Oh dear, the sky is falling!

[Pidge]

Psychic leads police to man's belongings

A psychic has helped police find items belonging to an elderly Palmerston North man who has been missing for over a week.

On Friday night, the local woman, who does not want to be named, described a location to the police. She had never been there before.

On Saturday, James Alexander's personal items were found on the banks of the Manawatu River.

Police said Mr Alexander, who suffered from Alzheimer's, was most likely in the river.

The police dive squad will search the river today.

(Entire article quoted - NZ Herald only allows subscribers to view past articles after a week or so. Mods, feel free to remove)

There's a disconnect between the psychic describing a location and the police finding the belonging on the banks of the river. No direct link is made but it is implied by the article, and there's no statement from the Police to say that the information provided was useful or acted on, or if finding the items was a coincidence.

Also, the claim that the psychic had never been there before is curious. Was that as a result for being directly questioned on that, or as a freely given statement (as Shakespear puts it, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks")?

I'll have to watch Letters to the Editor tomorrow...

 

[Tricky]

Psychic leads police to man's belongings
(Entire article quoted - NZ Herald only allows subscribers to view past articles after a week or so. Mods, feel free to remove)

There's a disconnect between the psychic describing a location and the police finding the belonging on the banks of the river. No direct link is made but it is implied by the article, and there's no statement from the Police to say that the information provided was useful or acted on, or if finding the items was a coincidence.

Also, the claim that the psychic had never been there before is curious. Was that as a result for being directly questioned on that, or as a freely given statement (as Shakespear puts it, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks")?

I'll have to watch Letters to the Editor tomorrow...

Also there's the line

On Friday night, the local woman, who does not want to be named, described a location to the police. She had never been there before.

How exactly do the police know she had never been there before? They took her word for it? Uh huh.

 

[steve s]

Also, had the police made any public statements about where they believed he might be? It's often the case that the police might say "We believe he may have drowned in the river", and then a psychic comes forward and says to look by the river. Duh!

Steve S.

 

[gfunkusarelius]

i am always a little suspicious when an article is about 100 words long. usually it indicates that the information is really preliminary and relatively unverified- if this had much data to back it up, it would be worthy of a lot more commentary...my guess is, if they even care enough, the police will contact them and let them know it wasnt like that and the publication will wedge the correction somewhere in the backpages.

 

[kieran]

i am always a little suspicious when an article is about 100 words long. usually it indicates that the information is really preliminary and relatively unverified- if this had much data to back it up, it would be worthy of a lot more commentary...my guess is, if they even care enough, the police will contact them and let them know it wasnt like that and the publication will wedge the correction somewhere in the backpages.

As already said by Pidge, no direct link was made in the article between "a location" described by the "psychic" and the river where the clothes were found ... so I don't think the police will even bother to comment.

Typical woo, typical anecdote material - now committed to print. It will probably have pride of place on this psychic's new web site now that she can "prove" herself to be "bona fide", wonder if she'll increase her fees for a reading, and/or start psychic tours of the river bank ...

 

[rustytunes]

She probably pushed the poor guy in.

 

[veggie doll]

She probably pushed the poor guy in.

 

[Zep]

...so her psychic vision could come true??






I'd believe that...