Sylvia Browne- The other side and back

[Queenbee spk]

Im reading this book at the moment and its really making think. Has anyone else read much of her stuff? What are your opinions on it?

[WaldoMcFroog]

James Randi has some interesting stuff about what a huge fraud Sylvia Browne is at the moment:

http://www.randi.org/jr/2007-01/012607differen t.html

Suffice it to say that Randi, as a skeptic, is extremely anti-Browne's stuff and from what I've read of it, with good measure.

[WaldoMcFroog]

'with good measure'? What am I talking about! I meant to say, 'with good reason'.

[Queenbee spk]

Mmmm thanks for that Waldo

[dawkins]

Following on from what Waldo had to say: Sylva Brown appeared on Montel Williams with the parents of Shawn Hornbeck in 2003 who was then missing. She told shawn's parents he was dead and his body was probably in a wooded area near two jagged boulders. She offered to help them further in a private session for $700 per twenty minutes. Shaun was found alive four years later!

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Browne#Sha wn_Hornbeck

She is also noteworthy for making terrible predictions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Browne#Cri ticism_and_controversy.

Particularly over the sago mine disaster:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Browne#Sag o_Mine_controversy.

James Randi offered her $1 million if she can prove her psychic abilities under test. She accepted the challenge live on larry king on 3 september 2001 but has still not taken the test. There is a clock on Rhandi's website counting the weeks since she first agreed to be tested.

[WaldoMcFroog]

Would this be the same Doris Stokes, the noted cold reader, who claimed to have solved two murders despite the police forces involved saying her 'assistance' was information already in the public domain (http://www.skeptics.com.au/journal/vol1no1.pdf ), and who refused to go back to Australia after she was exposed by skeptics as a fraud?

Are the other two equally well qualified, I have to wonder?

[dawkins]

It would be interesting to know what you mean by genuine medium fender. Rita rogers met Diana and dodi a few days before their death:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0, ,1558087,00.html

Forget to mention anything rita?

[wizard69]

I've posted this before on A.B but hey, who cares,
Some years ago, when I was looking into all this mumbo jumbo (I was more open minded then) I went to see a medium that was highly rated in my city. He informed me that in the very near future my neighbours would build a shed (or some other such building) in their garden that would cause me problems by blocking out the light from my house.He didnt even have the decency to blush when I informed him that it would have to be a VERY large structure as I lived on the 7th floor of a multi storey block of flats.

[WaldoMcFroog]

Okay, let's say that we do believe in mediums. You say it's not reasonable to expect 100% accuracy. Are you saying that it falls within the acceptable margin of error if a medium tells parents their child is dead when they are not? Or if they fail to predict impending death of their clients? Even if we're playing along and saying they get it right some of the time, surely failing on such a scale shows their 'powers' are worse than useless? They're so unpredicatable that no reasonable person would trust their pronouncements.

Of course this ignores the fact that it is a matter of record that so-called mediums use cold reading and other well-established and understood techniques to divine their 'revelations'.

It's fine having an open mind, but you have to be skeptical.