Skeptic Chris French tries to 'Cold Read' and loses to psychic Gordon Smith

[Open Mind]

This video is a few years old but it is a fairly rare example of a professional skeptic trying to match in practise what they believe in theory psychics do.

Gordon Smith - This Morning - YouTube

[Kamarling]

I'm reminded of a passage from Robert McLuhan's excellent book, Randi's Prize. He points out that there is more to it than just delivering cold details (names, places, dates, events, etc.) which might have been picked up by unscrupulous methods. There is also a quality and familiarity with the information and the delivery which suggests that it is genuine. I hope Robert won't mind me pasting a small passage here:

It’s the manner of its delivery that often convinces sitters as much as the content itself, as in this example from a Leonora Piper sitting:

"Then came the greeting from my father and a description of the life there, and of his first day there, and that his only unhappiness was that he could not tell me how well it was with him. He had found so many of his friends there—his father and mother and my mother. He spoke of the home here and of my step-mother, and of much known to him alone. He spoke of the life at some length and in words and manner peculiar to himself. My father had been a great student, with an intense love of books, and always expressed his thoughts with a piquant, caustic, ready eloquence, as rare as it was peculiar to himself. Anyone who had ever heard my father speak could not mistake the beautiful and rounded phraseology of his address to us. It could be no one but my father."

If it is not the father communicating, we would have to acknowledge that the medium, besides ransacking the sitter’s memory, is showing extraordinary powers of dramatic reconstruction. There is a sense of artistry here, of an intelligence striving to create an appearance of verisimilitude, and without any obvious means of identifying the model that it needs to match.

[Open Mind]

'... Steiner (1986) described how he fooled many skeptics at a CSICOP conference by claiming not that he was psychic but that he could detect extremely subtle cues...' - magician George Hansen

He was just cheating. In otherwords if you tell a 'skeptic' that it is 'cold reading' they just accept the explanation because they have been authoriatively told by people like Randi, Hyman, Gardner, etc. that is the explanations of what psychics do.

[Open Mind]

Can skeptics like James Randi actually 'cold read' good enough to impress anyone? Or do they just cheat instead?

'... Randi was introduced pseudonymously as a psychic and proceeded to attempt cold readings, with embarrassingly negative results. He was eventually stopped, ostensibly because of some technical hitch, left the room, and later returned to resume his act, this time with more success. The presenter, Kate Galloway, who did a difficult job with considerable skill, then revealed to a far from astonished audience, most of whom said they had recognised Randi from the outset, that it was all faked, and that Randi had access to audience names and addresses, and indeed employed a researcher to show how easily fake mediums could discover information about potential sitters, or clients ....' -Montague Keen

It seems James Randi's attempt at 'cold reading' was so bad ... the producers (perhaps hoping for a debunking exercise) stopped it and James Randi returned to do hot reading instead .... possibly Randi attempted 'cold reading' but it went so bad, he then relied on cheating.

[Arouet]

Accepting for the sake of the argument that psychics cold read (whether intentional or not) one would still expect that the more experienced psychic would do better than a less experienced skeptic cold reader. You'd really need to compare a practicing mentalist vs. a practicing psychic - not a dabbler. I don't know why Franch thought he'd be skilled enough to pass for the real thing!

[Open Mind]

What about other leading 'skeptics' who claim it is 'cold reading'? Can they do it?

Gary Schwartz onced asked leading skeptic Ray Hyman (listed in the whose who of magic and CSIcop fellow) to come and replicate what psychics achieved under controlled conditions. Hyman declined, saying he would need years of practise ..... however shy Ray Hyman had been a palmist in his youth for money!

Under experimental conditions where (a) professional cold readers do not know the identity of the sitters (i.e., cheating is ruled out), and (b) cold readers are not allowed to see or speak with the sitters (i.e., cueing and feedback is ruled out), it is (c) impossible for cold readers to use whatever pre-obtained sitter specific information they might have obtained, and (d) impossible for cold readers to use their feedback tricks to help them get information from the sitters.

At the two-day meeting I convened in Los Angeles of seven highly experienced professional mentalist magicians and cold readers, they all agreed that they could not apply their conventional mentalist tricks under these strict experimental conditions. However, a vocal subset (Hyman was one of the three), made the unsubstantiated claim that if they had a year or two to practice, they might be able to figure out a way how to fake what the mediums were doing.

Schwartz, 2003

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Arouet

Accepting for the sake of the argument that psychics cold read (whether intentional or not) one would still expect that the more experienced psychic would do better than a less experienced skeptic cold reader.

There is no evidence they can do it well, mentalists cheat, they do not 'cold read' ... they would fall flat on their faces.

There is no evidence Derren Brown can 'cold read' well either ...he just cheats and misrepresents what he does....

http://forum.mind-energy.net/skeptik...programme.html

[Arouet]

Again, you would need to test people of similar experience and skill to really have a proper test. That's what hyman was referring to and he's correct about that. I don't think this is controvercial.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Arouet

Again, you would need to test people of similar experience and skill to really have a proper test.

Hyman was a member of a group disgracefully named the 'psychic entertainers association' ... these conjurors (not psychics) practise faking phenomena that looks like psychic phenomena ... Hyman was a former palmist

That's what hyman was referring to and he's correct about that. I don't think this is controvercial.

More nonsense.

[Open Mind]

Just think of all those opportunities magician Richard Wiseman has had to demosntrate 'cold reading' when testing claims ......for example Nina Kulagina Edit: Oops I mean Natasha Demkina (not Kulagina) who obtained odds of 50 to 1 against chance .... why didn't Wiseman set up another test and outperform this himself ... instead Wiseman said she had failed the the test, he had arbitrarily set the bar higher but he didn't prove he could do what he believed was occurring.

'....One of McMoneagle's most successful demonstrations was in front of those who attended a meeting at the Rhine Research Center. The ubiquitous Wiseman was again involved in changing the protocol to suit his requirements, which did not prevent 29 out of the 30 members of the audience matching McMoneagle's drawing to the correct target out of a pool of five possible targets. Of this demonstration, shown on the Discovery channel, McMoneagle notes drily that "Richard has refused to discuss it since".

"There is so much proof for the existence of psi," he concludes, "it's foolish to continue spending time, money and effort 'proving it' to the satisfaction of idiots."
Secrets of the Skeptics

Why didn't magician Richard Wiseman attempt to replicate what McMoneagle achieved? Why are skeptics setting themselves up as experts on things they cannot demonstrate?