Clancie said:
Ian Rowland might have done a great demonstration in his thirty minutes on Primetime Thursday, but we will never know as they only showed ninety seconds of it. Viewed in person at Cal Tech, he did a couple of psychic-style cold reading demos, but brought nothing through in terms of mediumship, despite two attempts at it.
Clancie,
I noticed you did not reply to my post in How Does JE Receive Messages? thread. I really must correct the impression you keep giving of this performance at Caltech- remember, I was there. And, remember, so was Electric Monk. And, remember, you and I discussed this right after the performance. Here is you post in How Does JE Receive Messages? and my response.
Clancie said:
Hi g8r,
Yes, I agree with you that some of LKL messages are vague (not that I've seen any professed cold reader get anything comparable--including Ian Rowland, viewed live, where his mediumship demo yielded....zero hits, not even "vague" ones).
I -do- disagree that
all LKL hits were vague messages. For example, (and I realize others disagree
), I consider "cigarettes in the coffin--not his brand" an excellent hit.
[/B]
Can you link to the transcripts of the additional LKL interviews?
As to Ian Rowland, I would like to remind you, that not only did he get some hits, as you and I were in the same audience, but at least one other member of the audience agreed with me on that. In addition, presenting an admitted cold reader to an audience of skeptics at Caltech is a slightly different circumstance than a medium to an audience of believers.
Here were my original notes
Cold reading- that was a tough one, as he was sitting in front of a skeptic crowd. He threw out 4 threads, and I believe if it had been a more trusting crowd, he would have gotten spectacular hits on all. However, the interesting part was not so much the hits, but his entirely nimble maneuvering, making use of near misses into great hits. It was fascinating. Once again, it is impossible to do it justice here, but here were the threads
1. Charles, older man, mustache, connection with military. Now in a crowd of 300, there damn well better be a connection, but nobody bit on that- it did not phase him one bit. He just let Charles stick around
2. Conversation with Elizabeth. One woman said she had recently spoke with Elizabeth, at which point he fairly accurately described Elizabeth's appearance and said they had a professional relationship. This is where it got funny- the person said Elizabeth was her apartment manager, but I think Ian thought she was her work manager, because he talked a bit about raises and work changes. The woman appeared to validate most of his guesses- good reading
3. Recent financial troubles- also a hit and a prediction. Not as general as it might sound, the sitter validated a few things
4. Car trouble in tires- also hit, the sitter validated shock problems, and Ian pretty much guessed all.
Here is a portion of your reply, where you seem to acknowledge Elizabeth hit, which you forgot above.
However, I just do want to highlight what you mentioned, that his two attempts at "mediumship cold reading" didn't come off at all. "Deceased Charles or Charlie" got no hits, despite being an "uncle/grandfather"....or eventually "maybe a family friend", "having a military connection...." Nothing.
And "Elizabeth" was originally supposed to be someone deceased, too, until the woman claimed her as someone living.
He quickly dropped "mediumship" and switched to just "psychic readings" --about a job and money--predictably cold reading-as-you'd-expect-it, and those did seem to fit whoever he gave them to (probably also fit many others in the audience with work/money problems, as well).
Very entertaining stuff. Just no "cold reading like JE". None at all.
A portion of my reply
That is true. There are many reasons for that, including
1. He is, as he says an admitted fraud
2. This was a skeptical audience
3. He has scruples.
I believe that if this was a believer audience, who did not know he was a magician, and if did not care about their feelings and loss, he would have done as well or better than JE. Certainly his performance last night, even with the above constraints was as good as or superior to JE's undedited readings on Larry King.
And here is a comment by another JREFer who was there, Electric Monk
I'll put my vote in for audience difficulties on the cold reading portion of the program. Despite asking everyone to put themselves in the place of an earnest audience, the general familiarity of the local skeptics with the tricks of cold reading had a lot of them laughing loudly every time he tried one of the standard dodges. Kinda spoiled the mood, I think.
The sitter who responded to the "tires" prompt was the husband of Tanja Sterrmann, Mike Shermer's office manager and lovely assistant at TAM. Since TAM, I've spoken to them both a few times and can report that they're both quite sharp-minded individuals, and that he is a very lucky guy.
As to whether it was at all like John Edward- perhaps you would like to familiarize yourself with this comment by Luker
http://host.randi.org/vbulletin/sho...24370&perpage=40&highlight=tire*&pagenumber=1
Anyone want to list John Edward's big misses? Misses where the info was fairly specific but got no response?
I happened to be home for lunch yesterday and saw a couple of big misses on one lady.
{snip=r}
3. At the seminar I attended John picked someone out of the crowd and said, "Congratulations on the new tires." The man shrugged his shoulders clearly indicating he knew nothing.
{snip=r}
Of course I could not let it pass, hence the comment by me
New tires? That is hilarious because Ian Rowland in his cold reading demo said something similar, about new tires. Of course JE was getting it psychicly... I alsways thoughts spirits were quite the kidders.
So JE
somewhat like Rowland, at least.
Now I would like to elaborate on that. You now claimed there were no hits, "zero" hits. Right after the seminar you acknowledged that he got Elizabeth, and you did not contradict me when I said he accurately described her. Your quibble seemed to be that she was supposed to be dead, but turned out to be alive. That happens with JE
all the time! Check the LK readings! You count even initials as hits, remember how you combine weak hits and hits to inflate JE's hit ratio.
As to Charles not being validated= that is not a miss at all! That is merely not validated! If you applied the same standard to Ian's reading at Caltech as you apply to my analysis of JE's reading (dismissing not validated guesses and combining weak hits to generate a 50% hit ratio) Ian is doing great. You claimed his tire hit is a psychic communication, not a psychic medium communication. Lurker posted an example of JE doing the same thing- except Ian got a hit, but JE got a miss. Seems Ian is
better than JE.
Add to that the fact that Ian was reading a skeptical audience, and as Electric Monk said, every phrase from him was met with a round from laughter. Can you really think that in an audience of several hundred people nobody had a dead man named Charles? I suspect that is impossible.
The problem I have here is the same I have with Neo, in the post she did not answer to. I do not think you or Neo are dishonest. But you also seem to use different standards of evidence based on what results you want to find. You had many objections to LKL readings, when they were bad, but no objections to cigarette hit. Just like neo, who dismissed LKl readings as snippets when they were bad, but said it may have been spirit communication when it was good. A skeptic looks at all results.
With the LKL readings you equated very weak hits with regular hits, added them up, dismissed not validated hits and came up with in inflated 50% hit rate. With Ian you now claim zero hit rate, you claim not validated Charles hits are misses, you forgot the Elizabeth hits, the tires hits. How can you be an objective witness if not only two other witnesses contradict your memory of what happened, but your own writings after the fact contradict it? If it was a JE reading, you would fight to give him the Elizabeth hit, the tires, the fact Ian described her! You would claim the not validated Charles reading would fall in the same proportion as the other hits or misses, like claimed not validated comments did for JE. Or maybe Charles came through for the guy in the other room. Ian spoke about the future- well, JE does that also!
I am amazed at the litany of excuses JE believers have for poor performance of JE on LKL or other venues, but they are terribly strict when cold readers try to replicate him. Not to mention, once again that, in this particular case
1. Ian as he says an admitted fraud, and the crowd knew it
2. This was a skeptical audience, familiar with tricks of the trade
3. Ian has scruples and would not milk the audience.
I would love to see how well JE would perform in front of the same crowd...
But I've seen plenty of skeptics who are perfectly willing to accept Michael O'Neill's allegations that JE does just that, even though it is flimsey, anecdotal evidence, and O'Neill is nowhere to be found to question further. Skeptics cite O'Neill's account all the time. 
