A reader by the name of Ryan felt the need to stand up and state why he believes in professional psychics James Edward and Sylvia Browne, but not James Van Praagh. He made his observations, using many properly spelled words, in the comments to a previous blog entry I made where I wasn’t very kind to said psychics.

Im a strong believer in John Edward, and Sylvia Browne, but not James Van Praagh. James always says “kind, happy” things to his guests ALWAYS. Everything that comes out of your mouth when your a psychic can not be positive or your a def. phony. It just makes no sense. I belive that psychics are real because they would not have made it this far if they were phonies. They predict future events that would be impossible to do. Sylvia Browne helps the FBI in cases and she does it well. Therefore, psychics are real in my belief and I don’t think John Edward would commit his life to being a “psychic” if he was a phony.

Psychics are about as real as unicorns and faeries, but I understand that a lot of people believe in those things as well. Your suggestion that they could only have made it “this far” if they were really psychics is argumentum ad populum (Appeal to Popularity Fallacy). Successfully selling oneself to the public as a psychic doesn’t actually prove anything other than there are a lot of gullible people out there with money to burn. There are countless number of scam artists who have become very famous and done very well despite being phonies.

You claim that Sylvia Browne has helped the FBI. I would love for you to provide documentation of one single case she ever helped solve. Hell, the woman can’t even accurately predict celebrity births and yet you say she’s helping the FBI?

Let’s see, Sylvia’s predictions for the year 2000 included Courtney Cox getting pregnant and giving birth to a baby boy. Courtney didn’t get pregnant until 2001 and miscarried 3 months later. She also claimed that David Letterman would quit his show and the end of 2000, but last I checked he was still hosting away. She predicted that “Gwyneth Paltrow marries an older man who is in the entertainment business, but not as well known as she.“ Last I checked, she was still single.

OK, so maybe she didn’t do so well with the celebs that year, let’s try more important news. Sylvia predicted that “There is going to be a very definite detection of mines and some bombs that have not been detonated off the coast of Hawaii.“ Hmmm. I can’t come up with any newspaper reports of mines and bombs being discovered in Hawaii that year. She also claimed “There is going to be a shake-up at American Airlines during January and February. American will also merge with Alaska Airlines.“ Let’s see no big shakeups that I recall until the 9/11 event (which Sylvia seems to have missed predicting). How about her prediction that “An earthquake hits around the Niagara Falls area, small but significant because of where it is.“ No, no, that didn’t happen either. Damned shame she wasn’t able to help with the recent serial sniper case either. Sure could have used her telling us who the hell to arrest after the first couple of people got shot. She did try to lay some claim to having helped on the case, but she didn’t give specifics. Always handy to make such claims after someone else has solved it.

Of course, Sylvia has since taken her predictions for 2000 down from her website so folks won’t go back and reference them. It’s too bad she didn’t think about the Web Archive and the fact that her page might be cached. You’d think she would have psychically picked up on that one.

Anyway Ryan, you keep right on believing in those psychics. I’m sure they’ll come in handy some day when you desperately need to know about some rugs you’ll be getting in the future.