Battle of the Psychics

Via Tutta's Posto, The Two Percent Company's Rants has an entry called "Quite Reasonable Doubt" on CourtTV's Psychic Detectives show. Take a look it is wondeful!  
 
I have to say I have not watched the show, but maybe it would be good to use for my students to critically think about? Hmmm?

I added my comment:

From my Psych text (Dr. David Myers of Hope College): there is a cartoon with a Pizza Delivery guy. Back of shirt says, "Psychic Pizza Delivered 15 minutes BEFORE you order it or it's FREE!" HA! There is another of a woman answering the phone "Thank You for calling the Psychic Hotline. How can I help you? Caller says, "You tell me..." HA!   Some more facts cited in our text: A study by Strentz (1986) looked at New Year's predictions of the National Enquiror's favorite psychics between 1978 & 1985. They yielded 2 accurate predictions out of 486! They miss huge events like even OJ being charged much less the outcome of the trial, Hurricanes, presidential outcomes & claim so many erroneous things no one calls them on like Madonna becoming a gospel signer and Queen Elizabeth abdicating the throne to enter a convent. Sweat & Durm (1993) reported 65% of police departments state they have never used a psychic. Of those that had, not one found it helpful. There were thousands of psychics who overwhelmed police on Chandra Levy but all were wrong. Psychologist Richard Wiseman from Hertfordshire University had a coin tossing machine which people could try their luck at predicting around the country at various festivals. 28,000 people had used it by the end of the study in Jan 2000. They predicted 110, 972 tosses & were 49.8% accurate! Ok, so half the people can predict...are they all psychic??? Ha!