On TV right now! Psychic Secrets Revealed!

The channel available in my area is "MY TV," though I have no idea what other affiliates might be airing it.

It's in the style of those "Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed," but it's focused entirely on "psychic" powers. The first two tricks that I saw were the ol' "predicted number in sealed envelope" and "audience participation telekinesis." Both elegantly debunked in very plain and simple terms.

Given the preponderance of fawning "We Love The Supernatural" programming usually on the air, I'm delighted to see this rare expose of frauds and charlatans!

:-)

To hear about this show, since its was not and probably won't be avilaiable to me here....

Take off your tinfoil hat, and your reception might improve.


I'll try to post some thoughts tonight.

And you know all that thimerosol and mercury and heavy metals like aluminum, well it just tends to cut down on my receptivity....
:rofl:

I was truly quite surprised at the straightforwardness of it. I watched from very near the beginning to the end, and I didn't hear a single disclaimer on behalf of "real" psychics, and several times the VO announcer referred to "frauds" or said "that's how the con is run."

If I counted correctly, they had five actors posing as psychics, four men and a woman.

The woman was a spiritual "reader" and speaker-with-the-dead. Her segments were shown in a small occultish parlor with a series of unsuspecting customers. Her first demonstration was the most damning; she gave exactly the same reading to four different people, and afterward all of them expressed their amazement that she could read them so accurately and specifically. It was all general stuff like "you're facing uncertain financial times," or "you sometimes feel that you have a psychic side, too," and they all fell for it completely. The camera even flashed to a prepared script that the "medium" had obviously memorized, with a bunch of generic platitudes designed to appeal to the biggest crowd.

Her second segment involved communicating with departed loved ones, for which she employed an assistant who hid beneath the table. As the medium spoke with the victim, the assistant scribbled meaningful notes--gleaned from the conversation--on a small chalkboard, which he then covertly passed to the medium. When the time was right, she revealead the chalkboard in such a way as to make it seem as though the writing had appeared there magically, and the one victim was nearly moved to tears.

The first man was a mentalist who did a trick involving three people, each of whom wrote a number onto a single pad out of his sight. A fourth person added these numbers together and then opened a sealed envelope that miraculously contained the exact sum. The trick? The man had already written three numbers onto the pad, and through some basic sleight of hand presented these to the fourth person. Since he'd already calculated the sum, it was naturally easy to have the same number written and concealed beforehand.

There were others, among them a John Edward-style medum who spoke with the dearly departed, gathering his information with the help of audience plants and eavesdroppers who monitored conversations while the crowd was waiting in line for the show.

Good stuff all around. Entirely clear and without sensationalism. I am truly surprised that this was aired, since it's so pointedly contrary to just about everything else on tv about the supernatural.

If I have one complaint, it's that the explanations seemed too simple and easy, so that a victim of woo would likely say "I would never fall for that." But as the announcer stated repeatedly, the oldest and simplest tricks are still the best.


If they show this program in your area, make a point of watching it. It was a refreshing and well-constructed break from the otherwise omnipresent woo.

I've probably mentioned this before, but I once attended a live show in which a professional illusionist demonstrated and explained a number of "psychic" techniques, including cold reading. Pretty impressive (I knew about cold reading, but nothing prepares you for witnessing it performed by an expert). Most of the audience accepted his explanations, but there were a vocal few who insisted that he must have paranormal powers, and to claim otherwise he must be either deluded or dishonest! It's not easy to give up a cherished fantasy.

This story doesn't deal with phony psychics, but it has always stuck with me. I remember it whenever I think I'm too smart to fall for something.

Sometimes I think we are at our dumbest when we're saying that.

Anyway, this story ran as an article in the Los Angeles TIMES some years ago. It was written by an L.A. TIMES reporter after his first visit to New York City.

Walking down a street in Manhattan, he saw a small crowd on the sidewalk and went over to check it out. Somebody in the crowd was yelling "I won! I won!" And flashing a handful of money.

The L.A. reporter watched the person win again, and decided that the guy holding the deck of cards must be a moron with too much money. The game was so simple anyone could win it.

After a few minutes, the reporter walked away $400 poorer.

He had, of course, walked into a game of Three-Card Monte. One of the oldest tourist ripoffs in NYC, and a scam probably as old as the one involving Manhattan and $24 worth of beads.

You'd think an L.A. TIMES reporter would be well-educated, but I guess his education didn't cover the word "shill."

Anyway, I always try to remember that any of us can become a sucker. Usually when we least expect it, while we are congratuating ourselves on being smarter than all the other suckers.

I also thought about this when I read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. Diamond has spent a lot of time in the New Guinea jungles. He observed that when backwoods New Guineans visit the towns, they seem stupid and the town dwellers treat them that way. But if you're with them in the jungle and need food and shelter, suddenly they are not so stupid at all.

That con used to be a common sight on London's streets, but I haven't seen one for years now. Maybe the police cracked down, or maybe too many people wised up.

Novelist Michael Prescott reviewed this show when it originally aired in 2003.

He was irked that the show lacked balance. It didn't cover any REAL psychics!

Advice from Prescott: Just because some money is counterfeit, we can’t assume that all of it is.

No, but if I visit the Psykiks 'R Us Bank nine times and they give me counterfeit money, I don't need to try a tenth time.

Prescott has a simple explanation for why "real" psychics sometimes get caught cheating. The Weird Powers, after all, can't be summoned up on demand for us cranky skeptics. So under public pressure to perform, the poor fragile psychics sometimes resort to trickery.

In other words, it's all the fault of the non-believers. As usual.

This is the end of his article: After all, there’s one thing worse than being taken in by a fake psychic. It’s being in the presence of a genuine paranormal phenomenon – and thinking it’s a trick.

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/psychic.htm

If the name sounds familiar, Prescott got into a running Web-battle with James Randi a few years ago:

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/FlimFlam.htm

A similar documentary aired on FOX--of all places--back in 1998: The World's Greatest Hoaxes

Concentrated on Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs and alien autopsies etc. (Somehow they missed Judaism, Xianity, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, $cientology et. al. ...)

It has also been challenged by kooks all over the web, especially its treatment of the Patterson-Gimlin "female Bigfoot" video from 1967.

In reviewing the show, one woo wrote that the video quality was poor because Patterson "only had his old 8-mm home movie camera."

Actually, Patterson had a state-of-the-art (for 1967) 16-mm movie camera. How do we know that? Because he rented the camera, failed to return it, and the rental company issued an arrest warrant for him.

:rofl:

This line here..".Just because some money is counterfeit, we can’t assume that all of it is.." thats a favorite woo argument here on DU about psychic phenomena. In fact I wrote a long rant about this kind of psuedoscientific crap in GD and I got people "claiming" they had PEER REVIEWED data PROVING people were psychic. Well their data was crap from stuff like the Journal of Parapsychology (ooh of course thats on the same page as the jouranl Neurology!:eyes: ) where the most SUCCESSFUL participants were correct at best 20% of the time. Its statistically significant and greater than random chance. Well whoop-de-do..So a successful psychic is someone who is wrong 80% of the time? Would you want someone trying to find a missing person knowing the odds are likely that they won't be correct about anything? Assuming of course they actually HAVE this ability in the first place and aren't outright frauds or delusional. Sheesh. And most of these people are the ones that think Big Pharma "makes up shit" when I can tell you, a drug thats only effective on less than 20% of the population is not likely to go anywhere.

Pseudoscience of whatever stripe is given a pass if it's right or it seems to work one time in 100. But actual medicine and actual science are ridiculed unless they work 100% of the time. The least failure or ambiguity in "allopathic" medicine is taken as proof that the whole discipline is a sham, while the least apparent success in "homeopathic" "medicine" is held up as proof that that entire industry is sound, honorable, and valid.

And when you point out this glaring double standard, you're likely to hear claims of "different logic" or "western-style thinking."

I hadn't actually realized that but you are right on the money. There is certainly a double standard. I see medical doctors routinely bashed for making mistakes (who doesn't) and being human and not knowing everything and if even ONE doctor is proven to be a fraud, thats proof of the flawed industry. But if you post about the dangers of say...chelation therapy being used to "cure" autistics and point out the lethal potential of it, the excuse is "well THAT person just doesn't know how to do it!"
That pretty much sums up mr "I HAVE THOUSANDS OF STUDIES" arguments very well actually.
And yet, the other argument made when you point this out is the accusation that scientists are arrogant and know-it-alls when its actually the WOOS that behave that way--classic psychological projection.
Woo arguments can be a VERY interesting study in psychology.