John Edward on Glenn Beck
September 10th, 2009
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I’m not always the biggest fan of Glenn Beck, and on occasion I’ve actually found his show to be reporting some very bad science, but he does at least a mediocre when it comes to John Edward – at least better than most interviews. That’s not saying much though. The fact the Glenn Beck brought up anything critical at all is unusual, but I really would have liked to see him actually take on John Edward’s claims. Frauds like John Edward tend to be very selective about who they let interview them, as uncontrolled interviews have proven disastrous in the past.
Edward tries to back out of things when he gets asked why he wouldn’t take the JREF’s Million Dollar Challenge. His only answer is that he wouldn’t be tested by “anyone who’s first name is an adjective.” Cute, but the test is not done by The Amazing Randi (who has the legal name “James Randi,” and uses that in most circumstances.) If he were tested and won, he would have one million dollars to do whatever he wishes and to contribute to whomever he wishes. The actual test would be conducted under mutually acceptable circumstances and would have a number of observers. Randi may very well be one of them, but chances are that a third party would actually do most of the test. It would be documented and open to examination.
The one place he was “tested” was the Human Energy Systems Laboratory, now the VERITAS Research Program at the University of Arizona. It’s a very very fringe program that has all the appearances of being the low budget pet project of a real life nutty professor. These kind of programs have existed at many universities and are generally not well received by most of the sane teaching staff. The program is associated with the Windbridge Institute, which also offers “Mediumship Certifications.” It should be clear to anyone that these groups have a very strong bias and are not the most skeptical or objective venues for determining whether “mediumship” even exists.
This sounds very much like the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab or “PEAR.” PEAR operated from 1979 until 2007, during which time extensive experiments were preformed with the goal of researching paranormal phenomena such as ESP or the ability of human thought to influence otherwise random events. The institutes directors, especially the long time head, Robert G Jahn, strongly supported and championed the idea that the human mind had the ability to alter events or remotely perceive stimuli. They worked for many many years, repeatedly conducting experiments to attempt to prove this. Despite years of research, they never found any proof of anything. PEAR claimed to have found small but statistically significant evidence of human influence on machines, but third party review has dismissed this as being within the expected error of such experiments.
Ultimately, nothing changes the fact that John Edward is the biggest douche in the Universe.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Just LAME, Paranormal, media, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 10th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
There is something about that guy that makes me really dislike him even if he were not such a bold faced liar and complete fraud. Just the way he talks and comes across is so self-serving, smug, asinine. If I didn’t know he was a self-proclaimed psychic and I ran into him I’d dislike him. He has the kind of manner that makes him the kind of guy I’d never buy insurance from or hire as a plumber.
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September 10th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
He’s an ass alright. It’s really annoying that he is able to make so much money by just being a shameless liar.
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September 11th, 2009 at 12:25 am
He claims he didn’t even know about Houdini’s secret code. Houdini was one of the earliest modern debunkers and promoters of skepticism and he did it in the days when it was very difficult because so many took that crap seriously. His pledge to communicate a code if there was a way to do so from the dead is well known.
many have done this. There have been many cases where someone made a pact that if they died that someone close to them would have a way of verifying any communication with them. It has sometimes been codes or something a number of yes/no questions and sometimes something else. This is not hard to do. If you have any relatives who are gullible enough to go to an ass like this, you can also do it and tell them how they can verify it if you meet an untimely death.
Anyway, what I am getting at is that in all such circumstances, nobody has ever been able to demonstrate this is valid or anything of the sort.
It’s not like there’s even a question with him. If you watch his shows, it’s just downright pathetic.
We all know why he would never allow himself to be put to task by someone like Mr. Randi or anyone else who was really going to make him prove it. He knows it would be a fair, well documented, totally open and completely transparent affair for all the world to examine. He also knows he would fail.
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September 11th, 2009 at 1:40 am
It’s annoying to see that smug bastard making a living at this especially when he’s so bad at it. N We know what he is doing is just cold reading and the bull**** “give me a J” but he’s not even good at it. He sucks at the whole thing and his shows are pitiful.
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September 11th, 2009 at 1:49 am
From what I have heard, although I could be wrong, his shows are edited so that the extremely bad failures and times when he just looks like a complete ass are omitted and the ones where people think he can talk to the dead are the scenes included. He looks so abd in those I wonder what the outtakes look like. They must be calamitous.
Even the guy’s face looks like a horse’s ass.
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September 11th, 2009 at 3:57 am
What is so depressing to me is that science have revealed that the universe is full of the most amazing things that are real, yet there is a segment of the population that will reject science to believe in this dren.
Small, small minded people.
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September 11th, 2009 at 6:25 am
DV82XL said:
Indeed. A woo-woo once tried to challenge me by saying “What a narrow and small life you must have to be requiring evidence for everything”.
I immediately turned that around saying that I’m quite content with all the real wonders of real life. So much in fact I have no need to fill it with imaginary friends.
Example of how fantastic reality is:
David Gallo shows underwater astonishments
The Door to Hell. Cute name there, don’t you think?
Deinococcus Radiodurans, the “Marveous berry that endures radiation”. A bacterium that can survive up to 5000 Gy of ionizing radiation without loss in viability. Humans drop off at 10 Gy… E. coli goes at 60. Also very resistant against “ultraviolet light, desiccation, oxidizing and electrophilic agents”.
And… of course: my kids. Call it sappy but damnit, they are real and it’s bloody fantastic how they go from a single cell to the brats they are, talking back to me, the little rascals.
/Michael
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September 11th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
To add a few others:
Lightning – seems mundane because anyplace that gets thunder storms will get lightning and it’s hardly a rarity. However, viewed close up or with a high speed camera it’s amazing. The strange effects it can have on occasion are amazing as well. Also, the less understood jets and sprites are quite interesting.
Solar Eclipses
The astonishing ability of a bloodhound to pick up a few molecules of scent (this is the kind of thing I would not believe could be true if it were not so well documented)
Hydrothermal jets
The fact that there are organisms which colonize hydrothermal jets, highly acidic and hot pools of water near geysers and other extreme environments. Apparently these are just local organisms that managed to adapt to these environments. Some actually will die if you take them out of these environments and bring them to what we’d consider to be more mild.
Finally, the unexplained. It always goes to show that there is more to learn and discover. I don’t mean paranormal, but things that science is still not sure of:
Why do the magnetic poles periodically reverse?
What is the nature of dark matter?
What is the nature of dark energy? Does dark energy even exist or is it an illusion caused by our being situated in a region of the universe that is less dense than its surroundings?
Exactly what factors lead to climate events like the Little Ice Age and Mideavele Warm Period? Is it entirely solar variations?
What caused a number of strange sounds picked up by cold war acoustic submarine monitoring systems?
What produces cosmic rays?
What exactly caused the Tunguska incident? (meteor, comet and of what nature)
What produce jets and sprites?
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September 11th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Michael Karnerfors said:
Yes at the time I thought it was somewhat fantastical that I was holding in my arms someone who was going to have to have something “done” about me in the future.
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July 19th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
Beck told the crowd at his American Revival meeting in Salt Lake City that he’d been diagnosed with macular dystrophy.
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