Like most other paranormal and pseudoscientific claims, ESP's popularity depends largely on anecdotes, nothing more than stories about a vision that correctly predicted a future event, a sense of impending doom just before something bad happened, a phone call from someone who was just thought of, and so on. These kinds of stories may be compelling to people, “but the only way to find out if the anecdotes represent a real phenomenon or not is controlled experimental tests,” warns scientist and Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer. “Psi phenomena have now been subjected to rigorous scientific experiments for over a century…and the results are unequivocal: psychic power is a chimera.”5
Shermer adds that good evidence is not all that is needed to make the case for ESP: “The deeper reason scientists remain skeptical of psi—and will even if more significant data are published—is that there is no explanatory theory for how psi works. Until psi proponents can explain how thoughts generated by neurons in the sender's brain can pass through the skull and into the brain of the receiver, skepticism is the appropriate response. If the data shows that there is such a phenomena as psi that needs explaining (and I am not convinced that it does), then we still need a causal mechanism.”6
BUT WHAT ABOUT PSYCHIC DETECTIVES?
Believers often cite the success of psychic detectives as proof of ESP. The problem, however, is that psychic detectives aren't any good. Their track record is abysmal. There have been many claims made by psychics and their fans, of course, but look closer and one finds little or nothing of significance. Virtually every case can be explained as coincidence, the exaggerated value of vague tips, or the gullibility of a law enforcement person who gave undeserved credit to a psychic. For example, saying things like, “the victim knew the killer” or “the victim was killed with a knife and buried in the woods” are just guesses. And, thanks to confirmation bias, ESP believers will latch onto the rare hits and forget the numerous misses. Skeptics have analyzed many claims over the years, and they always find problems. Regardless of what you may have heard, there is no great number of cases out there somewhere that were solved by psychics. It's a lie.
A typical example of how people are misled would be a psychic predicting that the body of a missing crime victim would be found “in the woods,” “near water,” or “near a highway.” These are smart guesses, because the bodies of missing persons who were murdered are often found in rural areas near a pond, lake, river, or ocean because almost everywhere is “near” water. “Near a highway” is also an excellent guess because many places are “near a highway.” Certainly more missing bodies are found in the woods near a highway than, say, in a telephone booth or in a theater. It is a standard cold-reading technique to make vague predictions that can easily be spun to look like direct hits. Psychics have an even better chance to claim success if they throw out multiple predictions, which they almost always do because they know people will remember and focus on the “correct” prediction while forgetting all the wrong ones.
Here is the most telling fact of all to consider when assessing the validity of psychic detectives: the police don't use them. Some misguided law enforcement people somewhere may call on these people sometimes, but the vast majority of police departments and detectives do not bother with psychics because they know they are a waste of time. Detectives may listen to a tip from a psychic because they have to listen to all tips. But that doesn't mean they pin their hopes on these people. If psychic detectives really could “see” crimes that have already occurred and find missing people, this would be well known to all by now. Word would spread very fast and criminal investigators would jump to exploit their powers. There would be a full-time psychic on the payroll of every police department in the world. But this is not the case, which says a lot about the real abilities of psychics as crime solvers.
KEEPING AN OPEN MIND ABOUT THE MIND
Those who are skeptical of ESP are often accused by believers of having closed minds. Jefferson M. Fish, professor emeritus of psychology at Saint John's University in New York, is unconvinced but says he is open to accept it if new evidence ever justifies it. “I think it is possible, though unlikely, that there is something there.” He says that there has not yet been a convincing case made for ESP, but neither has it been completely discredited. Fish explains that there are two lines of evidence for ESP claims:
(1) Many experiments showing a slight but statistically significant deviation from chance, and additional results that make sense in terms of psychological principles—e.g., believers scoring above chance and disbelievers scoring below, when everyone should score at chance. Unfortunately, there are objections to all these experiments, and while some have been replicated, none are consistently reproducible.
(2) Many isolated instances of amazing unexplained individual or shared experiences. There are, of course, alternative possible explanations for all of these events.
As a result, I'm inclined to be skeptical, but don't consider the case closed.7
It appears that an open mind is typical of many ESP skeptics, despite what ESP believers often charge. I certainly am open-minded on the issue, and no serious skeptic I know would turn away from compelling evidence if it were produced. Terrence Hines, a professor of psychology and neurology, reviewed a batch of studies and found a pattern of paranormal believers being “rigid and unchanging” in their beliefs compared with skeptical nonbelievers, who are more willing to revise their conclusions when shown contrary evidence.8
I think I understand why some people would want to maintain a tight grip on their belief in ESP. I feel some of what they feel because I too believe in a magical mind. The only difference is that the kind of “magical mind” that I believe in is the one that has been revealed by science. This mind doesn't require supernatural or paranormal elements to impress and excite. The mind I am in awe of has no need for unproven claims and gross exaggerations of its power and value. The real mind is impressive enough.
GO DEEPER…
Blackmore, Susan. In Search of the Light: The Adventures of a Parapsychologist. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996.
Charpak, Georges, and Henri Broch. Debunked! ESP, Telekinesis, and Other Pseudoscience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Horstman, Judith. The Scientific American: Brave New Brain. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010.
Horstman, Judith. The Scientific American: Day in the Life of Your Brain. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2009.
Hyman, Ray. The Elusive Quarry. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989.
Nickell, Joe. Psychic Sleuths: ESP and Sensational Cases. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994.
Van Hecke, Madeleine. Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997.
Credulous France, what are you doing, hanging on the words of Nostradamus?…Don't you understand that this dirty rascal offers you only nonsense?…One must ask, in the end, who is sillier, this evil charlatan or you, who accept his impostures?
—From a letter written by a Nostradamus critic in the year 1555
It's not difficult to understand why many people are drawn to Michel de Notredame, the sixteenth-century French medical doctor, poet, and astrologer. Who doesn't want to know the future? If the world is going to end tomorrow, for example, then I would love to know because it would mean I can skip taking out the trash this evening. What is difficult to understand, however, is how Nostradamus ever became history's undisputed champion of supernatural predictions. It's not like there isn't plenty of competition for the title.
There was no shortage of astrologers and soothsayers around in Nostradamus's day, and there are still many around today who claim to be able to predict the future. So how has Nostradamus remained king of the hill, more than four hundred years after his death? He must have some amazing predictions to his credit, right? One might think so, but in fact he does not. His record is no better than the astrologers and TV preachers of our time. The popular image of Nostradamus as a mysterious man who
had the ability to see far into the future rests entirely with the vague nature of his prophecies that can be loosely interpreted and twisted to mean just about anything anyone wants them to. Nostradamus only continues to be a popular and convincing prognosticator because those who believe in him don't think critically about the predictions.
In addition to being a renowned skeptic and elite magician, James Randi is a Nostradamus scholar. He looked deep into the extraordinary claims and found no extraordinary evidence to back them up. He couldn't even find any weak evidence to back up the Nostradamus phenomenon. Randi's book The Mask of Nostradamus: The Prophecies of the World's Most Famous Seer is a brilliant analysis and critique of the Nostradamus prophecies. It clearly shows that there is nothing substantial to be found in the hype. Nostradamus left behind no remarkable, uncanny, or spooky predictions that defy explanation. The only thing that happened is that five centuries ago, a European astrologer wrote a bunch of poetic gibberish that others have rewritten, reinterpreted, and spun to appear like accurate predictions of future events.
Some beliefs, no matter how hollow, are difficult to kill. Especially when some people put so much effort into selling the lie. It seems that scarcely a month goes by, for example, without the History Channel pushing Nostradamus belief on a new generation of unsuspecting innocents with yet another slick pseudodocumentary. These days they include impressive special effects as well as compelling soundbites from Nostradamus and paranormal experts who lay out “overwhelming evidence” to make the case.
Before we pull the curtain back and expose Nostradamus's legacy for what it really is, let's review who the man was. He was born in Saint Remey de Provence, France, in 1503. According to Randi, Nostradamus was a bright student who graduated from school early and went on to have a successful medical practice. He specialized in treating the plague, the disease that killed his first wife and two of his children.1 Nostradamus's astrology and prophecy work was no great stretch for a doctor at the time, as medicine during the sixteenth century was more a mix of art and hocus-pocus than science.
The Nostradamus prophecies that continue to impress people today are contained in quatrains (four-verse poems). In my opinion, this in an important element to the attraction because it seems that many people are far more impressed by predictions embedded in ambiguous collections of obscure wording than a straight, no-nonsense message. The Bible code is another example of this. If Nostradamus simply wrote, “The world will end at noon on December 1, 1927,” it would not be as dramatic or mysterious. It would also hurt his chances to impress multiple generations, because then it would be easy for everyone to know exactly what he meant and it would be clear when he was wrong. The Nostradamus industry would sink fast if his predictions could be given an unambiguous pass/fail assessment.
Before we go further, we need to acknowledge that it's not really fair to judge Nostradamus based on his quatrains. Maybe he really did know the future and maybe he really did write down accurate predictions of major events to come. The fact is, we can't know for sure because there are no original Nostradamus manuscripts! Yes, that's correct. All the noise coming from Nostradamus believers is based on their interpretations of original writings that no longer exist.
“The very first editions of his prophetic writings are lost and we must depend upon the accuracy and integrity of those who transcribed them [whomever that may have been more than four centuries ago],” explains Randi. “Numerous known forgeries have been published, some to prove points not originally intended by the seer and others merely to take financial advantage of a public hungry for anything in any form bearing the Nostradamus name. Typographical errors, transpositions, changed italicization, punctuation, and capitalization, altered spellings and ‘improvements' on his writings have bastardized his works to the point where proper scholarship is difficult.”2
There is also the colossal problem of meaning. Even if we were to assume that existing versions of Nostradamus's predictions are somewhat fair representations of his original work, it is clear that the wording is too imprecise to be useful. Colorful language might be great for poetry, but it is terrible for assessing predictions. Like any well-written horoscope, his quatrains can be interpreted in multiple ways which, of course, increase the chances of them being “correct.” Randi shows this by identifying four very different interpretations of the same quatrain (1-57) from four Nostradamians. One believer said the quatrain predicted a political revolution and dead king. A second said the same quatrain was a “clear and forthright prediction” of the attack on Pearl Harbor. A third expert claimed it was a warning about the rise of Adolph Hitler. Finally, a fourth said it foretold an earthquake.3 Could the interpretations of one small batch of words be any more different? This is the same way horoscopes in newspapers are able to impress so many people. No matter what happens, they are seen as accurate by true believers.
In his book The Mask of Nostradamus, James Randi provides a helpful list of guidelines for anyone who would like to become a great prophet:
Make lots of predictions, and hope that some come true. If they do, point to them with pride. Ignore the others;
Be very vague and ambiguous. Definite statements can be wrong but “possible” items can always be reinterpreted;
Use a lot of symbolism. Be metaphorical, using images of animals, names, initials. They can be fitted to many situations by the believers;
Cover the situation both ways and select the winner as the “real” intent of your statement;
Credit God with your success, and blame yourself for any incorrect interpretations of His Divine messages;
No matter how often you're wrong, plow ahead. The believers won't notice your mistakes and will continue to follow your every word;
Predict catastrophes; they are more easily remembered and more popular by far;
When predicting after the fact, but representing that the prophecy preceded the event, be wrong a few times, just enough to appear uncertain about the exact details; too good a prophecy is suspect.4
WILL THE REAL ANTI-CHRIST PLEASE STAND UP
One of the more amusing flaws within the Nostradamus industry is the repeated naming of the Anti-Christ. The biblical villain was Napoleon, according to confident Nostradamus scholars in the nineteenth century. When the French emperor failed to deliver the end of the world, however, new predictions were “discovered” that clearly and obviously pointed to Adolph Hitler as the man destined to bring down the final curtain.
If you read a book or watch a pseudodocumentary that promotes the Nostradamus myth, you are likely to encounter the name “Hister.” Hmmm, sounds a little like “Hitler,” right? Sure, but “Hister” also sounds exactly like “Hister,” which was the name given for the lower portion of the Danube River on maps at the time Nostradamus lived. That, as well as the fact that the line immediately preceding the line containing “Hister” mentions “swimming,” would seem to indicate that Nostradamus was referring to a river and not the twentieth century German dictator.5
I am old enough to remember when Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein were each at various times declared to be the Anti-Christ that Nostradamus had warned about. Of course, none of them worked out too well, so believers were quick to embrace Osama bin Laden as the guy Nostradamus really meant when the 9/11 attacks occurred in 2001. But when Bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALS in 2011, another Anti-Christ candidate bit the dust.
An interesting example of how Nostradamus nonsense can spread occurred in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Millions of people around the world, myself included, received this Nostradamus quatrain in a chain e-mail shortly after the World Trade Center towers fell:
In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
Two Brothers torn apart by Chaos,
While the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb.
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.
Wow, that's an attention grabber. “Two brothers torn apart by cha
os” sounds like it could be the World Trade Center towers, right? And during the tense days after 9/11, who could ignore this line: “The third big war will begin when the big city is burning”? There is, however, a problem with this Nostradamus prophecy—Nostradamus didn't write it. I mean he really didn't write it this time, not even in a fake way. It was the work of a university student in Canada. The prediction was included in the student's 1997 essay as an example of a vague prediction that could later be applied to a wide variety of events. The student points out in his pre-9/11 essay that “city of god” could be attributed to many cities; “a great thunder” could mean anything from war to a storm to an earthquake; and “brothers torn apart” could apply to many things (a split between nations, a government, two populations, two former friends or allies, or two actual brothers). The funny part of the story is that this wise student asks readers of the essay to imagine how this brief 1997 prediction might be viewed if it were put aside for centuries and then matched with some event that it seemed to predict. The kid was right on the mark about everything except the time frame. His prediction was just vague enough to be tied to the 9/11 attacks only four years later. By the way, just as it has been the case with Nostradamus's writings, someone dishonestly added “The third big war will begin when the big city is burning,” to give it even more punch. As this non-Nostradamus quatrain circulated throughout the world via e-mails, other lines were added as well. Sadly, millions of people were probably influenced by this bogus e-mail to believe that there must really be something to the Nostradamus claim. Four days after the 9/11 attacks, Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies, was the number one bestselling book on Amazon. Five other Nostradamus books made the top twenty-five list.6
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