Friend of Skepchick Ben Radford just published a fantastic article for LiveScience showing yet another major failure of dirtbag psychics. Jaycee Dugard is the woman who was recently found after being abducted at the age of 11 and spending 18 years confined in the backyard hell of her rapist and abuser, Phillip Garrido, and his wife.
Jaycee saved herself after her captor inexplicably took her to a meeting with his parole officer. Ben points out that a “psychic” named Dayle Schear has come forward to claim this as a victory, because she once informed Jaycee’s parents that they would one day see her alive. Schear took the parents’ money and in exchange gave them meaningless drivel that did nothing to end or abate the following 18 years of misery that Jaycee would experience. Some psychic. As Ben says,
Yet the psychics conveniently ignore the fact that their information was either wrong or so general and vague that it was useless. [snip] What police and searchers need is not general, vague “I told you so” information after the missing person has been recovered through police work, but accurate, useful information that leads police to the victim.
No psychic has ever been able to prove that his or her abilities are anything more than magic tricks, and most often a particular trick called cold reading. But Ben makes a very good point: even if we assume they have powers, what’s the point? Their powers are worthless. They don’t prevent murders, they don’t prevent abuse, and they don’t even find the bodies when it’s too late to help.
All this is reminiscent of Sylvia Browne’s most prominent screw-up: telling Shawn Hornbeck’s weeping and desperate parents that their child was murdered, and his body tossed near “a rock” somewhere miles from their home. He was, of course, discovered living with his abductor just down the street. At least Sylvia had the good sense to not come forward and declare this proof of her “powers,” unlike the heartless troll who preyed upon Dugard’s parents.
EDIT: Hat tip to Steve and Ooxman, the latter of whom sent the link with this note:
When I saw this, it was on the front page of Yahoo. I was shocked and delighted. The day before, Yahoo was advocating I alternate
breathing through my left and right nostril to balance out my yin and
yang energy forces. Srsly.
I used to believe in the Nostradamus predictions and was sure that NYC would be destroyed by an atomic bomb in July of 1999. When that didn’t happen, I stopped believing it in. After September 11, 2001, I started hearing the exact same cryptic phrases being used to claim that Nostradamus had predicted that event. I remember thinking something similar to the point above:
People made a prediction and it failed. Even if they really are supernatural, they’re obviously useless for making predictions in advance, so that’s that. What’s the point of seeing the future if it’s blurry to the point of inscrutability?
Jaycee Durgard also failed to foresee her own ruination when this particular prediction failed spectacularly.
What a tool Durgard is.
One thing I’ve really learned from this whole Jaycee Dugard thing isn’t that psychics are money-grubbing bastards (don’t worry, I already knew this), but that Google Maps can creep the shit out of you. Not sure if any of you saw this, but do have a look:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/31/did-google-street-vi.html
Garrido or not, watching that rusty old junker of a van, that just so happens to scream “Whoever drives me is in all likelihood a big dirty pedophile”, peel out of a driveway and slowly creep down the road as it follows the precious Google van, really takes Google Maps Street View to a whole new disturbing level.
@Loona:
If you think that’s creepy, you should see Phillip Garrido’s blog:
http://voicesrevealed.blogspot.com/
@QuestionAuthority: FYI, Dugard is the victim, not the psychic.
@Rebecca: I bow to your correction, Oh Wise and Wonderful One, as you are indeed correct.
I will flog myself immediately.
Rebecca, your post is so full of win and awesome, it’s a pleasure to read. Well done.
I am surprised that Garrido wasn’t busted a long time ago by building code enforcement. I’ll bet he doesn’t have any permits for all those structures where the girls were kept. All one of the neighbors needed to do was to call the local building department and Garrido would have been history.
I really feel sorry for those girls. Maybe the therapist can somehow connect them with that girl from Austria and her children who were kept in the basement of her father’s house. Seems like that might help.
Garrido should be dressed like a Taliban and UPS’ed to Dick Cheney’s house for a “debriefing”.
As far as the topic at hand, I have a friend who believes in anything woo. The more woo, the more he believes. Anything rational is part of the conspiracy to keep us in the dark. I am going to suggest he start writing down all the crazy predictions that he believes in – i.e. Mayan calendar doom, Illuminati manipulation of currency values (economic armaggedon due to lack of gold standard), etc. Perhaps that will help him see the folly of such beliefs. OTOH, that doesn’t always guarantee success. Take for example the 7th day Adventists and the Branch Davidians:
You can’t make this shit up.
/BCT
Schear probably didn’t even predict Michael Jackson was going to die in 2009 like self-proclaimed non-psychic Rebecca did.
Awesome.
@Billy Clyde Tuggle:
From what I understand, it wasn’t unusual for backyards to be full of stuff, including tents and whatnot. I’m sure no one enforced or cared about any kind of codes.
@Billy Clyde Tuggle: @marilove: As I recall, a neighbor called both the police and the building department, but both entities stopped at the front door rather than to venture into the back yard. Having spent a lot of time dealing with building codes and such, I’m not sure having a tent or lean-to in your back yard is a cit-able offense. I suppose if there were obnoxious odors emanating from there, it would be different.
Also, connecting the SDA with the Branch Wakkos is kind of like saying that all Catholics like jello molds because Lutherans are just an offbeat sect of the Catholic Church.
@Old Geezer: It probably depends on the city, and the HOA, if one exists. I’m from an area where having lots of crap in your back yard isn’t abnormal, so yeah. I’m not surprised it didn’t raise a lot of eyebrows.
Brilliant work on Ben’s behalf! Which is more than we can say for Schear…
It’s particularly cool to see this syndicated, instead of the usual believers’ twaddle that’s paraded on Yahoo’s homepage.
This is what we’re all about!
@Old Geezer/Marilove:
Yes, it depends on the character of the local jurisdiction. That is all over the map, but I think most building departments will get their nickers in a twist if they think unnapproved/non-compliant structures are being used as permanent housing. IOW, have all the sheds you want in your back yard as long as people aren’t living in them.
/BCT
@ Old Geezer:
Perhaps I am a little thickheaded, but I don’t understand the jello mold connection. Or was my logic so bad that you needed to use an analogy where there was no connection to demonstrate the disconnected character of my logic?
In truth, I just wanted to post that SDA/Branch Davidian historical excerpt because the image of two splinter sects gun fighting over a 25 year corpse that one of the splinters thought they could resurrect was so hilarious and surreal that I wanted to share it with others. Mea culpa.
/BCT
@Billy Clyde Tuggle: I agree with the hilarity. I just think that running the history back to the group they whacko’d away from is unnecessary. And yes I do see the origin as being part of the history. The jello mold reference is most likely more familiar to folks who live in the upper Mid-West. You can’t eat dinner at a Lutheran gathering without running into dueling jello salads. But this propensity does not run all the way back up to the church from which the Lutherans sprang. My reference was to the point that a disconnect should be recognized when the splinter group is as far disconnected as the SDA and the Branch Davidians are. It wasn’t meant to be the start of another thread. Sorry.
!!New Verb Alert!!
@Old Geezer said:
Excellent! I’ll have to remember that one. English, the ever changing language.
@Billy Clyde Tuggle: But that requires they look to see if someone is living in one. More often than not, they just ignore the junk. They really don’t care if you have 5 sheds, 2 broken cars, and a tent in your backyard.
@ marilove:
Too bad Garrido didn’t live in LA County. The LA County code enforcement people have been harassing the truckers up in the high desert about parking their big rigs on unicorporated land up there arguing that this constitutes commercial use of a residential property. I mean god forbid if you own a house on 5 acres and want to park a semi on it or have one of those shipping containers sitting in your back yard for storage. It might disturb the ambience of the manufactured homes and the tumbleweed.
Anyway, I should just shut up. I think have totally killed what should have been a decent thread with all my off topic ramblings about code enforcement.
Maybe if I insult someone it will get things going again :-)
/BCT