A spirited debate

I haven't posted anything about the David Thompson controversy in quite some time, and I really don't want to get drawn into the endless (and largely pointless) debate all over again. But ...

Despite my reservations about reopening  a can of ectoplasmic worms, I do think this editorial by Simon Forsyth on The Psychic Times Web site is worth linking to. In it, Forsyth compares an audio recording of an allegedly materialized Alan Crossley with a video of the actual Crossley, showing clearly that there is no similarity between the two voices. He also proffers an interesting challenge to Victor Zammit and David Thompson, backed up by a promise to pay a thousand pounds to charity if the challenge can be met.

As I say, I am weary of this argument, but this article - especially the thousand-pound challenge - seemed newsworthy enough to justify a link. It will be even more newsworthy if Mr. Thompson and his investigators take up the challenge. I hope they will.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Comments

A new article on The Psychic Times? Wow, that's something we haven't seen in a while.

Despite the challengers discusison of the scientific method, this challenge is not very scientific. Without first proving the method can work for some mediums it is not valid to propose it as a way to validate any particular medium. As a challenge, it should have a control involving a medium who has reliably given a positive result. It should also involve readings for more than one person/spirit pair so that the spirits can be assigned to the people getting the reading in by an independent judge providing a blind.

The text of the challenge makes a lot of statements about why Victor's evidence is not convincing. However a successful result of the challenge will also not prove what Victor is said to be failing to prove.

If a medium answers the questions correctly how does that prove the correct spirit is being materialized or even that any spirit is actually materialized? It could be that one spirit told another the answers and that the other spirit is materializing. It might be mental mediumship. It could be the psychic power of the medium. Maybe some third spirit can look up the answers in some sort of akashic records, maybe a spirit guide was around the challenger while he went through life and knows the answers to the questions.

The fact is, there is really no way to absolutely prove identity through mediumship mental, or physical, or trance. The best you can do is to get specialized knowledge, and personality characteristics like mannerisms, voculary, accent, idioms etc. (For practical purposes this will convince many people of identity, but strictly, it is not absolute proof.) This challenge only seeks specialized knowledge.

Given our current understanding of the capabilities of spirits, there is really no way to end disagreement about what is happening in a physical seance. You can prove something paranormal is happening but you can't prove what it is.

Materialized physical characteristics like appearance and facial features do not prove identity for the same reason that a photograph does not prove the piece of paper is the thing it is a picture of. There is no evidence that ectoplasmic materialization is anything more than a moving sculpture of ectoplasm.

anon

[Simon Forsyth]

Let me address a couple of the points made above:

Firstly, this is not meant to be a 'scientific' challenge. Such an excercise would require much planning and protocol - something I'm not inclined or particularly qualified to do.

It is a simple request for EVIDENCE - something which is entirely lacking in this particular case.

"If a medium answers the questions correctly how does that prove the correct spirit is being materialized or even that any spirit is actually materialized?"

The "medium" should not answer anything; it is the alleged communicator who is being asked to provide the answers.

By providing the correct answers to the questions we will be presented with EVIDENCE for Zammit's claims. This is all I am asking for.

The interpretation of such evidence in regards to its origin; be it Super PSI or whatever, is immaterial. That is a seperate debate entirely and parapsychologists have been musing over alternative origins of evidential communication for decades.

My Challenge is a simple and straight forward request for evidence to support (not prove) Victor Zammit's contention that the deceased spirit of Alan Crossley is communicating via David Thompson's mediumship.

I have no doubt that my £1000 pounds will still be in my bank account this time next year. Either Victor will condemn The Challenge out of hand with his usual heavy handed rhetoric or Thompson will veto the idea by way of some convenient excuse.

But either way, by their failure to accept The Challenge they will be exposing their refusal/inability to back up their claims with hard evidence.

And as such, The Challenge would have proven its worth.

[Marcel Cairo]

F is for fraud and F is the grade that Zammit and Thompson get in all of the work they do.

Why not name other mediums and include them in the challenge, and also open the challenge to any medium at all. Then see if any medium will accept it and agree to publicize the results no matter what they are. Would if be fair to criticize David Thompson for rejecting a challenge that no other living medium would take?

But, in my opinion, a better use of the money would be to lease a thermal imaging (not and infrared (ir) camera but a thermal imaging camera) and get some video of a physical medium doing materializations who is trusted. Then if materializations can be photographed in this way the next step would be to approach David Thompson and see if he would let his seances be photographed using a similar camera.

Maybe Marcel Cairo will be willing to take the challenge for free?

What proof do 99% of all mediums have that they are not frauds? They have clients who say the medium provided evidence of the indentity of a spirit they knew.

Has anyone who has been to a David Thompson seance said they thought he was a fraud? Doesn't he have clients who believe the evidence he provided?

I think there is a big difference in questioning what is happening in a physical seances and saying out right someone is a fraud. If a medium made such an accusation he would have to offer evidence that he himself is not a fraud or else some people might consider him a hypcrite.

[william]

“F is for fraud and F is the grade that Zammit and Thompson get in all of the work they do.”

You do not have the evidence that these materializations are fraud unless you have information you are not revealing on this blog anymore than I have evidence that these materializations are valid.

Claiming fraud without evidence to support that claim is as perilous as claming validity without evidence. The ultra skeptics and the religious fundamentalist are the worst offenders of this condition. Oh ok most politicians also fit this pattern. Yes even many scientists and; well ok it is a human condition.

I will be the first to admit with all the technology we have today like passive night vision goggles not being utilized is suspicious but I refuse to claim fraud without the evidence to support that claim. Follow the data and not our emotions or a personal belief is very very difficult to do. Yes even for William.

I have read many times that it is very hard for a medium to accept another medium’s abilities if it is different than their own. Marcel I suspect there are a lot of people that would or do call you a fraud based on their personal beliefs and emotions without any evidence to back up their statements.

Time will reveal David Thompson’s mediumship as fraud or partial fraud or valid or whatever. I mean a pet dog was materialized how could this be fraud. I have this vision in my head of David Thompson or someone crawling around on the floor pretending to be a dog and barking for the owner of this beloved pet. Who would sink low enough to do that? Ok dry humor again with a pun.

Yes yes I know they could have managed to sneak a dog into the room but I prefer my visual.

I would like to know more about The Psychic Times and its financial arrangements with the links to psychics on its web site.

What evidence have those psychics provided of their accuracy?

Why should someone criticized in the challenge offered by the psychic times help it by participating in a publicity stunt, especially if accepting that challenge will help that organization to make money?

I point this out not to make insinuations against the Psychic Times but to explain why some psychics might be reluctant to participate in the challenge.

[Michael Prescott]

No one has addressed the fact that the voice of the "materialized" Crossley does not sound at all like the voice of the actual, living man. Doesn't the fact that Mr. Zammit and his associates have accepted this voice as the real thing cast some doubt on their analytical abilities?

I don't understand why some people bend over backwards giving Mr. Thompson the benefit of the doubt, when the test conditions are so poor and the evidence is so weak. Perhaps they feel that skepticism must always be combatted, even in cases where it's justified?

[Simon Forsyth]

Excellent point Michael. The onus on Victor Zammit is to provide EVIDENCE for his claims that the voice is Alan Crossley's. He has provided NO evidence whatsoever, so the only logical and reasoned position for an objective observer to take is one of sceptism. All I'm saying is 'Show Me Some Evidence'. How unreasonable is that?

The fact of the matter is that there is more evidence to demonstrate that it is NOT Alan Crossley than there is to substantiate that it is.

[Simon Forsyth]

"Why not name other mediums and include them in the challenge, and also open the challenge to any medium at all."

I'm not James Randi. I leave that sort of thing to him. And no other medium is claiming to have the materialised spirit of one of my closest friends in their seance room!

"Would if be fair to criticize David Thompson for rejecting a challenge that no other living medium would take?"

Again - no other medium is claiming Alan Crossley is speaking in their seance room, so other mediums have nothing to do with this. If Thompson refuses to accept The Challenge, which is purely designed to give him the opportunity to provide EVIDENCE for his claims, then he deserves all the criticism he gets.

A medium refusing to cooperate in providing evidence for a communicator's authenticity has no credibility.

I didn't say anything to support Victor's assertions, or in support of the validity of Davids mediumship.

Neither have I combatted skepticism.

I don't see stating what seem to be facts as bending over backwards to combat skepticism. If I think the challenge is flawed and unfair isn't it reasonable to explain why I feel that way? How is that bending over backwards to combat skepticism? I have not suggested any hypothesis to explain away the critcisms although I could easily do that. I haven't done that because I didn't want to be an apologist (bending over backwards) for Victor and David

I don't really have an opinion on the validity of the mediumship in question beyond an understanding of what I think the facts are. People who go to the seances (including someone I've communicated with personally who said people were packed so closely together it is impossible that the medium got up and walked around.) seem to unanimously think it's genuine. The critics haven't been there. This tends to make me think it could be real. I've seen the list of criticsims on that spiritualist discussion group and some do seem like valid concerns of people seeking the truth. That list makes me think it could be fake. Then I see Victor's video where he says it's real and that that makes me think it could be real. So I really honestly don't know what to think about it.

However I do think the psychic times challenge is fundamentally flawed for reasons given in previous comments and unfairly directed to Victor and David instead of all mediums and that the money would be better spent working with friendly mediums in a positive way to get evidence of the paranormal or the afterlife rather than being used as a means of confrontation. The confrontational nature of it to me has "publicity stunt" written all over it.

Randi's challenge is targeted to any psychic, Victor's is open to any skeptic. Why is Victor called upon publicly to prove something while other mediums (some of whom may be paying for advertising on psychic times, and others making explicit accusations of fraud in the comments here) are not called upon to prove anything?

Maybe some people can't imagine that reasonable people may disagree without seeing it as combat. Some such people may like being confrontational but don't like being confronted themselves.

The dissimilarity of the voices is certainly a valid question, but when you have conflicting evidence sometimes you don't know what to think. I can't explain all the facts and I don't know how to interpret all the evidence. Something is not understood that is certain.

I don't see Victor's or David's non-cooperation with skeptics as proving anything. Why should they cooperate with people who have been critical of them?

I read "the psychic mafia" which I learned about on this blog. One thing I did learn from that book which is not discussed among skeptics is that frauds can be detected by ordinary people. They stay in business by repeat customers who are cronic believers but "normal" people may be unconvinced. They also use their mediumship to extract excessive sums of money from their victims. This does not seem to be David's way of working, he doesn't give readings to the same people over and over, his spirits don't ask for money, and as I've said I don't know of anyone who has been to his seances who were unconvinced.

In summary, my comments are not intended to support of any medium, I have tried to give facts that explain what I think is wrong with the challenge and in this comment I also tried to explain that there is conflicting evidence and the charges of fraud do not explain all the facts just as assertions of genuineness leave other questions unanswered. I'm not trying to prove or disprove any medium is genuine, I'm trying to say that it would be better to work postitively to obtiain evidence for the afterlife in a constructive manner.

[Simon Forsyth]

"However I do think the psychic times challenge is fundamentally flawed for reasons given in previous comments..."

The reasons are not logical or relevant.

"... and unfairly directed to Victor and David instead of all mediums..."

So, you are stating it is "unfair" to ask Victor Zammit for evidence to support HIS claim?!

And the basis for your "unfair" accusation is that my challenge is ONLY directed at Zammit/Thompson and not "all mediums"?!

What have other mediums got to do with this? Zammit/Thompson are the ONLY people claiming that Alan Crossley is communicating in THEIR seance. Therefore I am asking THEM - and ONLY them - for evidence to support their contention.

If you think that is unfair then good luck to you! :-)

Regardless of who the medium is or what their claims are the requirements of the trial should be reasonable and should rule out fraud by the experimenter.

If the challenge is based on one person/spirit pair and the answers to the questions are known only to that one person how can the medium be insured that the answers provided by the person are correct? The medium is suspected of fraud but why is the challenger immune from such suspicion?

Even if the answers provided by the challenger are correct what proof is there that the sprit will know the answers? What proof is there that the spirit will remember the answers even if the spirit knew them at one point?

In order to avoid fraud by the sitter/challenger there should be multiple people getting readings, the questions should be verifiable by an independent judge and the medium should read the person blind, without knowing who the person is, which prevents the medium from investigating the person and obtaining the information that way.

The level set for success is also misleading. The challenge says three out of five correct answeres will win the prize. A naive person might think the standard is 3/5 or .6, just over .5 which would be chance? Right? Nonsense!

For the sake of demonstration, suppose there are five questions with five possible answers. There 5x5x5x5x5 or 3125 possible combinations of answers.
The odds of getting at least three right by chance is the total number of combinations with three or more right answers. The number of combinations with five right is 1. The number of combinations of answers with four right is:
0++++
+0+++
++0++
+++0+
++++0

with 0 being one of four possible wrong answers. Therefore there are 5x4=20 possible ways to get one wrong answer. The number of ways to get two wrong answers (three right answers is):
questions 1 and 2 wrong 00+++ (with 4*4 = 16 combinations for 00)
1 and 3 wrong
14
15
23
24
25
34
35
45
10 combinations and then 16 of each of these since two wrong answers will give 4*4 possible ways to get the two wrong answers
or 10 * 16 = 160

So the way to get at three or more right answers is 160+20+1 or 181,
181/3125 = .0579

The odds of getting three out of five right by chance is .0579.
that is less than six times in 100 trials.

If someone were to get these results in one trial it would be extroradinary.

Getting even two right answers would only occur by chance in about 2 trials in ten. I don't know what the questions will be. Maybe there are many more than five possible answers; answers that involve locations, names etc. can be very large. It might be that even answering two questions correctly by chance is vanishingly small. I'm not an expert in statistics so I hope I have done the calculations correctly, but I think the principle is right: to get a statistically significant result depends on the questions and even getting a low score in the challenge can be almost impossible to do by chance.

It is also relevant to this discussion to consider that spirits have reported that it can be difficult to remember their earth life when they come down to the earth plane to communicate. This is another reason I think it would be better to focus efforts on understanding phenomena and building our knowledge rather than on challenges based on unrealistic assumptions about poorly understood phenomena.

Michael Tymn, who has been a guest blogger here, has written on his own blog about some of the difficulities that spirits have in communicating with the earth plane:

http://metgat.gaia.com/blog/2008/4/dead_physicist_explains_communication_difficulties

"Sometimes I lose some memory of things from coming here," Sir William told her in a February 8, 1927 sitting. "I know it in my own state but not here." He went on to liken it to having a dream in the physical state and to explain that when he goes back to the spirit world after a sitting he realizes that he did not get everything through that he wanted to. He further explained that when we die, the subconscious and the conscious join up, making a complete mind that knows and remembers everything. However, when he has to lower his vibration to communicate with her, he leaves the subconscious behind and must rely on what was his conscious memory. He said the subconscious is housed within the etheric body."

This same phenomena has been described by other spirits through other mediums:

The Road To Immortality by FWH Myers through Geraldine Cummins
http://www.trans4mind.com/spiritual/cummins/cummins1.html

One law prevails, however, your soul is only aware of those beings who possess bodies vibrating with the same intensity--that is, unless he puts himself into a state analogous to that strange sleep known as hypnosis. When thus conditioned he may go back, temporarily descend a rung of the ladder and make mental contact with a soul who inhabits a denser shape. He can even descend into Hades, enter its fog and come into touch with human beings. He is thereby frequently caught in the dream of the earth's personality; and it is as if the memory of his experiences on a higher plane were temporarily anaesthetised away. So he is incapable of conveying to earth--save with rare exceptions--any interesting or remarkable information. Caught in the cocoon of earth memories, which frequently are not his own, he can merely speak of trivial material affairs. It is as if he were a drugged bee in a hive, a bee sated with honey.

...

Sometimes, when we are really thoroughly submerged in this dream atmosphere, we can get into touch not alone with one subconscious mind but with the subconscious mind of many thousands. It is like a wide sea stretching out before us. Much of it is scarcely apprehended. We can only tap it here and there, but, with the assistance of the guide we may draw out of this sea of mind the particular association of ideas that corresponds with a happening, a name, or a place in our earth life. We recognise it and use it as evidence of identity when we are communicating.

[Michael Prescott]

>spirits have reported that it can be difficult to remember their earth life

Okay ... but if the allegedly materialized spirits can't answer personal questions and don't even sound like their earthly selves, then what is the point of summoning them in the first place?

>Okay ... but if the allegedly materialized spirits can't answer personal questions and don't even sound like their earthly selves, then what is the point of summoning them in the first place?

For myself, I don't think materialization is of much use. The best teachings come from trance mediumship (ie silver birch) and automatic writing (ie william stanton moses).

Such teaching does not involve proving identity which I think is impossible.

For other people, I think physical mediumship helps them to believe.

I'm not trying to apologise for any particular medium but I really think there are a lot of flaws in the challenge and I would not advise any medium to accept it.

[Marcel Cairo]

William,

I have spoken to people who have attended a David Thompson seance in Australia. That is all I will say about that.

Basically it comes down to this. You don't declare, as Zammit has, that you have once and for all proven that the afterlife exists, and then prevent any reasonable exploration of such claim under rigorous scientific control.

Thompson and Zammit will die legends in their own misguided minds, and their story will live on only because it's virtually impossible to erase anything from the internet.

[Marcel Cairo]

Oh, no matter how many cards short of a full deck Victor is, you can always count on him for a good laugh.

Here is his thinly, veiled response to Simon Forsyth as posted on Victor's own website.

"A COWARD ATTACKS VICTOR: in my next Friday Report I'll be rebutting that guy who thinks he's a smartass by launching an attack against Victor. Typical of this coward, an uninformed defeatist and a know-nothing he does not have the testes, the courage, the honesty and integrity to send me the 'dirty' article. Coward! That shows colossal cowardice pushed to its exreme! Next Friday chum!"

Simon, Michael and I are happy to welcome you to our "Know-nothing Defeatists Coward's Club." BTW, we are having a meeting next Friday. Please make sure to bring your night vision goggles; we're planning on watching DT pull a puppy from his ass.

:-)

[Michael Prescott]

>we're planning on watching DT pull a puppy from his ass.

That made me laugh out loud.

It's remarkable how Victor's tirades all sound the same, isn't it? He just uses the same words over and over - "coward," "defeatist," "testes," "dirty." He also refers to himself in the third person, which I find odd.

Anyway, exactly how is it cowardly to put up a thousand pounds in an online challenge? Simon is laying his money on the line. Seems pretty bold to me.

[Simon Forsyth]

LOL!

Victor should get his facts right. I sent him an email about the article on Sunday!

So, instead of finding out the FACTS first - did I send him an email that for whatever reason he never received - he jumps to the CONCLUSION that I never sent one.

And this is the guy who wants us to rely on his intellectual assessment of Thompson's mediumship!