Thank you. I might let others make comments, others skeptics who were in the audience. We have finished the final show now, just back home from it. I can tell you that I stayed friendly but did not let my guard down. Skeptics in the media do not get a good run, but I hope with this show many, many people will hear me and the points I make. I won't change the mind of the believers, no one can do that, but I know I will reach those on the fence as it were.
Correction: Impossible/unreasonable skeptics don't get a good run, for obvious reasons.
Part of me wants to believe you've experienced at least some small paradigm shift, but reading this thread has crushed any such hope. You're as bad as Randi.
I'm willing to admit that the show wasn't done well, but accusing the producers of slanting things in the psychics' favour is going a bit far. They did, after all, show some of the misses - the first test in particular showed only two of the contestants successfully completing the task in the allotted time, the rest failed, two others failed miserably.
How I would have done the first test: there would be the requisite control group, made up of army and/or civilian rescue personnel with sniffer dogs and GPS transponders. The second group would be skeptics, armed with only a map of the area. Then there would be the psychics, each acting individually, and actually having the camera on their person rather than having a cameraman nearby (eg a helmet cam).
The second test (paranormal freestyle): Get the skeptics up there to do some cold reading and see how they compare.
I agree that the whole Peter Falconio thing was unforgivably tacky and whoever came up with it deserves to be soundly bitchslapped. BUT - don't forget that there are psychics out there who do find missing people, who do solve crimes and are valued police resources in their community. It's just the flakes and charlatans who overshadow the good ones and make the whole thing look fake.
What bugs me, Richard, is that in the end you, like Randi, ignored the hits and focussed exclusively on the misses. Never mind that Shé D'Montford aced the first test (that woman absolutely blew me away),
and successfully identified a man with a specific medical problem in an audience full of complete strangers. Never mind that, let's all just ignore the evidence - however scant it may be - and dismiss it all as tricks and woo.
No wonder Stacey Demarco started yelling; the poor woman must have been at the end of her rope with you.
