Mr. Lancaster
I asked you about a year ago if you thought you could really stop Sylvia Browne.
You e-mailed me back promptly and said that you wouldn't have started this project if you didn't think that you would be able to finish it.
When do you call it done? There are a few things left to research. A few articles left to write. Your web site does an extraordinary job at informing anyone that can be influenced. The rest, you just never can reach with reason. I think that you have reached some point of diminishing returns. You will probably never get the quantity of testable claims that you did from the Montel show again. I have not seen the other mediums give this kind AND amount of data to pour though and analyze against news reports years later. Feel free to prove me wrong here
Before your site came along, the media didn't report critically about Sylvia. Lack thereof or wrong 911 predictions, the Sago mine controversy, nor the Sylvia clock ever made the news that I watch. After your site came along the Hornbeck story was mentioned every time her name was used in the news.
I and others tried to make changes to Sylvia's Wikipedia page to add a criticism section last fall, but it was always reverted because we were outnumbered. (Read: Not a single one of us was up to the editing standards of Wikipedia. There were several in the pro Sylvia side that were.) This January, "Criticism of Sylvia Browne" became a Wikipedia page all of its own, with the major points listed on her main page. There are over 20 independent skeptical contributors to those 2 pages now.
About a year ago, she was taking advantage of grieving and desperate people on what amounted to her own once a week nationwide TV show. Today, she is not making any TV shows. When she said that she was working on a new show, she was really trying to convince her loyal followers that public opinion of her would still support a TV show. I beg to differ.
The reason that Wikipedia and the media cannot be taken as fact is because it IS public opinion. It IS argument from common knowledge. Is this recent overall change of public opinion because of stopsylviabrowne? You would say ... We'll just let the evidence speak for itself and leave it up for the reader to make up his or her own mind.
Not me.
I say ... Give credit where credit is due. You can't give equal weight to the slim possibility that these are all coincidences as you would give to the possibility that you are doing exactly what you set out to do and thought you would accomplish before you started. You obviously have the gift of calm, consistent, relentless persuasion.
I would like to hear from you that you are up for another project as this one is starting to wind down. You have momentum and it would suck to lose it. Just looking at this thread tells me that you could have substantial resources to bring to bear if you wished to. How many e-mails do you think that the Montel Show received about Hal's open letter? I sent one.
Here is an idea:
Could you please convince a major portion of this country that there is no pill that will enlarge "that special place on a man". The FDA already prohibits that claim to even be made. You could bring truth to light, save the population millions, maybe put some scammers in jail this time, AND greatly reduce internet traffic congestion all in one shot.
Seriously, I did do some research into their recent "clinical studies" and it is humorous how many excuses they come up with for not being able to publish any reliable measurement data.
Cheers,
Bob