Psychics prove that they're not psychic

[harvey]

"Psychics on 2012 last year: Kevin will be PM
Forecast big gas explosions and pregnant Katie Holmes

None of that actually happened


KEVIN Rudd will be PM by the end of the year.

Prince William and Kate Middleton will have had a child. The Queen will become ill and talk of handing over the crown.

Katie Holmes will have had a baby, too.

A News.com.au review of psychic predictions for 2012 has revealed that there is a lot of work to do in a short amount of time if their prophecies are to be fulfilled.

The Psychics Directory prints their "top predictions" from members of the Australian Psychics Association at the beginning of each year.

At the beginning of this year they predicted terrorist attacks, fires, earthquakes, floods, volcano eruptions and water skiing accidents. All of which occurred - spooky, huh?

Unfortunately it's the specific predictions the nation's top crystal ball gazers fell down on.

KristyV, the psychic consultant who "tells you what your best friend won't", expected Barnaby Joyce to be "implicated in a blue gas flame explosion in a gas mining company".

Psychic and healer Kathy Foster said "Kevin Rudd will be reinstated as Prime Minister as a last ditch effort by the Labor Party to improve their ratings". They'd better move quickly.

Francis Bevan correctly divined "there will be a lot of concern about Kate's health" but predicted a baby would be born in November/December.

There are some areas psychics will be glad they failed miserably. Elisabeth Jensen, a multi-award winning psychic medium and the 2010 Australian Psychic of the Year predicted:

"Adelaide will be affected by an earthquake in March or April 2012 but damage will not be extensive and with only a very small loss of human life. A number of animals will be affected".

Ms Jensen also foresaw that people would be concerned about December 21, the Mayan Apocalypse, and thought there would be some energy shifts and technical difficulties caused but that "we will mainly all still be here living in Earth". Let us hope she meant ‘on'.

Frighteningly, Jade Sky – Queensland's Psychic of the Year - predicts SA and Victoria will be "hit with a very bad fire storm or bush fire season that will cover much of the states". There's still time.

Absent from the predictions were mentions of Prime Minister Julia Gillard's misogyny speech, the tragic prank call to Kate Middleton's hospital, the recent US school massacre, and the runaway success of a little song called Gangnam Style.

News.com.au has tried to contact the Psychics' Association to discuss the results, but they obviously weren't expecting the call. According to the ethics guide on their website, an "error margin" in predictions is "quite reasonable".

"At no time should professional members promise to be 100 per cent accurate," it says.

"Allowing for an error margin in predictions and the like is quite reasonable. Making ridiculous claims does not increase your standing in the clients' eyes. Honesty, on the other hand, will always serve you well."
http://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainmen ... 6544010010" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Wow what a surprise that the psychics got it wrong

[harvey]

Wonder why the psychics didn't predict that they would get it wrong

[wog_girl]

If they really were psychics then surely they would have accurately predicted the winning numbers on major lotto draws and be living in up in their beachside mansions? If people are silly enough to spend money listening to these highly paid "guessers" then more power to them.

[mantra]

Wonder why the psychics didn't predict that they would get it wrong

All psychics would see something differently - or perhaps interpret their visions differently. Sometimes they get it right. We've all got a bit of psychic in us, but most people haven't got the confidence to discuss it publicly. How many times has something unusual happened and you've said to yourself "I knew that was going to happen"?

[harvey]

Getting 1/100 makes everyone a psychic.
Now if only they would get more than 80/100 and accurate predictions and not predictions like the sun will shine tomorrow.
Enough of cold readers like John Edward!

[boxy]

Confirmation bias is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs...They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

...

One factor in the appeal of psychic "readings" is that listeners apply a confirmation bias which fits the psychic's statements to their own lives. By making a large number of ambiguous statements in each sitting, the psychic gives the client more opportunities to find a match. This is one of the techniques of cold reading, with which a psychic can deliver a subjectively impressive reading without any prior information about the client. Investigator James Randi compared the transcript of a reading to the client's report of what the psychic had said, and found that the client showed a strong selective recall of the "hits".