Psychic Char Margolis Fails Badly On TV
January 17th, 2012
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I have to admit, this really does not amount to much of a story, since it’s unlikely to change anyone’s mind, but god I love watching something like this…
Interesting that she brought up the “M or J” thing. I mean, how can you mistake an M for a J, which one is it? And why do spirits always provide things one letter at a time? The funny thing is that it actually would apply to me to a huge extent. My deceased paternal grandfather was named Joseph Joyce. My grandmother is Mary Joyce. I have an uncle whose name is also Joe Joyce, I have an aunt named Mary Anne, a cousin named Megan and my brother’s name is James. It might be more of a stretch (although that never stopped a psychic from claiming success), but my sister’s middle name is Marie and my paternal Grandmother’s maiden name was Moriarty. I have many J and M names in my relations, although names starting with either one of those letters are extremely common.
I love how she says she didn’t know the age of the anchor woman’s daughter and therefore couldn’t know if she had a boyfriend. The whole damn point of being a psychic is you’re supposed to know stuff without being given all the information necessary to figure it out. If you know a person’s daughter is seventeen, for example, it’s not a long shot to guess she either has a boyfriend or has some kind of romantic interests. If she’s six, you can probably guess she does not. It’s so ridiculous to think a real “psychic” would need to be primed with the information to know this.
The best part is the other news anchor who actually takes her to task, pointing out that she didn’t guess the name of the woman’s daughter but only guessed J or an M for someone relating to the woman. It’s very common for a psychic to claim success for something they didn’t get outright but were lead to. It’s also rare to get a news personality who will take them to task for this. I wonder why she wants to do his reading off camera?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, Paranormal, media. 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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January 18th, 2012 at 12:24 am
The pathetic thing is that this will not likely make much of a dent in Margolis’ practice, or the number of people she will be able to scam. These parasites exist because their victims want them to, and exposing them as frauds won’t change that.
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January 18th, 2012 at 3:48 am
They are able to scam a lot of people and I think that somebody can change that.
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January 18th, 2012 at 4:37 am
Парапети said:
There are organized skeptic groups that have done a very good job of showing this is all crap and have investigated the claims that are reported as being correct and put them to scientific tests. They have done a very good and complete job of showing there’s nothing there and have offered large cash prizes to anyone who can prove that there is.
It’s all good that they do this and maybe it convinces some, at least anyone who objectively does any kind of research will find it’s crap but that will not stop them because there is a portion of people who just don’t care and won’t listen to the facts that show this is crap. People want to buy this and nothing will change their mind.
I think it’s just some trying to take the easy way out of things. People die and they’re gone and it’s very sad to lose your friends or family members. It’s sad and you miss them but you have to accept and and deal with it and move on. Some people are too weak to do that so they insist on clinging to any stupid lie that says that things are different and their lost loved one is still around as a ghost or an angel and they can talk to them by using one of these jackasses.
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January 18th, 2012 at 1:09 pm
I have many J and M names in my relations, although names starting with either one of those letters are extremely common.
Yep:
James. John. Michael. Joseph. Mary. Jennifer. Maria. Margaret.
And Johnson, Miller, Jones, Moore.
You’re staggeringly likely to get a hit on “M or J”.
(The above examples are all from the Census Bureau’s top tens by frequency for male and female names, and surnames.
8 of 20 for first names, and the “best” letter pairs for match possibilities in them.
It’s enough to make one doubt her honesty!)
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January 18th, 2012 at 2:38 pm
Парапети said:
The only way to change that would be to put the psychics in jail and even then you probably wouldn’t completely eradicate it.
Many of them, including most of the high profile ones you could probably get on fraud, assuming a prosecutor had the will to go after them and even then there are plenty of cases in which much more harm was done that are more important to prosecute.
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January 18th, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Anon said:
How could you ever prove it? They say what they’re claiming to see and hear that nobody else can. Maybe that is what they see and hear. I’m sure some of them are legitimately insane, even if most aren’t.
It would still be impossible, I think. Some of them would claim it’s a religion and governments tend to be very sheepish about any prosecution that involves something that might tread on religious discrimination.
Also, just too much support. I’d imagine a lot of protests and possible worse. Maybe there could even be enough to mount a successful takeover in the next election cycle. For that matter, there are enough believers in this crap you could end up with them on the jury.
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January 18th, 2012 at 9:49 pm
Gordon said:
Being able to show that they don’t believe any of it themselves would probably help.
Gordon said:
Hard yes, you’d need to prove beyond reasonable doubt that:
a. they aren’t really psychic
b. that they have taken money from people on pretences that they are psychic
c. that they knew they weren’t really psychic
but I think it could be done.
Though the stakes would be high, losing the case would give psychics some extra credibility and the specific psychic a lot of free publicity (and they’d already have a decent amount to start with, this would only be worth doing to celebrities).
Gordon said:
Most countries do give far too much additional privilege to religion (including operating under a one law for the religious, one for everyone else system) so that is a larger issue but if there were the will I think it could be sufficiently overcome to prosecute a psychic.
Gordon said:
Not electing judges and prosecutors does have its advantages (and I highly doubt such a thing could swing a legislative election).
Gordon said:
Good point, though there’ll probably be some skeptics on the jury as well, but divided juries mean retrial so this could get expensive and very drawn out.
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January 18th, 2012 at 10:08 pm
Anon said:
The trouble is that there isn’t any substantive difference between what a psychic does when they claim to speak to the dead, and what a priest does when he claims to speak to a deity. Gordon is right: for all intents and purposes, its a religion.
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January 18th, 2012 at 11:15 pm
DV82XL said:
So stop privileging religion and having one law for the religious and one law for everyone else.
Yeah, I know, easier said than done (and doing it in a way that still protects freedom of belief and speech is even harder).
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January 19th, 2012 at 3:39 am
One solution: create a Psychic License, that all psychics must possess in order to practise. A Psychic License can be acquired by passing a few very simple tests that someone with genuine psychic abilities could pass easily, but will be impossible for anyone without psychic ability. Any psychic caught practising without a license is subject to a heavy fines. This will ensure that the only practising psychics will be those who have proven themselves to have genuine psychic ability, which I daresay would decrease their number substantially.
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January 19th, 2012 at 12:23 pm
“that someone with genuine psychic abilities could pass easily, but will be impossible for anyone without psychic ability”
You’re new around here, aren’t you? LOL!
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January 19th, 2012 at 4:41 pm
Someone without psychic ability could cheat on the test, giving a pretty much open and shut fraud case.
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January 19th, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Actually, a psychic license has been suggested before, and would include a test. The general consensus is that if such a license existed it would never get issued to anyone. Some might try to get it, but none would.
There do exist tests for being a genuine psychic – tests which, for all intents and purposes, are impossible to pass if not a psychic and are hard or impossible to cheat on. They’re done with very good controls and isolation from any potential influence. All attempts are made to make them as open, simple and straight forward as possible, to avoid the opportunity to have some kind of backdoor trickery. They have tight controls and rules that are agreed to beforehand and have multiple observers. Usually another consideration is to have extensive documentation, like multiple video cameras and such.
James Randi and the James Randi Educational Foundation are well known for demanding such high quality and straight forward tests and documentation for their Million Dollar Challenge. I’ve been involved with a couple of them, and I’ll tell you the procedures are always air tight. Nobody is ever left alone with anything they could tamper with. Nothing happens that is not in plain sight and observed by multiple people. Those who do the testing are isolated from the information that might be involved. etc etc
That’s only one example, of course. Others have tried to put paranormal claims to the test under suitably well controlled situations as well. Richard Wiseman has run some similar experiments. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry has too.
Nobody ever passes. Nobody ever even comes close. Such experiments and tests have been done for decades. They are fair. They don’t give a chance to cheat, but they’re also not rigged against a “genuine psychic.”
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January 20th, 2012 at 7:28 am
I actually agree with Arcanyn on this one!
Stick a license at the end of the reward for beating the James Randi million dollar challange and prosecute everybody else!?
I’m just saying…
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January 22nd, 2012 at 8:16 am
I agree with Arcanyn. However I highly doubt that such licensing mechanism will ever be put in place, not because none of “psychics” will ever get one, but because someone could realize that would be time to ask for such certification to priests and similar (such as tests to check that wine is actually turned into blood) and that’s a no no for religious institutions.
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April 13th, 2012 at 11:23 am
Wow – This was one of the most awkward psychic readings I have ever seen! “Do you have any deceased family that starts with M or J? Maybe your husband’s side of the family? Perhaps it’s a middle name?” Oh – you have a daughter? “Yea, but she’s living”. Talk about aaaaawkward… lol Geez, another scam artist following Sylvia Browne’s footsteps.
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