….and then they called the cops on us.

[Ian David]

Posted by eamon knight under Activism, Skepticism, free speech | Tags: Skepticism |

The other day someone on the meetup mailing list noticed an ad in the local 24 tabloid for an event called “The Psychic Experience” with Matthew Stapley, being held tonight. And the suggestion was made that maybe a few folks should go ’round and offer another perspective…..

….So about 6pm, seven members of HAO and/or Ottawa Skeptics (I’ll preserve their anonymity; participants can de-lurk in the comments if they wish) assembled in front of the Mayfair Theatre on Bank Street. We were armed with pamphlets from Ottawa Skeptics entitled “How To Be A Psychic” (PDF here). Inside, it gives basic instructions on standard techniques such as cold-reading and the Barnum (also known as the Forer) Effect. These are methods a psychic can use to convince an audience that he knows things about them that, by rights, he couldn’t know — ergo, he must be getting that information by magical means! The idea behind the pamphlet is that it doesn’t directly label the psychic as a fraud — but does make people aware about the ways they might be getting manipulated, and perhaps leads them to question whether the claimed supernatural phenomenon might, in fact, have a completely prosaic explanation in applied psychology.

The audience started showing up in ones and twos towards 6:30. Our approach was to stand on the sidewalk, and when someone walked by, ask if they were going to the psychic show, and offer them a pamphlet which explained how they could become a psychic themselves. After a couple of minutes the theater manager came out and angrily informed us that we were blocking the fire exit (we were, in fact, standing mostly in front of the wall of movie posters, not the door). He threatened to call the police, got into a rude argument with one of our party, then threatened to call the police again. So we told him: “Go ahead”.

About ten minutes later a police car showed up and the officer politely requested that we move away from the front of the theatre, or we could possibly be charged with trespass. Not being a lawyer, I don’t know if this is true, but I have a vague idea there may be some statute by which business owners can prevent riff-raff loitering on the public sidewalk in front of their premises. After some discussion with the officer, it was agreed that we could continue pamphleting if we moved along the street. Accordingly, we split in two groups, one roughly in front of the pub a couple of doors south of the Mayfair, the rest of us by the construction hoarding on the north side (ironically, the latter group was now, in fact, standing in front of side-alley fire escape route!)

More:
http://humanistottawaweb.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/and-then-they-called-the-cops-on-us/#comment-1548

Hat-tip to: http://twitter.com/SomeCndnSkeptic/status/18147900065