James Randi appeared on CBS's 48 HOURS explaining precisely how James Van Praagh does his "psychic" readings (you may recall I debunked him on Unsolved Mysteries a few years back). Despite this, Van Praagh continues his stunning success--he is apparently booked for private readings three years in advance! Randi showed how Van Praagh used post hoc predictions: "Is this your husband?" Subject nods yes. "Because I'm being told 'I am her husband.'" He also spoke in generalities, threw out lots and lots of statements, most of which were wrong, but as B. F. Skinner demonstrated you only have to give a reinforcement once in a great while to keep 'em pressing the bar (or pulling the lever in the case of Las Wages slot machines). To her credit the subject seemed rather unimpressed, although when she got home she suddenly started finding things that Van Praagh told her about, which Randi pointed out works in the post hoc fashion where you simply find things to fit the "psychics" predictions...and, as Randi pointed out, she's got the rest of her life to look.
Ray Hyman did a masterful job on SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN FRONTIERS' special on "BEYOND SCIENCE," showing how easy it is to convince people, even skeptics, of the accuracy of palm reading. His subject, someone who didn't at all believe in palm reading, was stunned at how accurate Hyman was, and he believes even less than she did.
On Friday Leeza ran a show taped many months ago on which I appeared on alien abductions and UFOs, that featured mostly believers and people who think they have not only been abducted, but also impregnated by aliens. They even had a guy--a poor pathetic-looking soul who looked like a c No doubt they all looked like Jane Fonda in her Sci Fi debut. During a commercial I asked him when was the last time he got laid by an earthling. It had been a long, long time he said. No surprise. They also showed three clips of UFOs, "one of which is fake." Well, they are all fake (in the broad sense of not being real spacecraft from other planets) as far as I'm concerned, but to their credit the folks at NBC managed to fool a bunch of people about which one was the fake, so it was an effective demonstration.
On Thursday I did a two-hour radio phoner in Erie, PA, the entire two hours of which ended up being about creationism. Most of the callers were creationists with the usual arguments, although there was one I hadn't heard: the rate of the earth's spin is slowing at a tiny, tiny rate, but extrapolated over 4.5 billion years it means the Earth was spinning so fast that nothing could possibly "hold" on, as if the rate of spin had something to do with the gravitational pull on those ity bity tinie tiny bacteria tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the early Earth's primordial soup. The final caller, however, switched subjects to the moon landing hoax--all taped in a Hollywood studio. I pointed out that this was made into a movie starring none other than O.J. Simpson. His source? The World Weekly News, the same folks who brought us the fact that JFK's brain is being kept alive in a jar.
Most bizarre was this show I did on the Family Channel, called the Home and Family Show with Christina Ferrari and Michael Berger. The set consists of this "home" with a big cushy couch that all the guests sit on, pressed up against each other in a cozy, fun, "family" fashion. It was easily the stupidest television program I have ever witnessed or been on. I was told that the viewers are mostly house wives in the midwest. My partner Pat Linse's theory is that the goal is to make the viewers feel smart by having the guests and hosts act incredibly silly and stupid. They did an excellent job of it. For example, one of the other guests included a chef who said "BAM" a lot (like every time he sprinkled some seasoning on something he would say "BAM BAM BAM," then the producer held up this cardboard sign with "BAM" on it to cue us all that we were suppose to yell "BAM" also. Then they schleped in a bunch of people off the tram (the show is shot at Universal Studios) so they could all yell "BAM" also.
Anyway, I was on for my book and they insisted that we had to keep it light and funny--no Holocaust denial stuff, no creationism, and definitely no God or religion. So I started with UFOs and alien abductions, then near-death experiences, then psychics and psychic hotlines. But to open the show we all had to say what we were going to do so I said I was going to do a psychic reading on the hosts. Well, this freaked out Christina, who said "I'm a Christian. You can't do a psychic reading." Like psychics are Satanic or something. In any case, while in the make-up room I was pumping the make-up women for private info on the hosts--stuff they have never talked about on the show, maybe even stuff the staff didn't know about. We finally came up with the fact that Christina's daughter was sick that day but no one, and I mean NO ONE knew this because only one person overheard her on her cell phone that morning. So I was armed and ready to really surprise her.
Just before my segment the producer asked me to tell him exactly what I was going to say. I didn't tell him about the sick kid, but he got worried because of Christina's comment about being a Christian, so he checked with her and she said, "No psychic reading, no personal stuff about my life. I don't want my private life on the air." Mind you, this is the same woman who appeared two days before on Monday night's DATELINE on NBC, watched by 20 million people, in a segment on women's loss of sex drive because of low testosterone. Their feature story was about Christina, who droned on and on about her personal sex life, her new-found wonderful orgasms with the testosterone treatment, etc. Ya, sure, nothing about her personal life on TV. Right.
Okay, so we do the first segment on UFOs and alien abductions so she warms up to me and on the commercial break she says "okay, why don't you do a psychic reading on me. And make it personal." Right, and let's get our stories straight here. Anyway, I explain how the psychic hotlines work--$3.95 a minute, keep em on 20-30 minutes, psychic makes 60 cents per minute, most calls are nights and weekends, talk about love, healthy, money, career, etc., etc., then I say to Christina "for example, you are thinking about a career move" (everyone in the entertainment biz thinks about career moves), "you're concerned about your health...." She interrupts me and says "ya, all general stuff." So I say, "No, wait, it isn't YOUR health you're concerned about. It is your daughter's health. She's ill today, isn't she? In fact, she couldn't go to school today." Christina's jaw hits the table. She bursts out "no one could have possibly known that. That's amazing. How'd you do that?" I say something like "I'm psychic...just kidding...that's how it works--you pump people for information." Then I give examples of psychics hiring a P.I. or subscribing to marketing journals to get demographic info on their subjects from around the country, or just pumping people that know the subject for information, "like chatting to the make-up people about your personal life," wink, wink. Christina shoots a look at her make-up woman like she's gonna shoot her after the show. So I figured she got it.
But after the show she comes up to me and says, "Okay, really, how'd you do it?" I said "I told you how I did it." "But no one knew about my kid's illness," she retorts. "Well apparently someone did because I'm not psychic," I respond. "But, but, but..." "Look," I explain. "This is one way to wow people with your "psychic" power. You get something on them that you "couldn't possibly know about." But one of your staffers knew about the kid and told me." She just sat there shaking her head in disbelief and all I could think about is what a killing I could make in the psychic business if I didn't have scruples and morals. Ashame about those pesty things.
December 14: Frank Miele, Skeptic Senior Editor, "IN GODDESS WE TRUSTED: The Faith of Our Forefathers." Baxter Lecture Hall, Caltech, 2:00pm.
January 11: Dr. Stephen O'Leary, USC Professor of Communications, "MILLENNIAL CULTS." Baxter Lecture Hall, Caltech, 2:00pm.
February 1: K.C. Cole, Los Angeles Times Science Writer, "THE UNIVERSE AND THE TEACUP: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty."
1998 SKEPTICS SOCIETY CONFERENCE:
GOD, RELIGION, AND MYTHS
Examining the Human Need to Believe
Plus: James "The Amazing" Randi's SOLVED MYSTERIES WORKSHOP: How to Examine the Evidence, Solve the Deception, and Test Extraordinary Claims
A One-Day Multi-Media Workshop with Randi.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
May 22-24, 1998
Baxter Lecture Hall, California Institute of Technology
Hilton Hotel, Pasadena
Lectures (still tentative) will include:
--The God Module: Are Our Brains Hard-Wired to be Religious?
--The Meaning of Myths
--Story Telling as Myth Making
--God and the Ghost Dance: The Eternal Return of the Messiah Myth
--Who Wrote the Gospels?
--The Millennium: What Really Happened in A.D. 1000 and What Will Happen in A.D. 2000?