Skeptics everywhere (and fans of South Park) will know the above as none other than John Edward. Psychic medium extraordinaire and top shelf asshat. John is famous for his show "Crossing Over" which featured him making contact with the deceased family members of a studio audience. A friend recently reminded me of how bad he is at what he does. By "what he does" I don't mean talk to the dead as he would have us believe. I mean cold reading. What is cold reading you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked. Cold reading is when the psychic throws out generalities or initials and hopes for a hit that they can build upon. They rapid fire guesses and make vague statements, inviting the subject to interpret them. For example, they may say "I see the name Marg or Maggie, some sort of M-G name." When there is several people in an audience then that is likely to resonate with someone. Also, people reveal more about themselves than they realize. The psychic can tell loads about a person just from age, dress, and body language. This is beautifully illustrated in an episode of Penn & Teller's "Bullshit". A man gets a reading from three different psychics but he dresses completely different for each one. A stressed out, suit clad, clean-shaven business man. A shaggy, unkempt man with alcohol on his breath. I think the third one was a casual, happy, family man. Needless to say, he received three very different readings.
Then there is confirmation bias. People are very prone to forgetting all the misses that the psychic makes and remembering and exaggerating the hits. Many names might be mentioned in the course of a reading but only the ones that hit will be remembered and the others discarded. People will also actually remember the psychic as knowing certain information when in fact, they supplied the information themselves.
Example:
Psychic: "I see the letter B connected to your mother. Does that mean anything to you?"
Beatrice: "Ummm....I don't think so."
Psychic: "Think hard, maybe an aunt or distant cousin who's passed over. I'm definitely getting the letter B."
Beatrice: "Well.....we once had a dog named Boomer."
Psychic: " Yes, that's it! Your mom is telling me that Boomer is there with her and he is very happy."
Later, Beatrice will recount her experience to a friend and exclaim that the psychic knew she had a dog named Boomer and "there's no way he could possibly have known that!"
That example also highlights another trick of the psychics. They will browbeat their subjects and insist that even though they don't know what the psychic is talking about they will later. I saw a video of John Edward doing a phone reading with a lady. He said he saw a man in her life that had passed on and he was wearing a uniform. The lady said that she could think of no one who would have been in uniform. He didn't accept no as an answer and was actually insisting that she was wrong and he was right!
A good psychic can turn a miss into a hit. On another episode of "Bullshit" psychic Rosemarie Altea tells a man that his deceased mother is standing behind her. She says that his mother appears shy and nervous. In a split second she sees that she is not getting a reaction from the man so she changes it to "which is unusual for her because she is normally not like that at all." This gets the desired emotional response and she moves on from there.
Sometimes psychics seem to hit on some pretty amazing things that seem like something they wouldn't know. One suspects then that they are employing hot reading. This is when advanced knowledge of the subject is gleaned through various methods. Before John Edward's show is taped, the audience is intentionally left to mill about while John's aids mingle with them and ask some very interesting questions. John Edward was actually caught hot reading during a Dateline special.
So why is John so bad at what he does? Even with all the bones he's thrown, he's often wrong more than he is right. Two hours of tape ends up mostly on the cutting room floor and less than an hour of the best hits are kept for airing. In one case a man was shown nodding after something John said when he clearly remembers disagreeing.
John Edward and his ilk will insist that what they do is a good thing. They help the grieving move on and give them closure. I disagree. I have nothing but empathy for those who have lost loved ones and I would love it if talking to the dead were actually possible. Emotions run high and people in that position look for comfort anywhere they can get it. But all we have left of our loved ones after they pass is our memories of them and it makes me very mad when these show boaters piss on those memories and twist them around to make a buck. They are deceiving people for their own personal gain and it's wrong. Harry Houdini used to fake seances and do essentially the same thing as John Edward until he experienced loss himself and then he realized how wrong it was. This is what he said about that:
"At the time I appreciated the fact that I surprised my clients, but while aware of the fact that I was deceiving them I did not see or understand the seriousness of trifling with such sacred sentimentality and the baneful result which inevitably followed. To me it was a lark. I was a mystifier and as such my ambition was being gratified and my love for a mild sensation satisfied. After delving deep I realized the seriousness of it all. As I advanced to riper years of experience I was brought to a realization of the seriousness of trifling with the hallowed reverence which the average human being bestows on the departed, and when I personally became afflicted with similar grief I was chagrined that I should ever have been guilty of such frivolity and for the first time realized that it bordered on crime."
Now most skeptics will probably disagree with me on this, and I could be wrong, but I think that John Edward may have mostly deluded himself into believing he actually has these powers. He has been doing it since he was fifteen years old after he was told he had "wonderful psychic abilities." It's not uncommon for people to fool themselves into believing they have these wonderful gifts. They also forget their own misses and remember the hits and get positive feedback from clients. When I see interviews with John, I see a sincerity in his eyes that leads me to believe that he may have fallen victim to his own scam.
Further reading: Joe Nickell, "John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved"
Then there is confirmation bias. People are very prone to forgetting all the misses that the psychic makes and remembering and exaggerating the hits. Many names might be mentioned in the course of a reading but only the ones that hit will be remembered and the others discarded. People will also actually remember the psychic as knowing certain information when in fact, they supplied the information themselves.
Example:
Psychic: "I see the letter B connected to your mother. Does that mean anything to you?"
Beatrice: "Ummm....I don't think so."
Psychic: "Think hard, maybe an aunt or distant cousin who's passed over. I'm definitely getting the letter B."
Beatrice: "Well.....we once had a dog named Boomer."
Psychic: " Yes, that's it! Your mom is telling me that Boomer is there with her and he is very happy."
Later, Beatrice will recount her experience to a friend and exclaim that the psychic knew she had a dog named Boomer and "there's no way he could possibly have known that!"
That example also highlights another trick of the psychics. They will browbeat their subjects and insist that even though they don't know what the psychic is talking about they will later. I saw a video of John Edward doing a phone reading with a lady. He said he saw a man in her life that had passed on and he was wearing a uniform. The lady said that she could think of no one who would have been in uniform. He didn't accept no as an answer and was actually insisting that she was wrong and he was right!
A good psychic can turn a miss into a hit. On another episode of "Bullshit" psychic Rosemarie Altea tells a man that his deceased mother is standing behind her. She says that his mother appears shy and nervous. In a split second she sees that she is not getting a reaction from the man so she changes it to "which is unusual for her because she is normally not like that at all." This gets the desired emotional response and she moves on from there.
Sometimes psychics seem to hit on some pretty amazing things that seem like something they wouldn't know. One suspects then that they are employing hot reading. This is when advanced knowledge of the subject is gleaned through various methods. Before John Edward's show is taped, the audience is intentionally left to mill about while John's aids mingle with them and ask some very interesting questions. John Edward was actually caught hot reading during a Dateline special.
So why is John so bad at what he does? Even with all the bones he's thrown, he's often wrong more than he is right. Two hours of tape ends up mostly on the cutting room floor and less than an hour of the best hits are kept for airing. In one case a man was shown nodding after something John said when he clearly remembers disagreeing.
John Edward and his ilk will insist that what they do is a good thing. They help the grieving move on and give them closure. I disagree. I have nothing but empathy for those who have lost loved ones and I would love it if talking to the dead were actually possible. Emotions run high and people in that position look for comfort anywhere they can get it. But all we have left of our loved ones after they pass is our memories of them and it makes me very mad when these show boaters piss on those memories and twist them around to make a buck. They are deceiving people for their own personal gain and it's wrong. Harry Houdini used to fake seances and do essentially the same thing as John Edward until he experienced loss himself and then he realized how wrong it was. This is what he said about that:
"At the time I appreciated the fact that I surprised my clients, but while aware of the fact that I was deceiving them I did not see or understand the seriousness of trifling with such sacred sentimentality and the baneful result which inevitably followed. To me it was a lark. I was a mystifier and as such my ambition was being gratified and my love for a mild sensation satisfied. After delving deep I realized the seriousness of it all. As I advanced to riper years of experience I was brought to a realization of the seriousness of trifling with the hallowed reverence which the average human being bestows on the departed, and when I personally became afflicted with similar grief I was chagrined that I should ever have been guilty of such frivolity and for the first time realized that it bordered on crime."
Now most skeptics will probably disagree with me on this, and I could be wrong, but I think that John Edward may have mostly deluded himself into believing he actually has these powers. He has been doing it since he was fifteen years old after he was told he had "wonderful psychic abilities." It's not uncommon for people to fool themselves into believing they have these wonderful gifts. They also forget their own misses and remember the hits and get positive feedback from clients. When I see interviews with John, I see a sincerity in his eyes that leads me to believe that he may have fallen victim to his own scam.
Further reading: Joe Nickell, "John Edward: Hustling the Bereaved"
Comments
John Edouchewards may actually think he is psychically blessed. But there is little doubt that on top of that he sweetens the effect with editing.
Why bother wasting the public's time with all those 'near misses' when he can just show the hits? Everyone just wants the hits, right?
Just like my favourite radio-station when I was a kid: "CJCI - All hit radio."