78. Psychic Detective, Noreen Renier and Skepticality Response (Podcast)

[alextsakiris]

Guest: Psychic detective Noreen Renier discusses the current state of psychic detective work and provides an overview of some of her current cases.nbsp; Alex also ...

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[Eric Debois]

Good episode. Spicy Drama!

[jacob]

It was an interesting episode.
Noreen's predictions about Reagan is also intriguing, with the deposition of the FBI agent.

I'm looking forward to know how her current cases turn out.

[TrentV74]

I'm afraid this one came across as a very large ad-hominen attack on Ben 'Intellectually Dishonest' Radford. You were made fun of a little in the skepticality interview, but mostly because of your insistence that "Experienced Police say it's so, so it must be true" bull headed approach towards declaring victory in the smack down. You still haven't responded to the point made by myself and several others about lack of credibility in unsupported eyewitness accounts beyond the same appeal to authority over and over.

In this interview, Nancy really added nothing to give her any more credibility beyond her personal recollections of anecdotes to the effect of "some person, who I can't tell you about or let you talk to, says I'm good, so I am. Really!"

Really she doesn't give any overview of any current cases at all beyond saying a few vague, non-specific things given to her or said to her by unspecified police. She doesn't even go the police 'war story' tactic of giving all the bloody details, but leaving out names and locations (or information sufficient to guess the two) as it would tie her down way too specifically and make it difficult to twist to fit the facts of a successful investigation.

If you're trying to find some information to give credibility to her psychic power claims, get it from someone other than Nancy! Get a FOI request of Secret Service records about her Reagan prediction. From what she says about the circumstances of it happening, there MUST be some record somewhere about it.

I'd even love to find some record of her being employed to lecture by the FBI. I find it hard to believe that they would employ a Psychic to lecture recruits. Again, I'm sure that there would be some payroll or Tax record of these lectures that could be obtained somehow without Nancy.

I'm interested in finding out what the now Chief Costanza can tell us about the ticket he gave Koedatich. If all he does is confirm that he did in fact give this ticket it adds nothing. You need to find the people that Nancy told her apparently remarkable prediction to before the killer was identified, get their versions, and find any supporting evidence for it that you can. Here's a hint - Nancy's post hoc recollections don't count.

As to your disputation of the Best Case selection - listen to Skeptiko 50 at around 52:46 where you agree to find the best case you can for Ben to analyse.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by TrentV74

In this interview, Nancy really added nothing to give her any more credibility beyond her personal recollections of anecdotes to the effect of "some person, who I can't tell you about or let you talk to, says I'm good, so I am. Really!"

The interview is with Noreen Renier, different person than Nancy... who worked on the last case.

[hoggworks]

I just listened to Alex's rebuttal. Now, there's the obvious bit where Alex seems to be misinterpreting Ben's point -- the cops changing their specific phrasing of what they said was said doesn't prove Alex's point, but works to Ben's in that they are changing their stories in minor ways. I don't think anyone's suggesting that they're intentionally doing it, but rather than it's a normal thing to do, and one of the things which makes it hard to trust what they -- what anyone -- says about an event far in the past. What's funny about this is that Alex then spends time talking about how much "specifics matter." Why's this funny? Because when Ben said this repeatedly, earlier on, Alex dismissed it.

Alex, re the point about "the best case," he's holding onto that because in the interview you did with Ben, where you challenged him to investigate it, YOU said you'd find the best possible case. This was YOUR claim, not his; you presented the case to your listeners as that best case, as the slam dunk that you had which would send Ben reeling. This turned out not to be the case, obviously, and your response seems to be to back off from that claim and say "no, not the best, who said anything about the best?" The answer to that question, of course, is that YOU made that claim. One should certainly imagine that if Ben was sent reeling, you'd tout it as a best case, still. All Ben's trying to do is hold you to the standards you set forth; changing those standards when things aren't going as well for you as you'd like seems quite, what's a good phrase? Ah, yes: intellectually dishonest.

Also, Alex, did it occur to you that Radford and Colanduno were reluctant to come on Skeptiko because they didn't want to be berated for an hour? Having listened to a good number of your episodes, you have a pretty clear pattern of getting less than civil with people you disagree with. Take, for example, this last episode, where you were *extremely* petulant. I understand that you're probably feeling frustrated that Ben just won't see the light, but really, berating people isn't a way to get them to continue a conversation.

(Hmm. I wonder if I'll get banned for this post)

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by TrentV74

As to your disputation of the Best Case selection - listen to Skeptiko 50 at around 52:46 where you agree to find the best case you can for Ben to analyse.

It is called 'raising the bar'. This was Ben's ploy from the offset, the typical skeptic tactic of demanding extraordinary evidence then nitpicking why it is not extraordinary enough even if on balance there is indeed evidence for the claim.

The first interview with Alex this is just what Ben arranges, not Alex ...Ben sets it up 'Tell you what we'll do, you find the best case you can find, look at any psychic you want, pick the one case you think is airtight and give it to me and I will get back to you in a couple of months and we will see what we can find'

In Ben interview with Skepticality Ben uses the same two terms 'best case' and 'airtight' ......but this time implies it was Alex coming to him offering the best, airtight case ... which wasn't the case. Alex never claimed it was the best case after choosing a case.

CSIcop/JREF have been pulling the 'raise the bar' stunt with their 'extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence' .... of course the term 'extraordinary' is non scientific and arbitrary, so even if there is evidence on the whole for the claim, the skeptics claims it is not extraordinary evidence.

[Open Mind]

Ben Radford has proven nothing other than human memory is not perfect ....one *should* expect memory to become less accurate over time, that is what most scientists would expect to occur .... it is quite normal for memory of events to become less accurate over time .... so nitpicking little discrepancies between accounts 20 years later really doesn't prove anything.

One cannot claim any mismatching favours Radford's viewpoint ... for example if the matching of accounts was better years ago than in recent interviews that would contradict Radford's viewpoint, not help it.

As entertaining as the debate has been .... controlled, carefully docuented research is the only way to settle these issues and that research has to involve open minded proponents and open minded skeptics.

[Miguel]

Originally Posted by TrentV74

As to your disputation of the Best Case selection - listen to Skeptiko 50 at around 52:46 where you agree to find the best case you can for Ben to analyse.

A transcript of the show is kindly provided at:
Skeptical Inquirer Magazine Editor, Ben Radford Speaks Out on Psychic Mediums, Psychic Detectives, and Dr. Gary Schwartz | Skeptiko Blog

Relevant excerpts:

Alex:You know, you just waded into a subject that I did want to talk about today in this whole idea of psychic detectives, because I’ve read many of your articles, and you’re obviously a very talented writer, and you do a good job of summing up these cases. You’re not flying off the handle in a really incendiary way, but I do feel like a lot of times you pick on cases that have failed and make the case that that somehow proves something. To me it’s like you’re trying to be the Better Business Bureau for psychics and say that some of these psychics are not as good as other ones or some of them are outright fraud. Fine, but as I was reading, I was thinking, “Gosh, why hasn’t he looked at the best cases.”


Let me give you an example. Here’s someone I’ve actually spoken with, a psychic I’ve spoken with. Nancy Orlen Weber is her name, and she was on the Psychic Detective show. I go to her website in preparation for this interview we are doing here, because I’ve seen your cases where you’ve said that some of these psychics that appear on TV never solve any cases, and all the rest of that. You go right to her website, and you read her letters of reference from detectives, detectives who have been in the New Jersey State Police for 25 years and say, “Yeah, I’ve worked with her on all these cases and she really helped.” “Yeah, I spoke with these other investigators who worked on murder cases with her. She did a really good job. She received a letter of commendation.”


It’s like there’s this total disconnect. Do we really care that there’s all these failures? Or do we care that the phenomena does seem to happen at some times with some people to the extent that it’s proven beyond a doubt to the very folks who are very skeptical to begin with? When you talk about a detective on the New Jersey Police – these people are not easily going to go in and dupe with some tall story. Where’s the investigation on the best cases?



Ben: Well, there’s a couple answers to that. First of all, in my investigation of psychic detectives – or anything else for that matter – I cannot and will never prove that psychic powers don’t exist. I cannot and will never prove that Bigfoot or ESP or whatever…that’s not provable. All I can do is I can say, “We’ve looked into this. This is what’s been found, and in these cases, the evidence is right there. Look for yourself. This is not true.”


Look at the case, for example, of Allison DuBois, who was not only one of the subjects for Gary Schwartz, but was also the basis for the TV show, Medium. She claimed that she had actually solved cases for the Texas Rangers and the Glendale Police Department, and I called the Texas Rangers and I called the Glendale Police Department, and they said she hadn’t done that. Now, there’s some investigation right there. You have a high-profile medium who is making claims that she solved cases. All it takes is a couple phone calls to find out that’s not true.


Now, in terms of the best cases, part of the problem is that – and I get this all the time – people will say, “Here’s the best case. Look into this.” So, I look into it, or Joe Nickell or someone else will look into it, and we solve the case, and someone says, “Oh no, this is the best case over here.” The problem is there’s always somebody new claiming that, “No, no, no. Maybe you explained those, but this, this is the best case.” It’s a never-ending battle because every time you explain something, there’s always some other case somewhere else, some other psychic who claims this.

Emphasis by me.

[Open Mind]

Miguel, CSIcop know what they are doing .... it is the 'raising the bar' stunt

Ben Radford says '...Now, in terms of the best cases, part of the problem is that – and I get this all the time – people will say, “Here’s the best case. Look into this.” So, I look into it, or Joe Nickell or someone else will look into it, and we solve the case, and someone says, “Oh no, this is the best case over here.”


The skeptics asks fo the best case (just like he asked Alex) ... but it is a fallacy, there is no scientific law saying psi effect must be strong and perfectly accurate to be considered real .... in fact brain is a filter theory *expects* psi to be commonly weak.

I doubt anyone approaches CSIcop and says 'Here is the best case look into this' ... it a nonsense claim by Ben, they ask for it .... it would take years of research to find the 'best case'.