Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

One important point should be noted here about the nature of Rand’s phony predictions. She took pains to make her predictions less than perfect. She did not say, “I foresee that on March 30 an attempt will be made on the life of President Reagan by a man named John Wayne Hinkley. Hinkley will attempt to assassinate the President as he emerges from the Sheraton Washington Hotel at 1:48 P.M.” No one would have believed such a specific prediction. So Rand purposely made her “prediction” somewhat vague, although consistent with what had happened.

When one examines the specific predictions psychics have made before the predicted event is supposed to take place, one finds a dismal record of failure. Several compilations of psychic predictions have recently been made (Saxon 1974; Anonymous 2000; Emery 1998, 2001). The record of what psychics predicted that didn’t happen and what they didn’t predict that did happen makes amusing reading. A selection of failed psychic predictions for 1999 includes the following:

Pollution cloud will cause New York City to be quarantined.

Marijuana will replace petroleum as major energy source. (Yeah, but it’s so hard to stuff 3 or 4 kilos into the gas tank!)

Terrorists will set of bomb that rips the arms off the Statue of Liberty.

On the Howard Stern show O. J. Simpson will confess.

Mary Tyler Moore will join the cast of 60 Minutes II .

Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy will give birth to twins. (She didn’t—she died with her husband, John F. Kennedy Jr., in a plane crash, which no psychic predicted.) (Anonymous 2000)

In view of psychics’ dismal record of failed predictions, why do so many people continue to take their claims seriously? There are several reasons. First, until recently no one has been “keeping score” on psychics’ predictions. The tabloids certainly don’t run a column at the end of the year detailing the fact that the psychic predictions they ballyhooed so vigorously have all turned out to be wrong. In short, failed predictions are not news and are forgotten. On the other hand, when a psychic does manage to be correct, either by being trivial (“I foresee continued trouble in Lebanon”) or by claiming that a prediction was much more specific than it really was, that prediction gets plenty of media attention. Thus, the public is selectively exposed to “correct” predictions and almost never hears about the thousands of failures.

A second, related reason for the continued belief in psychics is simply that one hears so much about them. Psychics and their predictions fill the tabloids and turn up frequently on television and radio talk shows and local television news. It is natural to assume that, if one hears a great deal about a particular topic, there must be something to it. Most readers and viewers will thus assume, incorrectly, that there must be some validity to psychic claims simply because these get so much media attention.

Finally, continued belief is often a result of personal encounters with psychics. People are convinced by the psychics’ cold-reading abilities and other forms of trickery outlined above. They reason that, since one or two individual psychics were so “accurate” in foretelling events in their personal lives, they are also accurate when predicting news events.

Many people believe that psychics can help police solve crimes and find missing persons. Certainly, psychics’ claims in these areas attract considerable media attention. When examined, however, these claims turn out to be as groundless as claims to predict the future.

One of the most famous psychic “crime fighters” is Dorothy Allison of Nutley, New Jersey. She claims to have helped dozens of police forces solve crimes, including the string of murders of black children in Atlanta in 1980–81. She appeared on the television program Donahue in 1981, which resulted in the citizens of Atlanta bringing pressure on the police force to invite her to try her hand at solving the children’s murders. Allison’s trip to Atlanta was widely covered on the local television news in both New York and Atlanta, as well as many other cities. The results of her trip, however, received much less coverage. A Sgt. Gundlach of the Atlanta police force, quoted by Randi (1982–83a), revealed that Allison produced a total of forty-two different names for the murderer or murderers—she believed that there were two murderers. Thus, she was of no help whatever in solving the murders.

In another case, Allison went to Columbus, Georgia, to help solve a string of murders of elderly women. According to Columbus Police Chief Curtis McClung, in the space of two days, “she said a whole lot of things, a whole lot of opinions, partial information and descriptions. She said a lot. If you say enough, there’s got to be something that fits” (Skeptical Eye 1980).

The multiple out is the heart of Allison’s method. She produces so many “feelings,” “impressions,” and “hunches” that, after the fact, some are bound to have been correct. This effect is accentuated by the fact that she often takes a Nutley, New Jersey, detective with her to “interpret” what she has said. With sufficient “interpretation,” almost anything can be transformed after the fact into a “correct” prediction. An excellent example of this technique is Allison’s prediction in the case of a missing teenager whose parents turned to Allison for help (Skeptical Eye 1980). She sadly informed the parents that the boy was dead and would be found “near an airport.” Now, that sounds pretty specific. After all, dead is dead—except when psychics are trying to cover up their blunders. The teenager had, in fact, joined a religious cult and was living in New York City’s Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building). Allison claimed she was right because the boy was “emotionally dead” and there is a heliport on the roof of the building. With such leeway, it’s almost impossible to imagine any statement about the boy that couldn’t be made to fit the situation after the fact.

Allison blundered in another famous case in New York City. In 1979 Etan Patz, a six-year-old boy, disappeared while walking to school in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan. To date, the boy has never been found. His disappearance set off the national concern over missing children in the early 1980s. In 1980 Allison was prominently featured on at least one major New York television station predicting that little Etan would be found “alive and well in six months.” Obviously, she was flat wrong, but what one did not hear six or seven months or even a year later on that television station was a story that started: “Dorothy Allison, the famed New York psychic, was wrong in her prediction about Etan Patz made on this program last year.”

The Dutch clairvoyant Gerard Croiset, who died in 1980, was another famed psychic crime fighter. Pollack (1964) recounts many of his exploits, relying for his information on Dutch parapsychologist Prof. W. Tenhaeff, who was a promoter of Croiset. Hoebens (1981–82a, 1981–82b) reviewed the claims made for Croiset, both in Pollack’s book and in the European literature. He found that the claims are not supported by the facts. For example, Pollack describes a 1953 case in which Croiset allegedly saw, psychically and in detail, what had happened to ten-year-old Dirk Zwenne, who disappeared while playing and was later found dead in a canal. Pollack’s account, taken from Tenhaeff, contains many specific statements and predictions that Croiset is said to have made, which were said to have come true. In fact, Croiset never made such statements. Hoebens (1981–82b) tracked down the original report of the Zwenne case and found that Croiset made the same type of vague statements that are typical of the multiple out. In addition, several of his statements were simply wrong. At one point, Croiset said the body would be found at a particular location. When taken to a second location to see if he “saw” anything there, he indicated that he did not. The body was found at this second location, not the first. Croiset also said that when discovered, the body would bear a fatal wound on the left side of the forehead. There was no such wound. Of course, these errors are not mentioned in Pollack’s book. The Zwenne case is just another example of psychics and their promoters claiming great accuracy and slyly changing the predictions after the fact.