Medium Dreams

E-mail Psychics?

by Sheila on December 28th, 2006

Gary Schwartz has been recruiting psychics to attempt to provide evidence of life after death via e-mail. (Full article - it is pretty short)

Sounds bizarre, yes? Actually it is not. The article describes a standard double blind experiment that just happens to use e-mail as the method of communication between the medium, experimenter, and sitter. Here is how a double blind works:

1. The medium is blind to the identity of the sitter, and
2. The sitter is blind as to which “reading” is his. He (or she) must read the transcripts of several readings and decide which one is closest to the truth and therefore must be his.

Schwartz has previously done triple blind experiments, where the experimenter who works with the mediums is blind as to who the sitters and the deceased are. This is to prevent the experimenter from providing information, inadvertently or deliberately, to the mediums about whether their statements are correct or not as the reading unfolds.

It sounds like this e-mail experiment is another version of a triple blind experiment, only the sitter does know who both parties are but there is no physical proximity of the participants. (Take away one blind and add another.) This removes the possibility of the medium reading physical clues as the reading progresses and adjusting his or her reading accordingly. It would also, in theory, prevent the psychic from obtaining the answer through mind-reading.

So how does mediumship work, anyway? The person getting the reading thinks about the dead person he wants to contact. Said dead person gets the psychic message and searches out a medium to receive his message from beyond. The medium given the message turns out to be the one involved in the experiment.

Sheesh. Even if the person is a real medium, what are the odds?

I am beginning to wonder if Gary Schwartz, who says the purpose of his research is to prove psychics are genuine, is really gathering data to prove otherwise. Think about all the data he has about the accuracy of predictions. How often are the people who claim to be psychics right? How often are non-psychics? And how far apart are those two percentages?

Oh to be a fly on the wall..

Tags: gary schwartz, medium, medium nbc, psychics

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POSTED IN: Psychics/Metaphysical