Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal

[pokerfan]

DU doesn't seem to have a facepalm emoticon so this will have to do: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/11/bad_move_ae.php">Bad move, A&E

by PZ Myers

The A&E Channel has a new show coming up: Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal. Sounds awful already, doesn't it? But it's worse than you think: they're looking for disturbed kids who think they've got magic powers, and then they're flying in "professional psychics" to coach them in dealing with their awesome powers, i.e., indulge their delusions, get off on feeling superior to unhappy kids, and collect a paycheck for psychic child abuse.

<...>

http://skepchick.org/blog/2010/11/psychic-kids-letter-writing-campaign-edition/">Skepchicks are mobilizing the skeptic hordes. Call or write to A&E and let them know that their schlock has reached a new and despicable low.

I mentioned that I have cable…but there's almost nothing on. The quality has been on a steady decline for years; cable stations like A&E, TLC, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel were all set up with the noble goals of providing good educational/informative programming, and they've all sold out to provide little more than dreck ala Psychics with Serious Mental Illnesses Hunting Hitler's Ghost While Driving A Big Truck with Their Freakish Family. It's cheap, it's easy, the 'talent' they hire are all boring nobodies with only their disturbed personalities as a selling point — these are modern freak shows, plain and simple — and audiences eat them up.

I agree with PZ regarding the decline of those once great cable channels. I think I first saw Discovery Channel more than twenty years ago. I was instantly hooked. It was like PBS' Nova and Nature 24 hours a day! Now it's nothing but dreck with a few exceptions. --BTW, this week's Nova (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-decoded.html">Dogs Decoded) was awesome not to mention free.

I was even disappointed with Bad Astronomer's Bad Universe where he claimed that interstellar travel is impossible not because of the incredible distances, time or energies involved but because of the bone-crushing accelerations required. :banghead: In fact, a gentle and constant 1g acceleration will get you to relativistic velocities within a year. I'm not saying that that would be an easy thing to achieve, only that it would be a comfortable ride, no different than living on Earth. When confronted on his blog, Phil defended himself by saying that he had to dumb it down for his audience due to time constraints which I find ironic because Bad Astronomer cut its teeth by debunking similar crap in TV and movies.

But back to the psychic hockum... I'm perfectly willing to entertain all kinds of weird stuff. You know, things like relativity, quantum physics, deviations from the standard model but you have to filter out the bullshit to avoid filling your head with a bunch of junk.

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."
-David Hume

This comic nicely sums up my feelings on paranormal claims. Put up or shut up:



(Clutching my copy of Demon Haunted World whilst gently rocking to and fro...)

[SidDithers]

1. K&R...nt

Sid

[liberalmuse]

2. Actually...

Remote Viewing has been proven to work.

[fasttense]

4. Remote viewing? Isn't that what you do every time you turn on the TV? n/t

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. No. Instead, that is called remote searching, as in,

"where the hell did I put it?"

[liberalmuse]

8. Oh, you guys up there are funny, LOL.

Anyway, I do have a problem exploiting kids anguish for entertainment.

[kestrel91316]

9. Then how come we haven't caught OBL?

[pokerfan]

11. Uh huh

Someone should go collect the prizes, then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_for_evidence_of_the_paranormal

What's that? It's never been demonstrated under controlled conditions?

[laconicsax]

14. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

:rofl:

[Codeine]

17. Actually,

that's a completely ridiculous claim without a solitary shred of evidence to even BEGIN to back it up.

[Posteritatis]

19. Then you should have no difficulty providing non-anecdotal evidence. (nt)

[trotsky]

21. "Men Who Stare at Goats" wasn't a documentary. n/t

[TZ]

22. by whom? Random internet studies funded by your local Dr. Google?

Peer reviewed data from a non fringe journal plze. Thank you.

[fasttense]

3. A&E has been doing this for some time.

I watched one episode last year. The children were older - maybe 16, 17 and 18.

I did wonder what psychological problem this belief in their magical powers covered up.

There were a couple of older kids who were doing it against their parent's wishes.

But they all seemed to be very depressed and sad kids. The coaching didn't seem to help any of them. They all basically remained depressed, sad kids.

It was depressing to watch.

[shoreline]

6. Bad move indeed...

...I am a working scientist, and to even pretend there is some validity to the "evidence" presented in support of this kind of codswallop is nonsense. I know it's only meant to entertain, but please - aren't people stupid enough without programming like this? No doubt someone will defend their "findings", after all, it IS a documentary and they ARE scientists. How can people's critical thinking skills be so poor they cannot differentiate between fiction and non?

[endless october]

7. the history channel and A&E have gone off of the deep end.

they should just combine the channels and cover nothing but space alien hoarders who drive trucks across lakes looking for bigfoot.

[philly_bob]

10. Don't forget the "SyFy" channel! (nt)

[immoderate]

12. Psychic: "What was that?!" Dog psychic: "Woof?!"

Animal Planet is in the game too. Let's not discriminate against talented dog and cat (also bird, pig, and horse) investigators of the paranormal.

--imm

[pokerfan]

13. Anyone have the Science Channel?

It's not part of my package. Is it any better than the others?

[Qutzupalotl]

23. Yes.

It's still popularized science, but with a sound basis. The more theoretical programs are prefaced as such. I enjoy their astronomy programs and "How It's Made." And I haven't seen them do anything on Bigfoot or Hitler.

[Odin2005]

15. So instead of getting mental help their delusions are being REINFORCED? Just SICK!!!

:grr:

[dimbear]

16. One more row in the figure:

Evolution, agriculture, check mark.

[pokerfan]

18. good point

though I don't consider evolution to be in the same 'crazy phenomenon' category as relativity and QM. At least not with our present understanding of genetics and the genome... It would be more shocking if species didn't change given a "memory" of just one generation, mtDNA notwithstanding. Railing against evolution in the twenty-first century truly is akin to believing in geocentricism or a flat earth. But yeah, I can see adding it to the list considering that 150 years ago, it probably did seem kind of crazy or at least revolutionary.

[Posteritatis]

20. (string of obscenities)! (nt)