Why Psychics are the Bunk.

We've all seen them. Commercials on late night television -- someone selling their services as a psychic, medium or tarot reader. What most people don't realize is, they're all Bunkum. 

Bunkum, Hoax, Fraud, Flummery, Mummery Smoke and Mirrors, Bullshit. They're all synonyms for something false or fake that some few believe to be true.
In my younger days, I even toyed with such things as OuiJa and Tarot, and I even did a bit of Ghost Hunting in my day. But in the back of my mind there was always the famous night that Magician and Skeptic James Randi challenged Uri Geller to demonstrate his supposed powers live on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Geller failed. His "move a pencil with my mind" trick was debunked as Randi put a fistful of Styrofoam packing material around the pencil. It was then demonstrated that Geller was merely blowing on the pencil. Randi then showed up how Geller did his spoon bending trick, by bending the spoon himself, using ordinary prestidigitation techniques. I myself studied magic for a time, learning how people are deceived, how they deceive themselves, and how to do tricks. Mostly, I was giving myself some occupational therapy -- learning hand-eye coordination,  muscle control and how not to break things. I'm no master magician, but I know enough of such things. Years later, I would rediscover James Randi online, and realize that he was right more than wrong. Psychics work by asking vague questions, listening to your answer and then refining their questions to elicit more information. Some of them even make use of surveillance technology and plant stooges in the crowd to gather information. If need be, they can even call on one of their stooges and have them feed the psychic or medium answers.

But how did all this psychic nonsense get such a foothold in the public consciousness, anyway ?

Well, the answer is simple, yet also somewhat nuanced. In one way, it has to do with the human psyche. We humans have evolved over many years to have imaginations, mechanical aptitude, problem solving and a need to have answers. We want to know why it is things happen. We want assurance. We are mortal, and so fear death, and want to know why we die. This leaves us vulnerable to magical thinking. The idea that maybe we don't die, or maybe there is another existence after this one takes root. From there, it's an easy step to Deities, and from gods to organized religions. But this isn't meant to be a treatise on religion and religious doctrine, but only to offer some background. If people can believe in an afterlife, it follows then that a belief in some means of communicating with that afterlife may exist, and then that some may have,by accident or design, obtained a means of communicating. But the Christian churches, leery of charges of idolatry or witchcraft, declared all such practices to be anathema. Yet, by the Victorian era, psychics and mediums had become almost generally accepted. You see examples of this in the popular literature of the day.  One notable "psychic friend" was famous doctor turned mystery writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His story The Great Kleinplatz Experiment Was just the tip of the Woo-Woo iceberg in Doyle's mind. But Doyle was only reflecting what was already in the public mind. One of the biggest proponents of Psychic Mediums of the day was Helena Blavatsky, the self-styled Madame Blavatsky. She held seances, wrote books on spiritualism, and was one of the main driving forces behind the so-called Theosophical Movement. This, coupled with the all too human desire for answers, and our innate magical thinking, combined to give the woo peddlers an opening. In they rushed, and it's been worse than pulling teeth trying to get them out again. (note: There have always been hucksters of some kind or another. In Roman times, there were Messiahs of one sort or another almost on every street corner; but here I am only talking about in the modern era, which I reckon to be around the time of the implementation of electrification and of the telephone. ) 

But how do we know the psychics are faking it? 

Perhaps you remember the famous joke : "How do I know when a politician is lying?"
Answer : "His lips are moving".
Psychics are like that, although you'll never get one to admit it. Many of them are even somewhat sincere about it all. However, it must be remembered that there has never, ever been a demonstration of psychic or medium powers to the satisfaction of a competent scientific investigator. Paste that one in your hat in case you forget it : There has never been a demonstration of psychic or medium abilities that could pass muster before a competent scientific investigator.  Not one. There have been many who have tried, and even some investigators who colluded with their favorite psychic, but to date, since the time of Blavatsky to today, no psychic has ever been able to prove that their "powers" actually exist, let alone work. All of them come up with excuses why they can't perform, including  "bad mojo" , "negative waves/vibes", "blocking interference from Outsiders" and even blaming the investigator for their disbelief causing the magic to not work. Yes, the Psychics are full of excuses when it comes time to pony up some actual proof.
Ever see in the news when some infamous crime happens -- some child is abducted, someone disappears, a seemingly-impossible murder happens ? What doesn't get shown much these days is how psychics, like vultures, swoop down on the victims, victims' families and police and crowd out reason and logic with psychic visions, vibrations, object readings and messages from spirits.  Take for example the case of the late Sylvia Browne, whose mis-predictions are so numerous and so famous that people should have disavowed her ages ago, yet every now and then her "fame" is brought up again, and her son is still in the paid psychic business.

But how do they do it?  I've seen them on TV, and they always get something right, don't they ?

This is one of the odd things about humanity. We have evolved over our existence to have good pattern-recognition systems. We recognize patterns like the sound of footsteps approaching, or the noise of a predator moving. But when it comes time to listen to a psychic reading, we seem to only hear the "hits"  -- the things they guess that happen to be right, or that can be twisted into something seemingly relevant. So, the psychic will start with something very vague and generic such as  "you know someone whose name begins with an S"  Because of how people in the west are named,  names that begin with S are very common, so most of us will nod yes. Then they will home in on that -- "Stephen ? Stephanie ? Skylark ? " and so on. But, because we tend to remember the hits -- the good things -- we don't remember all the duds. All the tries that fail get forgotten, and we end up recalling only the successes. So, when the session is over, we come away with a good impression of the psychic, or medium and so they gain another sucker.

Okay, I'm mostly convinced, but what do you want me to do?  

First, don't support these psychics. Don't pay them, don't watch their shows. Don't pay for Tarot readings, psychic readings or mediums. For pity's sake don't fall for any of the usual psychic cons. For more information on such things allow me to link you to Flim-Flam! by James Randi. Or, if you don't like that, try The Center for Skeptical Inquiry. 
I'm not asking you to become some kind of skeptical evangelist, or even a skeptic at all, just to recognize that this one piece of woo-woo is just that. nothing more than a big Flim-Flam.
-- DLC