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Some people say, "Oh, there's anti-science on both sides of the political aisle." But that neglects one important fact: in only ONE political party are the leadership and the party platform dominated by science denial.
Would you believe there is a patch of trapped garbage floating in the North Pacific bigger than the state of Texas? It's called the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch".
The title of this blog post may seem harsh, but when it comes to douchebag charlatans who bilk the desperate and grieving out of their money, self-declared psychic Sylvia Browne was the bottom of the proverbial dung-heap. And now she’s dead. Ironically, in 2003 she predicted that she would die at the age of 88, yet she died 11 years earlier than that…
Over the course of writing this blog, I have dedicated some posts specifically to the late Ms. Browne in order to point out just how much of a self-aggrandizing and deceitful person she was, claiming to have psychic powers and often failing spectacularly in her “predictions” (none of which she ever apologized for, even given the pain she caused). In honor of her death, I shall reproduce those posts below in the hopes that people do not celebrate her as a “lost light to the world” or similar rubbish. Rather, it is my hope that people take the time to reflect upon Ms. Browne’s life and death and think carefully about just how much damage she did by hoodwinking the most gullible and vulnerable among us. Hopefully, perhaps people will be a bit more skeptical of the next psychic scumbag who comes along.
I make no bones about how I feel about various psychic charlatans who take advantage of the desperate, grieving, and bereaved: they’re pretty close to scraping the bottom of the barrel, in my view. At the top of this list is none other than the queen of psychic charlatans: Sylvia Browne.
Ms. Browne has made a career, literally, out of taking advantage of any opportunity, no matter how sleazy, to get in front of cameras in order to promote herself and her supposed “psychic powers”. In many cases, this takes the form of her going on a popular daytime television show, such as the Montel Williams Show, and giving readings to various audience members. And sometimes, she has stooped so low as to give authoritative-sounding psychicly-guided advice to people who have lost loved ones.
Of course, such psychic predictions can backfire when people actually take the time to examine them critically (such as keeping track of the New Year predictions made by prominent psychics which are complete and total duds). But sometimes, especially when dealing with those who are really going for the gusto (like Ms. Browne), these predictions can fail in a truly spectacular and despicable manner, as it did with what is turning out to be a huge fiasco regarding the discovery and rescue of kidnapping victim Amanda Berry in Cleveland, Ohio. It just so happens that not long after their daughter went missing over 10 years ago, Amanda’s parents went onto the Montel Williams Show to consult with Ms. Browne, who told them – rather unequivocally – that their daughter was dead…
… yup, dead. Which is kind of exactly the opposite of what Amanda really was… you know, alive and hoping someone would find her? Whoops…
Sylvia Browne is coming under fire after the television psychic told the family of Cleveland kidnapping victim Amanda Berry that their daughter was dead.
The case made national headlines this week when Brown and two other kidnapped girls were found safe in Cleveland. But for the family of Amanda Berry, that does not undo the heartache caused by Sylvia Browne.
As Miller pleaded for her for information on her daughter’s whereabouts, Sylvia Browne, got it completely wrong:
Miller: Can you tell me if they’ll ever find her? Is she out there?
Browne: She’s — see, I hate this when they’re in water. I just hate this. She’s not alive, honey. And I’ll tell you why, here we go again. Your daughter was not the type that would not have called you.
Miller: So you don’t think I’ll ever get to see her again?
Browne: Yeah, in heaven, on the other side.
Brown was correct on the last prediction, though it does not appear to be intentional. Berry’s mother would die of heart failure two years later — her family said she died of a “broken heart” after her hopes of a rescue were dashed by Browne’s vision.
Now Sylvia Brown has come under assault, with commentators calling her a “grief vampire” and her Twitter page coming under assault. [emphasis added]
And to me that is one of the real tragedies of this whole sordid affair. Not only have Ms. Browne and similar psychic charlatans used the grief of people to take advantage of them in their most vulnerable moments to promote themselves and their cheesy, pseudoscientific agenda, but they have also propped themselves up as some kind of authority with no evidence to support their claims. And then they go making terribly irresponsible statements such as what Ms. Browne did regarding Amanda Berry; sadly, because Louwana Miller gave some kind of credence to Ms. Browne and her psychic claims, because she trusted Browne, she was horribly and terribly deceived… eventually dying thinking that her daughter was dead.
[ **Side note: Lest you think I’m being a bit too hard on Ms. Browne, it should be noted that this isn’t her first high-profile grade-A screwup. For more history, check out her involvement in the Shawn Hornbeck fiasco. ]
I’m not one to say there should be a law against being a douchebag, especially such a self-aggrandizing and deceitful one such as Ms. Browne and her psychic ilk, but I do think it is incumbent upon those of us who call ourselves skeptics and critical thinkers to call these charlatans out on their lies and douchebaggery. We need to call them out long and loud on their lies and deceit, and we need to use these sad episodes as a lesson in teaching others the use of thinking a bit more critically about such extraordinary claims.
Well, here we are once again, and it’s time for that time-honored tradition of checking the accuracy of famous psychic predictions of the past year. As you’ll see, when subjected to scrutiny, the vast majority of these predictions fail pretty badly. However, there are all too many faithful followers of psychic woo who want to believe that it works. One of the primary ways in which believers fool themselves is to cherry-pick the predictions and results; in skeptic-speak, we call this “counting the hits and ignoring the misses”.
And there are a LOT more misses than hits, folks. In addition, many of these psychics tend to make very vague and ambiguous predictions which can be twisted and interpreted in a number of ways. This creative interpretation of misses or vague predictions after-the-fact as hits is well documented in the history of psychic woo. Let’s see how well those predictions for 2012 worked out by referencing this About.com article from one year ago…
A LOT OF people are looking at 2012 with a mixture of dread and hope. The last few years have been tough financially for many people, and there’s been all of that apocalyptic talk about Mayan calendars and doom and gloom. What will really happen in 2012 I’m sure will surprise all of us. Recently, readers like you made your predictions for 2012, but we always seem to be curious about what the professional psychics foresee. Here are selected predictions for 2012 from some of the most well-known and sought-after psychics, seers, and mentalists from around the world.
Let’s just begin this exercise by examining the first psychic on the list:
John Edward, un-psychic douchebag, endorses this event 🙂
… This event launches our presence in Indianapolis, a city where we’ve found great skeptics and the potential for a truly bad ass skeptical mofo community. Our only option was to invade Indy and bring some mofos together to help us save them from their little notch on the Bible Belt.
Come out to the Unpsychic fair this weekend and be a part of WTF Indy! We’ll give you all you can eat food and buy your first drink. Then, we’ll be raffling off an entire bottle of alcohol. And we’ll do unpsychic readings… by real fake psychics!
The Women Thinking Free Foundation has arrived in Indianapolis!
Please join us on June 25, 2011 for our first ever Indy event: Mysteries of the Totally Explained, an Unpsychic Faire.
Tarot card readings!
Psychic predictions!
Discover your fate with a oujia board!
You will be amazed at the occasional accuracy of your readings!
We can already sense your presence!
Tickets are $20 and include all you can eat appetizers, cash bar with drink specials and your first drink is on us!
FREE admission for ghosts entering through the Ouija board or other spiritual portal.
Among the New Year traditions that seem to get bantered about these days are psychic predictions for the upcoming year. Of course, psychics are a bunch of hooey – ever seen a newspaper headline titled “Psychic Wins Lottery, Gives Money to Starving Kids!”? You never will, because psychic & other related paranormal phenomena just don’t work, period.
However, there are all too many faithful followers of psychic woo who want to believe that it works. One of the primary ways in which believers fool themselves is to cherry-pick the predictions & results; in skeptic-speak, we call this “counting the hits and ignoring the misses”. And there are a LOT more misses than hits, folks. In addition, many of these psychics tend to make very vague & ambiguous predictions which can be twisted and interpreted in a number of ways. This creative interpretation of misses or vague predictions after-the-fact as hits is well documented in the history of psychic woo.
THESE ARE THE people who are supposed to be able to tell us the future, right? Okay, so here are 2010 predictions from psychics, astrologers and mentalists from around the U.S. and around the world about the economy, politics, Hollywood – and a few very weird things.
Christopher St John, Psychic
Another crash in the stock market… maybe a little bit later in the year.
Increased recording and reporting of sightings of UFOs will place pressure on world governments to admit “the truth” of extra-terrestrial life. …
Another stock market crash? Hmm, let’s see how the ol’ market did this year. According to Yahoo News Finance, it seems like it was a pretty damn good year for the market, specifically the Dow Jones:
Of course, if Mr. St. John wants to call the dip in the market from May to July (which amounted to ~1000 points over the course of two months) a “crash”, I suppose he could do that. But given what the markets went through back in 2008, I think this two-month-long dip could hardly be called a “crash”. I’m going to call this one a miss.
As for the supposed “pressure” put on world governments to release “the truth” of ET-life, I don’t seem to recall any major headlines on that front. In fact, a brief search of Google News using the terms “extra terrestrial life ufo governments” revealed pretty much nothing; well, nothing except for this headline: ‘Cosmic masters’ call for Govt investigation into UFOs
I suppose this is marginally interesting, but the prediction was that world governments (note the plural there) would have these UFO files released and facing pressure. As it is, it seems that this has only occurred in New Zealand, not worldwide as predicted. Not to mention, in the last few years we have seen the release of a number of formerly secret files on supposed UFO sightings by a number of governments, so this sort of “prediction” comes as no big revelation. If this is a psychic hit, it is a really vague & lukewarm one.
With all of the attention that airline security has gotten of late, specifically regarding new security procedures put in place by the United States’ TSA, I think it is worthwhile to ask a seemingly tongue-in-cheek question which has a serious side: where are the psychic security agents?
Think about it, seriously… if psychics really could read minds, or talk to the dead, or somehow get “forbidden” information through whatever method of divination they employ the way many of them claim, then why the hell aren’t these people working for the TSA by probing the minds of suspected terrorists? The question kind of harkens back to one asked by many people a little over 9 years ago: Why didn’t any of these psychic gurus see 9/11 coming before the fact?
In any case, I want to give the last word on this to skeptical investigator Ben Radford, who wrote a really good article on the matter. Check it out…
Amid all the discussion, anxiety and outrage over heightened airline security this holiday season, there’s one group of people whose important information is conspicuously absent: psychics.
There are thousands of people who claim to have psychic powers. Some, like convicted felon Sylvia Browne, are New York Times best-selling authors; others are seen on talk shows; still others, like Alison DuBois (of NBC’s Medium), serve as consultants for their own television shows.
While many dismiss psychics as frauds or mere entertainers, tens of millions of Americans believe in psychic abilities. For example, a 2005 Baylor Religion Survey found that nearly one-fifth of American women (and one-tenth of men) believe that psychic powers exist.
What do psychics have to do with national security? Everything — if they are real. [emphasis added]…
It never ceases to amaze me how psychics and their ilk manage to persist, despite numerous moments of spectacular fail – such is the nature of cognitive dissonance with the psychics & their followers. Well, at least we can have a little fun with it… A few days ago (on March 31st), just for a little bit of skeptical fun, Jimmy Kimmel had a psychic named Gary Spivey on his show to make a series of Final Four picks for the NCAA tournament. Of course, as Kimmel outlines in his opening remarks, most of these games had already taken place, and some of the “teams” (such as Balboa and Flanders) don’t even exist! Watch as master psychic Gary Spivey makes his predictions…
That’s pretty damn funny, if you ask me. I will give Gary Spivey one thing, however: he’s got the most wicked-cool looking hairdo EVER!!! 🙂
I recently got an I-Touch, and I’m discovering a whole bunch of neat little apps for it. Among one of the most interesting I’ve downloaded recently is an app called “Telepath” made by skeptic Dr. Richard Wiseman, which allows you to give the illusion that the I-Touch/Phone itself (or the operator) is telepathic! Dr. Wiseman knows quite a lot about psychology and how easy it is to fool people – or in this case how easy it is for people to fool themselves. So he put together this little app in order to teach people a little lesson in critical thinking…
Of course, there’s no actual telepathy to it, but it is a really neat trick (it fooled me the first time I saw it). To learn more about it, check out this Youtube video that Dr. Wiseman put together…
In order to learn the secret behind the trick, you’ll have to purchase the app from the I-Tunes store – considering what it does, it’s a real deal for only 99 cents! So if you have an I-Phone/Touch, I suggest that you go pick up “Telepath” and start having some skeptical fun with it 🙂
The Skeptical Teacher 
