Primetime Thursday tonight

[VicDaring]

Well, what other night would it be?

Anyway...I thought there was another thread about this show, but I'll be danged if I can find it, so sorry...here's another one.

In the segment on "psychic detectives" they're apparently touching on a case in my backyard, involving a guy named Hugo Selinski who had a bunch of bodies buried in his yard and a missing college student and possible connections.

I hadn't previously heard about any psychics in this case, but I'm certainly not surprised. It's gotten a lot of local media, and even some national play a few months ago when Hugo actually broke out of a county jail, in 2003, by tying bedsheets together and climbing down the wall.

What's funny is that there's also a segment in tonight's show about dowsing. If they wanted to, they could have used Hugo on that one too. When they were digging bones out of Hugo's yard, some yokel cop called a dowser and the TV people got wind reported it. The District Atty. was not a happy man. :D

[Dragonrock]

The commercials for it say "If you're a skeptic, you HAVE to watch!" which I translate to mean "The closest this show will come to a skeptical point of view is when you yell at the screen telling us what idiots we are."

I want to see it, but I'm certain that it'll be filled with the normal woo woo excuses.

[Linda]

I did start a thread on this in Forum Community, but I just found out from ABC News that they've changed their schedule and the dowsing segment with Randi will not air tonight. They'll call me back to tell me when it will be rescheduled.

[Dragonrock]

I just read what you had posted in the other thread and was actually about it issue an apology to NBC, but now I take back my taking back.

[Brown]

It was nice of ABC to call.

As of this writing, the ABC News web site still lists dowsing as a topic for tonight's show.

Other for tonight's show topics tentatively were: "Police Turn to a Psychic Detective to Help Them Find a Missing College Student" and "A Young Boy's Parents Believe He Is a Reincarnated World War II Fighter Pilot." Perhaps because of breaking news, all three stories (which seem to be connected by belief in the paranormal) might be bumped....

[Dragonrock]

I have decide to go ahead and apologize to NBC, but not to ABC, I will then take my well thumbed copy of Cat in the Hat and go sit in the corner mumbling to myself...

[Hexxenhammer]

It's on now with a story on the past life of a kid who they think was a WWII pilot. It must be true, no boy is interested in planes or war stuff. Never happens.

[Hexxenhammer]

And the second story was a psychic detective. What a load. Shermer got about 1 minute of air.

Where's John Stossel when you need him?

[VicDaring]

At work today, I told a co-worker that the "psychic detective" would start talking about, "a road, near water, and there are railroad tracks."

She started turning tarot cards and what did she blurt out? You guessed it.

The sad part is that she then dragged the TV crew and the lead detective, who should be working this - or some other - case, around the countryside looking at bridges and stuff.

[CurtC]

Yep, they dragged out the camera crew and found water, rocks, and railroad tracks. Nothing else.

Then they did flashbacks to when this same psychic lady helped in two previous cases. One was that she described a building with smokestacks about 40 miles away from a town, having to do with body parts of a victim. Sure enough, she took them to an abandoned building 38 miles away with smokestacks, they searched, and found the body parts (including a head).

The other case was of a missing teenager. She apparently told the father that his body was in a certain field, but it was covered with snow. The father went back when the snow melted and found the body. This and the previous story make me wonder what they left out.

The appearances by Michael Shermer and Paul Kurtz were about four seconds each! (Hexxenhammer - you said 1 minute - were you watching a different program?) However, Paul got two appearances, so that gave him about eight seconds to counter the other 30 minutes of tripe.

Really, they had Shermer and Kurtz on there just to make it look like they considered other points of view, but the whole show was advocating strongly that these are genuinely psychic events. Shermer and Kurtz just looked like Scrooges.

[CurtC]

You can read transcripts at http://abcnews.go.com/Sections/Primetime/

[Ceinwyn]

Shermer got about three seconds.

Yeah. Well done, ABC.

edit to add: I watched the whole thing, and I was a bit mystified by the little kid. But for the rest of it, jeez. Whenever someone pulls out tarot cards and claims to speak for dead people, no. Just, no.

[Skeptical Greg]

I'ts disgusting..

Why can't these media idiots ask why; If this works at all, why is anyone lost; why are there any unsolved crimes? :rolleyes:

[Brown]

Mr. Randi and Linda, take note.

We have a Pigasus media nominee for 2004!

[CurtC]

About the kid - there wasn't enough information given to do a proper debunking. I wish they had given Kurtz or Shermer access to the kid's info so that they could formulate a proper response, but it was apparent that he just had a cursory familiarity with it.

Even so, I can think of a few objections that would make this seem less like a ghost story.

First is the fact that although there were several things the kid said that were "hits," he said these over the course of two or three years, so the data is cherry-picked. What things did he say that didn't pan out? Kids say an awful lot of stuff in a day. Also, the age he was when he said it is the age that kids have an active imagination, and aren't really able to tell what's real and what's not. My seven year old, when he was three, had an imaginary friend named "Gokey." My son who is now three has an imaginary grandmother that he visits and tells us about. She has fast cars, a giant house, and whatever the rest of us are discussing, she has one. Even a penis.

Second, it's likely that there were an amazing number of coincidences in this case. Let's assume that it's so amazing that it's a one-in-a-million chance that it could happen by chance alone. Well, there are nearly 300 million people in the US alone, so I would expect hundreds of comparable stories to come up with only chance occurrences. And the ones that do come up would likely bubble up to the top and make it on network TV.

Diogenes, Shermer did, in his four seconds, ask why there are any missing people, for example Jimmy Hoffa. This was immediately countered by the psychic lady saying that she just calls 'em like she sees 'em.

[PygmyPlaidGiraffe]

Originally posted by buki
Shermer got about three seconds.

Yeah. Well done, ABC.

edit to add: I watched the whole thing, and I was a bit mystified by the little kid. But for the rest of it, jeez. Whenever someone pulls out tarot cards and claims to speak for dead people, no. Just, no.


unfortunately I couldn't find a station that carrried the show, but it was showcased on entertainment tonight and I saw a 3 minute sound bite when I channel surfed trying to find it.


THose people were amazed by the young child that was a reincarnation of a WWII pilot; we have to assume that the kid was not coached by anyone, had not watched Tora!Tora! or Pearl Harbour Movies, he mentioned there was a Jack on an aircraft carrier (wow! Jack, how many Jacks in the flight detail on an ACC could there posibly be). We have to take it on eyewitness testimony that the child named the aircraft Carrier accurately (was it close ? spot on? did his name for a big boat on the water start with an "n", therefore that was considered a hit?)

Truth be known even a young child can pick up on some terms or concepts from watching movies or hearing adults casually talk about historical events. This was not all that impressive. The only thing that was impressive was the language development of the young boy, if we can take the parent's testimony as accurate about what he said. (maybe they paraphrased, and the story has grown over time as they reconstruct it, adding more details).

[CurtC]

New data -

When I watched the show last night, I made a mental note of a newspaper headline that they showed, and I just googled that. The headline is "psychic on target in discovery". You can google it yourself. All the hits seem to be from the psychic lady's press release, not a story written by reporters.

In the case where she described the location where the teenager's body would be found, it turns out that his car was found abandoned nearby at the time he went missing. So her "hit" consisted of knowing that he was a teenage boy, his car was found abandoned by corn fields, and she guessed that he went into the fields and killed himself. Of course, the other psychics guessed that he ran away and was living down South somewhere. So this is somehow evidence for psychic phenomena! One psychic out of six makes a guess of something that was likely to have happened!

The other case she "solved," where she identified a place where body parts would be found, makes me wonder too. I'd like to see it confirmed that she actuall made these predictions before the parts were found.

[Hexxenhammer]

Yeah, about the kid. Not as impressive as it seems. Here's the chronology as far as I can see it. Rmember, this starts when he's 2, and continues until he is 6.

Kid likes planes, especially wwII planes. Can name them.

Big deal. When I was 2 I could spout off the latin and greek names of every dinosaur there was.

Has nightmares about being trapped in a plane on fire.

Understandable, I had dinosaur nightmares.

While reading a book about planes with his dad, he points to a Corsair and says, "That was my plane."

Drew pictures of planes fighting, signing them "James 3" the kids name is James.

Somewhere in here, the mom's mother suggests maybe the kid is remembering past lives. So they get a woman who helps people remember past lives to help them investigate.

The kid gets two inexplicable hits that need more explaining. The kid says he flew off a boat, presumably an aircraft carrier. When asked the name of the boat he says "Nakoma" when asked the name of someone else on the boat, he says "John Larson". I don't know how spaced out those questions were. And have these parents never noticed how when you keep questioning a little kid, they keep making up answers as long as they can? They, and this "past life investigator" just kept encouraging this.

While paging through another book on WWII, the kid points at Iwo Jima and says that's where he got shot down. Turns out there was only 1 (and I'd like confirmation of this) Corsair pilot who was shot down there, a James Something Jr. Now they have an explanation of the "James 3" he keeps writing on his pictures, since "3rd" would come after "Jr." John Larson turns out to be a real person who knew this James Jr.

What boggled me was how the parents kept saying they didn't influcence any of this. Despite the fact they kept buying him plane toys, they were reading him plane books, they took him to airshows (there was home movie footage), every picture showed him in googles or by a plane, and they asked him totally leading questions and encouraged this fantasy at every turn. It was always the adults attaching meaning to the things the kid said and then asking him new questions based on the things that were "hits". How many other things the kid said didn't match up over the course of 4 years? I'm guessing a lot.

[Hexxenhammer]

Originally posted by CurtC
New data -

When I watched the show last night, I made a mental note of a newspaper headline that they showed, and I just googled that. The headline is "psychic on target in discovery". You can google it yourself. All the hits seem to be from the psychic lady's press release, not a story written by reporters.

In the case where she described the location where the teenager's body would be found, it turns out that his car was found abandoned nearby at the time he went missing. So her "hit" consisted of knowing that he was a teenage boy, his car was found abandoned by corn fields, and she guessed that he went into the fields and killed himself. Of course, the other psychics guessed that he ran away and was living down South somewhere. So this is somehow evidence for psychic phenomena! One psychic out of six makes a guess of something that was likely to have happened!

The other case she "solved," where she identified a place where body parts would be found, makes me wonder too. I'd like to see it confirmed that she actuall made these predictions before the parts were found. Nice.

There was no mention of the car in the show last night, but I got the feeling that the police had already been searching the field when the dad talked to the psychic. So I'd guess footage from the search was on the news showing the area, possibly showing the wire fence she cited in her "reading". And even if she only knew it was a corn field, how many have fences along the edge? Tons!

[patnray]

In the psychic detective segment, AFTER the police gave her the names of two suspects she told them details of their (aledged) involvement. One wonders why they didn't give her names of non-suspects as a control, without telling her which were suspects and which were not (asuming the suspects names were not already public knowledge)... And she said the body parts were in the incinerators, but ABC reported they were found "near" the abandoned plant, without defining "near".

As for the young boy, they didn't mention that is is not uncommon for very young children to develop an obsesssion with a particular subject (planes, cats, vacuum cleaners...) and absorb a great deal of information about their chosen subject. It was an interesting coincidence that I read an article on the subject in yesterday's newspaper... Nor did they mention false memories or how easily they can be implanted in children at such a suggestible age. They mentioned, briefly, some kind of therapist, but I didn't catch the details...

[CurtC]

I've now been searching for information about the other "hit" she had. This involved the murder of a wife and daughter by Rafael Tello in California. What I've found so far is that the torsos were found first, then hikers found other body parts later, including a skull. The Primetime show last night gave the impression that police, as a result of the psychic information, went looking near this industrial building 40 miles away and found the parts. The newspaper reports just mention that they were found by hikers. Also, the newspaper articles have no mention of psychic help.

At first, I thought that the Primetime reporters were just being too credulous, and not doing their job of fact-checking. It now appears that they intentionally omit data, and alter the way the story is told, to support their case for psychic phenomena.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by CurtC
It now appears that they intentionally omit data, and alter the way the story is told, to support their case for psychic phenomena.

I suggest they are not trying to support anything other than their ratings, and they know what sells...;)

Too bad the boring truth doesn't seem to attract as much attention..

[VicDaring]

Yeeshk!

Watching it you could tell it was bad, but...yeeshk.

Time for some letters/e-mails to ABC?


Oh, by the way, here's a link to Carla Baron's Homepage (http://home.att.net/~carla.baron/mainpage.html). She's got a guest book and everything.;)

[Kopji]

If a 'psychic' is assigned to handle a police case like this one, does it mean that other psychics are sort of 'hands off' as a professional courtesy?

This would be a very tangible benefit of getting a psychic involved early on - filtering out other psychics.

Just a thought.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by CurtC
About the kid - there wasn't enough information given to do a proper debunking. I wish they had given Kurtz or Shermer access to the kid's info so that they could formulate a proper response, but it was apparent that he just had a cursory familiarity with it.

Even so, I can think of a few objections that would make this seem less like a ghost story.

First is the fact that although there were several things the kid said that were "hits," he said these over the course of two or three years, so the data is cherry-picked. What things did he say that didn't pan out? Kids say an awful lot of stuff in a day. Also, the age he was when he said it is the age that kids have an active imagination, and aren't really able to tell what's real and what's not. My seven year old, when he was three, had an imaginary friend named "Gokey." My son who is now three has an imaginary grandmother that he visits and tells us about. She has fast cars, a giant house, and whatever the rest of us are discussing, she has one. Even a penis.

Second, it's likely that there were an amazing number of coincidences in this case. Let's assume that it's so amazing that it's a one-in-a-million chance that it could happen by chance alone. Well, there are nearly 300 million people in the US alone, so I would expect hundreds of comparable stories to come up with only chance occurrences. And the ones that do come up would likely bubble up to the top and make it on network TV.



Or there parents are simply lying, or have selective memories etc.

What I want to hear about is your outrageous assertion that this is the best evidence there is for reincarnation. I trust you can back this up?? Or are you just talking through your @rse as skepdics normally do??

[CurtC]

Interesting Ian wrote:
What I want to hear about is your outrageous assertion that this is the best evidence there is for reincarnation.Well, it's about the best that I've seen. And the reporters who tried to convince the public of reincarnation must have thought it among the best to have featured it in the show. After all, this wasn't a news report that was just supposed to present the boy's case, it was a show made to convince skeptics, according to their advertisements.

You linked to the page http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/publications.cfm#MedHypotharticle for better cases. All I see there are abstracts of articles, with no details available online. Just stuff like this: "Children who, when they learn to speak express memories of previous lives, frequently engage in play that is unusual and has no model or other obvious stimulus in their family. The play seems to repeat the vocation or an avocation of the person whose life the child seems to remember. Sometimes the play reenacts the cause of death, such as drowning, of that person."

Is this supposed to be the evidence? This idea is such an obvious case of petito principii that I'm shocked that anyone could seriously consider that evidence. If there's better evidence, can you post it here?

[VicDaring]

I feel so stupid.

Our friends at Rapture Ready (http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?t=141564) figured it out immediately.

Demonic spirits!

:bricks:

Duh.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by CurtC
[B]Well, it's about the best that I've seen.



Then I suggest you open your eyes.

Go do your homework and less of the ill-informed comments.




And the reporters who tried to convince the public of reincarnation must have thought it among the best to have featured it in the show.



Who gives a toss about what they thought, or what you think they thought. I just ain't interested.



After all, this wasn't a news report that was just supposed to present the boy's case, it was a show made to convince skeptics, according to their advertisements.



A crappy show, made in the USA, regarding the paranormal supposed to convince pseudoskeptics?? They've got to be kidding right?? It would do nothing to convince even me for God's sake! Not that I've seen the programme, but I can just imagine the sort of thing. In the reincarnation case where is the independent verification that the boy did indeed say those things?


You linked to the page http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/publications.cfm#MedHypotharticle for better cases. All I see there are abstracts of articles, with no details available online.


The references are all there. What's wrong with them??




Just stuff like this: "Children who, when they learn to speak express memories of previous lives, frequently engage in play that is unusual and has no model or other obvious stimulus in their family. The play seems to repeat the vocation or an avocation of the person whose life the child seems to remember. Sometimes the play reenacts the cause of death, such as drowning, of that person."

Is this supposed to be the evidence?



No, of course that's not the evidence. How on earth can that be the frigging evidence?? :eek: Get hold of the original papers and books if you're interested.



This idea is such an obvious case of petito principii that I'm shocked that anyone could seriously consider that evidence. If there's better evidence, can you post it here?

No, I don't have. My purpose was merely to refute your assertion that the anecdote you're talking about constitutes the best evidence for reincarnation. From a scientific perspective, it constitutes no evidence whatsoever. Go look at the properly conducted research. Maybe you'll find it wanting. That's fine. But at least you'll have an idea of the evidence out there.