Great Time.com article. "Larry King and the Paranormal

[Pyrrho]

re last LKL:

On the very first call JE waved his hand and shut the caller up and then launched into an advisory that one should not give any information to the medium.

Five minutes later and for the rest of the show he did nothing but ask for the information he was so vociiferously declining at the outset. I don't recall anyone mentioning this.

-------------------------------------------------
Jaroff's thesis is that JE's hits can be blamed entirely on:

1. hot reading based on eavesdropping:
staff and mics overhearing audience members when said staff members were telling those same audience members to be "very" quiet, e.g. don't talk, don't say anything. Makes no sense to me. We saw no mics in areas we were herded before being allowed in the studio. Once in the studio we really couldn't talk.

How is that Jaroff's "thesis"? It's O'Neill's suspicion, as reported by Jaroff. There is no indication that Jaroff believes this. He wasn't lying when he reported O'Neill's suspicions as O'Neill's suspicions.

2. the presence of ringers in the audience, a van load of them as espied by Michael O'Neill. But O'Neill does not say any of this van load of ringers was read whereas, lo, he was. The van, by the way, is a commercial transport vehicle that picks people up at hotels near LaGuardia. Occupants are basically starngers to each other. Why would they necessarily sit together in the studio?

Eh, it's anecdotal. I find it hard to swallow, myself. Still doesn't make it Jaroff's assertion.

3. guessing, as espoused by O'Neill to explain his hits without, by the way, revealing what the hits were so a reasonable person could at least mentally calculate the odds for guessing those hits

I am sorry. Jaroff and O'Neill got some splaining to do.

O'Neill does, sure. Jaroff, no. I don't think O'Neill's anecdotal account is any more true or false than any other anecdotal account. That's not at issue. The issue is whether or not Jaroff was lying in his article, as you have claimed. As far as I can tell, he wasn't. By any standard, Jaroff was not lying.

 

[Clancie]

Pyrhho and Unas,

You both seem quite obsessed with Steve, but hopefully, you understand my point as well--which is that Jaroff's article is a shabby excuse for journalism. (And I notice, Unas, that you still give no indication that you've actually -read- the article you're defending...)

Quoting a third-hand source (i.e. an email purportedly sent to Randi by someone in the CO audience and forwarded to Jaroff) is not good journalism.

Jaroff didn't check his facts...didn't check his primary source (which actually is a third hand one)...was willing to reprint a whole lot of negative and unsubstantiated speculation from someone who told someone else he'd been in the gallery....it's almost unbelievably unprofessional.

Seriously, imagine a TIME article quoting a "believer" in the same way and giving this kind of credibility to a -favorable JE- email to, say, Schwartz!!!! Everyone would scream "unfair!" "biased!" etc. And, as with Jaroff and O'Neill, they would be right to.

No, Jaroff didn't confirm the source of the quotes. He didn't look at a CO taping for himself to see if his description of it was even close or made any sense at all. He tried to sandbag the CO staff by reading the article to them 24 hours before it was scheduled to be printed--nice tactic to cover himself by including a quote from them--i.e. he tried at the last minute to give the article a veneer of doing his homework when in fact, he'd done none!!!

This article really irks me because there is so little good criticism of JE out there to begin with. When I first tracked it down, I was avidly hunting for exposes of JE. I xeroxed it in the library and fully expected that the TIME magazine science writer would "deliver the goods". What a total disappointment to see something based only on innuendo and rumor!!!!

I still look at it and think...what a disgraceful piece of work....Really, it's appallingly bad in every respect and most of all for Jaroff's utter laziness and lack of journalistic standards...

Any second year high school journalism student would have done better....

He's quite the hypocrite for now blasting Larry King (on his talk show) for bias and a lack of balance....

 

[CFLarsen]

Pyrhho and Unas,

You both seem quite obsessed with Steve, but hopefully, you understand my point as well--which is that Jaroff's article is a shabby excuse for journalism. (And I notice, Unas, that you still give no indication that you've actually -read- the article you're defending...)

Quoting a third-hand source (i.e. an email purportedly sent to Randi by someone in the CO audience and forwarded to Jaroff) is not good journalism.

Jaroff didn't check his facts...didn't check his primary source (which actually is a third hand one)...was willing to reprint a whole lot of negative and unsubstantiated speculation from someone who told someone else he'd been in the gallery....it's almost unbelievably unprofessional.

Seriously, imagine a TIME article quoting a "believer" in the same way and giving this kind of credibility to a -favorable JE- email to, say, Schwartz!!!! Everyone would scream "unfair!" "biased!" etc. And, as with Jaroff and O'Neill, they would be right to.

No, Jaroff didn't confirm the source of the quotes. He didn't look at a CO taping for himself to see if his description of it was even close or made any sense at all. He tried to sandbag the CO staff by reading the article to them 24 hours before it was scheduled to be printed--nice tactic to cover himself by including a quote from them--i.e. he tried at the last minute to give the article a veneer of doing his homework when in fact, he'd done none!!!

This article really irks me because there is so little good criticism of JE out there to begin with. When I first tracked it down, I was avidly hunting for exposes of JE. I xeroxed it in the library and fully expected that the TIME magazine science writer would "deliver the goods". What a total disappointment to see something based only on innuendo and rumor!!!!

I still look at it and think...what a disgraceful piece of work....Really, it's appallingly bad in every respect and most of all for Jaroff's utter laziness and lack of journalistic standards...

Any second year high school journalism student would have done better....

He's quite the hypocrite for now blasting Larry King (on his talk show) for bias and a lack of balance....

Saved for posterity. Sorry, it has come to this: I don't trust that this will not be edited later on.

 

[Unas]

Before I stop responding to you, please show me where I said Gardner was a liar. Here is the first and only thing I originally said about Gardner and BTW the beginning of these remarks are not mine but were from an e-mail sent by Angus Huck which I properly attributed to him:

Angus wrote:
Rather odd, actually, when one considers that Gardner is an Evangelical Christian and Jaroff is a militant atheist and one-time admirer of Stalin.

Very strange bedfellows, these folks. What unites them is a hatred of the truth.

See the fish. See the fish in the barrel. Shoot the fish:

Jaroff's number one chum in the denial business isn't Zwinge, but Martin Gardner, veteran liar, propagandist and mudslinger, and father figure to the "sceptical" movement.

Your claim that the segment you quoted above was "the first and only thing [you] originally said about Gardner" is false.

Would we now be justified in characterizing you in exactly the same manner that you characterize Jaroff, Gardner, and Shermer?

 

[Pyrrho]

Pyrhho and Unas,

You both seem quite obsessed with Steve, but hopefully, you understand my point as well--which is that Jaroff's article is a shabby excuse for journalism. (And I notice, Unas, that you still give no indication that you've actually -read- the article you're defending...)

Believe me, I am not obsessed with Steve Grenard.

The question was not whether Jaroff's article is shabby journalism, which it may be, but whether or not Jaroff lied in his article, as Steve has asserted.

Quoting a third-hand source (i.e. an email purportedly sent to Randi by someone in the CO audience and forwarded to Jaroff) is not good journalism.

Jaroff didn't check his facts...didn't check his primary source (which actually is a third hand one)...was willing to reprint a whole lot of negative and unsubstantiated speculation from someone who told someone else he'd been in the gallery....it's almost unbelievably unprofessional.

[
Since we have no way to know, aside from asking Jaroff himself, if he communicated directly with O'Neill, we cannot make the assertion that Jaroff did not check his primary source. Jaroff did not report O'Neill's speculations as fact, but as "O'Neill's suspicions."

Seriously, imagine a TIME article quoting a "believer" in the same way and giving this kind of credibility to a -favorable JE- email to, say, Schwartz!!!! Everyone would scream "unfair!" "biased!" etc. And, as with Jaroff and O'Neill, they would be right to.

Maybe yes, maybe no. That's not relevant to the question of whether or not Jaroff lied. The question of bias is a separate question.

No, Jaroff didn't confirm the source of the quotes. He didn't look at a CO taping for himself to see if his description of it was even close or made any sense at all. He tried to sandbag the CO staff by reading the article to them 24 hours before it was scheduled to be printed--nice tactic to cover himself by including a quote from them--i.e. he tried at the last minute to give the article a veneer of doing his homework when in fact, he'd done none!!!

Clancie, none of us knows that to be a fact.

This article really irks me because there is so little good criticism of JE out there to begin with. When I first tracked it down, I was avidly hunting for exposes of JE. I xeroxed it in the library and fully expected that the TIME magazine science writer would "deliver the goods". What a total disappointment to see something based only on innuendo and rumor!!!!

I won't dispute the evidential quality of O'Neill's anecdotal account. I agree that, as far as I know, it is uncorroborated.

I still look at it and think...what a disgraceful piece of work....Really, it's appallingly bad in every respect and most of all for Jaroff's utter laziness and lack of journalistic standards...

Any second year high school journalism student would have done better....

He's quite the hypocrite for now blasting Larry King (on his talk show) for bias and a lack of balance....

Perhaps Jaroff is biased, and perhaps he shows a lack of journalistic balance and fairness, but he didn't lie. His criticism of Larry King should be judged on its own merits, and not on the basis of Jaroff's old article about John Edward.

 

[Unas]

Originally posted by SteveGrenard
Unas: I'll ask you whatever I please. Kindly bear in mind that you do not control this forum.

Answer: You can indeed ask what you please. And therefore I can answer what I please.

Yes, you can. And when that answer consists solely of evasion -- as yours does -- I'll point that out.

Have you read the article?

You're still evading. What are the specific lies Jaroff wrote? All you've given us so far are vague, hysterical accusations that everything Jaroff wrote was a lie. You cannot specify one single statement he published that was false? Not one?

 

[Unas]

Originally posted by Clancie
You both seem quite obsessed with Steve, but hopefully, you understand my point as well--which is that Jaroff's article is a shabby excuse for journalism.

Again, you have evaded a simple question: The original accusation made by Steve Grenard was that Jaroff lied. Do you agree with Mr. Grenard's accusation? Yes or no. Anything else is evasion.

(And I notice, Unas, that you still give no indication that you've actually -read- the article you're defending...)

Cite any article in any thread anywhere in this discussion forum in which I defend anything that Mr. Jaroff has written. You want sloppy? Check your own posts, Clancie.

 

[SteveGrenard]

TBK: These are mundane explanations of how JE probably does what he does. Because of the nature of his claims, these 3 explanations must be ruled out before jumping to the "JE has superpowers" explanation. It has to do with the whole "burden of evidence" thing that believers so often try to shift onto skeptics.

Answer: Nope. The most parsiomnious explanations are none of these things. They are too convoluted and difficult to pull off. If JE were a fraud, it would be because:

1. He asks a lot of questions: game of 20 questions. A cold reading technique.

2. Warm reading: he reads people's body language, appearance and voice intonation.

3. He uses pigeon-holing of information. Actually JVP is the most blatant of these. He gives back information provided by the sitters.

4. And finally a part of, but not his entire readings are generalizations. I tend to dismiss generalizations unless they are the whole reading since a lot of stuff can be general because it is common, not just because it fits a lot of people (which it does).

JE "has superpowers" is the very last factor you would consider but the above four come before hot reading scams.

There should be pretty tough standards for scientifically validating mediums. They need to rule out any possibility of any type of cold or warm reading as well as hot reading. You cannot do this from a TV show.

Jaroff would have done his readers a favor if he concentrated on how fraudulent mediums work rather than
cashing out opinions on van loads of ringers, whether JE was guessing O'Neill's hits (without telling anybody what they are because Jaroff didn't know -- he never spoke to O'Neill) or that JE's part time staff of two dozen college kids/interns were in on some giant conpiracy to report to him everything audience members said.

 

[SteveGrenard]

UNAS: You're still evading. What are the specific lies Jaroff wrote? All you've given us so far are vague, hysterical accusations that everything Jaroff wrote was a lie. You cannot specify one single statement he published that was false? Not one?

Sorry sonny. Unless you can tell me you've done ypur homework, I will not do it for you by rehashing the article here. For one thing you won't even know what I am talking about and therefore would not appreciate any answers I give you. I already told you that Jaroff's entire article, from word one to the last period was a fabrication because of two very simple facts:

1. He did not check out the Crossing Over set or an actual taping himself.

2. He did not corroborate what Michael O'Neill said in an e-mail to a second party (Randi).

 

[xouper]

Sheesh, I can't believe I just read through 80+ posts looking for the punchline and there is none. Steve accuses Jaroff of lying and can't even provide a single specific example of a lie, let alone say why it's a lie. How pathetic. Steve Grenard is a joke with no punchline.

 

[Jeff Corey]

COREY: You consider an e-mail from Benneth a reliable source of information?
Are you totally deluded?

As a true skeptic I would have to answer that by saying I don't know. On the surface, however, I agree much of what he writes can seem outlandish. This particular account was especially amusing. It could be a blend of some truths and a healthy dose of delusion. Am I going to write an article for TIME Magazine based on this? I think not. It is what Jaroff did with O'Neill's e-mail:

Sorry abut the late reply. Just spent all day burying the cat.
You're comparing Jaroff's journalistic methods to those of the looniest delusional person in both hemispheres?

 

[SteveGrenard]

Xouper, you win. The following is an example of Jaroff's lies or fabrications. He based his story on an e-mail sent to James Randi which he did not check and on a visit to the gallery he did not make. He investigated or checked nothing.


Jaroff: Clairvoyants who claim to communicate with the dead--and warnings not to listen to them--go back at least as far as the Old Testament, yet psychics continue to flourish in back parlors and storefronts across America.

Comment: And the source of these warnings? The Holy Bible. And what is the basis of the warnings Jaroff omits:
that those who communicate with the dead are communing with Satan and demons. Oookay. Jaroff makes it sound like some real important authority is warning you against this.



Jaroff: None today is better known or more listened to than John Edward, a fast-talking former ballroom-dancing instructor who is cleaning up on his proclaimed ability "to connect with energies of people who have crossed over." Died, that is.

Comment: JE taught ballroom dancing after he met his wife who taught him to ballroom dance and who owned such a studio. Why didn't Jaroff also mention that JE worked as a supervisor in the laboratory department of the North Shore University Hospital? Just a tad misrepping here, eh? I guess former ballroom dance instructor sounded cheesier to Jaroff.

Jaroff: Indeed, his nightly Crossing Over with John Edward is the highest-rated show on the Sci Fi network and is about to go into syndication.

Comment: Ah yes. Here's the bit that supports the contention this story, preceded by Randi's column in The Skeptic, which goes into greater detail, was designed to discredit Edward at this point (syndication) in the show's success.



Jaroff: He has made appearances on Larry King Live, Dateline, an HBO special, Entertainment Tonight and other TV shows. Between his fees for individual appointments, tickets for his seminars and stage appearances, and sales of his books, audiotapes and videotapes, Edward seems to be one of the few growth industries in an otherwise lackluster economy.

Comment: How does Jaroff know this? He has not seriously done an economic feasibility and comparison between JE and say the steel industry? eh?

Jaroff: But is he for real? Edward's critics claim his feats are merely illusions created by standard magicians' ploys--helped along, they charge, by a few tactics that are downright underhanded.

Comment: A rhetorical question. Jaroff calls what JE does a magician's ploy plus underhandedness. But offers no evidence. He makes claims ...er, but no support.


Jaroff: Like other mediums, Edward relies heavily on a technique known in the trade as "cold reading." It involves posing a series of questions and suggestions, each shaped by the subject's previous response. Practitioners often begin, for example, by uttering a generality: "I sense an older father figure here," eliciting a response that leads him to the next question. "I'm getting that his death resulted from a problem in his chest" is a statistically sound guess that could cover everything from lung cancer and emphysema to a heart attack. Should the subject answer no, the cold reader will often say, "Well, we'll get back to that," and quickly change tack. It's a sophisticated form of the game Twenty Questions, during which the subject, anxious to hear from the dead, seldom realizes that he, not the medium or the departed, is supplying the answers.

Comment: This proves that not only didn't Jaroff investigate the specifics and O'Neill for this story but has never watched JE either. This is not the way he usually cold reads. Jaroff and Randi cant seem to get past the identifying relatives ploys and the old problem in the chest area thing . For some reason JE will go way beyond this in many instances.


Jaroff: Michael O'Neill, a New York City marketing manager, had no preconceived notions about Edward but experienced what he is convinced was a "hot reading"--a variation on the cold reading in which the medium takes advantage of information surreptitiously gathered in advance. Given an extra ticket by family members hoping to hear from his deceased grandfather, O'Neill attended a performance and was singled out by Edward, who received what he claimed were communications sent directly from the dead grandfather.

Comment: Jaroff makes it seem he is first class buddies with O'Neill. But be careful. He never met him or spoke to him. This material is straight from Randi and the e-mail Randi got from O'Neill.


Jaroff: While many of those messages seemed to O'Neill to be clearly off base, Edward made a few correct "hits," mystifying everyone by dropping family names and facts he could not possibly have known.

Comment: In Randi's article O'Neill is alleged to call the hits "guess hits" but there as here we still don't know what they are. Wonder why that is? Oh yes, its because Jaroff never spoke to or communicated with O'Neill about this e-mail.

Jaroff: It was not until weeks after the performance, when O'Neill saw the show on TV, that he began to suspect chicanery. Clips of him nodding yes had been spliced into the videotape after statements with which he remembers disagreeing.

Comment: Jaroff doesnt explain how head nods equate with the affirmative information JE gave him. Either JE got the names correct or he didn't. And what about the facts JE couldn't possibly have known? Was this also inferred from head nod editing? Makes no sense. Did O'Neill say what JE gave them in names and facts was actual stuff he discussed with family before they sat down? No.


Jaroff: In addition, says O'Neill, most of Edward's "misses," both on him and other audience members, had been edited out of the final tape.

Comment: This runs contrary to readings all of us have seen on air....
with both misses and hits. I suggest O'Neill was not keeping proper records and that Jaroff never grilled him on this.
Oh, we already know that.


Jaroff: Now suspicious, O'Neill recalled that while the audience was waiting to be seated, Edward's aides were scurrying about, striking up conversations and getting people to fill out cards with their name, family tree and other facts. Once inside the auditorium, where each family was directed to preassigned seats, more than an hour passed before show time while "technical difficulties" backstage were corrected.

Comment: Now here is a really big lie by omission that Jaroff told: in Randi's account O'Neill says staff were scurrying around overhearing audience members speak while telling them to be "very quiet." Whatever happened to that Jaroff? He omitted the admonition to be "very quiet."

CO does not require members to write down their names, names of deceased family members and family tree information and give it to the staff.
Absolutely not. Jaroff attributes this bogus information to O'Neill so fine. Somebody is lying.

There are NO preassigned seats either.
People go into the studio in random order and are seated in an orderly fashion to prevent crowding. This is another lie. O'Neills? Jaroffs? Dont know



Jaroff: And what did most of the audience--drawn by the prospect of communicating with their departed relatives--talk about during the delays? Those departed relatives, of course. These conversations, O'Neill suspects, may have been picked up by the microphones strategically placed around the auditorium and then passed on to the medium. (A spokesperson for Crossing Over would say only that Edward does not respond to criticism.)

Comment: Here Jaroff implies by quoring O'Neill that conversations may be picked up by mics.

Jaroff forgets to mention he was invited to attend a taping to see if anything O'Neill said was true and he didnt want to get off his rear and come to NY from Florida. He could've had a researcher or several from TIME do so if he wanted. But he just refused and forgot about the offer. Lies by omission ? I would say so.



Jaroff: Meanwhile, O'Neill e-mailed his suspicions to the James Randi Educational Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where the Amazing Randi, a magician and skeptic, had been tracking Edward's career. Some of what Randi has learned is scheduled to be aired this week on Inside Edition, in what will probably be the first nationally televised show to take a skeptical look at the Edward phenomenon. Among other things, the show will feature Randi's demonstration of the cold-reading technique used by magicians to entertain and mediums to hoodwink an unsuspecting public.


Comment: "Meanwhile" my ass. Randi had this e-mail and published his O'Neill account well before Jaroff used it. This makes it sound like Jaroff knew about O'Neill and spoke to him all along and that ONeill advised Randi afterwards. Wrong. Deliberate misrepping of timelines to create a false impression. It doesn't get any better than this.

Randi's version contained the allegations about a van load of ringers, hidden mics and eavesdropping by staff members.


And renata, as to why JE decided not to sue Jaroff and TIME, it was because they would have been forced to subpoena and even quite possibly sue a gallery member as well (Michael O'Neill) and they clearly did not want to be placed in this position. So the cowards Jaroff and Randi hide behind O'Neill, knowing full well that CO would never sue an audience member. If they did they would suddenly become very un-popular with the public and this is clearly not something they wanted to do. So they just had to stay mum, well as mum as they could but certainly not drag O'Neill into court to defend Randii, Jaroff, TIME or The Skeptic.

 

[SteveGrenard]

Condolences on the loss of your cat.

 

[Unas]

The following is an example of Jaroff's lies or fabrications.

You present not one single shred of evidence to back up your claim. None of your comments contains any information that would prove that any of the statements you quoted from Jaroff's article are lies. Furthermore, you haven't even attempted to back up the accusations you've made against Shermer, Randi, and Gardner.

You've proven yourself to be the actual liar in this instance, Mr. Grenard. Expect to be reminded of that fact often.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Jaroff forgets to mention he was invited to attend a taping to see if anything O'Neill said was true and he didnt want to get off his rear and come to NY from Florida. He could've had a researcher or several from TIME do so if he wanted. But he just refused and forgot about the offer. Lies by omission ? I would say so.

Do you have any documentation that proves that? Let's just start with the first statement. Any proof he was invited to a taping?
If Jaroff said he was invited, I'd believe it.
But not if you state it as fact.
I must larsen this statement. Prove what you said was true while providing a credible source.

 

[SteveGrenard]

JC: Do you have any documentation that proves that? Let's just start with the first statement. Any proof he was invited to a taping? If Jaroff said he was invited, I'd believe it. But not if you state it as fact.

Yup, dont take my word for it. Somebody already suggested they would ask this question directly to Jaroff. Go for it. My info is only second hand, coming from CO and what JE has written about it. To date Jaroff has not refuted CO's claim.

Whatta about the other half of the equation?

By the way, going to the taping is only half of the investigation that would;ve been needed to be done. The other half was to corroborate what O'Neill said.
For this Randi would have to have given Jaroff O'Neill's contact info or at the very least his e-mail complete with his e-mail address. Surely you dont think this would have been too hard for Randi to do for his ole bddy Jaroff eh? Especially since Jaroff plastered O'Neill as a source all over his column.

Jeff, my condolences on the death of your cat. Did you bury it at home or take it to the pet cemetary?

 

[Pyrrho]

UNAS: You're still evading. What are the specific lies Jaroff wrote? All you've given us so far are vague, hysterical accusations that everything Jaroff wrote was a lie. You cannot specify one single statement he published that was false? Not one?

Sorry sonny. Unless you can tell me you've done ypur homework, I will not do it for you by rehashing the article here. For one thing you won't even know what I am talking about and therefore would not appreciate any answers I give you. I already told you that Jaroff's entire article, from word one to the last period was a fabrication because of two very simple facts:

1. He did not check out the Crossing Over set or an actual taping himself.

2. He did not corroborate what Michael O'Neill said in an e-mail to a second party (Randi).

I think you need to define the word "lie" for us, so we know that you don't mean a literal "lie", but some other definition that you privately hold.

Failure to inspect the Crossing Over set or actual taping does not make Jaroff's article a lie.

Failure to corroborate O'Neill's comments does not make Jaroff's article a lie.

If Jaroff's article was a fabrication, it would have been built out of whole cloth, as they say, which it was not.

If you want to call Jaroff's article piss-poor journalism, I might agree. Calling it a lie is just plain wrong.

 

[SteveGrenard]

Here is Shermer's version of the O'Neill/Jaroff thing excerpted from a larger article he did called Deconstructing the Dead:


Shermer:

Last month Skeptic magazine was the first national publication to run an expose of John Edward in James "The Amazing" Randi's column (in Vol. 8, #3, now on newsstands and bookstores or at www.skeptic.com), a story that was picked up this week by Time magazine, who featured a full-page article on what is rapidly becoming the Edward phenomenon.

Comment: Okay, I hope this supports contentions about the provenance of Jaroff’s article.



Shermer: Time's reporter Leon Jaroff, quoting from the Skeptic article, wrote a skeptical piece in which he reported the experiences of an audience member from an Edward taping. His name is Michael O'Neill, a New York City marketing manager, who reported his experiences as follows (quoting from the Skeptic article):

O'Neill: "I was on the John Edward show. He even had a multiple guess "hits" on me that was featured on the show.

Comment: Here it is …. Multiple “guess hits” And what were these guesses and just how guess were they? We will never know, I guess.


Shermer quoting Randi quoting O’Neill: However, it was edited so that my answer to another question was edited in after one of his questions. In other words, his question and my answer were deliberately mismatched.

Comment: But if JE had multiple guess hits why would he need to mismatch O’Neill’s head nods and answers?

Shermer quoting Randi quoting O’Neill:

Only a fraction of what went on in the studio was actually seen in the final 30 minute show. He was wrong about a lot and was very aggressive when somebody failed to acknowledge something he said.

Comment: Well of course. The taping is 4 hours, the 30 minute show you O’Neill was on was only 22 minutes. Of course O’Neill, Randi nor Shermer and certainly not Jaroff failed to mentioned that 6 to 8 or moré shows are cut from the 4 hour taping. A minor lapse perhaps or deliberate prevarication? I call this a gross deception to be kind.



Shermer quoting Randi quoting O’Neill:

Also, his "production assistants" were always around while we waited to get into the studio. They told us to keep very quiet, and they overheard a lot. I think that the whole place is bugged somehow.

Comment: Yes, eavesdropping while telling you to remain “very quiet/” Makes no sense whatsoever. Ah, and here it is: “the whole place is bugged somehow.” Another stupid reason to tell the audience to “keep very quiet” They should’ve been saying “talk about your dead relatives so the mics and production assistants can hear you. Speak up for gosh sakes.”


Shermer quoting Randi quoting O’Neill:

Also, once in the studio we had to wait around for almost two hours before the show began. Throughout that time everybody was talking about what dead relative of theirs might pop up. Remember that all this occurred under microphones and with cameras already set up. My guess is that he was backstage listening and looking at us all and noting certain readings. When he finally appeared, he looked at the audience as if he were trying to spot people he recognized.

Comment: And did O’Neill say what he and his family were saying about their dead relatives that came up in the reading he had? Nope.

Perhaps JE was looking hard at people trying to connect for them. Perhaps he was trying to figure out which one
OF THE he mics on the stage foor was picking up muted conversations in the gallery and from whom. I dont know but the latter seems ridiculous if not impossible. It is not parsimonious.


Shermer quoting Randi quoting O’Neill:

He also had ringers in the audience. I can tell because about fifteen people arrived in a chartered van, and once inside they did not sit together."

Comment: Again, if JE had ringers in the audience, why weren’t any or all of them read instead of O’Neill? Still can’t answer that one.
------------------------------------------------

Pyrrho, you bring up another good reason besides the one I brought up as to why CO will not sue TIME, Jaroff, Randi or Shermer. None of them are making their own assertions, they are using O'Neill and therefore they are not lying except by reason of quoting O'Neill. Piss poor and worse journalism by Jaroff is an understatement.

The effect, at the end, is the same. Using the convivance of language and hiding behind a source, Randi, Shermer and ultimately Jaroff caused O'Neill's pap to reach millions and Jaroff never checked it out. So Jaroff can't even say for sure that any of what O'Neill allegedly wrote was true. I agree. I am not sure what that makes him. But it isnt pretty.

 

[thaiboxerken]

JE "has superpowers" is the very last factor you would consider but the above four come before hot reading scams.

Why before? They are just as plausible as hot reading. They are just as valid of explanations as the rest of the mundane possibilities.


There should be pretty tough standards for scientifically validating mediums. They need to rule out any possibility of any type of cold or warm reading as well as hot reading. You cannot do this from a TV show.

Of course not.

Jaroff would have done his readers a favor if he concentrated on how fraudulent mediums work rather than
cashing out opinions on van loads of ringers, whether JE was guessing O'Neill's hits (without telling anybody what they are because Jaroff didn't know -- he never spoke to O'Neill) or that JE's part time staff of two dozen college kids/interns were in on some giant conpiracy to report to him everything audience members said.

It's a television show with an agreement policy that studio members cannot contest fabrications and fictionalizations of what occurs during the taping sequences. Because of this, even if JE was caught "hot reading", he is in no legal trouble. It's done in a studio full of camera's and microphones and you think that it's not very plausible that evesdropping is occuring?

It's evident here that your entire purpose is to cry and discredit any skeptical viewpoint. This is your own form of censorship, and it's dishonest.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Again, if JE had ringers in the audience, why weren’t any or all of them read instead of O’Neill? Still can’t answer that one.

Easy answer. The ringers are there just in case JE can't seem to get decent hits or his "hot reading" isn't working out that great. A ringer can be used once, after that his identity will be compromised and the fraud exposed.

I guess SG just doesn't have the thinking skills to understand the differing deceptions often employed by "mediums" or other "entertainers".