Testing Mediums in The Lab

If you've never heard the Skeptiko podcast, you might automatically think that it's geared to skeptics, debunkers and non-believers. Well, you would only be half wrong. Skeptiko is a podcast going on ten years that engages both believers and non-believers in a passionate dialog about an area of research that is as divisive as our current election. I'm talking about parapsychology and its place in scientific research.

The passionate dialog on Skeptiko, the one between those who label themselves open to the paranormal, and those who are generally closed off to it, isn't always mature, respectful or even productive, but it does seem to be lowering the wall that separates two camps of thought, allowing each camp to reflect on the nature of belief and how science can actually peer into that world of subjective mystery.

A great example of Skeptiko's power to bridge the conversation between believers and non-believers is an interview last year with Dr. Julie Beischel of The Windbridge Institute. The Windbridge Institute is the only scientific research center dedicated to the study of mediumship and its related fields. As Dr. Beischel states...

Dr. Beischel: Science is just a tool. It’s just one way we learn how the universe works so it can be applied to anything. And there were a lot of people with strong opinions about what the capacity of mediums is. Can they report accurate and specific information? So I took the scientific method and I applied it to mediumship. Again, it’s just a tool you can apply to anything and so yes, it does go together because it’s something we don’t fully understand yet. So yes, [mediumship] is the perfect thing for science to tackle because we don’t understand it. Full podcast Interview.

If you've always found your thinking to be at the crossroads between science and spirituality, Skeptiko is a great place to find a voice for your own beliefs. Also, if you want to hear a Skeptiko podcast interview with your truly, you can just click here. :-)

It's getting cold in here...

With the recent popularity of the TV show, The Mentalist, there's been a renewed interest in "cold reading" techniques that many skeptics claim is the foundation for psychic or mediumship readings.

Fraud exists everywhere in the psychic/mediumship world. At all levels. Sometimes that fraud is perpetrated with forethought, other times, it's just a byproduct of self-delusion. However, when you remove all the questionable and objectionable evidence from the mix, you are still left with volumes of evidence and experiments that beg the question, "Is there more to consciousness that meets the mind?"

So, back to the cold reading claim. I recently found a post (http://www.wikihow.com/Cold-Read) that gives its readers very detailed directions in how to portray yourself as a psychic or medium. Here's the intro to the article -

"Want to be a hit at the next party? Perform a cold reading, and you can amaze - maybe even frighten - people with your psychic abilities. Don't worry though; no actual psychic ability is required. Cold reading is a classic trick used by magicians, soothsayers, TV psychics, and other entertainers and charlatans. By asking a person the right questions, listening carefully, and making a guess or two, you can convince even many skeptics that you really are able to communicate with the spirit world.

I am posting the intro and link here for two reasons. One, it serves as a warning to gullible people that bad psychics and mediums do exist, and they do use these techniques. Two, it serves as a reminder of how shallow and ignorant skeptical arguments are against valid scientific research into consciousness survival.

In any major research protocol dealing with anomalous cognition, rigorous steps are taken to eliminate any possibility of cold reading as a possible explanation. Eliminating this explanation doesn't prove "life after death", but it does require the skeptical community to shed, once and for all, their automated rejection of the question that is still hanging out there, and like I said earlier, begging investigation, "Is there more to consciousness that meets the mind?"

Medium Smackdown - Allison Dubois Hits Me on MySpace

In a recent post, I called into question some of the actions and claims put forward by Allison Dubois, the inspiration for the TV show "Medium." Now, Allison Dubois has taken up her defense against these accusations and posted it to MySpace.

In a short blog post, and in a series of comments after the post, Ms. Dubois lashes out at me and Dr. Gary E. Schwartz.

My favorite quote from her lashing just might be -

"Let's all hope that Gary and Marcel spend more time being buddies and less time connecting themselves to my name."

So Gary, should we go fishing next weekend, or do you want to go bowling and have a few beers afterward? Oh, and by the way, Gary, I promise we won't talk about Allison this time.

Some may recall that Ms. Dubois was once a research medium in the Veritas Research Program run by Dr. Gary E. Schwartz at the University of Arizona. Ms. Dubois and Dr. Gary Schwartz had a public falling out in 2005, as so did another one of Dr. Schwartz's research mediums, Ms. Laurie Campbell.

Ms. Dubois' post is short enough for me to print here (her typos included), but you need to read the comments thread to truly appreciate how childish and insufficient Ms. Dubois' replies to the accusations really are.

Recently it has been brought to my attention that Gary Schwartz ("scientist" who use to study me) and his cronie Marcel have been bad mouthing me. First let me say that people in the spiritual field are not suppose to spew venom they are suppose to embrace their intuition and the otherside. They are claiming that law enforcement has never come forward for me which is so far from the truth. It's true that some have lied about not working with me and the media found the truth which supported that I worked with them. Fortunately I have a new show coming out that will allow me to bipass those in law enforcement that fear persecution. I'll let you know more about that when the official announcement has been made. I know Gary and Marcel will be very happy for me. By the way I've never met or heard of Marcel until I was informed that he can't get enough of me.

They also claim I exaggerated my work with law enforcement to Medium producers to get the show which is laughable. The producers approached me in the first place and the show would have just had a different tone if I didn't work with the law. The show is "based" on my life not a biography as you all know from my books. Maybe Gary should talk less and read more. I've been told Gary's mad because he was not invited to be a part of Oprah with me. Sounds like a poor sport. Maybe Gary should spend more time being a professor and less time throwing temper tantrums because I felt his lab was inadequate and left. Let's all hope that Gary and Marcel spend more time being buddies and less time connecting themselves to my name.

Well, as cute and sarcastic as you are, Allison, the facts simply do not support your claims, and you have never provided sufficient evidence to silence challenges to your story. Besides, no one is questioning if the TV show takes creative liberties with the truth, that is obvious. People are questioning whether you have taken liberties with the truth in various interviews and books in which you make extraordinary claims for which there is insufficient evidence, or in some cases, no evidence at all.

So, why do I care what you say or do, Ms. Dubois? I'm glad you asked.

For starters, there isn't a day that goes by that skeptics don't use the public media to call mediums,"frauds," or challenge their moral fabric and personal ethics. Yes, I'm use to this, it's part of the territory that comes with being a medium. I'm thick skinned, and I can take it. Yet, each time a high visibility medium like yourself, Ms. Dubois, is caught or accused of manipulating the truth for their own gain, it's harder to argue against the skeptics' criticisms and win back the public trust. So, obviously, this matters to me a lot.

More importantly, though, Ms. Dubois, you were a research medium before you became a TV Medium. Your path from a science-friendly medium to a made-for-TV medium with a dubious story only places a larger target on scientists and researchers who would be daring (or foolish) enough to undertake medium research. Yes, Ms. Dubois, your actions and your story have hurt scientific research into consciousness survival.

Allison, I don't have anything against you personally, and I wish you all of the success in the world. My biggest wish, though, is that you would think about the bigger scientific picture and the overall public integrity of the "survival hypothesis" each time you make a claim that is simply fantasy.

Dubious about Dubois

EDITOR"S NOTE: I wanted to add this point of clarification which I seemed to have omitted from the post itself. I in no way am calling Allison Dubois' or Laurie Campbell's work with the Veritas Research Program into question. I am merely commenting on the controversy surrounding Ms. Dubois' public claims to having played a crucial and pivotal role in the resolution of several high profile investigations across the country.

I have been publicly criticized in the past for crossing the white line. The white line is the psychic world's equivalent to the "blue line" you find in the world of law enforcement. Like the blue line, the white line is an unwritten code of silence and a demarcation of loyalty. If you are a cop and you cross the blue line, you are essentially considered a dirty rat, scum-sucking snitch, yellow-bellied whistle-blower who better watch his back. So, by writing this, I am essentially warned of the pounding that may follow for criticizing a fellow medium.

I experienced a little of this last year when I crossed that white line by challenging medium, Laurie Campbell. Ms. Campbell is a medium made famous by Dr. Gary E. Schwartz in his seminal work, The Afterlife Experiments.

Some have dubbed Laurie Campbell as the most tested medium of her times. This claim may actually be true of this century, though many could still argue that this distinction and honor more properly belongs to Leonora Piper.

Described as a shy, unassuming housewife at the time that Dr. Schwartz met her, Laurie Campbell quickly rose to the top of her game and became the standard bearer for all mediums entering Dr. Schwartz's Veritas Research Program. As a CRM (certified research Medium), Laurie was extremely generous with her time and extremely happy with the attention and business The Afterlife Experiments brought her. As she should have been.

Then in 2005, something changed. That change was a show called Medium, based on the life of fellow CRM, Allison Dubois.

In the lab, Dr. Schwartz called Allison Dubois the "Michael Jordan of mediums." However in 2005, Dubois and Schwartz fell out of favor with each other over Schwartz publication of his book, "The Truth About Medium," which coincided with the debut of the show based on her life and professional claims.

According to Dubois, she had asked Dr. Schwartz not to include her name or her stories in his book. Dr. Schwartz contradicts this, saying Dubois had always been very willing to have her name associated with his research, and had signed a waiver indicating so. He has said this many times, including on my own internet radio program, AfterlifeFM Profiles.

I mention Allison Dubois' falling out with Dr. Schwartz because Laurie Campbell also filed a breach of confidentiality complaint against Dr. Schwartz around this time. I'm not implying anything fishy by this, but it has been suggested to me, though I have no evidence for it, that Allison herself may have influenced Laurie's decision to file this motion as well as having been the influence behind Laurie's famous TV appearance attacking Dr. Schwartz's professional ethics.

On Octeober 6, 2007 (my 40th birthday), Laurie embarked on what I see as a calculated character assassination against the very same man who catapulted her career into the spotlight, Dr. Gary E. Schwartz. I say character assassination only because it's difficult to find another term to describe the type of journalism that was showcased on the Geraldo at large show that evening.

Originally, Fox News had posted a blurb on their website that indicated that Allison Dubois would also appear on the program. She did not, so Laurie appeared alongside investigative journalist Marianne Macy, and together, they picked apart Dr. Schwartz with one unsubstantiated innuendo after another.

I digress. The real focus of this post is not Laurie campbell, but her former associate and current friend, Allison Dubois. Allison Dubois' own fame is centered around some very impressive claims and personal history. The claims entail her pivotal role in assisting the law enforcement agencies of different states in the discovery of information and evidence that led to the apprehension and subsequent imprisonment of several "bad guys". These claims are the foundation of the show Medium.

Ever since Allison has made these claims the springboard of her career, skeptics and debunkers have zeroed in on her. That is their job after all. Most famous of these skeptics is James Randi, who has challenged Allison Dubois to take him up on his "Million Dollar Challenge."

However, the most convincing skeptical review of Allison Dubois' claims was assembled by a skeptical online website called, The Two-Percent Company. In 2005, the Two-Percent Company was fed up with claims that the show Medium was based on a "true story" that they ran Allison Dubois Week - an entire week devoted to investigating Ms. Dubois' claims. The research they did was pretty thorough, and it left me very skeptical of her story as well.

That report is now almost three years old, and Ms. Dubois has never fully answered the credibility questions that the Two-Percent Company brought up. Ms. Dubois and the show, Medium, are no worse for the wear, as her books are still selling well and Medium is in its fourth season, still pulling in impressive ratings.

As of this week, though, the Allison Dubois saga was revived with the publication of a cover story in the Phoenix New TImes News. The article is extremely well-researched and managed to dig a little deeper into other claims made by Ms. Dubois which also raise the credibility issue. More interesting in some respects, the Phoenix New TImes reporter was actually able to get Ms. Dubois to open up about the criticisms she's received, plus the article is sprinkled with interviews of Ms. Dubois' children and key people involved in some of the lore surrounding Ms. Dubois' life and career.

Judging from Ms. Dubois' reaction to the article, the story must have come as a bit of a shock and hit a raw nerve. To some degree, I find Ms. Dubois' childish threats to the Phoenix New TImes reporter more disturbing than the possible exaggerations of the claims she has made. The reactions themselves are indicative of a person driven by vengeance rather than by science. These type of threats would be more at home in the political arena than in the world of spiritual enlightenment.

As a medium devoted to the promotion of psi research and the demotion of charlatans, I would hope that Ms. Dubois would genuinely tackle the very valid criticisms made against her rather than attack those who make them. The more ammunition we give the skeptics to ridicule and debase the search for outer consciousness, the more banging of our heads against the wall we'll experience.

So, Ms. Dubois, until you address point by point the claims you make and the claims made against you, I will consider you a liability to this profession, and if ever asked, I will publicly voice this concern. This may be of little importance to you now, seeing that very little can unbalance your success, but I think inside where things matter to you, the rising volume of people questioning your integrity really does matter to you, or else you wouldn't be lashing out so childishly.

Make no mistake, this post is not about one medium railing against another medium, or a psychic bashing driven by professional jealousy. This post is about the integrity of The Great Question - "Do we survive?" To me, this question must be defended before it is debated. If the people making the case for the survival hypothesis lose credibility, the question itself loses credibility.

It is not enough if Allison Dubois' claims are almost true, or somewhat true. They either are true or they are not. You can't have it both ways in this debate. As a medium, I am always aware of this pressure, so I do the easiest thing I know, stick to the truth, even if it makes me look bad.

My own personal motto as a medium is one I wrote and one that's simple to remember - "there is redemption in truth, and great knowledge in seeking it." This is a motto I hope all mediums will adopt one day, including the ones mentioned above.

Return of the Trickster

Here is my first podcast on AfterlifeFM Profiles, the studio version to the live show AfterlifeFM.

The first interview is with George P. Hansen, author of The Trickster and the Paranormal, a seminal work for those of you seriously interested in studying the paranormal and consciousness survival.


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David Thompson - The Fraud from Oz

My colleague in the study of psi and the paranormal, Michael Prescott, has written a thorough and stinging final episode about David Thompson and his claims of materialization mediumship. It is definitely worth the read. I have been vocally challenging the claims coming out of Australia for some time now. Last year, I interviewed Victor Zammit, Mr. Thompson's sponsor, about the controversy on the radio show, Conversations from Beyond.

This year, I interviewed Michael Prescott on the very same topic on my new radio show, AfterlifeFM.

Some people, including my wife, have asked, "why do you care so much about what that guy does in Sydney?" My answer is very simple. He is destroying the credibility of something I cherish deeply - the study of consciousness survival. If phonies and frauds are allowed to bamboozle the believing public, then when that person is eventually exposed, why would any scientist or interested person ever believe me in what I am saying about consciousness survival. In some tangent way, confronting frauds like David Thompson is as important as confronting Holocaust deniers.

Sadly, when there's money to be made from people''s need to believe, the rats and vultures are never far behind. Be Skeptical. Be Open. Beware.

Who's Afraid of the Afterlife?

The following is an abstract of a paper written by Dr. Neal Grossman. The article appears in the first issue of AntiMatters, a quarterly open-access journal addressing issues in science and the humanities from non-materialistic perspectives.

The evidence for an afterlife is sufficiently strong and compelling that an unbiased person ought to conclude that materialism is a false theory. Yet the academy refuses to examine the evidence, and clings to materialism as if it were a priori true, instead of a posteriori false. I suggest several explanations for the monumental failure of curiosity on the part of academia. First, there is deep confusion between the concepts of evidence and proof. Second, materialism functions as a powerful paradigm that structures the shape of scientific explanations, but is not itself open to question. The third explanation is intellectual arrogance, as the possible existence of disembodied intelligence threatens the materialistic belief that the educated human brain is the highest form of intelligence in existence. Finally, there is a social taboo against belief in an afterlife, as our whole way of life is predicated on materialism and might collapse if near-death experiences, particularly the life review, was accepted as fact.

PDF link to Dr. Grossman's article