regarding assassination or dying in office. The president, whose name is never mentioned, could be assassinated in his first or his second term. He could die during his first or second term. Dixon would undoubtedly have claimed a hit if Kennedy had had a serious illness during either the first or the second term, or if an assassination attempt— whether or not the president had been injured—had taken place during the first or second term. However, the coup de grace to Dixon’s claim to have foretold the Kennedy assassination is that in 1960 she predicted that “John F Kennedy would fail to win the presidency” (Tyler 1977).
Another way to make a prediction seem surprisingly accurate is to make the entire, specific prediction after the event has taken place and then try to con the public into believing that it was made before the event. A well- known and blatant example of this psychic technique took place in 1981 when Los Angeles psychic Tamara Rand claimed to have predicted the attempt on President Reagan’s life. Her “prediction” included the details that the assassin would have the initials “J. H.,” which John Hinkley did, and that the last name would be something like “Humley,” which is pretty close to Hinkley. She further “saw” that the president would be shot in the chest in a “hail of bullets,” and that the assassin would come from a wealthy family and have sandy hair. All of these descriptions are correct. She even got the time of the assassination right, saying it would take place in the last week of March or the first week of April 1981. The attempt actually took place on March 30, 1981. These predictions were said to have been made on a talk show taped on January 6, 1981, on KTNV-TV, Las Vegas.
Such astonishingly accurate predictions were impressive stuff, and ABC, NBC, and CNN all broadcast the videotape of the January 6 program on April 2, 1981, four days after the assassination attempt. Alas, these major news-gathering organizations made no attempt to verify the accuracy of Rand’s claims before broadcasting her videotaped “predictions.” In fact, the tape was a fake. Rand and KTNV talk show host Dick Maurice had conspired to produce the fake tape, which was actually filmed in the KTNV studios on March 31, the day
One important point should be noted here about the nature of Rand’s phony predictions. She took pains to make her predictions less than perfect. She did not say, “I foresee that on March 30 an attempt will be made on the life of President Reagan by a man named John Wayne Hinkley. Hinkley will attempt to assassinate the President as he emerges from the Sheraton Washington Hotel at 1:48 P.M.” No one would have believed such a specific prediction. So Rand purposely made her “prediction” somewhat vague, although consistent with what had happened.
When one examines the specific predictions psychics have made before the predicted event is supposed to take place, one finds a dismal record of failure. Several compilations of psychic predictions have recently been made (Saxon 1974; Anonymous 2000; Emery 1998, 2001). The record of what psychics predicted that didn’t happen and what they didn’t predict that did happen makes amusing reading. A selection of failed psychic predictions for 1999 includes the following:
Pollution cloud will cause New York City to be quarantined.
Marijuana will replace petroleum as major energy source. (Yeah, but it’s so hard to stuff 3 or 4 kilos into the gas tank!)
Terrorists will set of bomb that rips the arms off the Statue of Liberty.
On the Howard Stern show O. J. Simpson will confess.
Mary Tyler Moore will join the cast of
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy will give birth to twins. (She didn’t—she died with her husband, John F. Kennedy Jr., in a plane crash, which no psychic predicted.) (Anonymous 2000)
In view of psychics’ dismal record of failed predictions, why do so many people continue to take their claims seriously? There are several reasons. First, until recently no one has been “keeping score” on psychics’ predictions. The tabloids certainly don’t run a column at the end of the year detailing the fact that the psychic predictions they ballyhooed so vigorously have all turned out to be wrong. In short, failed predictions are not news and are forgotten. On the other hand, when a psychic does manage to be correct, either by being trivial (“I foresee continued trouble in Lebanon”) or by claiming that a prediction was much more specific than it really was, that prediction gets plenty of media attention. Thus, the public is selectively exposed to “correct” predictions and almost never hears about the thousands of failures.
A second, related reason for the continued belief in psychics is simply that one hears so much about them. Psychics and their predictions fill the tabloids and turn up frequently on television and radio talk shows and local television news. It is natural to assume that, if one hears a great deal about a particular topic, there must be something to it. Most readers and viewers will thus assume, incorrectly, that there must be some validity to psychic claims simply because these get so much media attention.
Finally, continued belief is often a result of personal encounters with psychics. People are convinced by the psychics’ cold-reading abilities and other forms of trickery outlined above. They reason that, since one or two individual psychics were so “accurate” in foretelling events in their personal lives, they are also accurate when predicting news events.
PSYCHIC CRIME DETECTION
Many people believe that psychics can help police solve crimes and find missing persons. Certainly, psychics’ claims in these areas attract considerable media attention. When examined, however, these claims turn out to be as groundless as claims to predict the future.
One of the most famous psychic “crime fighters” is Dorothy Allison of Nutley, New Jersey. She claims to have helped dozens of police forces solve crimes, including the string of murders of black children in Atlanta in 1980–81. She appeared on the television program
In another case, Allison went to Columbus, Georgia, to help solve a string of murders of elderly women. According to Columbus Police Chief Curtis McClung, in the space of two days, “she said a whole lot of things, a whole lot of opinions, partial information and descriptions. She said a lot. If you say enough, there’s got to be something that fits” (Skeptical Eye 1980).
The multiple out is the heart of Allison’s method. She produces so many “feelings,” “impressions,” and “hunches” that, after the fact, some are bound to have been correct. This effect is accentuated by the fact that she often takes a Nutley, New Jersey, detective with her to “interpret” what she has said. With sufficient “interpretation,” almost anything can be transformed after the fact into a “correct” prediction. An excellent example of this technique is Allison’s prediction in the case of a missing teenager whose parents turned to Allison for help (Skeptical Eye 1980). She sadly informed the parents that the boy was dead and would be found “near an airport.” Now, that sounds pretty specific. After all, dead is dead—except when psychics are trying to cover up their blunders. The teenager had, in fact, joined a religious cult and was living in New York City’s Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building). Allison claimed she was right because the boy was “emotionally dead” and there is a heliport on the roof of the building. With such leeway, it’s almost impossible to imagine any statement about the boy that couldn’t be made to fit the situation after the fact.
Allison blundered in another famous case in New York City. In 1979 Etan Patz, a six-year-old boy, disappeared while walking to school in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan. To date, the boy has never been found. His disappearance set off the national concern over missing children in the early 1980s. In 1980 Allison was prominently featured on at least one major New York television station predicting that little Etan would be found “alive and well in six months.” Obviously, she was flat wrong, but what one did not hear six or seven months or
