I don't think MSNBC doing a statistical study on whether psychics have a more accurate guessing ability than an average person should be considered a TV stunt. It's still a study. Just because it was done by a news corporation that broadcasts its results doesn't make it "When Psychics Attack!" or something

I don't think that what someone finds as a lack of proof then automatically proves the opposite is true. That's failed logic. That's like saying because you can't scientifically prove that God exists, that it's a FACT that he doesn't. That's retarded. I'm agnostic and I would never say it's a FACT either way. When something needs more proof, it simply needs to be investigated more.

it certainly doesn't make it "the Oxford Medical Revue" either :)
News corporations make money by sensationalising things.. thats how it works. The telling thing is that he'll do a promotional "study" on MSNBC, or testing at the sympathetic "Soul Science research centre" but not a real scientific organisation.. or shock horror a skeptical one.. If I had psychic powers the first thing i would do would be to crush Randi and humiliate him into giving me the prize.. but then.. if i thought i had "psychic" powers i'd be either delusional or a fraud who would lose my income by being proved a charlatan by him.

no your strawman is "retarded". the existance of god CANNOT be proven or disproven so the lack of proof doesn't make it a fact.. john edward's "ability" *CAN* be proven or disproven so the telling lack of evidence, and the reams of data on the techniques he uses and similar tv charlatans that are fake and gullible and vulnerable audiences being the only ones that believe in him does make it a fact that he's a charlatan.

Actually the tone of the MSNBC special was pretty negative towards psychics. The study they did was a small part of it, and it was like "John Edward did score over 80% accuracy with his statements, compared to a 40% accuracy from other subjects". and then they went on. There was nothing sensational about it, and it was one of the only positive things for a psychic in the special.

You're assuming he uses the reams of techniques used by similar people. There is no proof of it. Give me the proof and I will agree that it's a fact he is a charlatan. Find me a planted audience member. Something...some proof. Until then, nothing is a fact.

If he won Randi's prize i'd be singing his praises. til then he sucker as much cash as he feels like from willing and complicit wallets.

I hate to break this to you, but the fact that psychics guess better than your average joe was not in question before this "study" was conducted.

As has been pointed out previously in this thread, there are a number of ways one can go about becoming very skilled at scoring the sort of hits psychics do. There are books that teach it.

A "psychic" being better at making guesses about people than Average Joe is about as remarkable as someone who has practiced violin for 5 years being a better violin player than Average Joe.

I suppose you'll tell me its because the fucking violin player is channeling the spirit of Paganini... :1orglaugh

THEN WHY DOESN'T HE TAKE JAMES RANDI'S MILLION?

This thing is going round and round in goddamn circles.

When this bloke makes James Randi look like a fool I'll believe he has genuine ability but not before, because all these other 'tests' are NOT scientific.

Show me a book that teaches psychics how to cold read someone who they can't hear or see, and I'll agree that the test proves nothing.

sorry i can point out innacurracies all day long to you, which you will promptly say is hearsay, or exaggeration of events that happened - did you know he was caught out on tv? he had a "feeling" of a dead relative named x from someone in the room - and it turned out to be the cameraman's relative - thing is he'd spoken to the cameraman before the show and he'd let theat info slip.. now theres a bunch of "blooper" stuff like this documented.. but you don't want to believe it so you'll say it's lies... you see.. im afraid that when i say i saw elvis's alien baby.. the burden of proof is on me... just like i don't have to proove edwards is a fake.. it's up to you to proove it to us.

Hehe...yes it is kind of going in circles. I don't know why he doesn't take Randi's million. Maybe he's a fraud. Maybe not. Maybe he's afraid he'll choke and mess something up, and the next thing he know he's failed the test and then no one watches his show any more and he's out many more millions than the 1 that he would have gotten out of Randi. He admits that he messes things up sometimes. Why risk a MULTI million dollar career to get a crack at 1 million? I don't know, I'm just spitting thoughts out...this could be his reasoning, I have no idea. Someone should ask him.

this is going in circles... time to get some work done.

Another "psychic" fails the James Randi test.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/j...199773,00.html

There hasn't been a test. Alrighty, lets go through this one more time.. just for fun.. and we'll make it really simple....

1. Edwards claims to be able to speak to the dead.

2. There are several simple tests which could validate his claim ot be able to communicate with the dead beyond any shadow of doubt.

3. Edwards refuses to take these tests.

4. Edwards instead participates in studies of the blindingly obvious which tell us nothing about whether his abilities come from being able to speak with the dead.

5. This gives his apologists, such as yourself, the ability to claim Edwards has been in "studies" when in fact his real claim.. the fact he says he can talk to the dead.. has never been tested at all.

6. Thus, Edwards provides a way for his apologists to claim scientific validity while at the same time avoiding any real test of his ability to communicate directly with the deceased.

Simple :)

Duuuuuude! That was not a blooper or him being caught! The producers included that in the show because they found it interesting that the cameraman got a reading by accident. Of course he could have talked to the camera man beforehand. If he only exclusively read his camera crew, that would obviously be a sign that he's a fraud. Try again :Graucho

The only place I ever heard about his double-blind test was on the MSNBC special. I have never heard him go around talking about it. He doesn't tout it as an accomplishment or anything. I just happened to catch it.

no, on the show it wasn't a blooper - later on though the camera man admitted he'd had a private conversation with Edwards earlier and he probably have given him family info.. he doesn't ONLY have to read cameramen to be a fraud - that he used information he was given eariler and pretended it was a reading shows that thats the way he operates.

Well now you're giving me andecdotal evidence :)

Where can I see the interview with the cameraman? Sounds interesting.

I guess my question as a professional skeptic (advanced degree in philosophy) is what would be the difference between a "real" John Edward show and one in which it was all scripted and arranged beforehand?

The problem with this show (just like the ones where David Copperfield moves an island or makes a jet liner disappear) is that while everyone on the screen is telling you over and over and over that it's all real and amazing, you aren't there, and gullible you are assuming that what you are seeing is real and true.

Even so, as has been pointed out, for a guy who supposedly has a pipeline to the other realm, he asks a lot more questions than he answers, and when he guesses wrong, he never says, "Oops, I fucked up!" he says, "We'll come back to that later," or later on when something seems to fit, he fits it in (how handy!).

It's just a slick sideshow performance, and you should be ashamed of yourself for falling for it.

"Be that as it may, on Dateline Edward was actually caught in an attempt to pass off previously gained knowledge as spirit revelation. During the session he said of the spirits, "They're telling me to acknowledge Anthony," and when the cameraman signaled that was his name, Edward seemed surprised, asking "That's you? Really?" He further queried: "Had you not seen Dad before he passed? Had you either been away or been distanced?" Later, playing the taped segment for me, Dateline reporter John Hockenberry challenged me with Edward's apparent hit: "He got Anthony. That's pretty good." I agreed but added, "We've seen mediums who mill about before sessions and greet people and chat with them and pick up things."
Indeed, it turned out that that is just what Edward had done. Hours before the group reading, Tony had been the cameraman on another Edward shoot (recording him at his hobby, ballroom dancing). Significantly, the two men had chatted and Edward had obtained useful bits of information that he afterward pretended had come from the spirits. In a follow-up interview Hockenberry revealed the fact and grilled an evasive Edward:


HOCKENBERRY: So were you aware that his dad had died before you did his reading?
Mr. EDWARD: I think he-I think earlier in the-in the day, he had said something.

HOCKENBERRY: It makes me feel like, you know, that that's fairly significant. I mean, you knew that he had a dead relative and you knew it was the dad.

Mr. EDWARD: OK.

HOCKENBERRY: So that's not some energy coming through, that's something you knew going in. You knew his name was Tony and you knew that his dad had died and you knew that he was in the room, right? That gets you . . .

Mr. EDWARD: That's a whole lot of thinking you got me doing, then. Like I said, I react to what's coming through, what I see, hear and feel. I interpret what I'm seeing hearing and feeling, and I define it. He raised his hand, it made sense for him. Great.

HOCKENBERRY: But a cynic would look at that and go, 'Hey,' you know, 'He knows it's the cameraman, he knows it's DATELINE. You know, wouldn't that be impressive if he can get the cameraman to cry?'

Mr. EDWARD: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Not at all.


But try to weasel out of it as he might, Edward had obviously been caught cheating: pretending that information he had gleaned earlier had just been revealed by spirits and feigning surprise that it applied to Tony the cameraman. (And that occurred long before Time had suggested that an Inside Edition program-February 27, 2001-was probably "the first nationally televised show to take a look at the Edward phenomenon." That honor instead goes to Dateline NBC.) "

Maybe you should watch the show. They do recaps and things and he very often says things like "while she couldn't figure out what the ___ reference meant, she did know what I was talking about when I said ___ "

He talks in his first book quite a bit about how he can mess up readings. I don't understand how so many of you guys make these statements about how he doesn't do things just because you haven't seen it yet.

Thanks for posting that. It's interesting, and the best thing so far I've seen to dispute the hundreds of readings that I believe seemed accurate. Does one scew up, or perhaps misleading reading prove that all of his other readings are false? Does that mean he had skillfully had conversations before his shows and massive seminars with the thousands upon thousands of people he has read? Maybe, but I find that unlikely. Something about picturing a room full of 2000 people and John doing a 4 hour seminar with many, many readings, and that he's skillfully talked to all of them beforehand individually...I don't know man.

I have seen it, but since it's on television, there's no reason to think it's any different from any other made for TV show, with a script, actors, etc.

if John Edwards was realy psychic...than maybe he should have told his webmaster that his website certificate had expired...cuz when I took the call last week...I laughed my ass off...

I'm thinking..."damn...if Mr. Edwards was for 'real'...his webmaster wouldn't be calling in yelling "our certificate has expired and this is such a high volume website..." and 'blah blah blah'..."

It's difficult to take your statement seriously when you apparently can't spell ...

It's psychic ... not physic ... (among other errors)

I rest my case ... LOL

Interesting fact:

The vast majority of psychic customers (about 80 percent) are women ...

Men tend to be much more skeptical ...

Whoa dude - 3 pages you and you are still saying this naive stuff LOL

psychics are all bullshit! It's cold reading etc.

You probably think David Blaine's magic is real too...

Pyshcics, magic, tarot cards are all bullshit - just ways to get money from people - or entertainment.

The funniest thing is to see those crack whore looking bitches sitting in some fucking dump all day waiting for some naive loser to walk in and fork over $20 to have some sunshine blown up his ass by some old hag with an IQ of 20. Yup, these people have natural physcic gifts - they KNOW they are broke ass fake gypsy looking dough-heads.

Until someone close to you passes over and weird shit starts happening that you can't explain, it is hard to conceive and believe in the afterlife.

My father died in 87 and all I can say is my mother, brother, sister and myself, and several relatives all had separate multiple bizarre "afterlife" type incidents with my dad happen for about 6 months, and after we all got together and compared notes, we couldn't find any other explaination for any of them, except that there was some sort of contact going on with him.

As you get older and more people you have deep soul type bonds with in your life start to die is when you become a believer. Trust me, there is something going on in the afterlife, but it obviously is not something to be easily understood.

I did a lot of research on this subject after my dad's death, and asked other friends who had gone through a strong bond type of loss and most everyone had some kind of contact experience they couldn't explain.

My take on it all is that when you die, your physical body is history. The energy force that is your soul doesn't die, but basically transforms and moves on into some other higher frequency dimension not visible to us on the earthly plane. I base that on Einsteins principal concept that energy itself can not be destroyed only transformed. There is some kind of energy force within each of us, that's a given. So it would make sense that the human body is just a temporary house so to speak for this energy during each lifetime.

Seems too when people die suddenly there are a lot more afterlife events that their relatives here experience. Its like the soul doesn't easily realize it no longer has that body housing it.

The thing with the "light" might be just some central universal lifeforce that we all basically are tied and hubbed into. There's been a lot of scientific research recently though that says this is just a trick of the mind, easing itself through the process of death with a massive brain release of endorphins as the body reacts to everything shutting down. Who knows, that's the irony of life. We'll all find out one day what really happens when you die.

Hopefully, there is continuity in some form or another and we do get to hook up with souls we've bonded to in prior lives and are able to connect to those we love and care for still in this dimension.

One more note on psychics, I agree all the 900 number psychics are for the most part a bunch of bs. But I think there are some genuine people who simple have the ability to tune in to other people's thought frequencies and can pickup on that.

Can't really poo poo the whole realm of psychic abilities since even the CIA and former KGB intelligence services both operated clandescent programs utilizing individuals that could remote scan locations to gather intel. These readers supposedly could tap their minds into an ultra high level of thought dimension that enabled them to literally mentally pierce into any building where top secret information was and then view things in these locations in realtime.

What exactly is "naive" about me saying I find it annoying when you say John doesn't talk about his negative hits, and then I tell you that he does talk about them. Do you even read what I post any more, or just make a canned response? It makes no sense.

"John never talks about his guesses that don't work"

"Actually he does quite a bit. Try watching the show or reading his book"

"HAHAHAH what a naive thing to say!!"

Huh?