Rob,
On a serious note.... We're not forgetting the reasons behind doing this. The post of Juliette(Julia) should remind us that this isn't a low-grade scam-artist-cum-delusional idiot like Kaz. This is the Great High Poobah, herself. Would that she was just an entertaining bit of fluff, but she actually does a great deal of harm.
I read through the bathos(pathos) in the following with utter horror.
http://www.healthdiaries.com/blogs/parentsfault/archives/2004/10/sylvia_brown.html
The original post is just meandering drivel. A little sad (well a lot sad), but for some reason she created a title "Sylvia Brown" for the thread. She doesn't say in the text that this was a visit to Sylvia. (I haven't seen reference anywhere else to Sylvia asking for stool samples.
) But, through the miracle of Google, people looking for e-less Sylvia Brown were directed to this diary entry. They began to write requests to Sylvia.
Everyone with a few minutes should read them. This is like having a free portal into the stuff she must get every hour of every day. You can just cherry-pick the more desperate ones and rack up a fortune if you're a trained scam-artists(I mean "psychic"). There's enough nonsense and thankfully a few de-bunkers jump in, but this is going on for years, now and they're still posting their pleas to this erroneous location, as of
today.
Without running the risk of libel suits you should try to get word out to some of the victims. (The temptation to say "suckers" needs to be avoided - some of them are surely just begging to be taken in, but others are so desperate that you want to weep for them.) The real valuable research would be to get your hands on narratives, which will need to be verified and proven, of some of the people who've been bilked and/or truly harmed pouring money down this dead-end drain. I think you'd need to have a private channel rather than have them post in a thread, i.e. make it like The Challenge - an entirely separate area for people who can prove they've been victimized. Cases like the one Juliette mentions are far too common for there NOT to be a number of people who would be willing to come forward.
On the down side, is this a shameless appeal to emotionalism? Yes, emphatically. It's a media war. Sylvia oohs and aaahs them with Montel and Larry carrying her nail polish kit. A good poster child for the victims would be the ideal counterfoil. And that sycophant Larry King would probably book such people on the show!
"Live here in the studio, little Mary Taylor, had her piggy bank taken away by Sylvia Browne! We'll be right back!"
The facts will speak for themselves. But getting that information out there is the challenge. I think a good handful of actual victims' stories would be a good approach.
As far as ownership, I suspect that CBS owns the rights since they have the rights to Montel's show.
