Child killers & Clairvoyants

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I picked Edwards specifically because of the multi-millions he has made from people. Not surprisingly plenty skeptics are willing to say things behind his back but nobody dares confront him face to face on TV in case he "calls up" a dead relative.



Think about what incentive there would be other than cheap publicity. Making patterns in cornfields using advanced technology or multiple people would cost somebody a lot of money. A group of Stanford engineering student's tried to simulate one of the simpler crop circle designs and while they were able to trample a rough pattern they were not able to
a) design a pattern to exact scale without viewing from a helicopter or aircraft making the exercise impractical from the ground
b) replicate the individual stalks bent at exactly a 90 degree angle as observed at newly made crop circles
c) simulate the low level background radiation typical of a freshly made crop circle

That makes no sense. If you're frightened he can call up a dead relative, you believe (a) this is possible and (b) he can do it.
No, the problem is that multi-millions thing. Calling him a fraud is a big legal challenge; you need to demonstrate not only that his talents are bogus but that he is deliberately conning people out of their money. Which is far more difficult, and very likely to lead to being sued for slander/libel.

In legal cases, the winner is often the party with the most money. Truth is incidental.



A board and a rope are advanced technology?



A bunch of engineering students were unable to figure it out, so it must be aliens. Right. Penn and Teller have a show where they invite magicians to perform tricks and then try to figure out how they are done. Sometimes they can't. So magic is real, right?

As for (c), I've never heard of that before. I'm highly dubious, though - who thinks to check their flattened corn with a geiger counter? Someone who already suspects the presence of radiation. That's not scientific - science is about forming conclusions from the evidence, not looking for the evidence to support a conclusion. See also "confirmation bias".

Yes I know. However scientific research has been conducted on the phenomena and it is taken seriously
http://www.bltresearch.com/links.php
http://www.bltresearch.com/published.php

There isn't a central body for "science". It's not like, say, Catholicism (with a central organisation, headed by the Pope) or particular branches of medicine (who have organisations to certify and regulate practitioners). So scientists can investigate all manner of things, and there isn't any body to say "these are worthwhile, these are not". Hell, I've seen "mathematical" formula for things like the perfect kiss in the newspapers before. That's not so much science as a professor in need of a little extra cash!

The main point is that science is often done in "fringe" areas and isn't always done rigorously. There are homeopathy tests that show a positive effect, but have such a small sample size that the results are meaningless. Often there's insufficient blinding, so the test subjects know whether they have the remedy or the placebo, which rather defeats the point. Peer review is the most effective way we have to address these, but it is far from perfect and requires that the peers in question know what they're doing. Publishing in pubmed is very different to getting acclaim from a magazine like "Aromatherapy Weekly".

As for Mr Edwards - if he's a genuine psychic (and if so, why isn't he avoiding the NSA and CIA?) then he should try taking up James Randi's challenge. A million dollars and massive publicity would be his. But he'd be unable to use any hot/cold reading, stooges, parlour tricks or vague predictions. He'd have to strip away everything except the psychic ability. If that fails him, his powers are clearly not psychic.

Eerily accurate predictions pop up now and again everywhere. Look up the "prediction" of 9/11 in the episode of The Simpsons where they go to New York. Or the hilarious "bible code" that works equally well when you translate any book into Hebrew - such as Moby Dick. Human beings have a remarkable blind spot when it comes to fake predictions - if John Edwards makes thirty predictions, and one coincidentally proves correct, people remember that one but not the 29 others.

I know an Australian mathematician who was awarded an Australian Research Council grant to create mathematical models of juggling balls. He's written two books on it.



I'm an ex biomedical scientist and I'm highly skeptical of discipline specific peer review and the over citation from US and European scientific journals. Frontier science has always been lampooned by the scientific establishment until a breakthrough is made. Charles Darwin was caricatured as an ape for proposing evolution and parts of the USA he is still vilified as a heretic. I need not mention what happened to Galileo and Copernicus.

Our modern inquisitors wear lab coats and declare that if data on a phenomena doesn't fit neatly into one of their established pigeon holes then it simply can't exist. The late Harvard psychiatrist, Professor John Mack, referred to this as the enslavement to the materialist paradigm. Of course science is not just about scaffolding the to the known body of knowledge, it is also about seeking new paradigms and expanding our minds.



He doesn't need to take up Randi's challenge as he's already making millions of dollars. His abilities are intriguing. It's a very very good parlour trick.



Yes this is true. Getting back to Edwards his hit rate is far better than 1 in 29 and assuming he isn;t planting stooges in the crowd then there are thousands who have been concivned he was speaking to a loved one. While a bereaved person who lost a spouse, sibling or parent may be vunerable to a con-man, Edward seems to get fine details on the deceased that just don;t seem to be pure chance. I am not sure about speaking to the dead, but I am open to the idea Edward might be reading thoughts...

I'm not sure whose point that proves!!



This is true. What's also true is that a lot of frontier science is utter quackery. Sometimes good ideas get lost in the bad ones. And there's always the other problem - human beings are not very good at science. We are pattern generators - a useful trait for our survival, but it throws up a lot of false positives. While realising that eating those red berries always makes us sick is a good thing, there's no inherent harm in avoiding cracks in the pavement. Superstitions are little more than false positive patterns - if a cat crosses your path shortly before a run of bad luck, it's quite common to link the cat to the events despite there being no connection.



I've heard it said before that science progresses by the death of scientists. One example is the speed of light, which was considered to be infinite until the 17th century, when the idea it was a finite constant was suggested and ridiculed - despite good evidence from measurements of Jupiter's moons. It wasn't until the leading scientists of the day eventually died that these theories could become widespread.

If scientists were enirely rational, science would progress much faster. Unfortunately, they are human beings - and come with all the irrationality and selfish political machinations that entails.



I don't know him well enough to investigate it. But my main question remains - is he psychic, or is his talent based in something more down to earth?



His hit rate would have to be better than that! Bizarrely, though, psychics can get away with much less success than stage magicians. They have to be 100% right, or they'd be booed off the stage.

What fine details are these? I wouldn't be surprised if these people were selected beforehand - not willing stooges, but the result of some basic research. Look at who's bought the tickets, check the records office for dead relatives, stuff like that. Avoid the trickier ones, and go for the low-hanging fruit. I'm not saying this is what he does, but it's certainly one way you could do it.

True there is plenty of chaff out there. Analysis of patterns is what gives people hunches that something is unusual, yes it's encoded in our perception.




Indeed, navigators were terrified of falling of the edge of the earth, a flat earth and divine intervention to explain life on earth.



The information you seek is pertinent to testing his bona fides as a psychic. You may be interested to read the University of Arizona's research on psychic powers, they allege and apparently demonstrate that people in different buildings can influence the mood of another person by simply focusing on them. Of interest is the exact moment a person's attention is turned on person X that person X's mood immediately changes.
http://veritas.arizona.edu/
The mechanism is completely unknown.

I couldn't find any details of that experiment on this link, but it is intriguing. More details are needed.
(1) How are they measuring mood, which is always highly subjective?
(2) What controls do they have in place?
(3) How do they get around the problem that, in order to know when someone's mood changes, they need to be focusing on them?
(4) Are the subjects being focused on aware that they are being studied in this manner?
(5) How are they being focused upon? Are they watched, or is this using some talisman (eg. photo, name) or simply through imagination?
(6) Is the focus employing an emotional content, or simply thought?
(7) What is the nature of their sample? Have they taken a wide group, or just a bunch of students from the campus?

Anamalous cognition has been researched and suggested to be a phenomenon that can be reliably demonstrated by independent review of the research done by Project Stargate, the government program that existed for about 20 years in the
US.

http://anson.ucdavis.edu/~utts/air2.html



Recent research that used a psychologically stimulating mediumof photographs with pornographic images, showed a statistical correlation beyond chance in the subject's ability to identify the photographs with pornographic images with anamalous cognition.

http://caps.ucsf.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/bem2011.pdf



No one knows why anamalous cognition happens, but it is evident that other factors are involved, besides a persons ability to do it on demand in any circumstance.

Normally when enough people experience a phenomenon, there is an element of truth somewhere; while it is not miraculous results, there is reputable evidence provided, to date, that suggests there is something to anamlous cognition, other than chance.

Last edited by aghogday on 05 Sep 2011, 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Aghogday, I am currently struggling to square the long words you are using with the age of your avatar. Hey, it's late...

This anomalous cognition thingummy - I take it this is the experiment in which people are shown a series of images and react to them emotionally before they see them? I've heard about this a while back but I can't remember much about it now.

I don't doubt that it isn't chance. But what is it? Without studying the experiment set-up, I can't identify any potential loopholes. And, assuming that there aren't any, what actually causes the effect?

To clarify on the first link; in a previous thread, I had used the wrong link to the review of project stargate done by Statistician Jessica Utt's. I noticed it and corrected it in this link.

No one brought the error to my attention in the previous thread; I didn't realize I had made that error until now.

If you use the corrected link to Utt's review on the research you will be able to gain a better understanding of her review.

Anamalous cognition is a scientific term used to describe what some call clairvoyance, psi, ESP and the like, part of what has been commonly understood as psychic phenomonon.

The link to Bem's research using the photographs, measures pre-cognition, a specific example of anamalous cognition that some call clairvoyance. It is fully explained in the linked research.

Both Utt's review and Bem's research has been criticized by some, but both are seen as reputable scientists within their respective fields of expertise.

I personally believe natural phenomenon is behind the part of anamalous cognition that can be reliably demonstrated. Scientists are continuing to research it and demonstrate it. No one has any concrete evidence of what physical forces may be behind it, as far as I know.

But, apparently at least part of the phenomenon of anamalous cognition has been identified as a phenomemon that can be reliably demonstrated.

As much as I've enjoyed reading this, what does this have to do with someone who murdered a child? Sylkat

I've lost track myself. Best I can figure, it was either a clairvoyant or Bigfoot.

Apologies...this needs another thread

Dear Cyberdad, I was not criticizing the direction of the conversation, I actually want to know what connection exists between clairvoyance (real or faked) and murdered children; was there intended to be a discussion about psychics called in to find bodies of dead children, or to help find the missing ones, were specific cases to be analyzed? I do not blame families who reach out for any possible help, I cannot criticize people in that much pain, and I do believe that the majority of psychics believe in their own abilities, even if they are actually responding to subconscious reactions from subjects. Just my 2 cents worth. Sylkat

First, there is no connection.

Second, any perceived connection is purely subjective, and therefor higly suspect.

Third, so-called "psychics" themselves are frauds - Sylvia Browne being typical of the ilk.


Finally, "psychics" by and large do more harm than good in any such investigation.