Norwegian magazine sings praises to alleged psychic

[Safe-Keeper]

The media has done it again. In an article an amazing eight pages long, the usually serious Norwegian A-Magasinet, distributed once a week with the major Oslo newspaper Aftenposten, sings the praises of alleged psychic Anna Elisabeth Westerlund, who was so "successful" in the eyes of her contemporaries that she gave professionals permission to extract from her body her brain, which was then preserved and examined to find the area or areas which provided her with psychic powers.

The article which details her life and the research on her, vaguely lists several 'hits' of dubious nature. For example, she is tested by a professor asked her to handle a piece of glass containing tissue from a dead body. She saw lots of blood, bright hair, a rock, and a young girl on a pasture. The tissue was indeed from a girl, with bright hair, who had been killed on a pasture field. This one vague hit was somehow significant to this professor, even though deaths frequently involve lots of blood ("lots of", being of course, qualitive), many Norwegians have bright hair, and many locales of thinly populated Norway has pasture fields somewhere near them, not to mention rocks. The only thing that surprised me when I read this was that the girl was actually killed on, not near, a pasture. But again, using this as proof of her abilities is falling neatly into the trap of Confirmation Bias.

The article also states that her method was obscure and subject to :drumroll: interpretation.

The magazine has a section featuring reactions to the issues raised in previous issues, and I made sure to send an e-mail over. Hopefully they'll print it, along with e-mails they'll receive, hopefully, from other skeptics:).

I'll upload some pictures from the article as soon as I can. I'll see if Aftenposten eventually uploads the article to their site, too. ETA: Here (http://www.aftenposten.no/amagasinet/) is the site of the magazine part of the paper, with only the front cover of the magazine (below) available for public viewing.

ETA: Uploaded two photographies I took of the magazine. First one shows the cover, with the caption "this is the brain of psychic Elisabeth Westerlund". The second picture shows a photo of Westerlund with a caption reading "she 'saw' more than most", and "Anna Elisabeth Westerlund was clairvoyant [or a psychic, not sure which term to use]. After her death scientists looked for the supernatural abilities in her brain".

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

You know what I find telling about psychics and people who claim to possess powers of the paranormal in general? What a short shelf life they seem to have.

None of them are famous past their life times. They claim to do such extraordinary things and yet they are never remembered past their initial fame and public interest in them. You'd think someone with the abilities Sylvia Browne and John Edward says they have would be famous for years and years.

The only person who seems to have lasting fame ofthe kind you'd expect from a psychic is Aleister Crowley. Maybe the Fox sisters. Perhaps the story of the Cottingley fairies.

[Safe-Keeper]

Oh, but you see, that's just because psychic abilities are hushed down (yes, I honestly heard at least one person say this just today).

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

You could make a very good case that the exact opposite is true. Whenever the media reports on a story about the paranormal, it's almost always either a neutral "just the facts" approach or favorable and uncritical.

I've found this with psychic detectives and faith healers and others- the approach almost always seems to be "He's the real deal" or "Ok, let's just report what she claims she says she does with no commentary one way or another. Maybe throw in a quote from a skeptic or an example of her being wrong for balance."

It's not just an American thing, either. As a long-time Lexis Nexis user, I can attest that this is equally true of the Canadian, British, Irish, Aussie and New Zealand press.

Maybe there just is no story for reporters if there is no paranormal phenomena to at least consider. Maybe if you say "A woman with paralysis is going to see a faith healer in Brazil and she hopes it will cure her- but actually, he's a fraud", there is no story.

[Safe-Keeper]

Maybe there just is no story for reporters if there is no paranormal phenomena to at least consider. Maybe if you say "A woman with paralysis is going to see a faith healer in Brazil and she hopes it will cure her- but actually, he's a fraud", there is no story. I theorize that t's just as much that the media don't consider New Age/alternative stuff to be all that important, so they might as well just tell people what they want to hear. Randi discusses all this at length in this highly recommended YT interview, in which he talks about a hoax he orchestrated in Australia for just the purpose of showing people how unskeptical the media is:

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