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What does everyone think about John Edward?

Found this cached on Google...

By Brian Carnell

Friday, April 20, 2001

The first time I saw and advertisement for the SciFi Channel's "Crossing Over with John Edward," I was tempted to cancel my subscription to the channel. I reconsidered after smugly thinking that nobody would possibly take the show seriously and it would die a quick death. Boy was I wrong -- the show turned out to be enormously popular. It is so popular, in fact, that Edward is rumored to be on the verge of taking his show to a major network.
Even with the ratings, though, the show is still bunk. Edward is just using his own version of a long time magician's technique called cold reading. Apparently Edward is not even very good at cold reading as the show is heavily edited to make him look more accurate than he is. An expose on the show in Skeptic magazine quoted Michael O'Neill, a marketing manager who appeared on the show, describing his appearance.


I was on the John Edward show. He even had a multiple guess "hit" on me that was featured on the show. However, it was edited so that my answer to another question was edited in after one of his questions. In other words, his question and my answer were deliberately mismatched. Only a fraction of what went on in the studio was actually seen in the final 30 minute show. He was wrong about a lot and was very aggressive when somebody failed to acknowledge something he said. Also, his "production assistants" were always around while we waited to get into the studio. They told us to keep very quiet, and they overheard a lot. I think that the whole place is bugged somehow. Also, once in the studio we had to wait around for almost two hours before the show began. Throughout that time everybody was talking about what dead relative of theirs might pop up. Remember that all this occurred under microphones and with cameras already set up. My guess is that he was backstage listening and looking at us all and noting certain readings. When he finally appeared, he looked at the audience as if he were trying to spot people he recognized. He also had ringers in the audience. I can tell because about fifteen people arrived in a chartered van, and once inside they did not sit together
In an article on the Skeptic web site, Michael Shermer describes watching unedited footage of Edward at work which gives insight into how Edward works,


Edward begins by selecting a section of the studio audience of about 20 people, saying things like "I'm getting a George over here. I don't know what this means. George could be someone who passed over, he could be someone here, he could be someone that you know," etc. Of course such generalizations lead to a "hit" where someone indeed knows a George, or is related to a George, or is a George. Now that he's targeted his mark, the real reading begins in which Edward employs cold reading, warm reading, and hot reading techniques.

Meanwhile, James Randi had an interesting analysis of "psychics" such as Edward and his forerunners, James Van Praagh and Sylvia Brown, who appeared together recently on the Larry King Show along with CSCIOP's Paul Kurtz, Time reporter Leon Jaroff (who recently penned an expose of Edward), and Uri Geller friend Shmuley Boteach.

I missed that show, but Randi relays a hilarious account from one of his readers about how these folks explain away their errors. When Van Praagh totally botched a reading of a caller, Edward rallied to his defense,


... Edward said that since the caller said that nothing [Van Praagh had said] made any sense, it most likely was because the "feelings" VP had, were connected to some other member of her family -- her father, etc. I submit that maybe his feelings may have been regarding her postal carrier. Or the clerk in the convenience store where she bought a soda today. Isn't it handy to have so many excuses available?
Sources:

Deconstructing the dead: cross over one last time to expose medium John Edward. Michael Shermer, Skeptic.Com, undated.

Text from Korea, a Herd of Pyschics on Larry King< Pop Psych on Today, Galileo's Day, and Bye-Byte to Triangles. James Randi, Randi.Org, March 9, 2001.
 
I think the same of him that I think of every other supposed "psychic." There's no such thing as it, every one of them is just good at performing.
 
I doubt it's real, though I've never watched it to try to ascertain as such. But the fact that it takes an hour of potentially interesting programming (so I'm a geek, I like most scifi shows) bothers me. Didn't Sliders used to be in the time slot? Not quality TV, but entertaining, unlike Mr. Edwards.

edit: thumbs down
 
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