Michael Prescott's Blog

Essay: Hits and Misses

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004.

---

 

Hits and Misses:
A Crossing Over Transcript

 

After three controversial years on the air, Crossing Over With John Edward is going off the air.

When I began watching this show during its first season, I never guessed that I would end up writing three essays about it - much less that I would argue that Edward's abilities are (probably) genuine, and that skeptical explanations are simply inadequate.

As a sendoff to the TV show, I've decided to post one more essay, this time presenting a point-by-point analysis of a John Edward reading. This particular reading took place during an episode of Crossing Over that aired in syndication on December 29, 2003. The episode may have originally aired earlier; I don't know if the broadcast I saw was a repeat.

Skeptics tend to focus on Edward's least impressive readings, while Edward's defenders often select the most impressive ones. I tried to choose an average reading. It was not spectacular, and there were apparent misses as well as apparent hits. Because four audience members ultimately became involved (identified as No. 1, No. 2, etc.), there was a certain amount of confusion. This made writing the transcript difficult. The fact that Edward talks so fast didn't help.

My transcript of the reading follows, with my comments in square brackets.

--------

Edward. I'm being pulled over here in that back row. Whoa. Um, I need to come to the lawyer or the legal person.

[No "lawyer or legal person" responds.]

Edward. There's like a legal issue that they want me - they're showing me the scales of justice in that whole back section up there.

[From "a law person," he switches to "a legal issue," a subtle shift.]

No. 1. Libra is the scale.

Edward. Same symbol but not for being a Libra.

[Here Edward is offered the chance to reinterpret the scale as Libra, but he sticks to the legal symbolism. A cold reader would probably have taken the bait.]

Edward. The symbol for legality is what I'm seeing. So either there's a legality that's pending or there's something lawsuit-related happening right now.

No. 1. Yes, there may be one coming up.

[The sitter's response is too tepid and uncertain to qualify as a hit. Edward rejects it, while continuing to defend his position.]

Edward. No, let me tell you there is a total legality or lawsuit issue or court-related thing that is coming up in that back section. So that's what I'm seeing, I'm seeing the scales of justice, and it's not the sign of being a Libra.

[No further confirmation. It's interesting that Edward has now passed up two opportunities for "easy" validations. He could have gone with the Libra suggestion, or he could have accepted the sitter's uncertain response. Again, a cold reader lets the sitter guide him, but Edward seems intent on sticking to his guns.]

Edward. Now either your dad, or there's a father-in-law who's passed, but I've got a father figure who's coming through. They're telling me to say Richard or Rich. There's got to be an R name.

No. 1. Raymond.

Edward. There's got to be an R connection. Is that for him?

No. 1. Raymond was my father.

[Edward said there was a dad or father-in-law with an R name, and this is correct. On the other hand, he said "they're telling me to say Richard or Rich," and the name is Raymond.]

Edward. Okay, well, your "R" dad is here. He's telling me to talk about having your dog with him, or his dog is with him 'cause he's got a dog barking.

[Here he gives three options: "your dog," "his dog," or "a dog," multiplying his chances of a favorable response.]

Edward. And it's not a small dog, it's a bigger dog, so to me it's got to be like a shepherd, it's got to be like a bigger dog.

No. 1. My sister's dog -

Edward. It's a big dog, though.

No. 1. Yeah, my sister's lost two big dogs.

[On the minus side, Edward mentioned one dog, not two; the dogs were actually associated with the sister, not the father; and lots of people have owned a dog at some point in their lives. On the plus side, Edward was correct in specifying a big dog that is deceased. Still, a less than impressive "hit." But keep reading ...]

Edward. Okay. I'm only getting one of them, but to me when they give you the fact that a dog barks, you can let her know that our pets are well taken care of on the other side.

[This could be seen as a fudge, since he may be rationalizing his error in claiming there was only one dog.]

Edward. They're telling me to talk about Charles or Charlie as well. There's a CH or an SH name that I'm supposed to be letting you know connected to your dad.

[The statement is not confirmed, although Edward is talking so fast that the sitter may have failed to register what he's saying.]

Edward. And your dad's telling me to talk about colon cancer. So I don't know if he had something that affected here or surgery here but somebody has this or they had this in this area.

[Edward is indicating his stomach. Note that while "colon cancer" is specific, the statement "he had something that affected" his stomach is vague. "Or surgery" brings in another option. "Somebody has this" - not the dad anymore? "Or they had this" - another reformulation, so that the claim can now apply to anyone, living or dead. Even with all these possibilities presented to the sitter, there is no confirmation.]

Edward. And Maggie. Or Maggie or Margie or M with a G, Mugs, Muggsy.

No. 2. Muggsy was our dad's dog that died.

[Edward ran through Maggie, Margie, and Mugs before getting to Muggsy. Still, the name Muggsy is so unusual that it's hardly likely to be a lucky guess. Edward doesn't appear to register the audience member's response, though he does switch his attention to Sitter No. 2.]

Edward. Your dad passed through [sic] too?

No. 2. My dad's dog died the day of my dad's funeral. That was his favorite -

[Although Edward does not pick up on it, this statement may apply to the barking dog mentioned earlier. Muggsy clearly had a close relationship to Sitter No. 2's dad. Were Edward's earlier statements about the "R dad" really meant for Sitter No. 2? Unfortunately, we never learn the name of Sitter No. 2's dad.]

Edward. Okay, I thought I was cracking up here because they're telling me to say like Maggie -

No. 2. My name is Maureen, my dad's sister's Margaret -

[Note that the sitter, who has already identified the dog as Muggsy, is now stretching to make the name "Maggie" fit also. Edward, however, does not accept these suggestions.]

Edward. It's an MG name like Maggie, Margie, Muggsy.

No. 2. Muggsy is -

Edward. Is that the dog?

No. 2. That's the dog that died.

[He finally registers that Muggsy is the dog. If he really didn't hear it the first time, this tends to give the lie to the claim that Edward is a cold reader. A cold reader would pay much closer attention to what the sitter is saying. Also note that Sitter No. 2 described Muggsy as her dad's "favorite" and said Muggsy "died the day of my dad's funeral." Thus the dog would have had strong emotional significance to the dad.]

Edward. Okay. But your dad's passed as well.

[Sitter No. 2 already mentioned "my dad's funeral," so this information was given to Edward. He did not seem to be "divining" this, merely repeating it for clarification.]

No. 2. My dad's passed.

Edward. And the P name like Pete or Peter?

No. 3. Peter was my grandfather, and we came together.

[This is the third audience member to participate. All three are sitting together. "Peter" is correct, but of course it's a common name.]

Edward. Passed?

No. 3. Yes.

Edward. Did you actually say that if they came through, you'd be happy to hear from [addressing Sitter No. 2] your dad and [addressing Sitter No. 3] your grandfather?

No. 2. Yes, we did.

[Skeptics would say that this sort of conversation would be predicted, but there seems to be no necessity that the sitters would have singled out one's father and the other's grandfather, as opposed to various other deceased relatives.]

Edward. Somebody worked for the Transportation Department too. Somebody worked like subways, buses. They did something that would be transportation-related.

No. 3. My grandfather was a tractor truck driver.

[Note that Peter was Sitter No. 3's grandfather, so this information connects with Edward 's earlier reference to Peter. Driving a truck is not the same as working for the Transportation Department. Still, it's certainly "transportation-related." Edward is wrong in saying "subways, buses," but a tractor-trailer truck is arguably pretty close.]

Edward. Your mom is still here, right?

No. 2. My mom is.

[Edward is correct.]

Edward. And she's got the Eileen background or the Ellen, where's the Eileen name?

No. 2. My dad's cousin Eileen who passed away - it's Eileen -

[The name Eileen does mean something to the sitter, but the association comes on the father's side, and Edward said it was on the mother's side.]

Edward. Okay, for some reason you need to let your mom know that Eileen is with your dad, okay?

[This could be seen as a way of rationalizing the mistake. Eileen is associated with the dad, but "for some reason" it's important to convey Eileen's message to the mom.]

No. 2. Okay.

Edward. And Donna or Diana, the D name is still living, or [addressing Sitter No. 1] is that back for you?

[Edward's query "Is that back for you?" may have been prompted by Sitter No. 1's reaction to the name.]

No. 1. That's me, I have a brother Don.

[The name Don is fairly common, and since Edward is now talking to three people, there is a good chance that one of them will know a Don.]

Edward. Okay.

No. 1. Actually we're best friends. We all came together.

[If they describe themselves as "best friends" as opposed to sisters, cousins, etc., they are probably not related. Thus there is a large pool of deceased relatives connected to three of them - a separate group for each family. This increases the chance that any given name will be verified by someone in the group.]

No. 3. We all came together.

Edward. Oh, you came together. No wonder why ...

[Edward seems to be indicating here that the messages for the three of them were somewhat confused because they all came together. It had not previously been clear to him that all three sitters - not just sitters No. 2 and No. 3 - were connected.]

Edward. Then one of you has the story about the woodpecker outside your house. Or you actually have a woodpecker-like thing outside your house. There's either a woodpecker or a hummingbird right outside the house.

["Woodpecker" or "hummingbird" or "woodpecker-like thing" multiplies the chances of a hit.]

No. 1. My sister has a hummingbird feeder attached to her glass doors.

[Since Edward said, "You actually have...", he was referring to someone present, not to the sister. This would appear to be a miss - but in the post-reading interview, it is revealed to have been a very good hit, when a fourth member of the group says, "The woodpecker - the woodpecker my daughter and my husband watch every morning on our tree right in front of water out the window in the kitchen! Every morning!" Sitter No. 4 is embarrassed not to have thought of this during the reading, and adds, "Putting the pieces together - it takes a while."]

Edward. Okay, let her know that, you know, your family sees this as a way of acknowledging that this might be new since their passing, or her residence is new since their passing, and this is their way of kind of looking at this.

[A vague formulation that could mean the bird feeder is new or the house is new.]

Edward. And there's an issue about either the new house, the construction, or something about the property that was built upon where they didn't know what kind of, like, staircase to put in or should it be like straight up, should it be like a curved one, should it be like up, level, then up again, but there's an issue about a curve or something with construction with a staircase happening too.

[This prompts the fourth member of the group to speak up.]

No. 4. I live on the lake where we're disputing where we're going to -

Edward. Put your stairs?

No. 4. Put the stairs to the lake because we are up on a hill and I have two little kids.

[Edward has said there is an issue about construction, property, and a dispute about a staircase. All of this turns out to be accurate. Also, as we will learn in the post-reading interview, it was Sitter No. 4 who had the woodpecker outside her house, so Edward is correct in connecting the woodpecker with "the new house, the construction."]

Edward. Okay, a lot of property on the grounds?

No. 4. A lot of property.

[Edward is correct, although the sitter's statement that the house is "up on a hill" may have implied that there was a lot of property.]

Edward. Boundary's this then. [sic] It needs to be fenced. All I know is what they just showed me - it's a caution with the boundaries and the property.

No. 4. Okay. We've been disputing how we're going to put the boundary line at the hill to mark off where we go down to the lake.

[Edward seems to be right again, and the issue of building a staircase doesn't logically entail a boundary dispute. On the other hand, Edward did not specifically mention a boundary dispute. He said, "It needs to be fenced... It's a caution with the boundaries and the property" a fairly vague formulation.]

Edward. Okay, but these will be wood steps, correct?

No. 4. They're rock.

[Edward is incorrect.]

Edward. No, they're showing me wood steps, like I see wood, like I see a wood step or in this case maybe it's a wood decking.

No. 4. We have a huge deck we just built - we have a rope swing and everybody uses the rope swing -

Edward. Okay, from the wood deck?

No. 4. Yes.

[A skeptic could say that Edward, having failed with his identification of wood steps, rescued himself by switching to the subject of "wooden decking." Still there is a wood deck, which the sitter says "we just built" - a phrase that harks back to Edward's comment about "construction."]

Edward. Okay. They're pulling their energy back. Thank you very, very much.

[End of transcript.]

--------

Remember that the reading began with the claim that "a legal issue" was coming out - "a total legality or lawsuit issue or court-related thing." Unfortunately, Sitter No. 4 didn't make it clear if the dispute over the boundary had legal ramifications. Her statement, "We've been disputing how we're going to put the boundary line," could be taken to mean a dispute with the neighbors or simply a disagreement within the family over the best way "to mark off where we go down to the lake." If a dispute with the neighbors was taking place or was expected, then the early reference to a possible legal issue could well have been correct. Perhaps this is the issue that Sitter No. 1 was referring to when she said, "Yes, there may be one coming up." Or perhaps not. There's no way to know.

If we assume that the boundary of the property is a potential legal issue, and if we assume that the "R dad" is Sitter No. 2's father, then we have a pretty clear logical progression in both cases.

Logical progression A proceeds in a circle: real or potential legal issue > Sitter No. 4 > woodpecker > new house > stairs > property > boundary > real or potential legal issue.

Logical progression B also comes full circle: "R dad" > dog > Muggsy > Sitter No. 2 wanted to hear from her dad.

We also have a modest cluster of information around Sitter No. 3's grandfather: he is deceased, his name was Peter, he was a professional driver of a large vehicle, and Sitter No. 3 wanted particularly to hear from him.

People's reaction to a transcript like this is very much dependent on their standpoint on the subject of psychic phenomena as a whole. Skeptics will tend to focus on the clear or apparent misses: colon cancer, wood steps, a CH or SH name. Those who are not skeptical will tend to focus on the hits: Muggsy, woodpecker, stairs, boundary. As for the more ambiguous statements, such as the legal issue or the transportation-related job, each side will interpret them either positively or negatively to bolster their case.

The same is true of the Crossing Over series overall. After three years, the show has its passionate defenders and its equally passionate critics. Only one thing is certain: even with John Edward off the air, the controversy that surrounds him will go on.

Essay: Talking to the Dead — Live & Uncut

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004. It has been slightly abridged and reworded.

----

 

Talking to the Dead - Live & Uncut

 

I have to admit I'd never paid much attention to psychic medium James Van Praagh. His syndicated TV show, now canceled, never did anything for me -- the format was too similar to John Edward's series Crossing Over, and I didn't care for the touchy-feely attitude Van Praagh projects. But the other night (Friday, January 30, 2004), I happened to catch his appearance on Larry King Live.

What intrigued me about Larry King Live was that the show was, well, live. No pretaping, no editing. Van Praagh had to take calls at random from all over the world, in real time. He had no chance to prepare and, with only a minute or two for each caller, little opportunity to ask questions. Since he couldn't see the caller, he certainly couldn't be accused of reading the person's body language or facial expression. It seemed like a good test of mediumship on live TV -- working without a net. Did Van Praagh pass the test?

He did. With flying colors.

There are times when I wonder how people can be so skeptical about psychic phenomena. Watching this edition of Larry King Live was one of those times. I would hate to be a skeptic trying to explain the remarkable series of hits Van Praagh produced in the course of this hour of television. If you didn't see the show, I urge you to read the transcript of the episode.

The transcript will give you all the details, but what it won't tell you is how thoroughly convincing Van Praagh's manner of presentation was. Skeptics say that mediums ask leading questions in order to elicit information, but Van Praagh asked almost no questions and frequently interrupted callers who were trying to tell him more than he wanted to know. More than once he said, "Don't tell me. Let me tell you." He looked genuinely irritated at callers who blurted out information he'd wanted to reveal. Skeptics also say that mediums issue vague generalities that could apply to anyone. But a lot of what Van Praagh said was specific -- in many instances uncannily so. Once or twice I felt a chill as a caller verified a piece of information that could not possibly be explained away as a lucky guess.

Finally, skeptics say that any trained mentalist -- i.e. a fake psychic -- can duplicate what Van Praagh, John Edward, George Anderson, and other mediums do. Well, I'd like to see them duplicate what Van Praagh did on Larry King Live. I'd like to see a mentalist come up with specific, detailed information pertinent to a caller who has phoned in at random, in circumstances that preclude cold reading or advance research. If mentalists can reproduce this feat, let them prove it. Until then, I'll be skeptical of their claims.

As I said, the complete transcript is the only way to get the full sense of this program. What follows are a few highlights based on my scribbled notes.

Van Praagh is told by a caller that both her parents have died. He interrupts, saying that the father had a problem with one leg and couldn't walk. The leg was going to be operated on and preliminary tests were carried out, but the operation never took place. Also, the father's sister is deceased. This is all correct.

A caller says her twin sister died three years go. Van Praagh says the sister was not expected to die and had a sudden passing. She was religious and was buried underneath a religious symbol. All correct.

A caller says her mother passed away. Van Praagh focuses on a respiratory problem involving the sinuses and lungs and an inability to breathe. He is told that the mother died of emphysema.

A caller says her grandfather died nine years ago. Van Praagh says he's getting somebody with the last name of Cook or Cooke. The caller does know people by this name. Van Praagh says there's a deceased man named Cook(e) whose death was covered in the newspapers. The caller doesn't verify this, but seems to understand the reference. Van Praagh switches to the caller's grandfather, saying he had an eye condition that affected only one eye, and was unable to speak before he died. This is correct.

A caller asks about his deceased brother. Van Praagh says the brother is "around your father" (who is living) and that the father has health concerns - specifically blood sugar problems. This is correct. The brother suffered an unexpected death. Correct -- he died in a car accident.

A caller asks about her deceased grandfather, Adam. Van Praagh identifies a farm and is told by the caller that the grandfather was raised on a farm. Van Praagh says the grandfather's brother is also dead and the two men were not close while alive. This is true. Van Praagh says somebody just went to the eye doctor. The caller says, "I just went and got my eyes checked."

A caller wants to know about her Aunt Barb. Van Praagh says Barb wants to send a message to the caller's mother, who, he says correctly, is still alive. He says the mother deserves a lot of credit because, when her husband was not working, the mother worked extra hard to pick up the slack. This is true.

During a commercial break, Van Praagh apparently tells Larry King he is getting somebody's son and expects the next call to relate to this person. The next caller inquires about a father or husband, but Van Praagh says a son must have died before the husband -- which is correct. The son, he says, died by someone else's hand -- correct. The son had a friend named Mike -- correct. The son died at night -- correct. There's a reference to a fishing boat -- correct; the husband had a boat.

A caller wants to know if there is a message from ... But Van Praagh interrupts to say that her father has passed over - correct. There was friction between the father and his sister. True. There is a girl, deceased, whom Van Praagh identifies as the caller's daughter - correct. The caller says she has a gold necklace belonging to her daughter. Van Praagh says the caller thought of holding the necklace in her hand before making the call. True. He says a tree was planted in memory of the daughter. True. Asked by the caller about a friend named Lou, Van Praagh says the daughter knew him, and he liked race cars. True.

A caller wants to know about her father. Van Praagh says someone in the family just got married or is planning a marriage -- correct. He says someone in the family had a heart condition and is told that it was the father. Van Praagh says the father tried a variety of different medicines that didn't work -- correct. The father was put on a liquid diet and hated it -- correct. There are three kids in the family ("Exactly," says the caller), and they are fighting over the terms of the father's will. Correct.

A caller wants to know about a friend named Michael who committed suicide. Van Praagh says Michael was creative, he was thinking of moving before he died, he had his heart broken by someone else, there were two memorial services for him, and there is an important memory involving Florida. All of this is correct.

A skeptic would say I've listed only the hits and ignored the misses. Absolutely. That is precisely what I've done, and deliberately so - I want to stress the most impressive parts of Van Praagh's performance. There were misses, although often they involved callers who seemed so nervous and flustered that they might have failed to take in what Van Praagh was saying. By my count, the hits outnumbered the misses, although a skeptic would count some of my hits as misses and others as lucky guesses.

Is that what we're dealing with - lucky guesses? If so, Van Praagh is the luckiest guesser in the world. Anybody who can make this many lucky guesses in an hour has a skill indistinguishable from psychic power. Or is it a hoax, a massive conspiracy involving Van Praagh, Larry King, and CNN? Count on the skeptics to fall back on this desperate argument when all else fails.

I suppose that by a massive effort at rationalization, a person could pick apart Van Praagh's comments one by one, in much the same way that the O.J. Simpson defense team picked apart the mountain of evidence against their client and succeeded in befuddling the jury. Someone could claim that a particular statement was a lucky guess, while another was a generalization, and another was derived from an unusual insight into human nature, and so on. This is the kind of argument that skeptics make - when they bother to address the specifics of psychic readings at all.

To me, it sounds a lot like Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran arguing that one blood sample was planted by police, another blood sample was incorrectly collected, another blood sample was contaminated in the lab, etc. This strategy aims at getting us to focus on scattered bits of evidence, any one of which can be disputed, rather than stepping back to take in a broader view -- namely, that a trail of blood led from the the murder scene to Simpson's car, and from his car into his house. It can be an effective way to score debating points, but the only people who think it's a good approach for finding the truth are those who believe that O.J. is still searching for "the real killer."

What I think is that Van Praagh is for real. Call me naive, but for me, it's the simplest explanation, and the only one that fits the facts. And if he is for real, then there's no reason to doubt that some other mediums are for real also. Which means the world has suddenly become a much bigger, more interesting, and, I would say, better place.

Essay: Unreality TV

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2003.

---

Unreality TV: "Psychic Secrets Revealed"

 

Recently, NBC aired an hour-long prime-time special called "Psychic Secrets Revealed," produced by reality TV pioneer Bruce Nash. In the style of earlier programs that demonstrated how professional magicians pull off their tricks, including Nash’s own "Breaking the Magician’s Code," the show ran through a variety of mentalist acts and revealed the ruses behind the illusions.

Actually, one of the secrets not revealed by the program was its exact title. In TV Guide, NBC press releases, and assorted other places it was known variously as "Psychic Secrets Revealed," "Secrets of the Psychics Revealed," "Secrets of Psychics Revealed" (sans "the"), and most dramatically, "Secrets of Psychics – Revealed!"

Whatever you call it, the show consisted of a wide range of mentalist tricks, most of which were nightclub-style acts that would probably never be taken as serious evidence of psychic ability. Some of the tricks were not so secret; the slate-writing gimmick, in which words magically appear on a chalkboard, has been known and written about for a century. Other tricks were barely tricks at all. We see a fake psychic reciting vague generalities to her clients, who claim to be amazed at her "accuracy." I can’t imagine that too many responsible adults would be taken in by that one.

The gullibility of the audience was pretty surprising at times. I almost wondered if their oohs and aahs weren’t a little bit rehearsed. In this respect it may or may not be relevant that the March 12, 2003, jobs bulletin at Tinseletown.com includes an audition notice for actors needed for "the NBC special ‘Secrets of Psychics – Revealed!’" No details are given, except that the job opportunity was first posted on October 8, 2002. It’s not clear if one or more actors are required. There may be a perfectly innocuous explanation, but I do wonder why the show, advertised as reality TV, would need any actors at all. What roles did they play? Gullible man #1? Credulous woman #2? Maybe "Psychic Secrets" is keeping a few secrets of its own.

Be that as it may, if "Secrets" was meant to warn us not to take every street-corner psychic seriously, it served its purpose well. If it was meant to convince us that psychic phenomena are never genuine – that all such occurrences are magic tricks – then I’d say it overreached. Let’s look at the some facts the show didn't choose to reveal.

Early in the program, one of the fake psychics demonstrates spoon bending, which is then revealed to be a trick made possible by a precut spoon that could be snapped with minimal pressure. The stage illusion has been explained. But how about spoon bending that isn't done by magicians? How about a party where regular folks – and their kids – start bending silverware with their minds? If you think it can’t happen, you haven’t heard of "spoon bending parties," a remarkable social phenomenon that’s been going on since the 1980s.

The best report I’ve read on the subject is found in Michael Crichton’s highly entertaining book Travels. "In the spring of 1985," Crichton writes,

I was invited to attend a spoon bending party. An aerospace engineer named Jack Houck had become interested in the phenomenon, and from time to time had parties in which people bent spoons. I ... was told to bring a half-dozen forks and spoons I didn’t care about, since they would be bent during the evening ...

About a hundred people were there, mostly families with young kids. The atmosphere was festive .... We were instructed to hold the spoon vertically and shout, "Bend! Bend!" Once intimidated by being shouted at, the spoon was to be rubbed gently between our fingers ... A lot of people were laughing. It was hard not to feel self-conscious, holding up a spoon and shouting at it ...

I was sitting on the floor next to Judith and Anne-Marie ... Rubbing her spoon, Anne-Marie said, "I don’t think this is going to work ..." I looked down at her hands. Her spoon was bending.

"Look, Anne-Marie."

Anne-Marie laughed. Her spoon was like rubber. She easily twisted the spoon into knots.

Suddenly Judith’s spoon began to bend, too. She was able to bend the bowl in half. All around me, spoons were bending....

My own spoon had begun to bend. I hadn't even realized. The metal was completely pliable, like soft plastic. It wasn’t particularly hot, either, just slightly warm. I easily bent the bowl of the spoken in half, using only my fingertips. This didn’t require any pressure at all, just guiding with my fingertips.

I put the spoon back and tried a fork. After a few moments of rubbing, the fork twisted like a pretzel. It was easy. I bent several more spoons and forks....

A year later, I mentioned to an M.I.T. professor that I had bent spoons. He frowned in silence for a while. "There’s a way to bend spoons," he said, "by a trick."

"I think so," I said. "But I don’t know the trick."

As of August 2002, Houck had reportedly hosted 354 such events. At 100 people per event, that’s 35,400 people "fooled."

In the course of "Psychic Secrets Revealed," other examples of fake psychokinesis (or PK) are shown, in which hidden mechanisms enable the mentalist to manipulate small items like matchsticks or dollar bills; another mechanism creates the illusion that the audience, using its collective psychic power, can shatter glass. These techniques work fine in a theatrical performance, but could they be employed in the controlled conditions of a laboratory, where the psychic is carefully searched and there is no opportunity to set up any hidden equipment? It is precisely in such conditions that countless small-scale PK phenomena been observed – and large-scale phenomena, as well.

Some of the most dramatic effects were observed in the presence of the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino. Sir William Barrett, a parapsychologist active in the early part of the 20^th Century, summarizes an investigation of Palladino undertaken by neurology professor Enrico Morselli. "The control of the medium was very strict," Barrett writes.

Her hands and feet were held by Dr. Morselli and Sig. Barzini, editor of the "Corriere della Sera," who states that he was present "with the object of unmasking fraud and trickery," but was in the end convinced of the reality of some of the phenomena. The person of the medium was thoroughly searched before the seance, and the room was also searched; the light was never entirely extinguished.

Under these conditions Dr. Morselli testifies to the occurrence of the following phenomena: movements of the table; raps on the table and sounds on musical instruments without contact; complete levitations of the table; movements of objects at a distance from the medium seen in the light, and, also, the operation of self-registering instruments by the unseen agency; "apports," i.e., objects brought into the room from outside; the sound of human voices not proceeding from any visible person; impressions on plastic substances of hands, feet and faces; the appearance of dark prolongations of the medium's body; of well delineated forms of faces, heads and busts. Although entirely sceptical at the outset of his experiments he declares himself convinced that most of the phenomena alleged to occur with Eusapia are "real, authentic, and genuine" ....

Professor Philippe Bottazzi, Director of the Physiological Institute at the University of Naples, having read the report of Dr. Morselli's experiments at Genoa, made an attempt to verify the phenomena by means of an elaborate and carefully arranged set of self-registering instruments, in the hope of obtaining an automatic graphic record of the psychic force exercised by the medium. Such a record would negative [i.e., nullify] the hypotheses of hallucination or mis-description on the part of the observer. These important experiments, carried on with the collaboration of several able professors of the same University, were remarkably successful, and Professor Bottazzi's article concludes by stating these experiments have "eliminated the slightest trace of suspicion or uncertainty relative to the genuineness of the phenomena. We obtained the same kind of assurance as that which we have concerning physical, chemical or physiological phenomena. From henceforth sceptics can only deny the facts by accusing us of fraud and charlatanism."

Investigations of Palladino continued, with varying results. At times she very obviously attempted to cheat. At other times no known trickery could account for the phenomena she produced.

"In 1909," Barrett continues,

three members of the S.P.R. [the Society for Psychical Research], the Hon Everard Feilding, Mr. W.W. Baggally and Mr. Hereward Carrington, were commissioned by the Society to carry out another serious investigation with this medium. The selection was specially made with a view to the qualifications of the investigators. Mr. Carrington was a clever amateur conjuror, and for ten years had carried on investigations on these physical phenomena in the United States. His book on this subject shows his familiarity with the methods adopted by fraudulent mediums and his cautious attitude towards all such experiences. Mr. Baggally was also an amateur conjuror with much experience, and had come to a negative conclusion as to the possibility of any genuine physical phenomena. Mr. Feilding's attitude was the same, and, moreover, he had had extensive experience in investigating physical phenomena.

The result of this investigation was that all three of these well-qualified men were convinced of the absolute genuineness of the remarkable supernormal phenomena they witnessed at their hotel in Naples.

Transcripts of the Naples sessions fill the greater part of a lengthy book, Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, by Everard Feilding. More recently, Stephen Braude has ably summarized these sessions in his important book The Limits of Influence. A reader willing to wade through the exhaustive, literally minute-by-minute transcripts of the Naples sittings cannot help but be impressed by the variety, complexity, and sheer scale of the effects witnessed by these competent and skeptical observers.

Less dramatic examples of PK have been documented extensively. Dozens of experiments conducted by parapsychologist J.B. Rhine, in which test subjects tried to influence the fall of dice, have been subjected to a statistical "meta-analysis" by Dean Radin. In The Conscious Universe, Radin writes that even after eliminating some possibly defective tests, "there was still highly significant evidence for mind-matter interaction, with odds against chance of greater than a trillion to one." His analysis of random number generator (RNG) tests yielded similar results. After looking at 597 RNG studies conducted between 1959 and 1987, Radin found that "the overall experimental results produced odds against chance beyond a trillion to one. Control results [from 235 control studies] were well within chance with odds of two to one."

The hundreds of participants in these studies were not skilled conjurers engaged in a massive, decades-long conspiracy. They were ordinary people demonstrating a little-known, barely understood, but perfectly genuine ability.

The last major "psychic secret" to be revealed was communication with the dead. "Is it for the real?" narrator Stacy Keach asks ominously. "You be the judge."

Two readings with audience members are shown; both sessions seem highly convincing. Then we learn that these audience members had earlier been approached by the mentalist’s accomplices, who engaged them in seemingly casual conversation. Personal details were elicited, which were given to the mentalist. Color-coded stickers discretely placed on these audience members’ seats ensured that the mentalist would know whom to select for the readings.

Afterward, a man who thought he’d been in touch with his dead grandfather was told the truth. He appeared crestfallen. "A big part of me genuinely wanted to believe. Ultimately I was really let down."

Assuming that this gentleman had really been duped and was not someone who’d responded to the show’s casting call, I find this part of the demonstration somewhat unethical. The mentalist and the TV crew are toying with the raw emotions of real people. It’s a cruel thing to do just to prove a point.

But the question remains: Does this ruse explain all mediumship?

It certainly does explain some of it. In his book The After Death Experience, Ian Wilson recounts the exposure of prominent British medium Doris Stokes, whose public performances were rigged to feature clients she already knew. "Not only had the key individuals been known to Doris beforehand," Wilson writes; "each had been specifically invited to the show by none other than Doris herself." Wilson gives the example of a certain Mrs. Stenning, who received an impressive reading in front of the audience. "A friend had written to Doris Stokes on her behalf, telling her about Mrs Stenning’s loss of her daughter Kerry. As a result, Doris Stokes had personally telephoned her at her home just the week before, offering her two complimentary tickets ... At the very least the fact that Doris undeniably knew beforehand Mrs Stenning’s surname, Christian name, and deceased daughter’s name makes a charade of her professed hearing of these names as ‘other side’ voices. And with Doris’s similarly undeniable prior knowledge of Mrs Stenning’s telephone number, there is scarcely anything other-worldly about how she could have known Mrs Stenning’s 239 Kingston Road address. She had only to look in the London telephone directory."

But Doris Stokes had never been subjected to close scrutiny. Are there any mediums who have been tested – and who’ve passed the test?

One of the most famous mediums in history was Leonore Piper of Boston, who was active in the late 1800s. Her abilities came to the attention of many prominent Bostonians, including William James. An investigation was undertaken by the American Society for Psychical Research, whose chief investigator, Richard Hodgson, was notoriously skeptical and had debunked countless mediums. His colleague F.W.H. Myers explains Hodgson's methods: "Mr. Hodgson has been in the habit of bringing acquaintances of his own to Mrs. Piper, without giving their names ... Mr. Hodgson also had Mr. and Mrs. Piper watched or ‘shadowed’ by private detectives for some weeks ..." All such efforts were fruitless. "It was thus shown that Mrs. Piper had made no discoverable attempt to acquire knowledge" used in her sittings.

It’s worth noting that even in the 19th Century, investigators knew that fake mediums would attempt to gather information about their clients in advance – hence Hodgson’s policy of bringing anonymous, unannounced visitors to see Mrs. Piper, while setting private detectives on her trail to ensure that she was not conferring with an accomplice.

In 1889, British parapsychologists arranged for Mrs. Piper to come to England. Myers writes,

Professor Lodge met her on the Liverpool landing-stage, November 19th, and conducted her to a hotel, where I joined her on November 20th, and escorted her and her children to Cambridge....

Mrs. Piper while in England was twice in Cambridge, twice in London, and twice in Liverpool, at dates arranged by ourselves; her sitters (almost always introduced under false names) belonged to quite different social groups, and were frequently unacquainted with each other. Her correspondence was addressed to my care, and I believe that almost every letter which she received was shown to one or the other of us. When in London she stayed at lodgings we selected; when in Liverpool, in Professor Lodge’s house; and when at Cambridge, in Professor Sidgwick’s or my own...

We took great pains to avoid giving information in talk; and a more complete security is to be found in the fact that we were ourselves ignorant of many of the facts given as to friends’ relations, etc. ...

Myers sums up, "Few persons have been so long and so carefully observed; and she has left on all observers the impression of thorough uprightness, candor, and honesty."

Other mediums whose reputation for honesty was never tainted, despite years of close observation by trained experts, include Gladys Osborne Leonard and Eileen Garrett. Garrett, in particular, went out of her way to be tested, even helping to set up an institute for research into psychic phenomena. More on Garrett can be found in my essay "R-101." 

There are, in short, two points for viewers of NBC’s "Psychic Secrets Revealed" to keep in mind. First, it’s a mistake to assume that professional parapsychologists would be taken in by any of the magicians’ tricks showcased on the program. These tricks, and many others like them, have been known for more than a hundred years. Members of the (British) Society for Psychical Research and its American sister society have exposed hundreds of fake psychics and mediums. In most cases the exposure isn’t especially difficult. Although my knowledge of magic tricks is very limited, even I could guess how some of the effects on the NBC show were done. A professional investigator would make short work of any of the mentalists who appeared on that stage. That’s what psychical investigators do – they identify the frauds and unmask them.

But not all the people they investigate are frauds. And that’s the second point. Just because some money is counterfeit, we can’t assume that all of it is. Likewise, the fact that some people can fake some psychic phenomena does not entitle us to assume that all such phenomena are – or can be – faked.

In his book The Afterlife Experiments, Gary Schwartz tells a revealing story. With his associate Linda Russek, he had designed a laboratory test for several mediums – John Edward, Suzane Northrup, Laurie Campbell, and Anne Gehman – and he wanted to know if a professional mentalist could duplicate the mediums’ impressive results. For this purpose, he found a local magician, Ross Horowitz, who was knowledgeable about mentalist techniques. But when Schwartz explained the protocols used in his experiments, the magician balked.

He quickly explained that his techniques were useless unless he had the opportunity of obtaining secret information beforehand, or of holding a dialogue with the sitter, or preferably both. I pushed him to try, and he reluctantly agreed. Giving it his best shot, his +3 accuracy [meaning his score for the most solid "hits"] was well under 20 percent.

When Linda and I told him that the mediums we had tested produced specific and accurate information during a silent period, when the medium did not even know who the sitter was, we had his full attention. He wanted to see the videotapes ...

The look on Ross’s face as he watched [the first tape] was actually funny to see. After only a few minutes, he told me he could not find any indications that Suzane [Northrup] was using psychic cold-reading techniques....

He told us that none of the tricks or tools he knew would allow him – or any psychic magicians he knew of – to score as high as Suzane did.

The mentalist’s only suggestion was that all four of the tested mediums, as a group, had cheated by tapping the laboratory’s phones and Professor Schwartz’s personal phones. Even this unlikely conspiracy would not explain all the data that the mediums provided. In subsequent experiments, the protocols were tightened still further, but the mediums continued to supply accurate, verifiable information at rates well above chance.

Schwartz’s experiments are only among the latest in more than a century of investigations into psychic phenomena. If hidden mechanisms and planted accomplices could explain all paranormal occurrences, interest in the field would have died out long ago.

Viewers who choose to be wary of palm readers and carnival fortune-tellers have learned a good lesson from "Psychic Secrets Revealed." I just hope they don’t draw the wider, mistaken conclusion that the entire realm of the paranormal consists of fraud.

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.

 

Essay: 20/20 Blindside

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. Here's one of those essays, originally posted in 2003.

 

----

 

20/20 Blindside:

John Edward Takes a Hit

 

John Edward appeared on ABC's newsmagazine 20/20 the other night (December 5, 2003). Unfortunately I missed it, for the simple reason that I didn't know about the segment until after it aired. Nevertheless I was able to get the gist of the twelve-minute segment from the ABCNews.com site, which included an apparently complete recap of the show (2024 update: web page is no longer available).

From what I can tell, it was a typical hit piece, a smash-and-grab attack designed to make Edward look bad. ABC promos on the Internet queried, "Can John Edward pass a skeptic's test?" But there was no test, just routine footage of skeptic Michael Shermer saying that Edward's claims are "baloney" and that his abilities can be explained by the mentalist trick of cold reading. I have already written about the inadequacies of the cold reading explanation in two previous essays, "Some Thoughts on John Edward" and "More Thoughts on John Edward." I won't rehash those points. Still, a few things may be worth noting about this forgettable moment in TV tabloid journalism.

First, the reporter on the story was Bill Ritter, who had previously done a hit piece on another psychic, James Van Praagh. Here is how Shermer himself reports it in an earlier article: "Later, an ABC television producer flew out from New York to film me for an investigation of Edward they are conducting [another show, not the 20/20 segment]. The segment began as a 'puff piece' (as she called it), but a chance encounter in the ABC cafeteria with 20/20 correspondent Bill Ritter, with whom I worked on an expose of medium James Van Praagh a few years ago, tipped her off that Edward was, in fact, a Van Praagh clone and that his talking to the dead was nothing more than the old magicians' cold reading trick." (Shermer, "Deconstructing the Dead," viewable here as the second entry in the thread.) 

Ritter, then, was evidently not an impartial reporter, but someone who was out to get Edward right from the start, and who had already tried to "expose" him once before.

Commenting on the piece, on air, was 20/20's John Stossel. Stossel sent out an email to his fans, dated December 4, that touted the show: "Bill Ritter quizzes the hottest psychic of the moment, John Edward. Edward makes big bucks claiming he 'talks to the dead' on his syndicated TV show. His audiences are often convinced he's speaking to someone's dead uncle or boyfriend. Edward says it's not his job to be right all the time; his job is to be a medium and to pass on the information. Ritter assembled a group for Edward and he did make some connections for them … but he had a lot more misses. I was pleased that Ritter then invited Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society, to comment on Edward's 'cold reading.' Shermer says that so-called psychics rely on unleashing lots of numbers, names, illnesses, events - things that are bound to resonate with at least someone - until he finds a 'hit.' Then audiences are impressed. Thank goodness for the Skeptics Society, which offers a more rational explanation for Edward's hits, and continually uses science to challenge claims of the paranormal." (Ellipsis in original; this page is no longer online.)

Evidently, then, Stossel was also not impartial, since he had already sided with Shermer's Skeptics Society in condemning Edward's technique as "cold reading." The two reporters covering the story - Ritter, who reported it, and Stossel, who commented on it - had strong, overt, preexisting biases against Edward.

Note that Stossel says the Skeptics Society "offers a more rational explanation" for Edward's abilities. "More rational," in this context, seems to mean "more in agreement with the materialist-rationalist philosophy that I subscribe to." That this is the case is evident when we take a look at Stossel's intellectual bona fides, revealed in an interview with Full Context, an Objectivist (i.e., Ayn Rand-oriented) magazine. He tells the interviewer, "I am now reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time and I am thrilled and astonished that this woman could know so much so many years before everyone else did and express it so beautifully. And express some of the theories I feel in my stomach, as I go out to do battle." (2024: link has expired.) 

Ayn Rand is another subject I've dealt with elsewhere. Suffice it to say that anyone who feels Rand's angry, militant worldview "in [his] stomach" or anywhere else in his anatomy may be a paragon of Objectivism but hardly of objectivity. And a journalist who sees his work as "go[ing] out to do battle" is less interested in a dispassionate, impartial review of the facts than in proselytizing for his belief system - a belief system that is, of course, "rational." (Aren't they all?)

Naturally, with one reporter hungry to bag his second psychic, and another who comes to the table with a full-fledged rationalist-materialist ideology already in place, there was no hope for Edward to come out on top. Michael Shermer, featured on the show as the voice of reason, knew enough about the agenda of the segment's producers to lavish praise on the story even before he had seen it. In an email sent to readers of e-Skeptic magazine, dated December 5 (no longer online), he writes,

Tune in to ABC's 20/20 Friday night, December 5, to see Bill Ritter's piece on Crossing Over with John Edward ... They filmed at the studio where Crossing Over is taped, although there were restrictions imposed by the producers, of course. They also taped him doing readings on a small studio audience of their own that ABC culled from the folks waiting in line for The View, so there were no plants or shills ... I went to New York to review the tapes. Edward did not know I was involved.

I'll comment more in next week's e-Skeptic after I see how the edited version looks, but what struck me about Edward's approach was how different it now is from James Van Praagh, on whom Ritter and I did a debunking piece for ABC several years ago. Van Praagh is very sympathetic, even empathetic, with his subjects, and lets them guide the reading by what clues they give him. John Edward, by contrast, is more aggressive in his approach, insisting that his original statement is correct and that the subject is wrong ... Ritter told me that he thought Edward was much more sociable with the camera crew, jovial really, mixing it up with them on the breaks, etc. (almost used car salesman-like--my description), whereas Van Praagh, he said, was much more reserved and kept to himself. All of the production crew on the piece were totally skeptical, so I would imagine that the segment will reflect that.

This is interesting, partly for what it says and partly for what it doesn't say. What it says is that "all of the production crew on the piece were totally skeptical," an interesting admission of the segment's pervasive bias. Moreover, "Edward did not know I was involved." This, then, is the big showdown, the High Noon duel, between psychic and skeptic - Shermer waits until after Edward has done his job, then secretly reviews the tapes, with Edward never informed and never allowed to offer a rebuttal. Is it my mistake, or do these skeptics seem an awful lot like cowards, willing to pontificate in front of a friendly reporter, but afraid to confront their nemesis directly?

What Shermer doesn't say is also worth noting. He doesn't say what the onerous "restrictions imposed by the [Crossing Over] producers" were (although why Edward or Crossing Over would cooperate with 20/20 in the first place is beyond me). He also doesn't mention any successes Edward had in his reading with the panel. He doesn't mention that when Edward sticks doggedly with an audience member, the person frequently remembers a salient fact that does, in fact, validate what Edward was saying. He doesn't mention that Edward's insistence that he is right even when the other person disagrees is a violation of the most basic principles of "cold reading."

The ABCNews.com recap of the show describes Edward's reading of the specially selected volunteers as follows: "He then rubbed his hands together, closed his eyes and meditated before launching into a nearly 90-minute barrage of random names and numbers."

Random names and numbers? But isn't the whole point of Edward's approach that the information he gets is not random? I understand that skeptics disagree, but should the producers insert their editorial views into the factual content of the story so baldly?

ABCNews.com allows that Edward got some hits, but quickly explains this by citing Shermer, who "believes Edward has a strategy. He says he simply rattles off a lot of names until an audience member tells him the right one. 'He also offers up an assortment of common diseases,' Shermer said. 'All of us are gonna go, and we're gonna go from something pretty standard — cancer, heart disease. You can't go wrong with that,' he said."

So what we're being told is that the information Edward imparts is vague, generic, and random. Keep this in mind; we'll come back to it in a minute.

The piece continues: "One hour into 20/20's session with Edward, he turned to the side, toward the 20/20 crew and producer Michael Pressman. 'Is there a joke about somebody supposed to be a doctor?' Edward asked. Pressman told Edward he has a daughter who's a pre-med student. For more than 35 minutes, Edward quizzed Pressman with dozens of questions and observations and names. Only a handful turned out to be vaguely relevant; only one thing he mentioned was a concrete 'hit.' He guessed Pressman's wife's name. One good hit — out of 41 tries."

Notice, again, the slanted wording: Edward "guessed" the wife's name. Of course, if everything he says is purely random, then any hit would just have to be a guess – wouldn’t it?

Even so, one hit out of forty-one tries! Not good. We might notice that even the ABCNews.com write-up appears to indicate that he got two hits – the "doctor" reference and the wife's name. One plus one is two, or so I recall from my schooldays. Somebody at ABC can't count. Still, even two out of forty-one is embarrassing. One wonders, in fact, how John Edward ever got to be so famous if that's the best he can do.

But is it?

20/20 lets us see only what the segment's producer and editor allowed on the screen. Still, thanks to the Internet, the other side of the story has gotten out, largely in the form of message-board posts from a fellow named Chris, who seems to have been part of the panel assembled for the 20/20 reading. I say "seems" because it is, of course, possible that the postings are fake, and that Chris isn't who he claims to be. To me, his statements have the ring of truth. Judge for yourself. (2024: the postings are no longer online.) 

In a message posted on December 8, 2003, at 08:14, and titled "I was one of the people on the 20/20 panel," Chris writes, "Let me tell you, I was the guy with beard in the back row on the 20/20 panel. 20/20 did not show ANY of the things he [Edward] got correct. He told my wife (next to me) that she had a sister type figure who had a cancer in the chest area (she had breast cancer) that was cured, but now there is another cancer that is back (which is true). He also told my wife that she pretends to be stronger about the cancer than she really is. This is also true."

Remember Michael Shermer saying, in his analysis, that Edward "offers up an assortment of common diseases." Presumably he was referring, in part, to the comments directed at Chris's wife. But note that Edward did not simply mention cancer in a general way. He said that Chris's wife "had a sister type figure who had cancer in the chest area." "Sister type figure" is somewhat vague but indicates someone roughly of the same generation as Chris's wife, thus eliminating parents, grandparents, young nieces, etc. "Cancer in the chest area" is tolerably specific. The cancer "was cured, but now there is another cancer" – quite specific and apparently accurate. "She pretends to be stronger about the cancer than she really is" – perhaps a generic comment, but not everyone acts brave in the face of a possibly terminal disease.

Apply this "skeptic's test" to yourself: Do you have a sister-type figure who had cancer in the chest area, which was cured, but unfortunately has been superseded by a new cancer, which she is fighting with admirable but perhaps somewhat forced bravado?

If Shermer were going to respond intelligently to Edward, he would have to address details like these. Instead he relies on hazy hand-waving. Ironically, for all their talk about vague, general guesswork on Edward's part, it's the skeptics who seem to be guilty of issuing vague generalizations while indulging in specious guesswork of their own.

In a later post on the same day, Chris adds, "From the MOMENT Bill Ritter began interviewing us I knew what direction this segment would take. He was continually asking us 'negative' type questions. When all was said and done I knew they could take this segment either way but WOULD take it in a 'Let's show them how fake John Edward is' direction."

And the next day:

My wife and I went to Good Morning America and were chosen from that audience by Michael Mendelson (sp) a 20/20producer. They asked us who would be interested and my wife raised her hand.

The group reacted pretty well to JE, he is a VERY nice guy who allowed us to get pictures with him and autographs from him.

The funny thing is that the people who were negative along with Bill Ritter were the 4 people that did NOT get read that day. I believe if they had been read it would have been a different song they were singing.

As far as Michael Pressmen (the producer JE did read for), WEEELLLL, let me tell you.... There was a part in his reading to Michael that went as follows, I am writing this from memory, SO do NOT quote me but this is ABOUT what was said... this was NOT on the segment

JE - Are you going for a test of some kind for your chest?

MP - Ummmm, not really.

JE - Cause I see a problem in the chest area, you're going to have some type of scan done?

MP - Ummmm, not really.

JE - Hmmm, I can't let this one go ... You sure?

After SEVERAL minutes of this......

JE - I still see a chest scan of some kind.

MP - Look, I don't want to open my medical record here in front of my co-workers.

JE - I understand, no problem.

To me that was an admission that there was something there. There were several things that JE got correct when reading for Michael Pressmen. Of course, Michael was not going to give him an INCH! [All ellipses in original.]

So when ABC tells us that Edward, when reading the producer, had only one hit in forty-one tries, is the count accurate? From what we now know, there appear to have been three hits: the doctor connection, the wife's name, and the chest scan or chest problem. Since producer Pressman was obviously being uncooperative and refusing to validate anything Edward said, it is impossible to know how many other details Edward may have gotten right. And by the way, if Edward was trying to con everybody, why would he insist on reading the openly skeptical producer of the show - the person least likely to cooperate? Why would he persist in the reading if the producer was stubbornly giving him no feedback at all – feedback being the lifeblood of the cold reading technique that Edward supposedly uses?

In my two previous essays on Edward, I've expressed my own doubts and uncertainties about what he claims to do. Still, the more I see of the skeptics and debunkers, the more I begin to think that this guy is for real.

Which, come to think of it, puts a little different spin on things. After all, if it was 20/20's intent to undercut my skepticism and make me more willing to accept John Edward as genuine, then I have to congratulate them on a job well done!

 

Perry Mason vs. the paranormal

Lately I've been binge-watching the old Perry Mason TV series, which started in 1957 and continued until 1966. Right now I'm on season five, which seems to be the last one offered for free on Amazon Prime, so it's probably the last one I'll watch. Given that there are roughly thirty episodes per season, I will have watched 150 episodes, more or less, which is probably plenty, inasmuch as all the episodes follow the same formula.

I do like it, though. There are a lot of great guest stars, some of whom had previously made a name for themselves in 1950s (or earlier) cinema and a few of whom were yet to become stars. The writing is generally good, and Raymond Burr really is the perfect Perry Mason. I say this, having watched several Perry Mason movies from the 1930s featuring other actors who did not fill the bill nearly as well as Burr did. (We had Warren William as a drunken playboy Mason, Ricardo Cortez as Perry Mason with an accent, etc.)

All of this is a lead-in to an episode in season five called "The Case of the Meddling Medium," which deals with the paranormal in an unusually intelligent and well-informed way. If you have Amazon Prime, you may want to take a look at it.

For one thing, it involves the well-known parapsychologist Dr. Andrija Puharich (yes, Dr. — he was an MD), probably best remembered for his championship of Uri Geller's psychic abilities. In 1962, Puharich had yet to meet Geller, but he was already a prominent figure in the field, and he shows up in the episode playing himself. In fact, he hosts Perry Mason and perennial adversary Hamilton Burger in his parapsychology laboratory, where (spoiler alert!) he proves Perry's client innocent.

 The principal cast members gather in what is purported to be Puharich's laboratory. 

What's most interesting about the episode is it doesn't develop in the way you would expect. The medium introduced in the opening sequence turns out to be a fraud, who puts on a fake Madame Blavatsky-type accent. This is predictable enough. A little later, a fellow who wants to con his relatives pretends to have developed a talent for automatic writing.

But at the end, we're given to believe that one of the characters actually does have a small but measurable ESP talent, which accounts for some of her behavior.

In general, the episode takes a skeptical look at mediumship and the idea of communicating with the deceased, but is far more open to ESP, which is treated as a proper subject of scientific inquiry.

Moreover, screenwriter Samuel Newman took the trouble to learn something about the basic terminology of the field. The (fake) medium who handles people's personal items in order to divine things about their deceased donors is properly described as a "psychometric medium." (Well, maybe she should be a psychometric psychic, but whatever …)  The terms automatic writing and Spiritualist are used correctly, and the procedures in a parapsychology lab of that period – including a Faraday box – seem to be accurately reproduced, perhaps in part because of Dr. Puharich's participation. It's possible that Samuel Newman had a legitimate interest in this area. Unlike many of the earlier Mason shows, this one isn't based on an Erle Stanley Gardner novel, which makes me wonder if Mr. Newman didn't come up with the idea in order to indulge his interest in parapsychology — and to give the show a rare opportunity to employ some horror-movie atmospherics. 

The episode ends, as most of Perry Mason's adventures do, with a confession from the "real killer," this time not in a courtroom but in Mr. Puharich's laboratory. As a story, it's no better than average, but the parapsychology elements make it worth a watch. If you have Amazon Prime, you can see it for free: Perry Mason, "The Case of the Meddling Medium." Take a look.

By the way,  if you want to see what is (in my opinion) the best movie ever made about mediumship, check out Séance on a Wet Afternoon. It's not particularly pro-paranormal, though it does include a police detective who is — at least according to his own statement — a member of the Society for Psychical Research, but it's a brilliant movie with great performances.

Catastrophe

I've now watched five of the six episodes of season 1 of Catastrophe, an Amazon TV series available via streaming (free to Prime members). It's an intelligent single-camera sitcom about two strangers who hook up for a six-day fling, which results in an unplanned pregnancy - the catastrophe of the title. 

I like the show well enough, but even though it can be funny and smart, something about it is depressing, and I don't mean the part about an unplanned pregnancy. No, what's depressing is the world the characters inhabit, the very nature of their lives. 

Most of their friends and relatives are just awful. Even the few nice ones aren't really all that nice. Parents are minimally supportive at best. Supposed friends turn out to harbor not-so-secret resentments and hostilities. Doctors are so tone-deaf to basic emotional interaction that they deliver distressing news without warning or context. Business colleagues pretend to be friendly but actually hate each other on the rawest, most visceral level. Even a grade school teacher refuses to smile in front of her students, explaining that if she shows any weakness, it will be like throwing chum into a shark tank.

Though the characters are educated and semi-affluent, they live in a world of remarkable intellectual aridity. All conversations, including seduction, pillow talk, and marriage proposals, are dominated by the f-word and its equivalents. Nobody talks about ideas, except for content-free sound bites about global warming or nuclear war. Nobody has the slightest interest in spirituality or in finding any meaning in life. One character does practice homeopathy, but she's depicted as a hopeless neurotic who deserves ridicule; when she says a friend cured himself of prostate cancer with a walnut diet, the main character delivers the laugh line, "What'd he do, shove the walnuts up his ass?" 

(Not that I'm endorsing homeopathy or walnut diets, but couldn't these people be even slightly open to new ideas - or at least treat differences of opinion with a modicum of civility?)

Needless to say, no one practices religion, though we are treated to a diatribe on the idiocy of believing in the devil. No one is interested in art or music. No one reads books, except for a book on pregnancy. Even the main female character, supposedly a frustrated writer, shows no sign of ever having read a book for pleasure. We know she's a wannabe writer mainly because she detests a popular female writer of children's fantasies - not for aesthetic reasons but because of a personal grudge. In fact, much of what we know about these people is defined by their hatreds, which are always petty and vindictive. 

What's largely missing from this world are things that used to be taken for granted as part of any well lived life. A set of principles. A commitment to something higher than the mundane. Loyalty, honesty, kindness. Meaningful family relationships. A sense of community, of shared values. 

And you say: So what? The show's creators set out to realize a humorous but bleak vision, and they succeeded.

But that's the thing. I don't think they set out to do that at all. I think they did it this way because this really is life for them and for the people they know. In the circles in which they travel, conversations really are conducted on this level, and people really are constantly stabbing each other in the back (when they're not spitting invective directly into each other's face), and seriousness really is gauged by how freely they disparage religion or genuflect before climate change. 

All the things missing from this world are things that the "elites" of today, the educated, cosmopolitan class, have consciously rejected. A sense of community requires shared values, but ... values ? Come on, nobody believes in that crap anymore. Nobody believes in anything anymore, except sexual freedom, the one absolute. Nobody reads, studies, ponders, communes with nature or God, or asks what it's all about. Even love and friendship are not to be taken seriously, since we know it's all fake and we secretly hate each other and root for our friends to fail. 

I'm not saying the show is bad. Not at all. In fact, I think it's devastatingly accurate, in ways that it probably didn't quite intend to be. In its quest to depict two smart, sophisticated people dealing with a real-world problem in a modern way, Catastrophe shows us the hollowness of a society mostly stripped of the old-fashioned qualities that once made life tolerable. The two main characters are in it together - and they are in it alone. They do try to help each other (the man in the relationship seems particularly concerned about trying to do the right thing, one of the few grace notes in the series), but no one else is trying very hard. 

What a difference it would make if just one of their friends had said, "Wow, that's a lot to deal with. Whatever you need me for, I'm there for you. I want to help you in any way I can, because, honestly, I love you." But no one in their world could utter those words. The sentiment itself has become literally unspeakable.

To me, that's the real catastrophe. 

Kickstarting the afterlife

There's a Kickstarter campaign scheduled to launch on January 28 which can be previewed here. It's a fundraising drive for a documentary mini-series (a pilot and 12 half hour episodes) on Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP. I don't know anything more about it than what's presented on the Kickstarter preview page, but it looks like a serious project, and the two producers have previous experience in film and TV production. 

From the preview: 

WHO ARE THE PEOPLE MAKING THESE CLAIMS ABOUT EVP?

People involved in EVP research stand apart from those of us who may be casually interested in “psychic phenomena.”  Most started out as complete skeptics.  So they're not willing to just take the word of mediums who claim they can talk with the dead, or even the Bible or religious teachings.

Yet, some of these investigators have come to believe that EVP is objective proof that our personalities live on in another dimension after physical death.

In fact, some claim we’re on the verge of establishing a regular communication channel between dimensions – even though, as in the early days of radio, the technology we're using is at a primitive stage of development.

RECORDED TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE DEAD?  YEAH, RIGHT.   IT’S PROBABLY JUST WISHFUL THINKING BY PEOPLE FINDING MEANING IN A LOT OF NOISE.

That’s certainly possible.  All of us have had the experience of seeing “faces” in clouds.  Most of us have also been guilty of hearing what we want to hear out of what others would consider plain noise.  (You married people will especially know what we're talking about.)  

It’s also possible that alleged EVP voices are simply pieces of TV or radio transmissions that have been inadvertently picked up on recording equipment and misinterpreted as messages from the Great Beyond. 

But some of these alleged communications are crystal-clear.  They’re recognizable as the voices of real people who have died and make reference to real people and events in real time.  You can see and hear some examples in our video at the top of this page.    

SO WHAT’S GOING ON?

Great question.  Vague recordings or fuzzy pictures are one thing.  But voices or pictures that really sound or look like specific individuals -- and seem to respond to real-time questions or events -- are another.* 

Something has to be going on.   

COULD IT BE FRAUD?

You bet.  Some claimed EVPs are just too clear to be examples of wishful thinking.  So maybe someone faked them. 

And that’s what this scientific expedition/docu-series is all about.  We’ll get to the bottom of this mystery by building the most airtight experiments ever devised to test EVP.  Designed with the help of mainstream scientists who don't believe in the paranormal, these procedures will screen out fraud, random radio or television transmissions, or any other ordinary explanations for such phenomena ...

Up to this point, EVP has been the province of well-meaning amateurs, those fun ghost hunting shows on cable TV, or the occasional scientific professional who doesn't have the funding to mount a truly convincing study. 

No one has yet tested the claims of EVP proponents under absolutely impregnable, controlled conditions that would convince even the most die-hard skeptic.

Until now. 

OK.  GO ON…

Well, if you insist.  We’re seeking Kickstarter backing to conduct the most far-reaching investigation of EVP ever attempted – and to film every step along the way.

The people behind the Kickstarter project are asking for help in making their preview go viral. If the idea interests you, I suggest posting the link on your Facebook page, Twitter feed, or in emails to friends.

When the river meets the sea

 

Nice little video from a Muppets Christmas special featuring a character named Emmet Otter. The video is from that show, while the audio is the version of the song performed by John Denver on a subsequent Muppets album. 

Of is and ought

I was watching the Fox News Channel late-night program Red Eye the other night, when for some reason the topic of the is-ought dichotomy came up. 

As you probably know, the is-ought dichotomy was first identified by the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, who observed that it's impossible to derive a value judgment -- an ought -- from facts alone. The problem was largely ignored in his time, but has proved vexing to more recent philosophers. Many attempts have been made to bridge the gulf between is and ought. All have failed. There does not seem to be any way of resolving the dichotomy.

On Red Eye, one of the panelists suggested that the dichotomy posed no real problem by giving this example: "It is raining. Therefore I ought to take my umbrella." He then shrugged, as if to say: See? Solved it for you.

Red Eye is a pretty unserious show, which consists mostly of playful banter broken up by YouTube clips of funny animals, so I don't know if the brief discussion was meant to be taken seriously or not. But if this was a legitimate suggestion, it was mistaken. The example given does not resolve the dichotomy. The reason is that the line of reasoning presented includes a hidden step, which is implied but not stated. Let's restate the argument with the hidden step made explicit.

1. It is raining.

2. I prefer not to get wet.

3. Therefore I ought to take my umbrella.

Here we can clearly see that the ought statement is predicated on step two, a personal preference.

Now, no one has ever denied that ought statements can be derived from personal preferences. The point of the is-ought dichotomy is that ought statements cannot be derived from neutral facts. And that is indeed true. It is impossible to derive step three from step one without the intervention of step two.

In fact, virtually all ought statements derive from statements of preference, even if these statements are implicit. You can easily test this yourself by making just about any ought statement you can think of, and then identifying the preference that underlies it. The only arguable exceptions are ought statements based on instincts, such as the will to live. An instinct may be seen as only a deeply ingrained preference, or it may be seen as brute biological fact, depending on one's point of view. 

Does this mean that all moral values are based on personal subjective preferences and, possibly, a few biological drives? That's the position taken by most contemporary secular humanists. 

The alternative is that objective moral values unconnected to biology do exist, but that they are not derived not from empirical observations. Instead, they are derived from a deep, intuitive insight into the nature and purpose of the universe and/or its Creator - a precious gift, a pearl beyond price, handed down to the rest of us by a small number of gifted spiritual teachers. Of course, this takes us into the realm of mysticism and revelation, a step which is understandably offputting to many moderns, and which gives rise to problems of its own. 

Still, if we are going to live in a world of objective moral values instead of mere subjective preferences and blind animalistic instincts, then the is-ought dichotomy tells us we must go beyond the limits of logic. Because logic, it seems, can take us only so far. 

Why I'm not mad about Mad Men

There's a lot of buzz about the AMC dramatic series Mad Men, so I finally decided to rent the first three episodes on DVD. The show is well acted and well produced, and certainly captures the look of 1960. It can be funny and smart, though the pace is rather slow. Overall, though, I found myself a little peeved at Mad Men, at least if I can judge the whole series by only three installments.

The problem I have with the show, besides the sometimes glacial pace of the narrative, is that it seems to be written by people who have no personal experience of the 1960s - young people whose whole idea of that era is derived from books and movies.

Now, I have only limited personal experience of that decade myself. I was born in 1960, and didn't start to pay much attention to the culture around me until the late '60s. Still, I remember enough to know that the show's depiction of this time in America's history is more caricature than reality.

Let's look at some specifics.

Smoking. On Mad Men, everybody smokes all the time. People smoke the minute they wake up in the morning. They smoke while cooking breakfast. They smoke on the commute to work. They smoke constantly at the office, and at restaurants, and everywhere else, and they keep smoking after they get home, right up until they go to bed. And if they wake up in the middle of the night, they light another cigarette. They live surrounded by swirls of tobacco smoke, like an everpresent curtain of gauze or - in group scenes - a sickly London fog.

Well, sure. It's true that in the 1960s, smoking did not have the stigma that it carries today. It's true - as depicted in the series - that pregnant women, or at least some of them, smoked. It's true that bars and restaurants and railroad cars could be dense with tobacco fumes.

But let's not get carried away. Most people didn't chain-smoke the way the Mad Men characters do. They smoked socially, they smoked more than was good for them, but they didn't smoke everywhere, all the time, in every situation. A doctor would not light up a cigarette while examining a patient, as a gynecologist does in one of the early episodes. And some people, even back then in those benighted days, didn't smoke at all.

Drinking. The amount of hard liquor consumed by the characters in Mad Men could have kept Al Capone in business throughout Prohibition. The lead character, Don Draper, is almost never seen without a cocktail in his hand. He has a well-stocked bar in his office, and he and his colleagues miss no opportunity to pour themselves a stiff drink at any hour of the workday. At lunch they get even more potted, and if they go out for dinner, the booze keeps coming in an endless supply. On the rare occasion when no cocktails are available, Draper contents himself by downing half a dozen cans of beer, apparently without ill effect.

Draper and his friends drink so heavily, I'm surprised they can ambulate from one room to another, much less get through the day. Did people drink in the '60s? Sure. Did they drink all the time, to such obvious excess? I don't think so. The three-martini lunch is one thing; a twenty-martini work day is another.

Chauvinism and adultery. In the universe of Mad Men, it seems that all married men cheat on their wives, usually by pouncing on one of the "girls" from the steno pool. Marital fidelity is apparently unknown and certainly not expected. Women in the workplace are treated like slabs of meat; married women are uniformly housewives, who are treated as domestic servants and otherwise ignored.

Of course there's some truth in this, but things weren't quite that bad. I would wager that adultery was actually less common in the 1950s and early to mid '60s than it became later on, after the much-hyped "sexual revolution" loosened societal mores. Many men put a high premium on being a loyal husband, a good father, and a reliable provider. This wasn't just an act; it was the way they were brought up.

Nor did the typical husband necessarily regard his wife as a mere convenience. I can remember my father coming home at night and having long, serious conversations with my mother about developments in the office, in which he would solicit her advice about the best way to handle office politics and other problems. She was, in a sense, the power behind the throne. I don't think this was an unusual relationship. There was a saying back then: "Behind every successful man there stands a woman." Women's opportunities to advance in the workplace were severely limited, but they did at least find ways to advance their husbands' careers. Often the wife was better at seeing opportunities and getting her husband to capitalize on them than he was. Corporate advancement was a team effort; the wife was not ordinarily relegated to the role of Barbie doll - at least, not if her husband wanted to get ahead.

Sexual orientation. One character in Draper's advertising firm is a swishy guy who is obviously in the closet. His effeminate style of walking and talking make this immediately clear to the viewer. Yet we're supposed to believe that none of his colleagues can see through the ruse.

It's true that homosexuality was largely off-limits as a topic of conversation in that period. Either people didn't talk about it at all, or they used euphemisms like "confirmed bachelor." But that doesn't mean they were oblivious to the world around them. They knew perfectly well that some people were homosexual, and they could probably make an educated guess about which ones fit that description; they just didn't want to discuss it. I'm not saying this was a healthy situation; it led to emotional repression and needless suffering on the part of gays. The point I'm making is that, contrary to Mad Men, most people in 1960 were not naïve, clueless dolts.

And that gets us to the heart of my objections. Mad Men is a show written by young people about an era they never knew, and their attitude seems to include a large element of mockery and derision. In almost every scene, I can hear some smug twentysomething or thirtysomething scriptwriter whispering, "Look at these idiots. They didn't know smoking was bad for you. They didn't know liquor can cause health problems. They didn't think women had minds of their own. They didn't know there were gay people in the world. They were so stupid!"

Followed by: "See how much smarter, more worldly-wise, and enlightened we are?"

But let's think about this. Who exactly are the Mad Men generation? They're people who grew up in the Depression, defeated the Axis powers in World War II, then came home and built America into the world's leading industrial economy while staring down the Soviet Union. Tom Brokaw famously called them "the greatest generation," and while I think there's some hyperbole in that term, it's probably more right than wrong.

You can say a lot about these people, you can criticize them for attitudes and lifestyles that we now regard as misguided and antiquated, you can certainly make fun of their narrow ties and silly wigs, but I don't think you can say they were stupid, naïve, or ridiculous.

And that's why I'm not mad about Mad Men.