18 replies to this topic

[Saru]

Some of the UK's top psychics were invited to take part in a test designed to prove their abilities.

Guardian Unlimited said:

Our psychics and sitters were not allowed to communicate with each other in any way (other than psychically, of course!). Once all of the readings had been completed, the psychics were thanked and left the premises.

Read more...

[lsra]

Not surprised that most of the invited "psychics" declined to participate.  I'm sure it would be bad for business to prove you have no abilities at all!

[shaddow134]

Derek Acorah is the biggest fake of them all,it's criminal that these people prey on the vulnerable to make a fast Buck.

[Rlyeh]

shaddow134, on 31 October 2012 - 04:11 PM, said:

Derek Acorah is the biggest fake of them all,it's criminal that these people prey on the vulnerable to make a fast Buck.

I think he is really a comedian pretending to be psychic.

[pallidin]

I believe in the "idea" and potential "abilities" of psychics and the psychic phenomenon as a whole.

It's too bad that there are some whom just do "cold-readings" and such for nothing more than monetary gain; giving true psychics a bad name..

Just my opinion.

[shaddow134]

Rlyeh, on 31 October 2012 - 04:36 PM, said:

I think he is really a comedian pretending to be psychic.

Well he is from Liverpool,the city that has produced some of the biggest comediens over the years.I also remember an episode and i think it was one of the live episodes,where he claimed to have contacted a dead Alien,quite bizarre really.

Seriously though all so called Psychics,well the best ones use Cold Reading and there is no proof what so ever that they can talk to the dead.

Edited by shaddow134, 31 October 2012 - 05:59 PM.

[JGirl]

pallidin, on 31 October 2012 - 05:18 PM, said:

I believe in the "idea" and potential "abilities" of psychics and the psychic phenomenon as a whole.

It's too bad that there are some whom just do "cold-readings" and such for nothing more than monetary gain; giving true psychics a bad name..

Just my opinion.

i agree.

[lightly]

Anyone have a brief explanation of what thoughts / images are made of?   Seriously.   Are thoughts and mental images thought (hehe)  to be , in themselves,  physical?  
If so.. what are they made of?
(sorry if this is an idiotic question that everyone else already knows the answer to..  i'd just like to hear some of those answers please)

[Sundew]

lightly, on 31 October 2012 - 06:30 PM, said:

Anyone have a brief explanation of what thoughts / images are made of?   Seriously.   Are thoughts and mental images thought (hehe)  to be , in themselves,  physical?  
If so.. what are they made of?
(sorry if this is an idiotic question that everyone else already knows the answer to..  i'd just like to hear some of those answers please)

This is an interesting question, is what we perceive merely chemical and electrical signals within the brain? This seems doubtful but consider that the brain does not see an object as it is, it splits what the eye sees into many different components (around 12 if I remember) such as contrast, shading, outline, color and recombines them into an image, and it has to flip these images as well since the image that strikes the back of the eye appears inverted. And we see only in a narrow range of radiation; visible light. Many other forms of radiation are bouncing off everyday objects but we are blind to them. Images in the brain are likely recombined memories of imagines seen by the eye, that is we have a frame of reference of familiar objects around us that the mind uses as a template for the images, we "see" in our mind. I have heard that people who lose their eyesight eventually lose this ability to form these images which must be frightening and terrible if once you could remember the face of a loved one but after a period of blindness that is lost.


Memories are apparently created as nodes on our brain's nerve fibers. If you do something once or only a few times a bump appears on a nerve fiber and that is (some think) the stored memory. Now if you never do that again, this "bump" is reabsorbed. But if you do something often enough like memorizing a piece of music, that node becomes permanent. You may not repeat that action for years, but it quickly "comes back to you" when you try, you don't have to learn it from scratch. This may be why the elderly can remember past events so clearly, but recent tasks they have difficulty with; at some point the brain has difficulty forming or holding onto new nodes, so we no longer form memories, but the old ones are hard wired.

There have been whole schools of thought that the body is an illusion and all is mind, and others who think that all is body; the mind is only the result of chemical signals within the brain. I tend to believe in a real 3-dimensional universe as far as what we are reacting in and to, but who knows, perhaps we exist only in the mind of God?

[Sundew]

I remember years ago seeing a cover of a National Enquirer (I think) with some 25 or so noted psychic and their predictions for the upcoming year. I was later informed that they were all 100% wrong. So this is no shock that the grade of these "psychics" fell within  a category of statistical irrelevancy. Harry Houdini, saw these people as charlatans and went about exposing their tricks which were mostly those of a parlor magician, something he was very qualified to spot. And still people flock to Tarot card readers, seances and read their daily horoscopes.

[Sakari]

Why don't a bunch of the self proclaimed " legitimate " psychics get together and volunteer for something like this?

The ones who say ( in general, not saying just here ) " those kind make " us " look bad ".......

Get together, seperate the " real " ones from the frauds....it is a win win situation.

[DieChecker]

I wonder if they even tried the tests with regular people as a control? If regular people only got 1 out of 10, then 3 or 4 would be significant. My guess is that the regular people would also have a score of 3 or 4, just as the Psychics did.

[coolguy]

John Edward is a fake also

[Timonthy]

Well that's a disappointing test. Far too small and the method is pretty average. Would rather if the results weren't dictated by the sitters so heavily as well - the scale from 1 to 10 thing can be interpreted differently.

[Skithia]

Anyone else see the Derren Brown show where he very open mindedly gave one of these supposid true mediums every opportunity to prove themselves? He then went on to out perform them and he reiterates time and again he is using tricks. Some psychics are well meaning people probably tricking themselves as much as the ones they are reading and most know dead people aren't talking - cept the ones on the money they rake in.