Psychic dream detective Chris Robinson debunked

[PainKiller]

I have been looking for skeptical material on the alleged psychic dream detective Chris Robinson.

I managed to find this reported by Richard Wiseman in his book Night School (2014), so thought I would share it:

A few years ago I tested top 'dream detective' Chris Robinson. Robinson believes that his dreams can be used to solve crimes and avert national disasters, and claims to have predicted several terrorist incidents, including the attack on the Twin Towers and the London Underground bombings. The subject of numerous television programmes, Robinson frequently informs the police about his psychic tip-offs.

I investigated Robinson's alleged abilities as part of a television programme looking into psychic detection. We approached Scotland Yard's 'Black Museum', and they kindly loaned us three objects; a scarf used by a rogue milkman to strangle a customer, a bullet that had killed a policeman as he tried to arrest two car thieves, and a shoe that had belonged to a murdered woman. We placed each object in a separate box, and labelled the boxes 'A', 'B' and 'C'. Even though Robinson was unaware of the nature of the objects or crimes, he claimed that he would be able to obtain information about them in his dreams. In addition, two other alleged psychics handled the objects and tried to divine the nature of the crimes.

As a control, a group of my students were asked to look at the objects and guess what had happened during each of the crimes (I have since seen the student's exam results, and can confirm they have no special abilities). A panel of researchers judged the accuracy of their comments, with the results revealing that the psychics performed no better than the students.

Source:

Richard Wiseman. (2014). Night School: Wake Up to the Power of Sleep. Macmillan. pp. 201-202

Wiseman's paper originally appeared in 1996:

Wiseman, R; West, D; Stemman, R. (1996). An Experimental Test of Psychic Detection. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 61: 34-45.

Does anyone else have any skeptical coverage of Chris Robinson?

 

[marplots]

He has a website. On this page he mentions the psychic detective testing but does not mention Chris Robinson under that heading. http://www.richardwiseman.com/research/psychics.html

I don't know why.

 

[Ersby]

I looked into Chris Robinson a bit. Especially into his apparent successes in a scientific experiment with Gary Schwartz. I wrote about it on my blog:

http://ersby.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-arizona-experiments.html

In short, the "hits" reported by Schwartz are the result of non-blind judging, crerating correspondences, and using notes from one night's dream for a target meant for a different day.

Also, it's worth noting that many of Chris' successes revolve around police inicdents in the area where he lives. This is noteworthy since he first found fame as the man who intercepted phone calls from Princess Diana using a scanner. (I can't find the article for that at the moment. It was in the Fortean Times and it was called "Watching the Detectives". If I find it later, I'll add a reference.)

(Found it: FT86, pp 23-28. I'll scan them later today and put a link to them here.)

Here's the article in question: https://www.mediafire.com/?c6n97wq1qh1f66l

 

[Garrette]

I looked into Chris Robinson a bit. Especially into his apparent successes in a scientific experiment with Gary Schwartz. I wrote about it on my blog:

http://ersby.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-arizona-experiments.html

In short, the "hits" reported by Schwartz are the result of non-blind judging, crerating correspondences, and using notes from one night's dream for a target meant for a different day.
Also, it's worth noting that many of Chris' successes revolve around police inicdents in the area where he lives. This is noteworthy since he first found fame as the man who intercepted phone calls from Princess Diana using a scanner. (I can't find the article for that at the moment. It was in the Fortean Times and it was called "Watching the Detectives". If I find it later, I'll add a reference.)

(Found it: FT86, pp 23-28. I'll scan them later today and put a link to them here.)

Here's the article in question: https://www.mediafire.com/?c6n97wq1qh1f66l

Good to hear from you again. This is typical of much of Schwartz's work. One needs little more than a lack of bias and a high school level ability to reason to tear apart The Afterlife Experiments yet, like most such things, it keeps getting used as support.