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: http://www.skepdic.com/esp.html : : The Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com) is a wonderful site which provides arguments against unvalidated claims. It's a good thing to read when you need to return to earth. :) Here's an excerpt from one entry... : : <b>Source:http://www.skepdic.com/refuge/bunk.html</b> : : March 6, 2001. I wasted an hour tonight watching Larry King Live, whose guests included three so-called psychics who claim they get messages from spirits of the dead. The most obnoxious guest was Sylvia Browne, who claimed she solved the N.Y. Trade Center bombing and many other crimes. She's made the same claims several times on the Montel Williams show. Paul Kurtz of CSICOP, also on the "panel" (as Larry referred to his guests), noted that whenever Browne's claims as a psychic detective have been checked out they don't check out. No mention was made, however, of the Brill's Content investigation of Browne: : : Brill's Content has examined ten recent Montel Williams programs that highlighted Browne's work as a psychic detective (as opposed to her ideas about "the afterlife," for example), spanning 35 cases. In 21, the details were too vague to be verified. Of the remaining 14, law-enforcement officials or family members involved in the investigations say that Browne had played no useful role. : : "These guys don't solve cases, and the media consistently gets it wrong," says Michael Corn, an investigative producer for Inside Edition who produced a story last May debunking psychic detectives. Moreover, the FBI and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children maintain that to their knowledge, psychic detectives have never helped solve a single missing-person case. : : "Zero. They go on TV and I see how things go and what they claim but no, zero," says FBI agent Chris Whitcomb. "They may be remarkable in other ways, but the FBI does not use them." : : Of course, there is no way to test her other claims because they are about spirits or are too vague. For example, one caller wanted some info on her parents' parents. Her parents were both adopted. Browne said she was getting the message "B-U-R-G-E-S-S" and Memphis. Nobody could use such data to test anything meaningful. : : My favorite line of the night came from James Van Praagh, who does not take criticism well. Skeptics, including rabbi Shmuley Boteach who joined Kurtz and former Time magazine chief science writer Leon Jaroff, were out to destroy people, said Van Praagh, while psychics were bringing good things to life. Well, skeptics are certainly out to destroy frauds like those on Larry King's show, and with good reason. The rabbi--friend of and co-author with Uri Geller--noted that the information the psychics were claiming to get from spirits was trivial, banal and demeaning. Van Praagh disagreed because such "messages" prove there is an afterlife, which he takes to be a good thing. To tell the truth, I wouldn't mind an afterlife if it did not include characters like Van Praagh or Silvia Browne, but it would be hell to have to spend eternity in the presence of such uninspiring charlatans. : : The least obnoxious of the charlatans was John Edward, which is not to say that he was not obnoxious. He has reduced the debate between true believers and skeptics to one of choosing your belief system. He doesn't care what criticism you throw at him because he doesn't respond to criticism, which, he believes, is just part of your belief system, which isn't his or his fans' belief system. He says he isn't interested in proving his powers but he agreed to be tested by a scientist in Arizona who, as Jaroff put it, believes in the tooth fairy (clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona in Tucson, director of something called Human Energy Systems Laboratory). None would agree to be tested by James Randi because, as Browne put it, it would be a set up. (She claims she was set up by Randi before who tested her psychic powers some ten years ago. She said the subjects whose minds she was supposed to read were "Germanic" and didn't speak English. Why should that matter to a psychic? Anyway, Randi has posted a reply, denying that Browne was set up and claiming she lied about the Germans. According to Randi, "Only one member of that audience of 140 persons was German, and [Browne] spent a full one minute and seven seconds rattling off guesses for him, then found out he was German, only after he told [her].") : : I don't see how these three stooges (Browne, Van Praagh and Edward) could be tested, since they all claimed that just because the message they get from the spirit doesn't make sense doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. The subject might figure it out later or it might be a message from a different spirit! There is no way in hell anyone could prove these messages didn't come from somebody in heaven! : : Other than a bit of self-promotion and name-calling, the program provided nothing but a minimum of entertainment and even less enlightenment. For good measure, Larry brought in Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI agent and profiler, who stumbled his way around to say that psychics have never helped solve a case but he wouldn't rule out using them because you should pursue every avenue yada yada yada. Van Zandt said he'd use psychics even though they're useless: : : ....if you exhaust law enforcement investigation, if you exhaust psychological profiling, if the victim's family or the police say, "I would like to try a psychic," I would say, anything that can help, and anything that would help a victim's family, I would not stand in the way. : : Van Zandt was the chief negotiator in the Waco fiasco. He even admitted that he had someone say the word 'Beelzebub' to Koresh over the phone because some psychic advised him to do so. : : King also brought in Dale Graff, a retired physicist who worked with the military on Stargate, a program devoted to the investigation of remote viewing. : : The ostensible reason for having this show was to discuss Jaroff's recent article in Time magazine, "Talking to the Dead," an article inspired by James Randi's exposé of Edward in a recent issue of Skeptic magazine. Like Randi and Shermer, Jaroff has no kind words for frauds. The article mentions that Inside Edition is planning an exposé of Edward by James Randi to be aired later this week. There is no mention of such on the Randi homepage. (Inside Edition's website is a major waste of bandwidth requiring Flash 4.) : : In my opinion, the rabbi came off as being the most rational and thoughtful. Jaroff and Kurtz seemed cynical, the former calling the psychics names and the latter asking for the television equivalent of a strip search of his unscientific opponents. (There is something unbecoming about a person asking a psychic to be reasonable and scientific. Would Kurtz be baffled if the psychics required him to be spiritual in order to engage them in dialogue?) Browne and Van Praagh came off as bitter and arrogant, though the latter provided the best hoot of the evening when he claimed that Michael Shermer said on Oprah that Van Praagh has a computer hooked up to every home in America. Van Zandt waffled whilst Graff waxed poetic about the powers of remote viewing and forces out there that are unknown to modern physics. I'm surprised he didn't have to leave early to catch his UFO home. Larry remained calm throughout and to his credit did not appear to be favoring one side or the other. (Not everyone agrees with my assessment.) He gave the skeptics every opportunity to respond to the true believers. But it became clear about thirty seconds into the program that nothing very interesting or important was going to happen in the next hour. If the psychics truly are either suffering from delusions or are frauds, as I believe is most probably the case, how else could they respond to challenges from skeptics except with bitterness (Browne and Van Praagh) or indifference (Edward)? Any hope of a meaningful dialogue is as remote as the likelihood that the FBI knows who amongst them is spying for the enemy. : : The rabbi simply noted that the psychics make pointless observation after pointless observation: if these psychics are truly getting messages from the dead then life truly is pointless because these messages prove life after death is for the terminally silly.

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