69. Psychic Detective Smackdown, Ben Radford (Podcast)

[alextsakiris]

Guests: Ben Radford of The Skeptical Inquirer, psychic detective Nancy Weber, police Captian Jim Moore, and NJ State Police Luietenit Bill Hughes wrap up there discussion of the Amy Hoffman murder investigation.

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[Open Mind]

That was fun to listen to, made me laugh in places

[mcairo]

There are three types of psychic evidence...

Gibberish - random information that isn't "specific", but through games of mental association leads one to more solid information.

Soft information- information that helps color the crime or profile the criminal, but doesn't identify the criminal per se.

Hard information - information that can actually pinpoint the criminal, leading to an arrest, and hopefully a conviction.

Unfortunately, Alex, you let Ben lead this investigation by focusing on the soft information. Ben was able to drag you into the predictable and unbeatable quagmire of semantic jousting over the consistency between Captain Moore's testimony and Lieutenant Hughes' testimony.

In fact, Ben Radford did what he promised to do at the beginning of the interview, approach this like a defense lawyer.

What a shame that Nancy Weber didn't have a stronger team representing her. If Alex would have focused on the hard information, the evidence that could have led to an arrest of James Koedatich, Ben Radford would have been made to eat crow. In fact, Lieutenant Hughes gave you the lead in to start focusing on the hard information by mentioning Tommy Costanza, the officer who ticketed Koedatich in Mendham, NJ.

Just listen to what Nancy says starting at minute 25:00 of the interview. What else could anyone want or expect from a psychic detective? She led the investigators to a small town police department, gave the initial of the last name of a police officer who ticketed the murderer and gave the murderers first name and narrowed down their last name to a "K" and of Eastern European (Polish) dissent. C'mon!!!!!!!!!!! They could have taken Koedatich in that day.

Why Alex? Why didn't you fire back with this piece of hard evidence rather than let Ben Radford run circles around you? This was the silver bullet, but you never put it in the barrel.

[Eric Debois]

The issue of burden of proof is logically difficult. There are a couple of different ways to look at it.

In the social context, the burden of proof is pretty much on the person who cares the most in convincing others. And people seem to care a plenty on both sides in these debates.

What your touched on in this episode is the "scales of justice" thing. If A can put something in one bowl (like the testimony of a police detective) it's up to B to either remove it or, optionally put something heavier in the other bowl.
Burden of proof is shared. I think that's a fair enough way to approach it.

Like Ben did, Skeptics will often say that the burden of proof is on the one making the proposition. In natural sciences, this works in so far that you have established theories, and if you claim to have one that works better you must be able to show it.

This doesn't really translate to the world in general because we don't have consensus as to what the assumed state of reality is. We don't all accept that functionality is the same as truth as is the case with natural science's theory. (I.e if a theory works, it is assumed to be true. A carry over from positivism.)

So, outside of the very narrow halls of academic natural science, every person has a different default assumption.

Ultimately we end up with the scales again. (And actually, our desire to convince the other is placed in the bowl against us.)

[anonymous]

Originally Posted by Eric Debois

...

In the social context, the burden of proof is pretty much on the person who cares the most in convincing others. And people seem to care a plenty on both sides in these debates.

...
Like Ben did, Skeptics will often say that the burden of proof is on the one making the proposition. In natural sciences, this works in so far that you have established theories, and if you claim to have one that works better you must be able to show it.

I agree. As a practical matter, the burden of proof is on the person who wants to convince someone to change their mind.

But people sometimes see their role differently from the way others see them and therefore it is not always obvious to all involved who has the burden of proof.

A skeptic may propose a materialist hypothesis to explain a putative paranormal phenomena. From his point of view the burden of proof is on the believer in the paranormal to prove the hypothesis is not correct and that the phenomena is really paranormal.

However to the believer in the paranormal, a possible alternative explanation is not proof that the explanation is correct it is merely an hypothesis. The skeptic hasn't proven anything and from the believer's point of view the burden is on the skeptic to prove his explanation is correct.

This is why debates between skeptics and believers can be fruitless. The believer fails to convince the skeptic by ruling out all proposed alternative explanations and the skeptic fails to convice the believer by proving his hypothetical alternative explanations are correct.

It is also why I think someone doing experiements intended to prove a paranormal phenomena is real should not get caught up trying to convince every skeptic. At some point the experiments need to move into learning how the phenomena work and into applied research and development to find practical technology and techniques for the phenomena.

When more is known about the phenomena from that type of research it may then be possible to give demonstrations which will be more convincing to skeptics.

[craven]

For my part I don't think Alex or Ben made a strong case for either side. Which is too bad. I agree that certain opportunities came up and were lost. Also, Alex, you should play fair. Saying things like "Ben's theory is that you're memory sucks" directly to Moore and Hughes is just devious. How is someone supposed to respond to that? Ben should have been free to investigate and make his case without you persuading the interviewees.

You know, the real problem is here.

Hughes says:
"Specific letters or anything like that, maybe it was a “k” maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was an “ich”, ich for the last part and maybe it wasn’t. I mean, we’ve discussed this so many times and we’ve done so many shows over a period….I heard Jimmy Moore say well he remembers ‘this’, and Nancy say “I remember ‘that’”, and sometimes it’s hard to separate what I specifically remember of the incident when we were there, and what I just remember hearing from all the interviews we’ve done and stuff like that."

Hughes also mentions witness memory as inherently faulty, especially something as old as 26 years.

How can anyone possibly reconcile this, given the entire case is based upon memory? Hughes himself is saying it's a weak case!

[craven]

It was kind of funny though, hearing Alex jump in and try to change the subject after Hughes said that.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by craven

For my part I don't think Alex or Ben made a strong case for either side. Which is too bad. I agree that certain opportunities came up and were lost. Also, Alex, you should play fair. Saying things like "Ben's theory is that you're memory sucks" directly to Moore and Hughes is just devious. How is someone supposed to respond to that? Ben should have been free to investigate and make his case without you persuading the interviewees.

You know, the real problem is here.

Hughes says:
"Specific letters or anything like that, maybe it was a “k” maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was an “ich”, ich for the last part and maybe it wasn’t. I mean, we’ve discussed this so many times and we’ve done so many shows over a period….I heard Jimmy Moore say well he remembers ‘this’, and Nancy say “I remember ‘that’”, and sometimes it’s hard to separate what I specifically remember of the incident when we were there, and what I just remember hearing from all the interviews we’ve done and stuff like that."

Hughes also mentions witness memory as inherently faulty, especially something as old as 26 years.

How can anyone possibly reconcile this, given the entire case is based upon memory? Hughes himself is saying it's a weak case!

I'm glad we have such a skeptical audience... it keeps things real. For me, the evidence is so overwhelming that the whole things hardly seems worth hashing out... yet, here we are.

Regarding, Hughes, I guess I did re-direct him a little, only because in his effort to be evenhanded he was burying the lead -- he's convinced that Nancy Weber is psychic!

He never suggests/implies/insinuates that this is a "weak case".

[Cin]

There were several points mentioned in the interviews and what i take away from it is:

The suspect is:

1.) Male (not specifically stated, but talking about "he"). Ditch this piece of info if there is uncertainty.
2.) The suspect is of (let's use the weaker case of )Eastern European descent.
3.) The suspect has (the weaker case of) a hard 'k' OR 'ich' somewhere in his name.
4.) (The weaker case of) Someone in the suspect's immediate family (including the suspect) has worked at a "gas station" or "garage", depending on your term for a place where they work on cars. Yet again, use the broader term (or include both) if there is uncertainty.
5.) The suspect came from Florida and killed someone there while in prison. (The term of the South was used, but really it sounds to me more as a response to a vaguer question of where he's from rather than is he from the South or specifically from Florida. This was emphatically changed to be Florida when asked the question is it Florida or the South(the weaker case).). Change to South if this grieves you terribly.

To me a measure of anomalous cognition (there could be others of course) would be the number of people who lived in the city/town during that time that fitted the description:

Male, of eastern european descent, has a hard "k" or "ich" somewhere in his name, has someone in their immediate family working at a garage/gas station, from Florida/South, killed someone in prison there.

relative to the number of people who lived in the city during that time. I say the city and not the nation or the state because the key point of locale relates to a business in the city.

If it was a town that had mostly eastern european males, of whom most were killers from florida/south and the town was a gas station/garage mecca to service the state, the information is pretty general and doesn't mean much.

However, I do not believe that this was such a town and I would think that the number of people from the city/town fitting that description was quite small (but that's me subjectively giving an opinion - maybe that town was weird). Would have been nice to put some numbers to it to quantify it a bit.

[craven]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

Regarding, Hughes, I guess I did re-direct him a little, only because in his effort to be evenhanded he was burying the lead -- he's convinced that Nancy Weber is psychic!

He never suggests/implies/insinuates that this is a "weak case".

I'm sure he believes Nancy is psychic. I only meant that by his own criteria, this case is weak if it relies upon memories alone. By his own admission, memories alone are problamatic as the only source of evidence. He said that, not me. But then, he's not trying to prove anything. You are, to skeptics.

Sure, I'm skeptical. But how can you blame me? One could say that in THIS case, you are perhaps credulous.

Again, I do not believe either side really made a great case, but I applaud your effort in fighting the fight. To me, this kind of episode is the most interesting, and I hope to hear more in the same spirit of debate.