Randi on Anderson Cooper 360

...and Francine told her that she had picked up on the body of another boy.
The dead are such practical jokers.
 
Talk about desperate. It just ticks me off how they won't let Randi speak, without having to stammer. Using God as justification had to be one of the most repulsive ad-hominem appeal to emotions I've seen on national television. RLancastr, you've already secured a lifetime supply of beers on the house here, but do me a favor, if you ever get back on national television, send this sabot downrange:

"Sylvia refuses to demonstrate what she is doing is different than skilled guessing. People who practice cold reading can do the same thing she does with the same results. This is why they refuse to be tested."
 
Tricky said:
So she only does missing persons for free? Maybe I should ask her to find Franko.
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UBL anyone? JREF has a mighty fine prize, but the US has one 25 times larger for finding that guy.
 
It's just so simple to corner these people, I can't understand why Randi lets himself be put on the defensive. I hope he watches a few episodes of Law & Order beforehand if he gets another go at it on national television, and drives it home with something like this:

Her: "She's a spiritual teacher.."
Randi: "If I talk about imaginary beings, charge exorbiant amounts of money to say things that make no sense and have any relevance to people's lives, am I a spiritual teacher too? Or am I someone with psychological hang-ups."
Her: "She's helped a lot of people."
Randi: "No. She's helped a lot of people's money out of their wallets by fooling them. Telling grieving people things that aren't true and taking their money for it isn't helping people. It's profoundly wrong."
Her: "You don't believe in God."
Randi: "No, I don't believe she's God. She believes she's God, and wants other people to believe it. She does nothing a trained conjurer can't do, and refuses to prove otherwise."
 
RSLancastr said:
I have been told, by people who attended one of Browne's "Spiritual Salons" on January 20th, that she told them that she had asked Francine (her "spirit guide") how she could have been so wrong about Shawn Hornbeck, and Francine told her that she had picked up on the body of another boy.
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Just what I thought. :(
 
I thought this was Randi's weakest moment:
COOPER: OK, I want to bring in James Randi. James, you've actually called Sylvia Browne a villain.

We spoke to Ted Gunderson, who's a retired senior special agent in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles. He's worked with Sylvia Browne, and he says -- he says he's worked with her quite a bit. And he said this about her. He says, quote, "I've worked with numerous psychics in the past and very few are really on target, but Sylvia Browne is probably one of the most accurate psychics in the country."

Now, that's from a former senior FBI official. Are you saying he's wrong?

JAMES RANDI, PSYCHIC DEBUNKER: I think that perhaps he doesn't know enough about his subjects. I'm not talking about law enforcement now. I'm talking about detective work.

But he has to judge these things much more carefully, I would think, Anderson. He has to look at the total reading, everything that she says about any one fact, and evaluate that.

What you've done here, and what has been done here, I should say, is that cases that were successful or apparently successful have been selective. Now this is very much like the race track devotee who goes to the races, loses his money...
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I think it was a tough spot and even with time to think about it I'm not sure how best to respond to something like this given that you've only got time for a few sentences. Unfortunately Randi went into the weeds with the horse racing analogy, I suspect.

I say "suspect" because even though most of knew what he was getting at immediately and agreed with him, I suspect that the analogy was not going to be grasped easily by many of the people who are Browne believers and it put Randi in the position of trying to make a point with an analogy that was going to take more time to explain than was available before some people were going to get what he was talking about.

His characterization of the retired FBI agent as "not knowing enough about his subject" followed by an awkward description of what Randi meant was more (IMHO) problematic than getting into the horse racing analogy. Once again, I think most of us knew what he was getting at but I wasn't sure that the average Sylvia Browne fan would. It also put Randi in the position of criticizing somebody he had never met and had no apparent basis for making negative comments about other than that the guy was being quoted as saying things about Browne that Randi disagreed with.

Of course, this is with the benefit of time to think about it, but I think a better response might have been something like this:

I haven't met the person you're describing before and don't know anything about his claims. Up to now, we haven't seen evidence that any alleged psychic has provided any useful information to law enforcement in any kind of case, but if this man has some evidence of that we would like to see it.
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I realize, of course, that I had time to think about the answer for quite awhile before I wrote it down and perhaps even then many of you will still feel that it wasn't a very good way to deal with that kind of question.

Still, when confronted with an out of the blue story that one is completely unfamiliar with in a discussion it may lead to a less defensive appearance if one just admits that he doesn't have knowledge of the particular story that has just been foisted on him.
 
RSLancastr said:
I have been told, by people who attended one of Browne's "Spiritual Salons" on January 20th, that she told them that she had asked Francine (her "spirit guide") how she could have been so wrong about Shawn Hornbeck, and Francine told her that she had picked up on the body of another boy.
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Oh, dear.

This opens up a whole new can of worms. This means that any spirit can come through at any time, telling you anything about anyone. Only, you have no way of checking if the information you receive is correct.


T'ai Chi said:
I really feel sorry for those that believe all people who consult psychics, or anything else that the organized skeptical movement disbelieves, must be desperate and grieving.
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Another of your sweeping accusations against skeptics whom you are too cowardly to name.

Kilgore Trout said:
Additionally, there is a 990 on guidestar.org but it's from 2001. Sylvia was (at the time anyway) the only employee as president and received no salary. They took in about $400k and spent about $400k. The bulk of the income was for "healing/counseling" and their program service accomplishments cost about $400k to "provide facilities for ongoing religious study and church services in various locations. Also provides and supports a home study program."
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There's something stinky here.

Sylvia Browne claims to do 15-20 readings a day. Even if we say 10 a day, 4 days a week, it still is $28,000 a week. If we allow for, say, 35 weeks each year for readings, that is still $980,000. Add to that, the other readers she has employed (although at a lower rate).

Nah.

Let's go backwards.

$400,000? Let's go with a really low price, $200 a reading. That's 2,000 readings a year. 5 days a week, 40 workweeks? 10 readings a day. For Sylvia herself, and all her readers.

O....K. Perhaps she is not as busy as she claims.

The Cost Of Verifying Past Lives
 
Clearly, they're just a bunch of predators. Anderson Cooper, understandably, got on her case far more than Randi did, as she did nothing but obfuscate, hedge, and lie throughout the interview. You could sit there all day and respectfully talk of common sense and the finer points of evidence gathering, but what's the point. They know what they are doing. Hopefully, the millions watching saw her and her "church", like Scientology, for the very unfunny joke it was.
 
CFLarsen said:
Oh, dear.

This opens up a whole new can of worms. This means that any spirit can come through at any time, telling you anything about anyone. Only, you have no way of checking if the information you receive is correct.
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Bummer.

There's something stinky here.

Sylvia Browne claims to do 15-20 readings a day. Even if we say 10 a day, 4 days a week, it still is $28,000 a week. If we allow for, say, 35 weeks each year for readings, that is still $980,000. Add to that, the other readers she has employed (although at a lower rate).
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I've been told that recently on the Montel Williams show, she has stated that she does 20 readings a day, six days a week.

Her phone readings are $750. I would assume that her in-person readings are more expensive, but let's go with the "cheap" $750 readings.

20 readings x $750 per reading = $15,000 per day.
x 6 days a week = $90,000 per week.
x 52 weeks in a year = $4,680,000 per year.

Of course there are vacations and holidays to take into account. Plus, she doesn't say that she charges for all 20 of those readings.

Then of course you add to that the royalties from her 30+ books, and the income from her cruises, and the "spiritual salons" ($1,000 per person), her personal appearances, etc...

Any way you slice it, this woman is making some serious cash.
 
RSLancastr said:
I've been told that recently on the Montel Williams show, she has stated that she does 20 readings a day, six days a week.

Her phone readings are $750. I would assume that her in-person readings are more expensive, but let's go with the "cheap" $750 readings.

20 readings x $750 per reading = $15,000 per day.
x 6 days a week = $90,000 per week.
x 52 weeks in a year = $4,680,000 per year.

Of course there are vacations and holidays to take into account. Plus, she doesn't say that she charges for all 20 of those readings.

Then of course you add to that the royalties from her 30+ books, and the income from her cruises, and the "spiritual salons" ($1,000 per person), her personal appearances, etc...

Any way you slice it, this woman is making some serious cash.
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Never mind the cash, she's a real workhorse that should be set as an example to us lazy 35h/week Europeans ... I mean, 20 20-30 minutes readings a day, plus all those TV appearances, cruises, and "salons", not to mention her "spiritual" ministry ... pity days are only 24 h long ...
 
CFLarsen said:
Oh, dear.

This opens up a whole new can of worms. This means that any spirit can come through at any time, telling you anything about anyone. Only, you have no way of checking if the information you receive is correct.
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Not only that, but this gives her the option of saying that she is better at determining the correctness of the info than those 'other psychics'...
yeesh.
 
wow, the number of people believing in psychics in the southern US is the lowest of the country! i live in atlanta so this is the only decent woo woo news i have heard for a while, haha. but i bet that is probably just because there are so many christians who think psychics are voodoo...
 
gfunkusarelius said:
wow, the number of people believing in psychics in the southern US is the lowest of the country! i live in atlanta so this is the only decent woo woo news i have heard for a while, haha.
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When we watched that at TAM5, someone a few tables behind me said "Hey, we're ahead of the curve in somethin'!"
 
CFLarsen said:
Oh, dear.
This opens up a whole new can of worms. This means that any spirit can come through at any time, telling you anything about anyone. Only, you have no way of checking if the information you receive is correct.
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Maybe that's a point that the public should consider. What good is Sylvia if she can't tell one spirit from another? Isn't the "skill" of spirit communication pretty much worthless if you can't get your dead bodies straight, or even tell the dead ones from the live ones? There must be millions of apparitions floating around out there..if she can't focus in on the correct one, why pay her $700?
 
pchams said:
Not only that, but this gives her the option of saying that she is better at determining the correctness of the info than those 'other psychics'...
yeesh.
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I think that it is the same rule8 that John edwards pulls when he says that some of his misses aren't really misses.

The other comment that should have been made on the show is that her people were givent the opportunity to compile a list of her successes, and doing however many readings per day she only managed to find, what was the number, 2??? That is horribly worse than chance.
 
Chimera said:
Maybe that's a point that the public should consider. What good is Sylvia if she can't tell one spirit from another? Isn't the "skill" of spirit communication pretty much worthless if you can't get your dead bodies straight, or even tell the dead ones from the live ones? There must be millions of apparitions floating around out there..if she can't focus in on the correct one, why pay her $700?
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Indeed.
 
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