premise?' what premise? That memory is questionable? It's not a premise - it's a fact.




Your saying all these police officers are guilty of faulty or mistaken memory because they disagree with what you already believe.

No, I never said either of those things:

1. I never said 'all' or 'are' - I said we don't know how many. There's not enough information. What it is, though, is a natural explanation with facts behind it.

2. I gave you my reasons why I consider it so: because established scientific evidence shows that memory is terrible, and human history shows us that testimony is a terrible way to figure out what actually happened. A colleague of mine is on a project right now exonerating people in the US on death row. Over 100 now. All sent up the river based on 'overwhelming testimony'. All of which was false, apparently.





All these cops would have to become Forrest Gumps as soon as a psychic walks through the door.

Are all the cops on Forensic Files guilty of faulty or mistaken memories?

Are all the cops on The First 48 hours guilty of this mass case of amnesia among cops also?

I think at this point it's clear that you're just ranting. Nobody mentioned the words 'mass amnesia' so by accusing us of such a claim, it's obvious that you're not interested in a conversation anymore.

I had thought that you were here with an open mind but this is the third time you've just plain made up something and ranted. I'm done.





Or is it just the police officers that disagree with your pre-existing belief?

No, testimony is considered an unsuitable substitute for actual observable facts, regardless of its claim.

[Jimbo07]

The police become Forrest Gump when they work with Psychics.


They...

DON'T!! :mad:

"The police," DO NOT work with psychics! I don't know what jurisdiction you live in, but you should be able to go down to your local police station, and request evidence of psychic involvement. You might have to go through some sort of Freedom of Information request, or whatever act/bill covers where you live.

My bet is that you can't find one piece of credible evidence of the police having 'worked with' psychics.

Now, some here have suggested that individual officers may talk to psychics, I don't know, but please, please, PLEASE stop trying to make hard-working police look bad by perpetuating stupid stories from TV...

[godless dave]

Here's another duped police officer:

Delaware, Wilmington Police Department had no more leads in its attempts to capture serial rapist. Detective Ingraham under the supervision of Capt. Nathaniel McQueen sought the services of a gifted psychic Nancy Myer. Nancy was able to give the police information to capture, arrest and get the criminal to confess to the crimes he committed. The criminal was a serial rapist. The gifted psychic Nancy led the police where the criminal actually lived. She pointed to the actually building. There she said – I see him in my mind – coming and going. Nancy was not paid any money for her psychic service. Col. Irvin Smith of Wilmington Police Department stated for the camera for all the world to watch and hear, “Nancy Myer made an outstanding contribution to law enforcement.” Special thanks also went to Capt. Nathaniel McQueen, Lt. Joseph Aviola Jr., DE Stat Police, Troop 2. The police want results in their investigations. Gifted psychics are making a huge contribution in this regard. Well done Nancy Myer! Very well done!


Link?

[godless dave]

Here's another case of the "Forrest Gump" detectives being duped by a psychic.

A serial killer is loose in Baton Rouge. Police believe they're looking for a young, white man driving a white pick up truck. Forensic Consultant Ann Williams contacts psychic Jeanne Borgen for help. After a series of visions, Jeanne describes the killer as a light-complexion African American, with a round face and a goatee. Ann thinks Jeanne has it wrong, until she learns that one of the victim's neighbors had reported an African American man lurking in the bushes days before the murder. The neighbor's description matches Jeanne's. Meanwhile, the serial killer strikes again. Authorities get the break they need when a peeping tom is reported in a nearby town.

Everyone was looking for a white male but the psychic said he's black.

Link?

[Frankenstyle]

Link?



Link.

(http://img.waffleimages.com/b3ec3ee0368e99ffd75b6576e750c01ec9bf1603/6wpalx5.jpg)

[Bob Klase]

The truth is that skeptics don't ask psychics to be 100%, and polomontana is lying. Skeptics aren't rejecting psychics who are 99% accurate, or 80% or 65% accurate. To my knowledge, psychics are pretty much complete failures, and their results are indistinguishable from a Magic 8-Ball.


AH-HA! So you admit that the Magic 8-Ball also has psychic abilities!

[polomontana]

The reason why Forensic Files and Psychic Detectives are the same thing in this context is because we are talking about the truthfulness of the police officers.

Many pseudoskeptics on this board have questioned the police officers memory and intelligence because they don't believe psychic ability exists. This is seriously flawed in this situation.

The police officers on the show Psychic Detectives solve crimes and protect lives just like the detectives on Forensic Files or the First 48 Hours.

The only difference here is the pseudoskeptics pre-existing belief system.

It's not a show where psychics are just talking about how they helped the police. It's police veterans vouching for the psychics and telling what happened.

The pseudoskeptic maligns the police officer on Psychic Detective but they don't question the police officer on Forensic Files.

So to the pseudoskeptic the police on Forensic Files is telling the truth but the police on Psychic Detectives are idiots.

This is Pseudoskepticism at it's worst.

[polomontana]

Link?

A serial killer is loose in Baton Rouge. Police believe they're looking for a young, white man driving a white pick up truck. Forensic Consultant Ann Williams contacts psychic Jeanne Borgen for help. After a series of visions, Jeanne describes the killer as a light-complexion African American, with a round face and a goatee. Ann thinks Jeanne has it wrong, until she learns that one of the victim's neighbors had reported an African American man lurking in the bushes days before the murder. The neighbor's description matches Jeanne's. Meanwhile, the serial killer strikes again. Authorities get the break they need when a peeping tom is reported in a nearby town.

http://www.biography.com/psychic_investigators/pi_episode_guide.jsp?episode=167050

[Little 10 Toes]

(1)http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=91501&highlight=norm+pratt
Above listed link to message had link to original story. Original story does not show/mention how the psychic helped.


(2) See http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2933516&postcount=193
From the link original post, followed the original link. Didn't see where she claimed psychic powers told her where to find the missing man. Story also mentioned she was asked what a suspect did. She replied carpenter. Name of suspect was Carpenter.


(3) See http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3722704&postcount=41
Followed your link, where you posted the exact same story without any reference. Dead end.

[Jimbo07]

The reason why Forensic Files and Psychic Detectives are the same thing in this context is because we are talking about the truthfulness of the police officers.

NO. :mad: :mad:

This is not about the truthfulness of police officers... if anything is involved, it would be about the truthfulness of the producers of TV shows!

[polomontana]

This case was very good.

The psychic told the police officer when they find the killer they will find the rabbit that was stolen from the crime scene. When they found the killer the rabbit was under his bed.

She described the killer as being young with unkempt hair and he was 17.

She told the police what street he lives on.

Early in the investigation, Folsom said a psychic contacted him and told him “clues” as to who had committed the murder. He told the psychic he was “open to all avenues” to solve the case, and street names she mentioned related to indecent exposure incidents led to finding William Levearne “Bill” Carpenter, then 17.

Another piece of evidence used to link Carpenter to the murder was three rabbits Reinhardt had at the house when she was murdered, Folsom said. When detectives found a rabbit with a distinct marking, like a lightning bolt, under Carpenter’s bed that had been photographed in Reinhardt’s house, he was placed under arrest for her murder.

“I tell people I used a psychic and a rabbit to solve a homicide,” Folsom said.

Court TV and other stations had tried for a very long time to get a story filmed about the case, Folsom said. He finally agreed to allow Court TV to film an interview for the show, but he did not want any financial gain from the case. The filming was done over several months, and Folsom is curious to see the final cut of the show when it airs.

http://www.moultrieobserver.com/local/local_story_204225836.html

[Frankenstyle]

Now you're just flinging soiled diapers at the wall to see if anything sticks.

[Locknar]

This case was very good.Wow...another "cherry picked" story; what claptrap.

Granted, Sylvia Browne (and others) make a living peddling such non-sense...but honestly do you think your folk stories/tall tales mean anything, or will otherwise convince folks here of your claims?

[polomontana]

Wow...another "cherry picked" story; what claptrap.

Granted, Sylvia Browne (and others) make a living peddling such non-sense...but honestly do you think your folk stories/tall tales mean anything, or will otherwise convince folks here of your claims?

This is the tactic of James Randi and his loyal followers.

They always go after easy targets like Sylvia Browne, Uri Gellar and John Edwards.

It's like Michael Shermer trying to use Miss Cleo as an example when he's talking about psychics. It's very dishonest and shameful.

The psychics I'm talking about are not on the Montell Williams show every week but you can find them in police headquarters helping police officers.

[Locknar]

This is the tactic of James Randi and his loyal followers.

They always go after easy targets like Sylvia Browne, Uri Gellar and John Edwards.

It's like Michael Shermer trying to use Miss Cleo as an example when he's talking about psychics. It's very dishonest and shameful.

The psychics I'm talking about are not on the Montell Williams show every week but you can find them in police headquarters helping police officers.Advoidance...and poorly done at that. When asked for scientific studies, you counter with this? Just to funny....

Regardless...specifically what "police headquarters" and which psychics?

[Finnegan]

A serial killer is loose in Baton Rouge. Police believe they're looking for a young, white man driving a white pick up truck. Forensic Consultant Ann Williams contacts psychic Jeanne Borgen for help. After a series of visions, Jeanne describes the killer as a light-complexion African American, with a round face and a goatee. Ann thinks Jeanne has it wrong, until she learns that one of the victim's neighbors had reported an African American man lurking in the bushes days before the murder. The neighbor's description matches Jeanne's. Meanwhile, the serial killer strikes again. Authorities get the break they need when a peeping tom is reported in a nearby town.

http://www.biography.com/psychic_investigators/pi_episode_guide.jsp?episode=167050

Yes, but where's another link?

I can't find any other reference to a Balton serial killer except in

This (http://crime.about.com/b/2004/10/12/baton-rouge-serial-killer-found-guilty.htm)is the only Baton Rouge killer I can find. No (http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/baton_rouge/3.html)mention (http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/baton_rouge/index.html)of a psychic outside of your source. Care to point to us to places that will substantiate your claims? If a psychic solved it then the papers would be all over the damned story.

[Blue Mountain]

The psychics I'm talking about are not on the Montell Williams show every week but you can find them in police headquarters helping police officers.
Yet every single anecdote you've presented so far has not shown any real assistance by the psychic to the police. They're johnny-come-latelies to the case, supplying information that is either already in the public domain or is misleading, or is so vague as to be useless. All the so-called "hits" are retrofitted to suit the evidence after the fact.

Look up Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

[godless dave]

A serial killer is loose in Baton Rouge. Police believe they're looking for a young, white man driving a white pick up truck. Forensic Consultant Ann Williams contacts psychic Jeanne Borgen for help. After a series of visions, Jeanne describes the killer as a light-complexion African American, with a round face and a goatee. Ann thinks Jeanne has it wrong, until she learns that one of the victim's neighbors had reported an African American man lurking in the bushes days before the murder. The neighbor's description matches Jeanne's. Meanwhile, the serial killer strikes again. Authorities get the break they need when a peeping tom is reported in a nearby town.

http://www.biography.com/psychic_investigators/pi_episode_guide.jsp?episode=167050


I meant a link to an actual news story, not a segment on an entertainment show.

[Moochie]

This is the tactic of James Randi and his loyal followers.

They always go after easy targets like Sylvia Browne, Uri Gellar and John Edwards.

It's like Michael Shermer trying to use Miss Cleo as an example when he's talking about psychics. It's very dishonest and shameful.

The psychics I'm talking about are not on the Montell Williams show every week but you can find them in police headquarters helping police officers.

I don't know why you're here, polomontana. It's evidently (ahem!) escaping you that this forum is not quite like the ones you're used to visiting.

You can keep spouting your puerile twaddle -- it won't make an ounce of difference. The evidence demanded here is of a far higher standard than you're able to provide, so if you want to be taken seriously in a skeptics' forum, you'd better see to where your thinking on the subject of psychics is going wrong. Because your thinking, like your "evidence," is dreadfully, pathetically deficient.


M.

[polomontana]

Skepticism is truly a religion to the pseudoskeptic.

This is exactly why I seperate the skeptic from the pseudoskeptic.

I'm still skeptical about certain things because I way the evidence and then follow it using reason in each situation no matter where the truth may lead.

This is a true skeptic and freethinker. They use skepticism to seek the truth not as a crutch to back a pre-existing belief system.

James Randi, Michael Shermer and Joe Nichols give a bad name to skepticism because they are professional skeptics. There not seeking the truth, they are just being skkeptical to sell more books and magazines to the pseudoskeptics.

I'm not going to keep repeating myself over and over again. The skeptic will see my point and the fallacy behind the backwards logic of the pseudoskeptic.

The pseudoskeptic has turned skepticism into another ism and a belief system and that does a disservice to skeptics who seek the truth wherever it may lead.

[Ateius]

The plural of "Anecdote" is not "Evidence".

[Frankenstyle]

The psychics I'm talking about are not on the Montell Williams show every week but you can find them in police headquarters helping police officers.


Now we're cooking with food!

What are their names, and what police departments are they working with? I'm sure that they'd be happy to conduct a phone interview, so that more law enforcement organizations can be made aware of the invaluable service they can provide to humanity.

Also, I have devised a small single question test that will provide them with a way to end all the unproductive bickering that interferes with their ability to perform their selfless works.

All they have to do is correctly answer the question, "How many fingers am I holding up?"

I'll give them bonus points if they can also provide the full names of at least two of the people that the fingers originally belonged to.

[Finnegan]

Skepticism is truly a religion to the pseudoskeptic blah blah blah blah *cough, splutter, pop*

Sorry to cut off your most eloquent effusion of effluent, but would you mind addressing post 195? Or maybe 197, I'm not choosy.

[Locknar]

So when asked for specifics, you reply with babble....interesting.

I'm not going to keep repeating myself over and over again. The skeptic will see my point and the fallacy behind the backwards logic of the pseudoskeptic.
Given that is all you have been doing, repeating the same folk stories/tall tales...does this mean you won't be posting further?

As to the skeptic...the skeptic will see you've done nothing but post claptrap; your taunts, hand waving, etc. does not change that fact, nor does it make your folk tales/tall tales any more valid.

[Frankenstyle]

I'm not going to keep repeating myself over and over again.


Yeah, That'd be redundant.



...again.

[Finnegan]

This is the tactic of James Randi and his loyal followers.

They always go after easy targets like Sylvia Browne, Uri Gellar and John Edwards.

It's like Michael Shermer trying to use Miss Cleo as an example when he's talking about psychics. It's very dishonest and shameful.

The psychics I'm talking about are not on the Montell Williams show every week but you can find them in police headquarters helping police officers.

That is the tactic of psychics and their loyal followers.

They always go after easy targets like James Randi and Michael Shermer. It's very dishonest and shameful.

The debunkers I'm talking about are not in the Skeptic every issue, but have quite convincingly refuted all psychics now, tomorrow and forever. Obviously, I can't substantiate this but they 100% have.

[Moochie]

Skepticism is truly a religion to the pseudoskeptic.

This is exactly why I seperate the skeptic from the pseudoskeptic.

I'm still skeptical about certain things because I way the evidence and then follow it using reason in each situation no matter where the truth may lead.

This is a true skeptic and freethinker. They use skepticism to seek the truth not as a crutch to back a pre-existing belief system.

James Randi, Michael Shermer and Joe Nichols give a bad name to skepticism because they are professional skeptics. There not seeking the truth, they are just being skkeptical to sell more books and magazines to the pseudoskeptics.

I'm not going to keep repeating myself over and over again. The skeptic will see my point and the fallacy behind the backwards logic of the pseudoskeptic.

The pseudoskeptic has turned skepticism into another ism and a belief system and that does a disservice to skeptics who seek the truth wherever it may lead.

Well, I'm sorry, polomontana, and I'll tell you why. What you have written (above) suggests to me that something and/or someone has seriously messed with your mind. You appear to have no understanding of skeptics nor of skepticism; nor do you show any understanding of how evidence is discovered or that given the state of our present knowledge, there isn't any compelling evidence for the existence of Psi.

It's really not good enough to come in here with fatuous tales gleaned from television and fan websites. You need to educate yourself about a great many things before I will pay any more attention to you.


M.

[wahrheit]

His grammar and spelling are too good to be true. His repetitive "pseudoskeptics" thing is more than annoying.

It's not some deluded psychic follower, methinks it's a professional troll. Maybe it's Francine, who knows.

[Rodney]

Above listed link to message had link to original story. Original story does not show/mention how the psychic helped.
It didn't? Then see http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/01/27/psychic-body050127.html --

"Police in Nelson, B.C., have found the body of a young woman who disappeared last March, and they credit a local psychic for pointing them in the right direction.

"Kimberley Anne Sarjeant was last seen walking alone in a popular hiking spot near Nelson.

"Police say they used every tool at their disposal to try to find her, including search dogs, helicopters and infrared heat detectors.

"When none of the standard techniques seemed to work, Sgt. Steve Bank called on a local psychic for help.

"Police had already searched along an abandoned railway line where the 23-year-old woman was last seen.

"But local psychic Norm Pratt steered police away from that trail. About a kilometre into nearby woods, police found Sarjeant's clothes. Her remains were discovered in the same area.

"'Without the use of the psychic, I think I'd still be looking for this person,' Bank said Wednesday."

From the link original post, followed the original link. Didn't see where she claimed psychic powers told her where to find the missing man. Story also mentioned she was asked what a suspect did. She replied carpenter. Name of suspect was Carpenter.
You've got your cases mixed up. This one did not involve a murder: "The whereabouts of Dennis Prado, 71, had stumped Pacifica detectives, who conducted an exhaustive investigation for three months. They consulted Annette Martin at the urging of the family. Sgt. Realyvasques brought a photo and map of Mr. Prado's apartment complex. Annette saw Mr. Prado had hiked into the County Park for a stroll and veered off the main path and continued on the dirt towards a small hill, to perhaps rest and look a the scenery. But along the way he suffered a stoke and dropped dead along the dirt path. Saw body off to the right, behind some bushes. Annette marked on the map with a circle where the body was. This park is two thousand acres and so the circle was quite small. Two rescue volunteers knew exactly where that spot was and proceeded to go there and behold found Mr. Prado exactly where Annette had drawn the circle." See http://www.closure4u.com/example.htm, sixth case down.

Followed your link, where you posted the exact same story without any reference. Dead end.
I posted Mr. Lewis's e-mail to me that because some folks here didn't trust the authenticity of his comments on this webpage: http://www.nancyorlenweber.com/references.html
However, you will note that the story about the Nicholas Muscio murder case is the same. And, if any "cold reader" has ever been able to guess both initials of an unknown murderer, as Mr. Lewis says that Nancy Weber did, let me know who that was.

[fls]

And, if any "cold reader" has ever been able to guess both initials of an unknown murderer, as Mr. Lewis says that Nancy Weber did, let me know who that was.

I don't think that anyone presents themselves as a "cold reader" when trying to give information to the police. And are you sure you want to depend upon knowing whether something has happened based on whether you heard about it? It seems that what gets reported is pretty hit-or-miss.

Linda

[UnrepentantSinner]

{quoting someone else} I remember that on one of the days I was conducting a polygraph on this case, the detectives told me that they had been in contact with a psychic (Nancy Weber) who gave them the initials of the murderer. I remember asking them what the initials were. They were 'N.M.' I remember this because I then went through my files of all the people I had tested on the case to see if any of them had those initials. None did.

That was the Matrix telling the officer to Never Mind with regard to Weber's suggestion.

[Pixel42]

The reason why Forensic Files and Psychic Detectives are the same thing in this context is because we are talking about the truthfulness of the police officers.
What about the police officers who have appeared on programmes like, for example, the Penn & Teller one on Psychic Detectives who have categorically stated that no psychic has ever helped solve a case? Are you calling them liars? Along with all the other police officers (by far the majority) who agree with them?

[Rodney]

I don't think that anyone presents themselves as a "cold reader" when trying to give information to the police. And are you sure you want to depend upon knowing whether something has happened based on whether you heard about it? It seems that what gets reported is pretty hit-or-miss.

Linda
So what's your explanation of how Nancy Weber identified the murderer as "NM"?

[Rodney]

What about the police officers who have appeared on programmes like, for example, the Penn & Teller one on Psychic Detectives who have categorically stated that no psychic has ever helped solve a case? Are you calling them liars? Along with all the other police officers (by far the majority) who agree with them?
The fact that psychics have not helped some police officers says nothing about whether they have helped other police officers.

[Pixel42]

The fact that psychics have not helped some police officers says nothing about whether they have helped other police officers.
I'm talking about the police officers who have studied, or even been involved in, those cases where other police officers have credited a psychic as providing significant assistance, and who don't agree. Police officers like the FBI agent who appeared in the Penn & Teller programme I referred to earlier, for example. Are they lying? Or have they just carefullly examined the same evidence as the ones who were convinced and reached a different, possibly better-informed, conclusion?

[fls]

So what's your explanation of how Nancy Weber identified the murderer as "NM"?

When you make lots of guesses, some will match.

Linda

[Locknar]

The fact that psychics have not helped some police officers says nothing about whether they have helped other police officers.On the other hand, the fact that no psychic has ever successfully demonstrated any type of paranormal ability under testing/controlled environment says quite a lot.

While you, and others, post "cherry picked" folk tales of supposed success...you ignore the countless other "perdictions" which were failures. Why is that?

In the case of Nancy Webber you mention...how many other predictions has she made that turned out to be wrong? Is the one you posted her only success?

Her odds of sucess (in terms of guessing two initials) is what, 1:676; the odds of drawing a royal flush in poker is 1:~645K yet it happens. When put in perspective, one success in a 1:676 situation is not impressive.

[JoeEllison]

When you make lots of guesses, some will match.

Linda

You're assuming that it actually happened, which has not yet been established. ;)

[Rodney]

I'm talking about the police officers who have studied, or even been involved in, those cases where other police officers have credited a psychic as providing significant assistance, and who don't agree. Police officers like the FBI agent who appeared in the Penn & Teller programme I referred to earlier, for example. Are they lying? Or have they just carefullly examined the same evidence as the ones who were convinced and reached a different, possibly better-informed, conclusion?
Have the three examples I cited been debunked? If so, by whom?

[Rodney]

When you make lots of guesses, some will match.

Linda
But don't you think that guessing a murderer's initials is different from, say, guessing that the murderer has dark hair and a medium build?

[Mashuna]

But don't you think that guessing a murderer's initials is different from, say, guessing that the murderer has dark hair and a medium build?

It would depend on how many guesses are made.

[Pixel42]

Have the three examples I cited been debunked?
Before they can be debunked they have to be bunked, so to speak. That is, there has to be some actual evidence that can be examined and assessed. So far you have provided nothing of any consequence.

For example, providing an actual murderer's initials prior to his identification and successful prosecution is fairly impressive (though the number of similar guesses that turned out to be wrong does need to be taken into account, as explained). But the first thing that needs to be established is: was such a specific prediction really made? Quoting what someone says someone else remembered does not establish that. Memories cheat, vague statements about the initials N or possibly M (along with half-a-dozen other initials) being important in the case become, with the benefit of hindsight, a much more specific prediction. I've been interested in this subject for decades, and in every case I've come across where someone actually bothered to dig into the details and find out what really happened reality turned out to be very different, and much less impressive, than the original claims.

[fls]

But don't you think that guessing a murderer's initials is different from, say, guessing that the murderer has dark hair and a medium build?

In what way? They all seem to be the sorts of things that are guessed and counted as 'hits'. Relative specificity seems unimportant in that regard. You make a big deal about a plane banking before crashing, in one of your other favourite examples, yet the range of possibilities is pretty limited to begin with.

Linda

[fls]

You're assuming that it actually happened, which has not yet been established. ;)

Well, it can't be established that it happened, because adequate documentation doesn't exist. I'm merely pointing out that even if it happened, it still can't serve as evidence, because it still doesn't make the thing more likely to be true.

Linda

[polomontana]

Pixel,

Your not making any sense. First you say police officers whodisagree with psychic ability negate the police officers that work with psychics. That makes ZERO sense.

Secondly, your saying police officers have faulty memories on the show Psychic Detectives or Psychic Investigators and this must mean the police officers on shows like Forensic Files and The First 48 Hours are Forrest Gump detectives also.

Do you investigate everything a police says on every police show on TV before you accept it or is it just a show where your pre-existing belief disagrees with the police officers about psychic ability?

This is pseudoskepticism at it's worst. Any freethinker can see the faulty logic behind your assertions.

[polomontana]

Well, it can't be established that it happened, because adequate documentation doesn't exist. I'm merely pointing out that even if it happened, it still can't serve as evidence, because it still doesn't make the thing more likely to be true.

Linda

Linda, even though we disagree, I have to say your definately not a pseudoskeptic. You take the time to think about these things and you can see the faulty logic in just denying these things happen to placate a pre-existing belief system.

If you think there's another explanation for these things I can respect that while STRONGLY disagreeing with it. When you flat out deny that these things occur that's pseudoskepticism at it's worst.

[Pixel42]

Pixel,

Your not making any sense.
This will be good :)

First you say police officers whodisagree with psychic ability negate the police officers that work with psychics. That makes ZERO sense.
No, I said that some policemen credit psychics with helping them solve cases and others don't. You said that when sceptics suggest that the former are mistaken we are calling police officers lliars. In which case when you suggest that the latter are mistaken you are calling police officers liars.

In actual fact no-one is calling police officers liars. But one or other group of police officers must be mistaken. We think it's the ones who credit psychics, you think it's the ones that dismisss them. We make the better case.

Secondly, your saying police officers have faulty memories on the show Psychic Detectives or Psychic Investigators and this must mean the police officers on shows like Forensic Files and The First 48 Hours are Forrest Gump detectives also.
No I didn't say that, and no even if I had, it wouldn't mean that.

Do you investigate everything a police says on every police show on TV before you accept it or is it just a show where your pre-existing belief disagrees with the police officers about psychic ability?
I take anything I see on TV with a pinch of salt, but I can tell the difference between a documentary and a light entertainment show. You seem to be struggling with this distinction.

This is pseudoskepticism at it's worst.
This whole thread is, yes. You're the best exponent of it I've seen for a long time.

Any freethinker can see the faulty logic behind your assertions.
Anyone capable of rational thought can see the faulty logic behind your assertions.

[wahrheit]

What a joke. Some kid is regularly watching police and psychic shows, and then tries to convince the world that psychics are real cuz he saw it on teh telly.

[Rodney]

I've been interested in this subject for decades, and in every case I've come across where someone actually bothered to dig into the details and find out what really happened reality turned out to be very different, and much less impressive, than the original claims.
Can you supply a few examples?

[Pixel42]

Can you supply a few examples?
Certainly.

Here's a good one: http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/071129-psychics-journalism.html

Note that had this particular journalist not been curious enough to follow this case up the "Psychic Aids In Search For Missing Women" headline would have gone unquestioned, and you or polomontana might be telling us about this story on this very thread.

Here's a site that critically examines every single one of the cases described in an Australian TV show of the kind polomontana finds so convincing:

http://www.mysteryinvestigators.com/psychicinvestigators.htm

Here's a site that critiques the cases of one TV Psychic Detective in particular:

http://members.aol.com/garypos/Renier_list.html

How many do you want? I'm less than half way down the first page of 10,800 links returned by a search for Psychic Detectives debunked.

[polomontana]

Pixel,

The site you posted debunks nothing. I give it credit in that the site that you support is backing my claims.

They admit that psychics work with police on these cases. That's a blow to the pseudoskeptic who says it doesn't happen.

Next, the whole site is opinion. Here's one example:

The psychioc said.

"The letter 'E' on a name tag."

The skeptic said:

'E', the most frequently used letter in the English language. Need I say more?

This is debunking LOL!! You can't be serious.

The killers name was Edward and it was on his name tag.

Here's another one:

The skeptic said:

It is normal for people to misremember ‘psychic’ or cold readings. The ‘psychic’ may well have said something like;
Psychic: “I see people wearing uniforms. Does that mean anything to you?”
Detective: “Yes, I work for the police department.”
This is later remembered as
Psychic: “I see people wearing police uniforms. Are you a police officer?”
There are many, many variations of this type of fishing, each of which could result in the detective mis-remembering the real conversation. We do not know if this was the case in this situation, but it would not be at all surprising.

Here the skeptic must be a medium because he's channeling the conversation between the detective and the psychic and using it as evidence that the psychic didn't help the police LOL!!

You have given me a good laugh Pixel. At least this skeptic admits that psychics work with police, his explanations are just silly.

If a skeptic wants to show that a psychic never helps police then they have to go into a police office and do the same thing. Police know the difference between bogus information and real information but to the skeptic the police officer becomes Forrest Gump when the psychic walks through the door.

If it's so easy and obvious according to the skeptic, how do the police know the difference between a psychic that helps them and one that's bogus?

The skeptic is always saying how easy and simple it is. I want to see a skeptic have a sketch drawn of a criminal before the police even have a suspect which leads to the criminals arrest when the sketch is aired on TV.

Pseudoskepticism is funny.

[tumnus]

:( my head hurts

[polomontana]

Here's more from Pixels master debunker:

"Sue claims that there would be blood found close to a radiator and that subsequently blood was found on the radiator by police. This is offered as “proof for the psychic believers that the psychic has access to the world of the paranormal”. Since it was known Jason was stabbed, it is no surprise that blood would indeed be on the radiator and probably many other places."

This doesn't make any sense. She told them to look for blood near the radiator, they do and find blood. To the skeptic this was an easy thing to deduce because he was stabbed, yet the police didn't have this information before the psychic told them.

Again, if all these things are so easy, why doesn't the skeptic do the same thing? If it's so easy why is any psychic turned away from the police? Any tom, dick or harry should be able to do this according to the skeptic.

This is truly a case of backwards logic.

Thi

[Jeff Corey]

...Pseudoskepticism is funny.
You sure are.

[Pixel42]

You have given me a good laugh Pixel.
That seems only fair, considering how much innocent amusement you've given me.

But as it is now painfully clear from your reaction to the link I provided that you are incapable of understanding rational arguments, I see no purpose in continuing this conversation.

[Rodney]

How many do you want?
How about one good one? ;) For example, since I have mentioned Nancy Weber in connection with the Nicholas Muscio murder case, why don't we focus on the TV episode about her and consider whether Aussie skeptics have, in fact, done ANYTHING WHATEVER (like those skeptics, I too can use CAPITAL LETTERS) to debunk her role in the below case:
__________________________________________________ ____________________________
3. Psychic Investigators - Rachel Domas
ABC TV 8:00pm Thursday, 14 Dec 2006

Before the review of this episode, a note to the program directors at ABC TV. The ‘psychic’ in this case did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help solve the murder. Now….

Rachel Domas, 14 years old from New Jersey, was murdered in a forest by Michael Manfridonia in the late 1980s. The case is only hours old, at this stage Rachel was only missing, when a friend of the family calls on ‘psychic’ Nancy Weber to help. Detective Micco is in charge of the case.

The only relevant insights ‘psychic’ Nancy Weber seems to have come up with were;

1. The name 'Michael'.
2. The killer was connected with the smell of oil.
3. Rachel Domas was dead.
4. The killer was near oil drums.
5. The killer was suicidal and ‘high’.
6. The killer would be caught soon.

None of these amazing revelations are backed up with evidence (recordings etc.) and we the viewers have no idea if in fact Weber really did just blurt these out at the time. How many insights did she have after facts were known? As people misremember conversations, let alone cold or ‘psychic’ readings, it is far more likely, after 20 years that;

1. We have no idea if Weber really said the name ‘Michael’ or if detective Micco is simply retrofitting after the event. (Indeed he could have let slip the name at the time as Michael Manfridonia was the prime suspect to have Weber pick up on it.)
2. The smell of oil could mean anything as could ‘connected’, if indeed it was said at the time. What oil? Car oil? Cooking oil? Does it mean the suspect drove a car that uses oil?
3. Sadly Rachel Domas was indeed dead. Again, we have no way of knowing if Weber did in fact predict this at the time. Even if she did it is far from an amazing insight.
4. We have no idea if Weber really said, ‘Near oil drums’. How near? What drums? Near when hiding out? When working?
5. We have no idea if Weber really said the killer was suicidal or ‘high’. The show states that Michael Manfridonia was ‘high on an overdose of cold medicine when arrested.’ Oh Please!
6. We have no idea if Weber really said the killer would be caught soon but again, it is far from an amazing insight. The killer was caught when he went to his own house. Pity the ‘psychic’ could not have told the police where he was before then.

How many other things did Weber tell detective Micco and other people at the time that were simply forgotten as they did not fit the case? I would bet many indeed. It is also worth noting that the police officers involved went against orders when seeking information from the ‘psychic’.

The most ridiculous point in this farce was when the ‘psychic’ remembers seeing a photo of the missing girl. “I instantly know it’s confirmed. ” (her ‘psychic vision’ of Rachel) she says. Well dah! Anyone can play that game. Tell me you'll show me a photo of 'Fred', show it to me and I'll tell you it's Fred! There you go ABC TV. Can I have a 15 part series now?

From the ABC TV listing;

After the New Jersey school girl Rachel Domas missed her school bus and decided to walk the three miles to her home she was never seen again. A veteran psychic and a rookie cop then combined to solve the disappearance and murder of the 14-year-old.

What? “…combined to solve the disappearance..” Nope. Again it turns out that it was police work and police work only that solved the case in spite of the time wasted in talking to a 'psychic'.

Come on ABC TV… get the message. This show is an embarrassment to the good name of your organisation.
__________________________________________________ ____________________________
So, where, exactly, is the "debunking"??? All our Aussie friends have done is speculate that the version of events set forth in the TV show -- including Detective Micco's account -- is erroneous. Apparently, his version of events means nothing, whereas their speculations -- from 10,000 miles away and with no facts that were not supplied by the TV show -- are right on target. Now, perhaps, if they do some research, they might be able to find at least one person who can contradict the TV show, but at the moment, the scorecard stands as follows:

The only relevant insights ‘psychic’ Nancy Weber seems to have come up with were;

1. The name 'Michael'.
2. The killer was connected with the smell of oil.
3. Rachel Domas was dead.
4. The killer was near oil drums.
5. The killer was suicidal and ‘high’.
6. The killer would be caught soon.

The only relevant insights the Ausssie ‘skeptics’ seem to have come up with were;

0.

[Frankenstyle]

Next, the whole site is opinion. Here's one example:

The psychioc said.

"The letter 'E' on a name tag."

The skeptic said:

'E', the most frequently used letter in the English language. Need I say more?

This is debunking LOL!! You can't be serious.



So you've having us on, then? Because I can't believe you're serious at this point.

You must see that picking the most common letter of the alphabet and predicting it will pop up in some location in any random name, is practically a guaranteed hit. Like this:

I am having a vision that some member of your family either likes, or has at least eaten, food with bread or some sort of wheat product in it. Oh! The spirits are also giving me a vision of a car. This person in your family has either owned, ridden in, known someone else who owned, or seen a photograph of a car! This person preferred wearing shoes or at least some form of foot protection when walking on rough stony surfaces. Also, they have letters in their name...more than one...I see an "A", or maybe a "B"...a "C"? "D" then, or it could be an "E"...It's not clear but it's definitely a combination of letters.

"F"? "G"?

Pretty eerie, hunh?

edit:

I almost forgot, that will be eight hundred dollars, please.

Oh, and you're going to go on a trip of unknown distance, and meet a new person with some color skin tone, and two legs.

[tsig]

Here's more from Pixels master debunker:

"Sue claims that there would be blood found close to a radiator and that subsequently blood was found on the radiator by police. This is offered as “proof for the psychic believers that the psychic has access to the world of the paranormal”. Since it was known Jason was stabbed, it is no surprise that blood would indeed be on the radiator and probably many other places."

This doesn't make any sense. She told them to look for blood near the radiator, they do and find blood. To the skeptic this was an easy thing to deduce because he was stabbed, yet the police didn't have this information before the psychic told them.

Again, if all these things are so easy, why doesn't the skeptic do the same thing? If it's so easy why is any psychic turned away from the police? Any tom, dick or harry should be able to do this according to the skeptic.

This is truly a case of backwards logic.

Thi

I would be more impressed if she didn't know there was a radiator.

[Pixel42]

How about one good one? ;) For example, since I have mentioned Nancy Weber in connection with the Nicholas Muscio murder case, why don't we focus on the TV episode about her
Going through the "evidence" given in the programme point by point and explaining how pathetic it is seems more than enough to debunk the suggestion that the psychic had done anything in any way remarkable, let alone supernatural, to me. But if you want cases where the debunker actually did his own investigation, look at the third link I gave. This case, for example:

http://members.aol.com/garypos/court_tv_williston.html

My search also turned up this link, which makes interesting reading in the light of the previous discussion about the number of detectives who give psychics any credence:

http://www.pac-c.org/police%20&%20psychics.htm

[polomontana]

Frankenstyle,

Your post doesn't make sense. You are stating these things after the fact. It's easy to look at a puzzle after it's been solved and say that's easy.

The thing about the skeptic they can never reproduce all these easy things that the psychic is doing.

How many times have you or any skeptic told the police where a body was located or in what position it will be found before the police have a body?

How many times have you or any skeptic told the police that they see the letter E on a name tag and when they find the killer his name is Edward and he's wearing a name tag?

It's easy to come in after the fact and say that's easy because E is a populer letter which doesn't make any sense accept to the pseudoskeptic.

It's like saying the killer is driving a red car. Red is a popular color but for the psychic to connect a red car to the killer is something a skeptic can't duplicate.

The skeptic will say, anybody can guess that because red is popular.

What's not an easy gues is telling the police the suspect drove a red car,

the police check for any red cars in the area at the time of the murder that looks suspicious,

someone tells them they saw a guy in a red truck that almost hit them while they were crossing the street.

the guy describes the truck and gives a sketch artist a description of the driver,

they put the sketch on TV and they find the killer,

he gets convicted and goes to jail.

To the skeptic, saying a red car is a simple guess. Tio the police officer it's information that helped him with the case.

The skeptic can never do the same thing but in their mind it's simple and obvious after the fact.

[slingblade]

Frankenstyle,

Your post doesn't make sense. You are stating these things after the fact.

and you're not?

[polomontana]

Going through the "evidence" given in the programme point by point and explaining how pathetic it is seems more than enough to debunk the suggestion that the psychic had done anything in any way remarkable, let alone supernatural, to me. But if you want cases where the debunker actually did his own investigation, look at the third link I gave. This case, for example:

http://members.aol.com/garypos/court_tv_williston.html

My search also turned up this link, which makes interesting reading in the light of the previous discussion about the number of detectives who give psychics any credence:

http://www.pac-c.org/police%20&%20psychics.htm

Pixel,

Your batting 1,000 today.

In your link, the article says:

"Overall, the results were mixed. I found it a bit surprising that about 35 percent of those officers surveyed responded that they would use a psychic in a police investigation. I had expected (and hoped) the percentage to be lower."

"One area I found particularly troubling was the high response (41 percent) of police officers who called in the psychic to assist in the investigation. Prior to this survey, I had felt that the psychics volunteering themselves would be number one, followed by the family calling in the psychic."

This guy sounds like he set out to debunk that psychics work with detectives and was surprised when things didn't go his way. Just like Michael Shermer in his failed attempt to debunk Astrology.

Skepticism is truly a religion to the pseudo skeptic.

He then says:

"A few problems do exist regarding the accuracy of this survey. In certain areas, such as rank and department size, I felt there were not enough participants to give an accurate conclusion."

Just like Shermer, when things go wrong there has to be something wrong with the survey he put together. There's something wrong because what he already believed wasn't verified.

[polomontana]

and you're not?

Nope singblade,

I'm not stating anything, the police officers are. The skeptic is the one that's passing their opinion off as evidence.

When a cop says a psychic helped them find the body that's the cop saying it not me. The skeptic will come in and give an opinion after the fact like the cop must have slipped and told the psychic something or the cop is a nitwit and he's trying to retrofit the psychics information becaus he doesn't know the difference.

Like Rodney said earlier, it's pure speculation vs. the police officer's first hand account.

[JoeEllison]

What a joke. Some kid is regularly watching police and psychic shows, and then tries to convince the world that psychics are real cuz he saw it on teh telly.

I know, and the entire argument is based on the assumption that television shows never, ever edit or misrepresent information, and that people never, ever lie or misremember things. Further, the assumption is that psychics can do their magic, and the ONLY people reporting on them are tiny local newspapers and silly TV shows. It seems to also assume a giant conspiracy of suppressive media and scientists, keeping the "truth" of psychic powers out of the mainstream.

All in all, it is a sign of some seriously demented theory to watch a couple of psychic shows on TV, and assume that they are better evidence than the work of scientists and skeptics.

[slingblade]

Like Rodney said earlier, it's pure speculation vs. the police officer's first hand account.

Everything I'm finding says no psychic has ever helped solve any case.

You know what was cute? http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2006/07/medium_guesses_.html

:p

[JoeEllison]

Everything I'm finding says no psychic has ever helped solve any case.

You know what was cute? http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2006/07/medium_guesses_.html

:p

Something interesting from that blog:

No wonder she has a backlog of 200 murder cases to solve.

Obviously, she's not solving 200 murders a year. And, I have serious doubts that 200 police departments are contacting her at any given time. So, how does she have a "backlog of 200 murder cases"? My guess?

LexisNexis.

If Allison Dubois or any of these other ************ "psychics" are making vague guesses on every murder in America, based on their knowledge of the cases and general knowledge about likely killers, we would actually be surprised that they don't have more "hits" than they do. Maybe we should really wonder how all of these so-called psychics seem to be naturally BAD at making predictions!

[polomontana]

I know, and the entire argument is based on the assumption that television shows never, ever edit or misrepresent information, and that people never, ever lie or misremember things. Further, the assumption is that psychics can do their magic, and the ONLY people reporting on them are tiny local newspapers and silly TV shows. It seems to also assume a giant conspiracy of suppressive media and scientists, keeping the "truth" of psychic powers out of the mainstream.

All in all, it is a sign of some seriously demented theory to watch a couple of psychic shows on TV, and assume that they are better evidence than the work of scientists and skeptics.


Sorry Joe your wrong,

The truth of psychic ability comes to me through reason and enlightenment not just a TV show.

I think the police officers on shows like Psychic Detective are just as trustworthy as the police officers on Forensic Files. It's the skeptics claim that the police officers become Forrest Gump when the psychic walks through the door.

The psychics are telling police officers the names of killers before they even have a suspect. I'm not blinded by belief to the point where I can't accept psychic ability as a reasonable explanation for these things when the skeptics explanation is non existent or it's silly because they start with the priori that psychic ability can't or doesn't exist.

I then look at things like near death experiences, ghost sightings and science.

Psychics tell us that they are connecting to a persons energy, does science tell us there's energy beyond our perception in our 3-dimensional reality? Yes. Just look at zero point energy, dark energy and dark matter.

What science tells us is we are blind to these things because of decoherence. Our 3-dimensional enviroment is what we can observe but parts of the wave function we can't observe still exists. We can sense and get a glimpse of these things because we are connected to them through non locality and entanglement. So these things are seen as paranormal or supernatural but they are things that are part of the natural order of things but they our outside of the 3-dimensional cave we occupy.

So some ghost could actually be a person in a parallel universe near ours and for a moment we catch a glimpse of them or sense them or they could be someone who crossed over.

This is the whole crux behind quantum computing and the multiverse. In say 3 universes there are three versions of you. Each version believes they are all that exists because of decoherence. Decoherence gives observers the illusion that they are al that there is.

When enlightenment occurs you begin to see past your local reality.

Tao Te Ching says, when the whole is divided the parts need names.

What we call things is not what they are. We just give them names in order to bring order to our local reality. It's like Plato said, it gets rough when the shadows are attached to the illusion.

[JoeEllison]

Sorry Joe your wrong,

The truth of psychic ability comes to me through reason and enlightenment not just a TV show.

I think the police officers on shows like Psychic Detective are just as trustworthy as the police officers on Forensic Files. It's the skeptics claim that the police officers become Forrest Gump when the psychic walks through the door.Reason and enlightenment make you repeat stupid lies over and over again? Really?

The psychics are telling police officers the names of killers before they even have a suspect. I'm not blinded by belief to the point where I can't accept psychic ability as a reasonable explanation for these things when the skeptics explanation is non existent or it's silly because they start with the priori that psychic ability can't or doesn't exist.Evidence? You have none, besides your silly little TV shows.

I then look at things like near death experiences, ghost sightings and science.Evidence? You don't have any for NDEs or ghosts either.

Psychics tell us that they are connecting to a persons energy, does science tell us there's energy beyond our perception in our 3-dimensional reality? Yes. Just look at zero point energy, dark energy and dark matter.Now you're lying about what science says... what kind of half-baked, idiot "reason and enlightenment" do you subscribe to, that makes you lie and ignore reality constantly?

What science tells us is we are blind to these things because of decoherence. Our 3-dimensional enviroment is what we can observe but parts of the wave function we can't observe still exists. We can sense and get a glimpse of these things because we are connected to them through non locality and entanglement. So these things are seen as paranormal or supernatural but they are things that are part of the natural order of things but they our outside of the 3-dimensional cave we occupy.Another foolish lie about science from you... have you no shame?

So some ghost could actually be a person in a parallel universe near ours and for a moment we catch a glimpse of them or sense them or they could be someone who crossed over.Evidence? Again, you're just making things up, and pretending they are real. Are you lying to us, or do you honestly believe your stupid claims, and you're just lying TO YOURSELF? Get some integrity before criticizing others.

This is the whole crux behind quantum computing and the multiverse. In say 3 universes there are three versions of you. Each version believes they are all that exists because of decoherence. Decoherence gives observers the illusion that they are al that there is.More made-up horsecrap that science only says in your warped imagination.

When enlightenment occurs you begin to see past your local reality.

Tao Te Ching says, when the whole is divided the parts need names.

What we call things is not what they are. We just give them names in order to bring order to our local reality. It's like Plato said, it gets rough when the shadows are attached to the illusion.Awww... you're re-painted your foolishness as a sign of "enlightenment"! How special for you!

[Rodney]

Going through the "evidence" given in the programme point by point and explaining how pathetic it is seems more than enough to debunk the suggestion that the psychic had done anything in any way remarkable, let alone supernatural, to me. But if you want cases where the debunker actually did his own investigation, look at the third link I gave. This case, for example:

http://members.aol.com/garypos/court_tv_williston.html
Okay, I'll give credit to Gary Posner for doing his own investigation, but how does he explain the fact that the case was solved only after Noreen Renier became involved?

My search also turned up this link, which makes interesting reading in the light of the previous discussion about the number of detectives who give psychics any credence:

http://www.pac-c.org/police%20&%20psychics.htm
I certainly agree that this survey makes for interesting reading. For example, Question 3:
Would you personally use a psychic in a police investigation?
Responses: Yes-94 (35.75%); No-165 (62.75%); Maybe-4 (1.5%~).
So more than a third would use a psychic.

And how about Question 9:
Was any of the information given by the psychic useful in solving the investigation?
Responses: Yes-9 (13.5%);**** No-33 (50%); Maybe-24 (36.5%).
So, only half said it was not useful.

And then there's Question 10, which Detective Walstad claims that "Everyone answered YES!":
Would the case have been solved without the assistance of the psychic?
Responses: Yes-33 (51%); No-0 (0%); Unknown-32 (49%).
So, despite the Detective's attempt to distort the facts, the answers were almost evenly split between Yes and Unknown.

In fact, despite the above distortion, Detective Walstad admits that the survey didn't quite come out the way he had hoped:
"One area I found particularly troubling was the high response (41 percent) of police officers who called in the psychic to assist in the investigation. Prior to this survey, I had felt that the psychics volunteering themselves would be number one, followed by the family calling in the psychic. The 13.5 percent response that the psychic had given the police useful information was equally troubling."

Maybe next time, he can have the JREF conduct the survey. ;)

[Locknar]

I think the police officers on shows like Psychic Detective are just as trustworthy as the police officers on Forensic Files. It's the skeptics claim that the police officers become Forrest Gump when the psychic walks through the door.How accurate or credible the police may be is not relevant. The fact these psychics are "performing" in a non-controlled/non-scientific environment is the sole issue. That is to say, there are no protocols, no controls, etc. in any of these demonstrations.


The psychics are telling police officers the names of killers before they even have a suspect.Again, the sole issue at hand is the non-controlled/non-scientific environment.


I then look at things like near death experiences, ghost sightings and science.Totally unrelated to this discussion.


Psychics tell us that they are connecting to a persons energy, does science tell us there's energy beyond our perception in our 3-dimensional reality? Yes. Just look at zero point energy, dark energy and dark matter.Total "woo woo", and unrelated to this discussion.

The bottom line is, psychics can not support their "connecting to a persons energy" claim in a controlled/scientific setting.


What science tells us is we are blind to these things because of decoherence. Our 3-dimensional enviroment is what we can observe but parts of the wave function we can't observe still exists. We can sense and get a glimpse of these things because we are connected to them through non locality and entanglement. So these things are seen as paranormal or supernatural but they are things that are part of the natural order of things but they our outside of the 3-dimensional cave we occupy.Totall "woo woo".

Perhaps you should read a book on something referred to as the "scientific method."

What science tells us is, in order for something to be considered viable/credible it must be: tested, documented, repeatable. To date, no psychic has ever been able to demonstrate their "powers", let alone have it done on a repeatable basis.


So some ghost could actually be a person in a parallel universe near ours and for a moment we catch a glimpse of them or sense them or they could be someone who crossed over.Yeah...I saw that "parallel universe" episode of Star Trek too.


This is the whole crux behind quantum computing and the multiverse. In say 3 universes there are three versions of you. Each version believes they are all that exists because of decoherence. Decoherence gives observers the illusion that they are al that there is.Totally unrelated to the topic at hand.


When enlightenment occurs you begin to see past your local reality.

Tao Te Ching says, when the whole is divided the parts need names.

What we call things is not what they are. We just give them names in order to bring order to our local reality. It's like Plato said, it gets rough when the shadows are attached to the illusion.Again, just more "hand waving" and other mis-direction tactics...all of which are totally unrelated to the topic at hand.

[polomontana]

Here's another case of a Forrest Gump Police Officer:

Police sergeant Richard Keaton of Marin County Police Department homicide division with 30 years of experience stated on a 1998 program prepared by Discovery Communications for the Science of the Impossible” series, “I call in a psychic to investigate (the crime with us). I don’t know how she (the psychic Annette Martin, whose been working with the police since 1971) actually obtains the information. I don’t ask too many questions because I have seen too many successes (using psychics) … ” He continues, “When Annette comes to the (Police) Department we normally sit in a quiet office. I give her a brief outline of what the case is about. Annette concentrates … goes into meditation … and starts sharing verbally with us the things she’s seeing or perceiving … we take her to the crime scene … and would ask her what she can see … about evidence … and she’s able to replay that like a video tape like a movie …” Sergeant Richard Keaton further stated, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful in the future to see a team of psychic cops working with us from the inception of the crime … and maybe shorten down the time element in the apprehension of criminals … that would be wonderful.” According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle the 30 year partnership of the police officer (now retired) and the psychic has led to them setting up in 2001, the Campbell agency Closure4U Investigations, which opened in 2001 and is currently working on finding missing persons and solving cold cases from around the country.

http://www.annette-martin.com

http://www.closure4u.com/

Here's a story in the San Fransisco Chronicle:

It's how San Jose psychic Annette Martin and homicide detective Richard Keaton of Novato met 30 years ago.

The encounter led to a crime-solving partnership that continues today as the Campbell agency Closure4U Investigations, which opened in 2001, in which Keaton, who retired from the Marin County sheriff's department in 1998, and Martin work together to find missing persons and solve cold cases from around the country.

Keaton brings his proven detective skills to the cases. Martin says she has known since she was 7 years old that she has psychic abilities, including a skill known as psychometry, the ability to get psychic readings off the energy from objects by holding them or placing them to her head, and she uses them to help solve the cases. Keaton said that Martin has worked on more than 150 homicide or missing person's cases around the country since 1975.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/09/PNGV0EII1M1.DTL