40 replies to this topic

[mixe]

so your imaginary friend was a fairy bless  my one was that green thing from willow the wisp ;p as i say my theory is something to do with quantum entanglement and since we don't have the tools to measure utilise this yet then its neither science fact or fiction its just a theory like the big bang i will say tho that if clervoince was not taken seriously then why do the fed have them on payroll ? 

[Aspeh]

as i say my theory is something to do with quantum entanglement and since we don't have the tools to measure utilise this yet then its neither science fact or fiction its just a theory like the big bang i will say tho that if clervoince was not taken seriously then why do the fed have them on payroll ? 

 

+1

 

...and some police forces round the world use mediums.

[Devlin1991]

+1

 

...and some police forces round the world use mediums.

Which as far as I understand,

A) Can not be used as evidence in courts.
B) Can not be used as probable cause when asking for warrants for searches, arrest extensions etc.

Which makes them close to useless for every single case, the only exception being when they score a lucky guess on something that indirectly leads an officer down the correct chain of reasoning to solve a case within the bounds of the law. As you are probably aware almost every "Psychic" is nothing more than a performer praying on people for money, there is proof of psychics and mediums checking websites and researching the family of their targets in order to tailor their performance to the client to make it more believable. This has led them to being outed publicly by skeptics who bait them with false information on websites.

On the topic of why they are paid by some police forces I believe it is because they are praying on gullible officers the same way they do the general public. Below is a quote from wikipedia(yes I know its not the best source) which explains some of the techniques used by the psychics in order to manipulate police officers into believing they have "powers".
 

To assess the then-growing claims of psychic crime-solving, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) created a "task force" of investigators headed by Joe Nickell, PhD, a former magician, mentalist, and investigator for the world famous Pinkerton Detective Agency. The result was a book, introduced and edited by Nickell, titled Psychic Sleuths: ESP and Sensational Cases (1994),^[2] and containing a final analysis of claims by psychologist James Alcock.

Psychic Sleuths—still perhaps the only truly skeptical, book-length treatment of the subject—demonstrated that claims of psychic crime-solving repeatedly failed scrutiny. A major ploy the claimants used was a technique called "retrofitting" (or after-the-fact matching). For example, the psychic offers several vague "clues"—such as "I see water; I'm getting the number 7; and so on"—which are invariably of little use to police. However, after the facts become known, the psychic attempts to fit them to the earlier offerings. (For instance, a corpse may have been near a stream, pond, lake, or other body of water, and the number 7 might be made to seem a fit by pointing out that the location was 7 miles out of town,

or off Highway 7, or 27, or the like.) Retrofitting has duped even seasoned homicide detectives.^[2]

Most of the cases investigated for Psychic Sleuths depended on retrofitting, the apparent use of cold reading (a psychic's artful technique of fishing for information while appearing to gain it paranormally), and other ploys such as exaggeration.

In light of erstwhile "best-cases" that are sometimes touted (see below), Psychic Sleuths offers a remarkable example:

After a nurse went missing in Los Angeles in 1980, an ordinary woman claimed to have a "vision" of the nurse's murdered body. Not only did the unlikely psychic pinpoint the area on a map, but she actually arrived at the location of the body ahead of police! Nickell observes, however, that Smith failed a lie detector test, gave conflicting accounts of her "vision" and could have learned the location indirectly: as it happened, the killers were eventually caught because one of them had boasted about the crime in his neighborhood ^[2][3]

 

Edited by Devlin1991, 23 January 2013 - 05:59 pm.

[Darkademic]

.. using the tools currently available to them, with the current level of understanding.

 

We will have to agree to disagree methinks.

 

People should keep an open mind, not be so ready to just dismiss ideas or gang up on those who think outside the box, as is VERY often the case on the interwebs, (most of the big scientific discoveries more than likely came from people who thought outside the box) and use their own brains to decide for themselves what is fact and what is fiction. Question things which have been given to them as fact, rather than just accepting them. Thinking is a good thing. It develops understanding. A bit like the difference between copying a GW2 build off some forum, or actually working it out yourself!

 

This summarises this thread quite nicely:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI

[Aspeh]

haha, yes it does. Another +1

[Khally]

haha, yes it does. Another +1

 

Make it +2

[twiddlestix]

+3, that video was great. 

[mixe]

+4 !

[mixe]

the more i think about that video the more i think that they are both as daft as each other 1 persion jumps to conclusions without looking at all the options and the other dismissing options as he cant think of his own (maybe low IQ)