69. Psychic Detective Smackdown, Ben Radford (Podcast)

[mcairo]

Alex, I don't think you'll answer my question, but if you can, what is your reason for having avoided the Tommy Costanza/Mendham, NJ clue that Nancy Weber led the Captain and Lieutenant to? Just wondering.

[rameyerguam]

Love your site Alex and this post is one of the reasons. Ben trying to stuff all this in his materialist world was classic.

But, I'm not sure we want you to "win". As long as the politically correct world stays materialistic, everything has order. We like order, even those of us who acknowledge the existence of certain aspects of the paranormal. If anomalous cognition was accepted where would we go from there?

So, keep up the good work but realize the fine line between the paranormal and superstition.

[anonymous]

Originally Posted by rameyerguam

But, I'm not sure we want you to "win". As long as the politically correct world stays materialistic, everything has order. We like order, even those of us who acknowledge the existence of certain aspects of the paranormal. If anomalous cognition was accepted where would we go from there?

Hi rameyerguam,

This is something I have been wondering about too. I think it is a very good question. What if we learned how to harness psi and it created a lot of problems for society? There is some reason to be concerned about that possibility. People who are very psychic sometimes complain that it causes them problems. Defense department officials worry about military threats from psi.

What if anyone could disrupt electronic devices through psi?

What if anyone coluld know anything they wanted about you, a friend, a family member, business competitor, or a nation?

What if people could influence others through telepathy?

What if you had to develop your own psi abilities to function at a level of equality with other people in society but those abilities gave you knowledge about things that upset you, or made you sensitive to spirits that interfered with you, or gave you pk powers that you couldn't control completely?

It might bring on chaos.

On the other hand, it could have positive benefits too. No one could secretly do something harmful, such actions would be overt.

It could have benefits for medical diagnosis and through energy healing.

It raises some questions too.

Would financial markets be more efficient and less volitile or would more accurate predictions encourage speculators and cause increased volitility?

[Open Mind]

It is clear in this interview those 2 police detectives understand every bit as much as Ben the potential problems with trusting eyewitness testimonies, hardly surprising any experienced detective has encountered these problems in their work.... there is no good reason to question those detectives as good witnesses.

If you were on a jury, which version would you choose?

- Two detectives, who have well matching accounts, who didn't change their accounts, very aware of Ben's false memory theory due to their job and most importantly were actually there.

OR

Ben, who is arguing the false memory / confabulation theory but who wasn't there.

Ben lost debate IMHO. He was a good sport for even agreeing. There could be only one reason to prefer Ben's opinion, a firm a-priori belief that any claim of psychic phenomena must be false and any imaginary explanation is better than trusting what our society places faith in - police detective testimony.

In the history of organized skepticism, often there is little more than skeptics supporting an isolated witness who claimed to have witnessed fraud ...often there seems to be a sheer lack of questioning whether such a witness might have imagined fraud, misremembered information or just invented it due to bias that it was impossible anyway. ... the very arguments aimed at claimants reports/memories should apply to debunkers too.

[mcairo]

Just to be clear...

Ben's argument was weak and cheap. That is clear. However, we should ask, was it effective debating? IMHO, the answer is "yes".

Ben played it smart, though he was very transparent in his argument. He didn't try to cast doubt on Nancy Weber's ability to receive anomalous information pertinent to this case, or the actual evidence itself. He was, however, able to cast doubt on the "trustworthiness" of the data collecting that supports the case. He kept punching and punching at the "false memory" theory until it started leaving dents in the whole story.

This is the M.O. of most skeptical investigations and arguments. We all know this. In regards to psi, they don't follow the data to the truth. They follow prejudice back to disbelief. It's a circular path, and therefore, their arguments are circular as well. We need to anticipate this better.

If I were to give constructive criticism, I would suggest that future episodes avoid the "legal" framework set up, instead following a "debate" framework, where the two debaters are forced to present an argument and support that argument with specific points. The "I'm right - you're wrong" shout match just doesn't work.

[B Radford]

Hello All

There seems to be some misunderstandings about the facts and arguments in the Weber case, and I thought I might be able to shed some light on it...

OpenMind wrote: "Ben is arguing the false memory / confabulation theory but who wasn't there."

Of course I wasn't there. Neither were you, and nor was Alex. There are three people who were in the car when Nancy Weber provided information about Hoffman's killer: Weber, Moore, and Hughes. There are no written records of the information Weber gave, all we can go by are the memories of three people of a conversation that happened 27 years ago. If Weber, Alex, or anyone else has better information, I'm happy to see it, but it seems this is the best we have.

If all three witnesses said the same thing, that might be strong evidence for Weber's claims. The problem is that in many cases, the police officers contradict the psychic's claims of having provided specific information.


Weber claims she told them the killer's first name was James. Both police officers said that wasn't true.

Weber claims she told them the killer's last name began with a K. Both police officers said that wasn't true.

Weber claims she told them the killer was Polish. Both police officers said that wasn't true.

Weber claims she told them the killer's last names ended in "isch". Both police officers said that wasn't true.

Weber claims she told them the killer did time in a Florida prison. Both police officers at first told me they didn't remember her saying that, then one of them contradicted himself (I have it on tape) and decided yes, she did specify Florida.

THIS is the "best case" for psychic detectives?

In cases like these, either Nancy Weber told the police these specific details or she did not. If the police say she did not, then someone is either lying, wrong, or misremembering. Without any corroborating evidence, how do you decide whose memory is accurate? Alex wants to cherry-pick his evidence; when the police say something that supports his claim, he assumes they are 100% reliable witnesses with perfect memories. When they say something that disputes his and Weber's claim, he assumes that, well, of course they got some minor things wrong after 27 years. He wants to have it both ways.


I doubt that Nancy Weber consciously changed her story to make her psychic information seem more accurate than it was. Instead, it is more likely that she was so convinced of her powers that she simply fell prey to a common psychological mistake called confirmation bias. We all do it: we seek out information that confirms our beliefs, and we tend to remember the hits (the things we get right) and ignore the misses (the things we get wrong). The times when we find out that we were right about something are far more easily remembered than the times when we find out we were wrong. Moore and Hughes were not immune from this bias either (both told me that Weber did not provide any information about Koedatich that was incorrect; while it is possible that Weber’s information was 100% on target, it is far more likely that the detectives simply didn’t remember the parts she got wrong. It is far more interesting and memorable to find out that the killer actually had been in prison in the south than remembering any wrong information).

Try this yourself: List any prizes or awards that you have received over your lifetime. Then make a list of any prizes and awards that you competed for, or were in the running for, but that you did not get. Most of us remember our successes far more easily than our failures.

Once Koedatich was arrested, Weber, Moore, and Hughes all were amazed at the pieces that seemed to fit. There are no liars, no hoaxers, just people who have human memories.

[B Radford]

Oh, and by the way, Alex edited out one of my strongest points about the case, the investigation I did where I took the allegedly amazingly specific information and found the serial killer:

A final nail in the coffin for Weber’s story comes from an even stronger piece of evidence suggesting that the information Nancy Weber gave police in 1982 is not as accurate or specific as she claims today.

Depending on which source you consult, Weber gave between five and ten very specific and accurate pieces of information about James Koedatich. If even a few of the most important pieces of evidence are true, the police should have been able to solve the case. Weber claimed that Hoffman’s killer lived nearby in the Morris area; that his first name was James; that his last name began with a K and ended with the suffix “ich” or “itch.” If the police were given even that limited information, as Weber claims, the case should have been solved within days.

I know this because I tracked down the serial killer using Weber’s information. With the help of Joyce Leuchten, an assistant living in the area, I obtained a copy of the New Jersey Bell phone book for the Morris area, from July 1982. I went through all the last names that began with K and ended in “ich,” and whose first initial was J. It took about twenty minutes, and I found a grand total of four names (and two families) that fit the criterion. There on page 252, in the middle of the second column, are listings for Koedatich--- the serial killer’s brother Joseph, and their father. If Weber’s claim that she told the police that the killer’s brother worked at (or owned) a gas station is true, then they could have confirmed the validity of this lead with one question. Weber’s information would have led Moore and Hughes directly to Koedatich’s door (or at least to his family’s door)—if they had the specific and accurate information at the time.

There are two alternatives: Either Moore and Hughes are so incompetent that they can’t look in the local phone book to see if Weber’s information matches anyone local, or the information they had at the time was not as accurate and specific as it is now being made out to be. Tsakiris repeatedly made the point that the detectives were smart, intelligent, capable officers, and I have no reason to doubt that. My impression is that both of them are certainly capable and professional.

The principle of Occam’s Razor prompts us to ask: Is it more likely that the police detectives had the “amazingly specific” information Weber claims but were not smart enough to use it and pick up a phone book to find the serial killer, or that the information Weber gave at the time was not as accurate or specific as she and others remember it, nearly three decades later?

I can’t speak for Alex, but I have more faith in the police detective’s abilities than I have in a psychic detective’s recollections...

[craven]

Hey Ben, thanks for the interview with Alex, and for joining in here at the forum. I think we'd all been waiting for this episode for a while.

Did you discover any more info about the Costanza ticket situation? Or did Hughes and Moore offer any further explanation on why they were not able to use the information they were given to track down Koedatich?

I understand that answers to these questions have no baring on your bottom line argument, but it would be interesting to learn more about why they weren't able to catch the perp with such detailed information.


-craven

[craven]

Originally Posted by mcairo

This is the M.O. of most skeptical investigations and arguments. We all know this. In regards to psi, they don't follow the data to the truth.

What data? Is there data here that we are not all aware of? How would you interpret this case differently, given what we know? How would you follow the data to find the truth in this case?

This is the crux of the problem for most skeptics. In this case, Alex's "best case", there is no data, save for 27 year old memories. So you can't really blame Ben for focusing on the only information available. Though I agree that Ben fell way short by not asking some key questions.

I have yet to hear a rational explanation for the complete absence of psychic detective cases with a clear set of records behind them..... a substantial trail to follow.....to whatever truth.

[B Radford]

Hi Craven

Did you discover any more info about the Costanza ticket situation?

I didn't really get into the Costanza situation, because Alex and I agreed to focus on the info that Weber gave about Hoffman's killer. That seemed to be the strongest part of the case; you have to realize that there are many, many, elements to this story; we also didn't go into O'Brien's murder (or Weber's info on that) or Weber's claim that her prayer or spirit helped get Koedatich to confess or whatever... investigating each of those would have added much more investigative work, and had even less evidence for them than Weber's info on Hoffman. Basically we chose the "best case" part of the "best case"...


Or did Hughes and Moore offer any further explanation on why they were not able to use the information they were given to track down Koedatich? It would be interesting to learn more about why they weren't able to catch the perp with such detailed information.


A very good question. I asked both Moore and Hughes that, and their answers are very interesting: Both of them say that Weber's information was not specific enough. Of course, that is exactly my whole point!

When I asked Moore about it, he said, quote, "Could that have been done? Yeah... that's a possibility, but we didn't do it. I thought, 'How could we check in Florida... but [there are] thousands and thousands of inmates....I didn't think we had enough to narrow it down to call [the Florida Dept. of Corrections or Bureau of Prisons] and say, 'This is the guy we're looking for."

Hughes expressed frustration with the vagueness of Nancy’s information on the info about the killer and some connection to a garage or mechanic; he said (direct quote): “a mechanic or related to a mechanic—but where do you go from there?” Sgt. Hughes said the same thing about Weber's info on the killer's heritage: Weber’s information was far too vague to be of use (direct quote): “Eastern European descent—maybe Slovak, or Russian, or Romanian. Again, you’re talking about thousands of names. Where do you begin?”

So you have both police officers admitting that the information Weber gave was not enough to go on. But if what Weber says is true, and she gave all that accurate, specific information at the time, that should have been enough to go on: His first name, his last initial, his racial descent; his rap sheet, his hometown....

Unless the info was far more vague than Weber now claims-- in which case it all makes sense.