I didn’t know who Darren Brown was before listening to his TED talk and watching his older series about debunking other psychics, but I am so glad I know of him now. He truly is a great mentalist and has an amazing showmanship factor. The key thing for psychics really is the idea of being vague and generalizing things for their audience. Brown shows that he can match the “famous” psychics by being so vague and really “faking ‘til he makes it.” In my personal experience, I used to love getting my tarot cards read and looking up my astrology for compatibility or if I would want to know what would be my ideal career. Now I know that something like the “stars” and “signs” cannot define who I am as a person but it can generalize a majority of people who share the same birth month as me. As for the tarot reader, looking back now this old italian woman that I had met in Venice Beach, CA was able to sell me more of an “experience” rather than answers to my future and reading of my past. I found the Ted talk enlightening because as someone who used to rely so heavily on these psychics can now see that it is a trick of just reading a person's mannerisms and more relating to humans and their habits.
Showing posts with label psychic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychic. Show all posts
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Post #2: Darren Brown
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Psychic Crime Detectives: The Truth
I have seen numerous crime-detective shows that have used psychic detectives in order to find a murder, or missing person, etc. I never really believed in their powers, but also never researched much on psychic detectives, until reading the pseudoscience and paranormal book.
In the case of Charles Capel, a Miami University professor who had Alzheimer's disease, wandered away from his home in Oxford, Ohio, and was later found "because of the psychic detective", it was very interesting to read two different sides of the story. I can completely see how people could be mislead into thinking that the psychic was actually responisble for finding Charles' location, however after reading the real facts of the case I no longer believe this to be true. Noreen Renier's, the psychic detective's, descriptions of where Capel was, were very vague, and could have applied to multiple different things. For instance, when predicting his location, she mentioned seeing a stone, a wooded area, a creek, a fence, and a tower with an antenna on top of it, ad also said he was about 8 miles away. For the stone aspect of it, Capel was found near a place called Stoney Creek, and that was interpretted as correct information that was given from the psychic. It all sounds good when you don't actually look into it more.
The vagueness of the stone prediction could be consistent with a wide variety of scenarios, for instance if a big stone had been near Capel's body. Also, we tend to remember information the psychic provides and overlook information that was inconsistent. Capels was found near a wooded area, but it was less than a mile away, not 8 miles. Another interesting fact, the police were not even the ones who found Capel's body; they searched for 2 months until a hunter actually found Charles.
After numerous studies have been done on psychic detectives' performances, the overall conclusion seems to be the same for each; "psychic" detectives perform no better than regular people when it comes to predicting facts from crime scenes. Also, when a psychic gets a fact right about a crime, they attempt to highlight that correct guess and overlook their other statements that were very wrong. After the study performed by Martin Reiser of the Los Angeles Police Department, he stated, "The research data does not support the contention that psychics can provide significant additional information leading to the solution of major crime."
So, after reading the pseudoscience and paranmoral book, my disbelief in psychic detectives has grown, however I can understand why people may believe in them. It is up to you to decided whether or not you believe.
In the case of Charles Capel, a Miami University professor who had Alzheimer's disease, wandered away from his home in Oxford, Ohio, and was later found "because of the psychic detective", it was very interesting to read two different sides of the story. I can completely see how people could be mislead into thinking that the psychic was actually responisble for finding Charles' location, however after reading the real facts of the case I no longer believe this to be true. Noreen Renier's, the psychic detective's, descriptions of where Capel was, were very vague, and could have applied to multiple different things. For instance, when predicting his location, she mentioned seeing a stone, a wooded area, a creek, a fence, and a tower with an antenna on top of it, ad also said he was about 8 miles away. For the stone aspect of it, Capel was found near a place called Stoney Creek, and that was interpretted as correct information that was given from the psychic. It all sounds good when you don't actually look into it more.
The vagueness of the stone prediction could be consistent with a wide variety of scenarios, for instance if a big stone had been near Capel's body. Also, we tend to remember information the psychic provides and overlook information that was inconsistent. Capels was found near a wooded area, but it was less than a mile away, not 8 miles. Another interesting fact, the police were not even the ones who found Capel's body; they searched for 2 months until a hunter actually found Charles.
After numerous studies have been done on psychic detectives' performances, the overall conclusion seems to be the same for each; "psychic" detectives perform no better than regular people when it comes to predicting facts from crime scenes. Also, when a psychic gets a fact right about a crime, they attempt to highlight that correct guess and overlook their other statements that were very wrong. After the study performed by Martin Reiser of the Los Angeles Police Department, he stated, "The research data does not support the contention that psychics can provide significant additional information leading to the solution of major crime."
So, after reading the pseudoscience and paranmoral book, my disbelief in psychic detectives has grown, however I can understand why people may believe in them. It is up to you to decided whether or not you believe.
Links:
http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/psychicdetectives.html
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Psychic Crime Detectives
The topic of psychic crime detectives definitely caught my attention as we discussed the contents of chapter five in class. Being a criminal justice major, I thought how great would it be if we could rely on the powers of psychics to solve crimes rather than the traditional methods of tedious police work? I'm kidding. After doing some research, I came to the conclusion that though it would be awesome to say that a psychic was able to quickly and efficiently solve a crime that would, for instance, put a dangerous and deadly murderer off of the street, or even know about said crime before it happened, it just simply does not work that way. There are no such things as psychic detectives.
To put it simply, so-called “psychic detectives” are just great guessers. By paying close attention to detail in both police reports and forms of mass media, as well as using their powers of persuasion that they are the ones who in fact were able to solve the crime, they are able to make educated guesses about what happened during the course of a offense and pass it off as if they have revealed some new and important information about the case.
Crime reconstruction is not a simple, straightforward process. A lot of hard work and investigation goes into finding out who, what, where, why, when, and how a crime was committed. As shown with the case of the disappearance of Charles Capel, psychics are only able to give vague information about the minor details of the case which the police have to somehow make fit into the particulars of the crime once it is solved. The self-proclaimed psychic detective of the case, Noreen Reiner, was only called in to assist in the investigation once the police department had no one else to turn to; even then, the police still did not use her “clues” to find Capel’s body.
Essentially, the use of psychic detectives provides use with more questions than answers. According to Katherine Ramsland, “Psychics never predict the future in a way that might stop a crime or tragic event from happening.” Meaning if a psychic is able to tell us what happened as a result of a crime that was committed, why couldn’t they tell us how to stop it before it occurred? Other questions that could be asked include why the psychics are presently not rich as a result of their great abilities, in addition to if they can predict what happened during the course of a crime, why can’t they also predict other things, such as lottery numbers?
As discussed in class, Reiser and Klyver were asked to compare the psychic performances between psychic detectives and a control group of college students. The conclusion reached at the end of the experiment was that “this study provided no evidence to support the claims of psychic detection and, as such; the results are in accordance with other controlled studies” (Lawson, 145). As with this experiment, another test conducted by Joe Nickell was able to conclude several reasons as to why people are skeptics of psychic crime detectives, including “some famous cases never happened or could not be verified and checked, vague generalities can be made to fit almost anything, and people desperately want to believe that psychic information is true, so they easily accept the tales as told,” just to name a few (Ramsland).
In close, although I would like to believe in the prevalence of psychic detectives in society, I simply cannot. Based on all of the evidence provided against the claim of being a psychic detective with what little, if any, evidence that is shown proving their existence, I would not be able to rationally conclude that psychic detectives do, in fact, exist. However, I do think it will be interesting to see what else these self-proclaimed detectives can come up with and what other future cases they can claim to solve or at least be involved in.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/forensics/psychics/7.html?print=yes (Ramsland)
To put it simply, so-called “psychic detectives” are just great guessers. By paying close attention to detail in both police reports and forms of mass media, as well as using their powers of persuasion that they are the ones who in fact were able to solve the crime, they are able to make educated guesses about what happened during the course of a offense and pass it off as if they have revealed some new and important information about the case.
Crime reconstruction is not a simple, straightforward process. A lot of hard work and investigation goes into finding out who, what, where, why, when, and how a crime was committed. As shown with the case of the disappearance of Charles Capel, psychics are only able to give vague information about the minor details of the case which the police have to somehow make fit into the particulars of the crime once it is solved. The self-proclaimed psychic detective of the case, Noreen Reiner, was only called in to assist in the investigation once the police department had no one else to turn to; even then, the police still did not use her “clues” to find Capel’s body.
Essentially, the use of psychic detectives provides use with more questions than answers. According to Katherine Ramsland, “Psychics never predict the future in a way that might stop a crime or tragic event from happening.” Meaning if a psychic is able to tell us what happened as a result of a crime that was committed, why couldn’t they tell us how to stop it before it occurred? Other questions that could be asked include why the psychics are presently not rich as a result of their great abilities, in addition to if they can predict what happened during the course of a crime, why can’t they also predict other things, such as lottery numbers?
As discussed in class, Reiser and Klyver were asked to compare the psychic performances between psychic detectives and a control group of college students. The conclusion reached at the end of the experiment was that “this study provided no evidence to support the claims of psychic detection and, as such; the results are in accordance with other controlled studies” (Lawson, 145). As with this experiment, another test conducted by Joe Nickell was able to conclude several reasons as to why people are skeptics of psychic crime detectives, including “some famous cases never happened or could not be verified and checked, vague generalities can be made to fit almost anything, and people desperately want to believe that psychic information is true, so they easily accept the tales as told,” just to name a few (Ramsland).
In close, although I would like to believe in the prevalence of psychic detectives in society, I simply cannot. Based on all of the evidence provided against the claim of being a psychic detective with what little, if any, evidence that is shown proving their existence, I would not be able to rationally conclude that psychic detectives do, in fact, exist. However, I do think it will be interesting to see what else these self-proclaimed detectives can come up with and what other future cases they can claim to solve or at least be involved in.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/forensics/psychics/7.html?print=yes (Ramsland)
Monday, March 8, 2010
Psychic Crime Solvers Are Ridiculous
Psychic crime detectives are people who are supposed to aid the police and FBI in solving crimes using their extraordinary psychic abilities. I guess when you're desperate for an answer, you'll try anything, but a psychic? The way these people work is that they see flashes of letters, places, numbers, words and try to piece them together to locate a person or find suspects. Most of the time, they're far off predictions, as we've learned with Noreen Renier. How can these psychics know all these details? If I were to guess, I'd say they only speak of their predictions after the crime and try to fit their theories to the actual crime. If the proper correlations are made, it will seem that they truly are psychic and that they helped solve the crime.
[Police + Psychic Detectives] According to the website linked above, there are many so-called psychic detectives that have no substantial evidence from the police, FBI, or groups they've said they helped. Some even claim they are certified, by who I have no idea. Some reasoning behind why these people do this is for media attention and the money. They have no more psychic ability than an average person.
Noreen Renier, as we spoke of in class, is one of the most popular. She's even writing books about all of this. She was tested and her abilities weren't as good as she said they were, apparently not even close. There are many claims against Noreen Renier, too many to talk about here, but they're all on the website linked above.
My opinion on this is that they are clearly fake. If they knew how to find all of these people that were harmed or missing, then why are there still cold cases and unsolved crimes? Why couldn't they stop a murder before it even happened? It seems to me that they're only psychic after the crime happened and they fit their 'predictions' to the case when it's solved, which probably makes me just as psychic as they are.
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