Shakyamunison
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
Looking at you.
Psychics are wrong?
I came across this article on LiveScience.com, and thought it might make an interesting discussion. Do you believe in Psychic? I do not.
quote: Bad Journalism Encourages Psychic Detectives
By Benjamin Radford, LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist
posted: 29 November 2007 09:38 am ET
Share this story
Ada Wasson and Mary Ellen Walters vanished.
The elderly pair left their Warren County, Ohio, retirement home on April 19 for a day of shopping at an outlet mall. They never arrived. Days turned into weeks and months, with no clue about their fate. Their car was missing, their credit cards had not been used, and no one had reported seeing them.
Police were puzzled, and their families were desperate. The case was widely publicized, attracting attention, sympathy—and psychics.
While the news media often report on a psychic's introduction into missing persons cases, reporters very rarely follow up on the psychics. The result is that the public hears about psychics being involved, but doesn't hear about whether or not psychic information actually recovered the missing person or solved the case.
(An early news report on Wasson and Walters was headlined "Psychic Aids In Search For Missing Women," despite the fact that the women had not been found, and thus there was no way to know whether the psychic had in fact helped in the search. Giving wild guesses and incorrect information to police hardly "aids" in the search.)
Digging deeper
News of the women's recent recovery was reported in dozens of newspapers, but only one enterprising journalist dug a little deeper and interviewed police about the information they received from dozens of self-proclaimed psychics. The result was an excellent article headlined "Psychic Tips Were Off On Missing Women Case," by Deb Silverman, a reporter for WCPO in Cincinnati.
According to Silverman, police were contacted by about 30 psychics over the course of the six-month investigation. They sent maps, audiotapes, letters, dream journals, and e-mails. One supposed psychic said that the numbers 42 and 27 were significant and would help police find the missing women. Another said the pair would be found about five miles from where they were last seen; another said searchers should look in the Ohio River; still another said the women were within 300 feet of a rural, white church somewhere. Thirty different "psychics" gave 30 different answers.
The women were found, not by psychics, nor by police.
The skeletal remains of Wasson and Walters were spotted Oct. 14 by a hunter and his son in a secluded field near Interstate 71 in Kentucky. One of the women was in the car, the other was nearby, apparently having tried in vain to reach the highway. There were no signs of foul play; the pair had missed their exit to the mall, and tried to turn around but got lost on the country roads before driving into a dry creek bed where their car got stuck. Both were in poor health and neither had a cell phone.
The significant numbers? 30 and 40
All the information that all 30 psychics gave was wrong. The numbers, the dreams and visions, the river, the white churches—every detail was not only completely wrong but wasted time and resources. Police spent about 40 work hours sorting through the information.
The psychics are largely to blame, but journalists bear some responsibility. If more journalists covering missing persons cases followed up on their reporting and publicized psychics' consistent failures, perhaps fewer would contact police with their visions and hunches, wasting police time and falsely raising the hopes of the missing person's family.
http://www.livescience.com/strangen...journalism.html
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Nov 29th, 2007 03:52 PM
tsilamini
Junior Member
Gender: Unspecified Location:
lol
make a thread saying that the easter bunny doesn't exist either
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yes, a million times yes
Nov 29th, 2007 03:54 PM
OB1-adobe
Senior Member
Gender: Male Location: littleton
My friend saw a psychic once. Back 1999. God that lady was sooooooooooooooooooo dead wrong on soooooooooooo many things
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Nov 29th, 2007 03:54 PM
tsilamini
Junior Member
Gender: Unspecified Location:
quote: (post ) Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Well, I'm waiting for Deb to get here.
fair enough
countdown to the first mention of Quantum Physics is on....
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yes, a million times yes
Nov 29th, 2007 03:57 PM
Selphie
you teasing like you do
Gender: Unspecified Location: The Land of Bernie Sanders
Well, I used to be very into Tarot cards a couple years ago, and a lot of things I tested with them turned out to be quite accurate.
Except for when one kid asked me if he would get a "head" this weekend.
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riding high on love's true bluish light
Nov 29th, 2007 03:58 PM
tsilamini
Junior Member
Gender: Unspecified Location:
The human brain suffers from something known as conformation bias
We seek patters naturally, and when something appears to work as a predictor of something else, we remember that. Once we have made the association between two things, we constantly remember further hits and dismiss or rationalize misses.
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yes, a million times yes
Nov 29th, 2007 04:11 PM
leonheartmm
Senior Member
Gender: Female Location:
overwhelmingly large majority of psychics are wrong/false/frauds/deluded. but very rarely, u might come across sum1 real.
Nov 29th, 2007 04:32 PM
debbiejo
Dreamer
Gender: Unspecified Location:
quote: (post ) Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Well, I'm waiting for Deb to get here. Well, don't believe everything you read........
Nov 29th, 2007 04:39 PM
Shakyamunison
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
Looking at you.
quote: (post ) Originally posted by debbiejo
Well, don't believe everything you read........
... that psychics write.
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Nov 29th, 2007 04:59 PM
LatinoStallion
Perfection
Gender: Male Location: Paradise
Do you mean psychics as people who claim to predict the future, or people who claim thier minds can connect somehow to anothers ?
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Nov 29th, 2007 05:30 PM
Zeal Ex Nihilo
Restricted
Gender: Male Location:
Account Restricted
I do not believe in Psychic. I believe in Grammar.
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Ask me about my "obvious and unpleasant agenda of hatred."
Nov 29th, 2007 05:47 PM
tsilamini
Junior Member
Gender: Unspecified Location:
quote: (post ) Originally posted by SpearofDestiny
Do you mean psychics as people who claim to predict the future, or people who claim thier minds can connect somehow to anothers ?
which type do you think are credible?
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yes, a million times yes
Nov 29th, 2007 05:50 PM
Shakyamunison
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
Looking at you.
quote: (post ) Originally posted by SpearofDestiny
Do you mean psychics as people who claim to predict the future, or people who claim thier minds can connect somehow to anothers ?
What do you mean "connect somehow to anothers"?
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Nov 29th, 2007 05:58 PM
debbiejo
Dreamer
Gender: Unspecified Location:
like connecting...
Nov 29th, 2007 06:06 PM
Shakyamunison
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
Looking at you.
quote: (post ) Originally posted by debbiejo
like connecting...
What?
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Nov 29th, 2007 06:15 PM
debbiejo
Dreamer
Gender: Unspecified Location:
energies???
Nov 29th, 2007 06:48 PM
Shakyamunison
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
Looking at you.
quote: (post ) Originally posted by debbiejo
energies???
What energies?
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Nov 29th, 2007 06:50 PM
LatinoStallion
Perfection
Gender: Male Location: Paradise
There are some people who claim to know your future by reading your palm. I don't beleive in that.
There are others who claim they can sense your aura, in some way, and know what you are feeling even from a distance. Like some kind of intuition which expands outward. I am open to the possibility of such a thing.
I've taken courses on dreams, and there's something called "Dreaming in Tandem" where two people have the same exact dream. Usually one where they were both in it, and the same events happened. This can only happen, supposedly, in people who are very close...who have almost no secrets between eachother, and who trust eachother 100%.
It's interesting. I am open to what the human mind can do.
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Nov 29th, 2007 06:50 PM
chithappens
Senior Member
Gender: Unspecified Location: United States
One psychic told me I would be wearing glasses one day. Then she poured acid in my eyes...
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"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." - Thomas Gray
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Nov 29th, 2007 06:52 PM
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