The Labour Humanist

Sally Morgan "star psychic" forced to withdraw bogus claims

Congratulations to the gang over at badpsychics for exposing how self styled celebrity psychic Sally Morgan misleads and lies about her activities. Here are some of the claims that badpsychics have debunked:

• That Sally Morgan falsely claimed to have worked for Bob Geldof.

• Exposed Morgan's claim to have assisted in police investigations and "other investigations" and forced her to remove claims from her web site.

• Exposed how Sally Morgan claimed to have never met "celebrity" Brian Dowling before given him a "psychic reading" on her ITV1 show, but in fact had meet Dowling before and had given him other "psychic readings".

To the contributors at badpsychics we salute you, this is the way the internet can make itself socially useful!

Derren Brown attacked for not knowing the "social utility" of ghost stories

Is there anything more condescending than elite members of UK society who think it's a useful "social utility" if the lower orders continue to hold superstitious beliefs.  The woeful Melanie Phillips is one high profile example of someone from the media elite who wants efforts to convert the masses to a religion she herself does not believe in. And here we have it again, this time from the author Hilary Mantel in her review of Derren Brown's book Tricks of the Mind.

In the review Mantel challenges Brown's assault on superstitious beliefs on the following grounds:

"A group of people praying together, or telling each other ghost stories, are engaged in an emotional bonding exercise of considerable social utility. Brown does not see this, and thinks religion is just for poor saps who need comfort."

So there you have it, it's a "social utility" if the plebs continue to believe in ghost stories. We don't know if Mantel believes in the paranormal herself. Her argument isn't based on whether ghosts are real, you see truth holds less value than what Mantel sees as a desirable social outcome if others believe in all sorts of paranormal nonsense. The key question isn't if a belief is based on truth but if it alters the behaviour of the masses in a manner which the elitist views as socially useful.

Mantel whose last novel was a story of a "home counties psychic" calls on Brown to consider the social context of psychics, yets offers no social context herself. Perhaps she thinks the world would be a better place without superstition, we don't know, so have to judge her on the basis of how she seems to have been riled by Brown's attack on credulity.  This means on balance, her review makes her come over as a terrible elitist.

ITV hits the depths again with "star psychic" Sally Morgan

ITV really is leading the race to the bottom at the moment. Not content with burning all viewer trust with a number of premium-rate telephone scandals they are now doing further damage to any remaining idea that what you see on ITV is any way, real, true or trustworthy.

The latest embarassment is Sally Morgan Star Psychic. The ITV hype claims: "Yes, now you can join our superstar psychic as she uncovers the real truth and gossip within the lives of celebrities, past, present and deceased!" Wow,  not a single note of caution, no mights or maybes, she really does uncover the "real truth".

So it's thanks to Tony Youens for beginning to take apart this nonsense of a programme:

"If you're like me and haven't  previously heard of Sally Morgan a bit of background might be helpful. According to her website, "Sally Morgan, with the ability to see and hear psychically, since she was a child, practices as a psychic medium internationally, and at her office based near London, United Kingdom". It also informs us that, "Being psychic means having the ability to see, hear and communicate with those who passed over to the spirit world." Hmm, I'm not sure where that leaves you if all you can do is bend spoons.            

Chatting with the dead has obvious advantages such as helping solve murders, etc. and Sally claims to have helped with, "police and other investigations". Apart from claiming to assist with the theft of sunglasses (no really!) she also claims to have helped pinpoint the location of the body of a girl murdered 8 years earlier. The only downside to this undoubtedly useful information is that the body is still missing. Apart from that minor detail I'm sure the police found her insights invaluable. Enough background, let's look at the programme...

"...So let’s look at some of the tests. Before Sally arrived to give a reading to a celebrity she was shown a photograph and told who it was. Why? This did nothing at all to help the process, all it did was give her the opportunity to dig for information. Whether she did or not I haven’t a clue but to provide her with the opportunity is just plain stupid. In fact having someone fairly well known as the sitter is also stupid, but then after all they are in the business of entertainment – not truth.             

In one test Sally was expected to guess, sorry I meant psychically determine, what someone’s profession was simply by touching their hand. Before explaining how they when about this let me describe what I would consider a more suitable protocol i.e. not one as watertight as a colander with extra holes drilled in it.

You could begin by having about 10 people from which 5 will randomly be selected. Their order also determined by the random throw of a dice (10 sided obviously). Each person would put their hand through a small opening so that Sally is unable to see them at all. Their hands should in no way offer a clue about the job they do (e.g. rough skin/brick layer). Their dress should in no way give a clue as to their occupation. Sally should then proceed to tell us their jobs and she would only be told how many she got correct when the test was completed. Even this doesn’t offer definitive proof of course but it’s still practical to be used for television and a good deal better than what actually happened.             

In the actual test 5 subjects were dressed in the outfit they worked in, e.g. nurse uniform, cook, fireman, etc. and Sally had a scarf tied around her eyes to act as a blindfold. As any magician will tell you this is entirely useless, just a peek down her nose and Sally would have easily seen the lower half of the person’s body along with their uniform. Once during a lecture I had my eyes covered with half dollars, black gaffer tape wrapped around my head several times so as to completely cover my eyes, on top of which I had a metal blindfold (checked by the audience) and a black hood – and yes I could have told them what their profession was too.

Never the less Sally did tell the belly dancer that she had once been raped. How she knew this exactly I couldn’t say but I find it quite bizarre that someone is invited to take part in a psychic test and ends up with the fact that they had once been raped announced on a television programme. It was also a bit strange that the belly dancer didn't seem very surprised. Was this information passed on to a researcher before the reading took place? Perhaps she gave prior permission for this information to be used? Again we’ll never know.             

I guess the thing that annoyed me most about this programme was that it tried to pretend that it was carrying out genuine testing when in reality it was doing nothing of the kind. The programme was not about testing Sally Morgan, it was about promoting Sally Morgan and showing her in the best of all possible lights. Television producers know that there is a readymade audience keen to lap up this particular type of bilge. Belief in the paranormal seems to grow from the symbiotic relationship between a gullible public eager for more and television companies equally eager supply it. Supply driving demand and vice versa. The phrase ‘dumbing down’ doesn’t really do it justice. I believe Uri Geller appears in a later episode - I can hardly wait."

Change in law required to stop TV psychic frauds?

The excellent badpsychics team are organising a petition:

"The Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 has rarely been used in the prosecution of mediums and psychics, who claim to contact the dead relatives of people. Yet there are increasingly more TV shows and live acts where people claiming to be mediums and psychics prey on vulnerable people who have lost loved ones, giving them spurious information and taking their money.

We call upon the Government to revise the Fraudulent Mediums Act and make it easier to prosecute these people.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/mediums/

Regardless of your opinions of this site, regardless of your beliefs, sceptic or believer, we can all agree on one thing, and that is that the FMA 1951 is a joke. We must have a proper way to stop the frauds out there."

The petition has started an interesting debate in their comments section. It's a tricky area this one, it might not  be a good idea to prosecute individual "psychics", unless they are engaged in direct financial fraud, however, surely the TV regulators should be doing a better job of stopping TV stations proclaiming uncritically that psychics really do have special powers by way of encouraging vulnerable people to ring their station, at a financial cost to themselves, and at a profit to the TV company. This is clearly dodgy and something needs to be done.