Daylight Atheism > Snake Oil

Weekly Link Roundup

• It's about time! The SEC has charged a psychic with securities fraud for claiming to be able to supernaturally foretell the direction of the market.

• The staff of IslamOnline, a Cairo-based journalism website that offers a platform for liberal and reformist views, have gone on strike over plans by the Qatari owners to impose stricter editorial controls and force a more conservative viewpoint.

• I'm very glad to report that Ireland's government is now backtracking on the ludicrous blasphemy law it passed several months ago. The government plans to hold a referendum later this year on whether the law should be repealed. Now it's just up to the people of Ireland to do the right thing.

• Less positively, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld religious language in the Pledge of Allegiance, ruling against a new lawsuit brought by Michael Newdow, and reaching the ridiculous conclusion that "one nation under God" is not religious language. One of the judges who took part in the original decision (which Newdow won before his first case was thrown out by the Supreme Court for lack of standing) wrote a scathing dissent. Newdow plans to ask for an en banc rehearing.

• Also, there's a truly outstanding article by Johann Hari interviewing the Ethiopian women fighting back against bride abduction, the brutal practice of men finding wives by kidnapping and raping them (at which point, in agreement with biblical law, they're expected to marry their rapist - since they've been "ruined" and no other man will have them). In the shadow of a vicious dictatorship, there are heroic women, and men, fighting to change a culture where this is accepted and common.

Popular Delusions VI: Homeopathy

Before the advent of evidence-based medicine, a huge variety of quack nostrums and dubious cures flourished. Many of these have faded away with time - and in cases like radioactive water, this was almost certainly for the best. However, some superstitious treatments that predate scientific medicine are still being used today. One of the most prominent is homeopathy.

Invented by Samuel Hahnemann in the early 1800s, homeopathy claims that "like cures like": a substance that produces symptoms of disease in a healthy person will cure those same symptoms in a sick person. (By this principle, one would assume that the homeopathic cure for a person who has been shot is to shoot him again.)

However, it's not as simple as just administering these substances to the sick person. Instead, they must be successively diluted - adding one part remedy to nine parts water, mixing, adding one part of the resulting solution to nine parts water, and so on - repeating this process many times until, by our subsequently acquired understanding of atoms and molecules, there is not even one molecule of the original substance left. Not to worry, though, because homeopaths claim that the water "remembers" what used to be dissolved in it, so that the process of dilution actually increases rather than decreases the remedy's effectiveness. (Incidentally, homeopathy also claims that that all illness comes from internally originating "derangement of the vital force's normal harmonious vibratory frequency", and that the "vibrational pattern" of the remedy is what gets the body back into shape.)

There is absolutely no rational basis by which this could work. Everything we have learned in the last two hundred years about how the world works rules this out, and if homeopathy could be shown to have significant curative effects, then practically everything we thought we knew about the laws of physics and the human body would have to be thrown out. However, there is no such effect. Large, well-designed studies routinely find that homeopathy is useless. Skeptico, for example, links to a Lancet review of 110 clinical trials which concluded that homeopathy does no more good than a placebo.

I don't know for certain how Hahnemann came up with the idea of homeopathy, but based on how it's claimed to work, I think I can offer a plausible speculation. Here's what probably happened:

Searching for a new method of curing diseases, Hahnemann at first guessed that a toxic substance which produced symptoms in a healthy person would cure a disease with those same symptoms in a sick person. This approach did not work, and naturally it had terrible side effects. In a bid to remove these side effects while keeping the presumed curative effects, he tried a variety of experiments. One of these experiments entailed successively greater dilutions of these substances. Unbeknownst to him, he had actually diluted his formulas to the point where none of the active ingredient was left. (Avogadro's work on molarity and molecules was not published until over fifty years later.) But when he administered the result to patients, they showed improvement without showing any of the harmful side effects.

Knowing what we now know, it is obvious why this worked. The side effects ceased because none of the harmful substance was left. The improvement occurred because of his patients' belief in the treatment, the same improvement that often occurs in people receiving care that they believe will help them. In other words, what Hahnemann actually discovered was the placebo effect. Believing he was on to something, he never compared the effectiveness of his "potentized" solutions of water against doses of ordinary water not prepared using any special method at all, which would have shown him his error.

Nevertheless, homeopathic medicine was a hit, and it is easy to see why. In Hahnemann's era, the scientific approach to medicine was rudimentary at best. Treatments were based on old, discredited superstitions such as the theory of the four bodily humors, and many of them, such as bloodletting, were actively harmful. Compared to these, Hahnemann's approach was an improvement because it simply did nothing, allowing the body's natural recuperative powers to work without interference.

Of course, we now have far more effective treatments that do not cause unnecessary harm, so there is no longer any good reason to rely on homeopathic medicine. And in any case, the idea that water "remembers" what substances it has come in contact with was absurd from the beginning. It is a particularly silly bit of magical thinking, and the logical gaps in the idea should have been obvious even in Hahnemann's day.

For example, during the process of preparation, how does the water "know" which substance it is supposed to concentrate? In addition to whatever the homeopath chooses to add to it, any reasonable volume of water, no matter how pure or filtered, is bound to contain at least minute quantities of all kinds of toxins and contaminants - bacterial proteins, viruses, insect secretions, human and animal skin cells, heavy metals, natural radionuclides, pesticides, fertilizers, arsenic, asbestos, industrial byproducts, and so on. (See this list from the EPA). Are we to believe that water can somehow tell the difference between the one remedy the homeopath adds to it and all the other dissolved molecules it contains, and selectively amplifies only the former?

On the other hand, what if the homeopathic preparation of water does indeed amplify the curative properties of every substance dissolved in it? In that case, the probability is very good that any reasonably sized body of water will naturally have come in contact with some or all of homeopathy's chosen remedies at some point in the past. By homeopathic principles, the more dilute the remedy, the more concentrated its curative effect. Therefore, it follows that any glass of water must be a homeopathic panacea, already containing an extremely dilute and therefore highly effective version of any "remedy" one would care to name. It seems pointless, therefore, for homeopaths to waste their time and money stocking medicine cabinets with specially prepared remedies for different types of disease. Whenever they feel ill, all they should have to do is drink a glass of tap water, and they should be cured of whatever afflicts them. But this would not generate much revenue for homeopathic practitioners, so it is probably not surprising that they do not talk about this.

Other posts in this series:

Popular Delusions

A Daylight Atheism Consumer Warning

Consumers, be advised! When you want to know the future or ward off bad fortune through the invocation of magical power, don't trust just any fake dime-store psychic. Be sure to choose only the best fake psychics for all your supernatural needs.

Such is the message of a bulletin issued recently by the United Kingdom's official consumer-protection agency:

The UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has warned consumers not to fall for scams perpetrated by bogus clairvoyants, fortune tellers and healers.

Fake psychics had been mailing UK households saying "something bad" would happen to them if they did not buy a lucky charm or send money, the consumer protection agency said this week.

I have called before for consumer-protection groups to take action against individuals making extravagant and unproven supernatural claims, and this cannot help but be a step in the right direction. However, I fail to see why the Office of Fair Trading took action against only this psychic scam and not others. The only important difference between these psychic claimants and the other, more prominent ones is the directness with which they promise magical help in exchange for money.

Is it that these scams seem to be threatening consumers, whereas the so-called "genuine" psychics never stoop to such explicitly extortionate tactics? But how could that be? Everyone experiences both good and bad fortune in their lives, and a genuine psychic would surely be able to foretell both and tell customers how to avert the latter. If the more prominent media psychics never warn people about threats to come, surely that must mean that they are also scammers. They're merely running the opposite scam: telling people what they want to hear for money, as opposed to telling people what they don't want to hear and then demanding money to nullify their own prediction.

In fact, the OFT appears to take action against garden-variety scammers doing this very thing:

Others had offered Money Creating Scarabs of the Pharos (sic) and Parchments of the Sacred Olive Branch, claiming to bring good fortune, the OFT said.

Again, if this is illegitimate, why are the more prominent psychics and mediums who do very much the same thing not subject to liability?

But the most ironic part of the article must surely be the following:

Den Jones, a spokesman for the Spiritualists' National Union, the largest organization of healers and mediums in the U.K., said consumers shouldn't respond to mass mailings.

"If one is looking for a spiritualist healer or medium, there are qualified ones and unqualified ones," he said. People wishing to use one should only go to people certified by his organization, he said.

For the record, here is how to become a member of the Spiritualists' National Union. The major hurdles, apparently, are twofold: gaining the sponsorship of two existing members, and paying an annual application fee.

The procedure is that the appropriate application form is completed and returned by the applicant with the appropriate remittance to the Union's Head Office: if it is received in correct form, i.e. correctly sponsored and the correct amount of subscription and joining fee enclosed, the applicant will be accepted immediately into provisional Class B membership for a period of twelve months...

Notably absent on that page is any mention of actual testing or examination to see if the applicant possesses any genuine psychic power as a precondition of membership. If customers go to a psychic claimant who is a member of the Spiritualists' National Union, the only thing they are assured of is that they are consulting a person who has paid his membership dues to the Spiritualists' National Union. There is no formal test whatsoever to ensure that the applicant has any psychic abilities at all. The SNU does claim to conduct tests on its members, but it makes it plain that these are strictly voluntary and carry no penalties for failure:

One important facility which the Union offers to members is the provision of an educational scheme which provides courses in the various aspects of the movement: it conducts examinations for those who wish them and makes awards to successful candidates.

Of course, if this organization were to establish an actual test of competence for membership, one that ruled out the possibilities of subjectivity and fraud, there would almost certainly be no members left. The fact that James Randi's million-dollar prize has gone unclaimed for years is good evidence for that.

* * *

In other news, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab is closing its doors after 30 years of operation. Set up to study claims of human psychic ability, the lab's major (in fact only, as far as I know) experiment consisted of having volunteers stare at a random number generator and try to alter its output through willpower alone. The results? After three decades, the lab's director claims, his data shows a deviation from pure randomness by 2 or 3 parts out of 10,000. In other words, the PEAR lab claims to have shown that, in a run of 10,000 coin flips, participants can on average produce 2.5 more heads than would be expected by chance alone. How many millions of dollars have gone into producing this result?

As Robert Park has written, one of the sure signs of pseudoscience is an effect that can be found only at the very limits of detection, hovering at the boundary where results fade into statistical noise, and cannot be amplified. This is just what we would expect from a self-deceived scientist misinterpreting occasional fluctuations in randomness as data, which is almost certainly what has happened here. The PEAR lab has had more than enough time to produce a genuine result, and they have failed to do so. It's about time that they close down so that those resources can be redirected to areas of real importance where there are actual discoveries waiting to be made.

The 40th Skeptics' Circle

The doors of the Observatory are closed, and an eager crowd has gathered before them, milling about anxiously to await the unveiling of the newest Skeptics' Circle. Your host, Ebonmuse, steps up to a podium beside the doors and addresses the crowd thusly:

"Step right up, folks, to the Daylight Atheism Museum of Superstition and Pseudoscience! Dare to plumb the most bizarre depths of the human imagination! Marvel at the fascinating beliefs cultures throughout history have dreamed up to explain the world around them! We have a stupendous and spine-tingling assortment of strange and wild ideas for your edification and amusement. You'll laugh at their gullibility, you'll learn from their mistakes, and just maybe, you'll learn something about how your own brain works. Admission two for a penny - who'll be first to dare the weirdness within?"

He sweeps a hand dramatically toward the doors, which open onto a wild scene. The great telescope has been stowed away, and the vast domed room instead contains a madcap menagerie of trophies and exhibits that showcase the follies of humanity throughout history. Beneath the high ceiling, an elaborate orrery contains detailed models of the planets of the solar system encased in a set of interlocking crystalline Platonic solids. Animals crowd the decks of a scale model of Noah's Ark at the far end of the room, and putative Philosophers' Stones are scattered on pedestals, misshapen lumps some of which glow with their own inner light. Ancient statues of minotaurs, centaurs, mermaids and other fantastic beasts glare down on the exhibits in frozen stone.

Your host leads the tour group into the museum. "First, we have the Alternative Medicine wing - a durable field that's spawned all sorts of strange ideas. Just look at this authentic ancient Chinese acupuncture needle. Taking a cue from a classic pseudoscience, modern practitioners believe that sticking needles into people, and even into animals, can cure diseases by diverting the flow of an imaginary energy called qi! Skeptico sets them straight, in an essay titled No point to acupuncture on animals."

The next exhibit is a collection of hypodermic needles. "So like the acupuncture needle and yet so dissimilar, this one differs from the last exhibit in that it has actually cured people of suffering and disease. Sadly, some people reject the benefits of modern medicine in favor of ineffective quackery. Autism Street, in An Old New Twist on Undead Bad Science?, debunks a study claiming to detect correlation between autism and heavy metal levels in children's hair."

The tour's next stop is before an apparently empty glass case. "This case may seem empty, folks, but in fact, it contains the scientific integrity of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. They weren't using it, you see, so they've generously agreed to donate it as a permanent bequest to our museum. P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula gives us the full story in Damn the NCCAM."

Before a flourishing tray of deadly nightshade, poison ivy and hemlock, Ebonmuse continues, "And let's not forget, folks, that 'natural' medicine has been held out for ages as the cure to all ailments, as if the products of nature were somehow intrinsically better for you than the products of science. The Saga of Runolfr casts a critical eye on claims that consuming raw honey will cure pollen allergies, in The Cure for Allergies? And for a classic example of how 'natural' products can still be harmful, what could be more natural than HIV? A Moment of Science, in Skepticism Run Amok, an Appropriate Level of Skepticism in Evaluating HIV/AIDS Causation, asks why, if HIV does not cause AIDS, anti-retroviral drugs developed specifically to combat HIV are effective in extending AIDS patients' lifespans.

Our next exhibit, as you can see, is a single glass of ultra-pure distilled water. If the claims of homeopaths were correct, this would be the most powerful medicine known to man! The Two Percent Company informs us of the remarkable range of ailments that homeopaths claim to be able to treat with a single herb, in You Might Need Arnica Montana.

And finally, we have this table of assorted old-fashioned medical instruments - best not to ask what most of them do. The skeptical grandmaster Orac of Respectful Insolence is never one to shrink from the details, however, and gives us not one but two Friday Doses of Woo: Mere regularity is not enough and the appetizingly titled Would you like a liver flush with that colon cleanse?

Our next stop is the Psychics and ESP wing, another reliable source of uncritical thinking. The Island of Doubt, in The sense of being stared at ...not, registers disappointment that his alma mater, the University of British Columbia, is giving a platform to the notorious credulophile Rupert Sheldrake and his claims that people can psychically detect when they're being stared at.

Next, Skeptico again favors us in Medium guesses about serial killer, pouring rightful scorn on the vagueness and after-the-fact rationalizations of Allison Dubois.

And lastly, See You at Enceladus spins a tale of The Beirut Syndrome or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Credulity, about psychics who claim to have predicted the current warfare in Lebanon."

Beneath a gallery of faded and tattered documents, Ebonmuse continues, "History is the noble art of unearthing the past. Yet this genuine science, too, attracts the hoary speculations of the gullible. What we need is some skepticism to root them out, and thanks to several generous donations to this museum, we have it! The Second Sight, in Giant UFO Built Yowie Pyramids of Bullshit, offers sharp criticism of the true believers who are convinced of the existence of ancient contacts between pharaonic Egypt and aboriginal Australia; while Be Lambic or Green throws down the gauntlet against claims that Christopher Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci were the first Europeans to catch sight of the New World, in Rediscovering America."

As the tour takes another turn, the parchments and scrolls on display grow more ancient and venerable, and the sound of distant chanting echoes in the air. "That's right, ladies and gentlemen," your host announces, "we've come to that most sacred of all cows: religion. In Render unto Caesar [nothing], Infophilia analyzes the meaning of the biblical verse 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's,' concluding that it does not necessarily mean what it has always been construed to mean.

We also have an exhibit courtesy of Debunking Christianity that is titled Which Part Fits in Which Slot, Again?, remarking on the difference between natural events and miracles and the inconsistency with which Christian apologists invoke both categories. In a related vein, The Philosophy of the Socratic Gadfly asks whether 'ineffable' is a meaningful and useful term to use in arguments over the existence of God.

Atheist author Sam Harris has been making waves with his book The End of Faith, reviewed by Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds."

The last stop in this section, incongruously, showcases a Bible next to a vacuum cleaner. "But the comparison is more apt than you might think, as Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant explains in Jesus' Lubricant, which compares religious proselytizers to salesmen who steer every conversation into a pitch for their product.

After all this credulity, you must be hungry for some real science, my fellow skeptics. Luckily for you, we have exhibits on that too." He points upward, to where several smaller, less regular bodies orbit among the planetary models hanging below the ceiling. "What constitutes a planet? Interesting Thing of the Day gives a skeptical viewpoint in Xena: Troublemaker on the edge of the solar system.

In that vein, Humbug Online reenacts the Moon landing in the conspiracy theorists' preferred style, in Spooked911 Moon landing faked!

While we're on the topic, I'm particularly honored by the presence of our next benefactor: the illustrious Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy Blog. In Bad TV on the Science Channel: The Apollo 11 "UFO", the foe of bad astronomy everywhere mercilessly debunks a credulous and dishonest documentary which asserts that the Apollo 11 astronauts witnessed a UFO.

And isn't our Earth one planet among many? Deltoid and Thoughts from Kansas keep us up-to-date with the goings-on of this blue and green orb - with a refutation of the myth that environmentalists caused needless deaths by unconditionally opposing the use of DDT, in Zombie DDT Myth Will Not Die, and some good news for science from a recent slate of elections, in Final tallies: Science wins in Kansas.

A major part of science is critical thinking. In Doggerel #30: "You Need to Think Outside the Box!", Rockstar's Ramblings rants about claims that skeptics don't "think outside the box", pointing out that true believers are actually the ones whose thoughts are limited by their jumping to magic as the first explanation for everything.

And when it comes to understanding science," your host continues, "nothing is more important than educating the younger generation. Agnostic Mom has an account of one mother's plan to do just that, in An Accurate Guess Is Still Just A Guess."

As the tour nears its end, the tour group passes through a set of doors into a back room. "We have a special treat for you all today, one not open to ordinary visitors - a tour of our archived collections, the interesting material that just didn't fit anywhere else. For example, Salto Sobrius has donated an exhibit on the skeptical leanings of a classic sword-and-sorcery fantasy author, in Fritz Leiber, Skeptic.

And then there's Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, who debunks the religious mythology that has grown up around flag-folding ceremonies, in Flag ceremony update.

And last but not least, Unintelligent Design laments the credulous leanings of Alton Brown, host of the Food Network TV show "Good Eats", in Alton Say It Ain't So!"

Following a sign reading "This Way to the Egress", the tour lets out before the museum's front doors. Ebonmuse addresses the group one final time. "Thank you for attending, fellow skeptics and critical thinkers! It's been my honor to play host to you all, and I'd like to extend my special gratitude to the many excellent bloggers who generously contributed to this exhibit. Don't forget, the next Skeptics' Circle will appear at Interverbal in two weeks, so get those submissions in!"

Popular Delusions II: Talking to the Dead

One of the most widespread delusions of our society is the belief in self-proclaimed psychic mediums who assert that they can speak to the spirits of the dead. John Edward, Sylvia Browne, James van Praagh, and Allison Dubois are some of the most popular, and command considerable fame and wealth for their alleged abilities, attracting attention such as prime-time TV shows, best-selling books, and personal consultations for which they charge hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour.

However, so far no medium has ever submitted to scientific validation of their powers in a controlled setting, and indeed most of them studiously avoid any circumstance in which they might genuinely be put to the test. This is only to be expected, as the facts suggest that they cannot actually talk to the dead, but are deceiving their followers by using an old magician's technique called cold reading.

The fundamental tactic of cold reading is to ask vague and open-ended questions and let the subject fill in the details. The cold reader may ask, for example, "What significance does the month of May have to you?" Almost anything will do; May could be the subject's own birthday, the birthday of a relative or friend (living or dead), the subject's wedding anniversary, the birth month of someone the subject knows, the month when the subject's deceased loved one passed away, the month when anyone else known to the subject died, the date of a holiday particularly meaningful to the subject, or the date of any other special occasion at all that the subject remembers. Given such a broad scope, and given that there are only 12 months to choose from, it would be surprising if the average person could not find some connection to May.

Guessing letters is another common tactic in this area. If the medium asks a subject, "Does the letter R mean anything to you?" and the subject responds, "My grandmother's name was Rosemary!", in their excitement they will often misremember the episode and come away convinced that the psychic knew their grandmother's name, even though the psychic "knew" nothing of the sort; they merely provided a vague guess and the subject filled in the details themself. To encourage this to happen, cold readers will often take the information the subject has just volunteered and repeat it back to them as if they knew it all along.

Relying on generalities is another time-tested psychic technique. Most elderly people have poor eyesight, occasional back pain and limited mobility; all married couples fight from time to time, often over money; very many bereaved people keep a photo of their departed loved one on their nightstand or carry an item of jewelry that once belonged to them; and statistically speaking, there is only a handful of ways in which an average person dies. A psychic can say with virtually no fear of contradiction that they see "problems in the chest area", which can encompass cancer, heart attacks, pneumonia, respiratory problems, diabetes, and so on. (The chest, after all, is where almost all of our vital organs are. How many people die from ailments of the arms and legs?) If the subject does not take the bait, the psychic can assume the cause of death was a stroke and quickly shift to the head. And if all else fails, there are always excuses that can be used to explain away any failure; one of the more common tactics is to insist that there is a connection but the subject does not remember it, and advise them to look into the matter later. Another is to broaden the scope of the guess: if the psychic suggests that the deceased person liked sailing and the subject demurs, the medium can widen the guess to ask about fishing, swimming, going on cruises, traveling to islands, or almost any other activity that has anything at all to do with water.

A daring psychic can even intersperse these generalities with a few very specific guesses. If they fail to pan out, most subjects will simply forget them due to the common human tendency to count the hits and forget the misses; if they happen to hit on something, the psychic can be sure that they have made a convert for life. (The possibility of "hot reading", where the reader does specific research on the subject's background in advance, also should not be ruled out, especially in prearranged one-on-one consultations.)

Finally, the skillful cold reader will ladle a generous dose of mawkish sentimentality and sappy religious references into their spiel. It is a safe bet that anyone who goes to see a self-proclaimed psychic is seeking comfort and solace, and most cold readers do not disappoint, providing endless reassurances that the departed loved one is with God now, and free from pain, and happy to be in Heaven, and watching over their loved ones, and so on. People who receive this often come away convinced that their reading was a success even if the medium could offer no specific details. In general, people pay psychics because they want to believe, and are eager to believe; and this alone will lead them to overlook all but the most glaringly obvious of cold-reading failures. (Sylvia Browne supplies an example. In the Sago Mine disaster, when initial reports erroneously claimed that 12 of the 13 trapped miners had been found alive, Browne claimed in a live radio show that she "knew they were going to be found", only to have the news arrive later that same hour that in reality 12 of the 13 had died. This would seem to be a failure so catastrophic that not even a true believer could overlook it.)

Even if one is not convinced that these mediums are simply using cold reading, there is another line of argument that strongly indicates that their alleged powers are fictitious. Namely, why are they confining their gifts to such mundane cases? If these mediums can really do what they claim they can do, then it is a stunning waste of their powers to aspire to no greater heights than assuring wealthy suburbanites that their dear departed Aunt Millie is doing just fine in Heaven, and thanks for asking. Counseling the bereaved is well and good, but there are issues of far greater significance for which such a gift could be used.

For example, why do mediums, if they are for real, not speak to the spirits of people of great significance, such as famous scientists, authors, philosophers or statesmen? Imagine how much progress we could make in physics, biology, medicine or virtually any other scientific field if the greatest minds throughout history were brought together to collaborate through a psychic-mediated conference call! Imagine how much war and strife could be prevented if history's greatest diplomats were brought in to negotiate! Imagine the effects on people's lives worldwide if we could read new plays by Shakespeare, new fables by Aesop, new scientific treatises by Leonardo da Vinci, new satires by Mark Twain, or anything else by the world's most renowned thinkers, poets and writers. Why do mediums not ask Fermat what the "remarkable proof" of his last theorem was?

But we do not see this. Instead, if you believe the claims of mediums, the only things the dead have to say to us are trivial banalities and cliched expressions of vapid good will. They never impart any genuinely new or useful information, much less anything that only the dead person could know. Have you ever heard of a psychic telling a client, "Your grandfather says to tell you that his will which you've been looking for is in a safe hidden behind the painting in the hall closet, and by the way the combination is 6-13-84"?

Indeed, why do mediums not effortlessly crack murder cases by contacting the victim to ask who their killer was? For someone who can truly speak to the dead, this should be the easiest possible task. But despite innumerable claims, no psychic has ever offered any proof that they provided any concrete assistance to the police in any murder case. Again, they are completely unable to provide any knowledge or information that only someone genuinely in contact with the dead would know.

While other popular delusions may do more genuine harm, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is one of the most despicable. Although some alleged mediums may be self-deluded and genuinely convinced of the reality of their powers, I strongly suspect that most of them know exactly what they are doing. Many of the people who consult mediums, I am certain, do so because they are grieving and desperate; and the psychic pretenders are amassing fame and wealth by exploiting that grief. A more cynical and callous way of promoting oneself could hardly be imagined. We can only hope that, if there is any justice, these scam artists will soon be relegated to the obscurity they so richly deserve.