This is a report of the programme broadcast by Channel 5 in the UK on 25
th September 2008. The programme
featured self-proclaimed psychic Derek Ogilvie, 'The Baby Mind Reader', undergoing formal testing of his claimed ability; notably for the JREF $1,000,000
paranormal challenge. This is an overview of the programme commenting mainly on the tests done, why they were done as they were, and what they actually
mean.
Background information.
Derek Ogilvie is a self-proclaimed psychic whose speciality, or gimmick depending on how you
view him, is that he can communicate telepathically with pre-verbal children. Derek claims that by tuning into a child’s mind, he can ascertain family
problems and issues from the child’s point of view: in other words, acting as the voice of the child. This information can be used to improve family
relationships by making the parents aware of which issues (usually their own) are problematic for the child and which cause bad behaviour etc.
This alleged ability was used in the Channel 5 series
The Baby Mind Reader in 2006 although it should be noted that in communication with
OFCOM, who were investigating the series because of complaints, Channel 5 made it clear that all advice that Derek gave in the series was not a result of
his telepathic ability after all – it was all based on facts which he had established were true by asking the children’s parents.
[1]We normally see Derek doing his readings whereby he visits a
child with its parents then tunes into the child’s mind and does his psychic reading for the parents by interacting with them. The idea is to find out
what issues are affecting the family relationships, from the child’s point of view, so that advice can be given and changes made to improve situations.
Derek, like many psychics, is usually successful in convincing the parents that he has access to information that he ‘couldn’t possibly have known’. It
all looks quite convincing.
Criticism
Of course, appearing to be psychic and actually being psychic are two different
things. There’s no doubt that something is going on here but is it really psychic ability that Derek is using or is there another explanation?
Skeptics have noted that although Derek claims he’s tuning into the mind of the child, it’s the parents whom he does the reading for. It’s the parents
he interacts with and it’s the parents who give feedback and validate or repudiate Derek’s information. So, perhaps Derek is reading the parents and the
telepathic link to the children doesn’t actually exist.
This leaves us with an obvious test. Can Derek read information from a child’s mind
when its parents are not present? Two tests of Derek’s claimed ability were shown in the programme: one with Professor Chris French in London, and one
for the JREF $1,000,000 prize with James Randi in Florida; both of which were based on the idea of Derek being able to read the child’s mind in the
absence of its parents.
Cold Reading
Skeptics often use the term ‘Cold Reading’ when explaining how psychics manage to read
for people. Cold Reading simply means to read a person without prior knowledge of them; however, it’s often used as an explanation for
how
psychics read people: the techniques and methods they use.
Readings are not usually a case of psychics simply giving information to their
clients in a one-way process; readings are normally an
interactive communication between two people. In short, psychics will make many, usually
very vague, statements and then rely on the feedback they get from the client to guide them where to go next. This can give the illusion to the client
that they are being told some very specific and personal information, as people tend to personalise vague information as being very specific when it’s
given meaning by themselves: a process known as ‘subjective validation’.
[2]Does Derek Ogilvie use cold reading?
In short, yes he does; but he may not do so
intentionally. It is often assumed that knowingly fraudulent psychics use cold reading, whereas the genuine psychics (those who genuinely believe
themselves to be psychic) do not. However, this is not the case. If we accept cold reading as being a set of techniques then it is quite possible, indeed
highly likely, that people who operate as psychics will hone in on cold reading techniques either by trial and error or on ‘psychic development courses’
where they’re taught which things work and which things don’t.
Derek uses a lot of what’s known in cold reading as ‘trivia stats’. These are
little pieces of information given out that are quite common to most people, such as ‘you have a scar on your left knee’, ‘you have a single earring as
the partner to it is missing’ or ‘you’ve had problems with your car - left rear wheel/tyre’ (interestingly Derek used that one in the programme yet it’s
a classic cold reading trivia stat). Trivia stats serve only one purpose: they’re little ‘clinchers’ designed to convince the client that something
psychic is going on. Derek often gives out lot of information like, "mummy has a scar", "mummy had a sore tummy", "mummy has an issue with shoes", etc.,
and these are all trivia stats. They have no relevance to the intended purpose of the reading but they can be useful in getting the client to accept
something psychic is going on. Derek relies quite heavily on this cold reading technique.
Test 1
Professor Chris French of
Goldsmith’s College, London, did the first test of Derek’s ability. Derek’s task was to read six children’s minds in the absence of their parents and
write down the information that the he got telepathically from the children. The rationale of this test is that if Derek really is acquiring information
from the minds of children then he should be able to come up with a report containing information that is specific enough for the parents to recognise
their own child from the information.
There were six children, six readings, six reports made by Derek, and six parents. Each parent was given
all six reports and they had to choose the one that they thought was most relevant to their own child.
Of course, there’s always a chance that
parents could pick the correct report for their own child purely by chance (they have a 1 in 6 chance of doing so) so how can it be known whether a
report was picked because it was accurate or simply by chance? Well, for any single case we don’t know; but as there are six parents doing the picking it
becomes increasingly unlikely that they would all choose the right one purely by chance. Fortunately, statistics can be used to tell us how likely it is
that any given number of readings will be picked correctly purely by chance. When six people choose one from six reports at random the most likely
outcome is that one of them will choose the correct one. For four or more parents to pick the correct one by chance the odds of this happening are 115 to
1 against. Four or more correct answers was the required level set by Professor French as the pass mark for the test. This means that if four or more
parents picked the correct report for their own child then we can say that Derek’s claims are supported (but not proven) as the result was unlikely to
have arisen by chance.
An important point to note at this point is that one test does not prove or disprove psychic ability. Four parents
could have chosen the correct reports purely by chance (115 to 1 against is not colossal odds). This is why such tests need to be replicated. If
a psychic could pass tests at this level consistently then it would be very difficult indeed to keep arguing that it is down to chance.
As it
turned out, only one of the parents from the six matched the report for their child to their child correctly. This is exactly at chance level.
What can we conclude from this? Well, if Derek really had the ability to connect telepathically with a child and glean information then we would expect
the parent of the child to be able to recognise their own child by the information that is specific to them. As the parents failed to match any reports
above what chance guessing predicts then we can conclude that in this test there was no indication or evidence that Derek can connect psychically to
children as he claims he does.
It was interesting to note that during this test, Derek was complaining that he found it difficult to read the
children when their parents weren’t present. This is consistent with skeptics’ observation that Derek is cold reading the parents, not telepathically
connecting to the child. Further support for this view was that Derek started reading the childminder (who was present with the child during the tests)
resorting to his more familiar pattern of reading where he’s used to getting feedback. Feedback being a non-psychic interaction from the client which
helps the reading enormously - in fact, it's actually where most of the
information comes from in a psychic reading (not the psychic).
Test 2 - The JREF $1,000,000 challenge
The next test we see Derek undertake is the JREF $1,000,000 challenge in Florida. James
Randi devised a test along similar lines to the one described on this website.
[3]Again, the idea is that if Derek can tune
into the mind of a child then he should be able to state which toy the child is currently playing with.
This time, the child was chosen by
Derek as one whom he could connect with telepathically. Derek was shown the 10 target toys that he would have to pick up on during the test and then he
was placed in an isolated and soundproofed room. A toy was chosen at random and given to the child. Derek’s task was to connect to the child and state
which toy he was playing with. This was repeated ten times and at the end of the trials Derek’s answers were checked against the toys the child actually
played with.
As $1,000,000 was at stake, the odds of success were set higher than in Professor French’s test. Derek would have to successfully
match 6 or more toys for the result to be considered a success (6,807 to 1 against doing this purely by chance). Derek had agreed to the test conditions
and the odds as being fair before the test commenced.
Derek scored 1 match out of 10 - exactly what chance guessing would predict.
So again, we can conclude that Derek’s claim to be able to communicate telepathically with children doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
When
testing a claim like this it is imperative that the thing that is under consideration (in this case Derek’s claim to be able to connect telepathically to
children) is the only thing that is tested. It is quite easy for Derek to claim to be connecting to children’s minds when there are no test conditions
imposed (and he could be cold reading the parents etc.) but test conditions require that when testing for telepathy that telepathy,
and only
telepathy, is what is being tested. This is why the strict conditions are imposed during testing.
The finale
Up to
this point the programme had been a much better than normal (for a TV programme) at looking at psychic ability. However, TV programme makers never like
to shut the door on such things and always like to leave something ‘open’ – let’s say ‘for balance’ rather than an excuse to make more similar programmes
with an eye on future advertising revenue…
The final sequence showed Derek having his brain scanned by Dr. Gerald Gluck. Gluck advertises
himself as an “energy healer” (i.e. a quack). This does not mean that he can’t use an EEG machine properly but his belief in non-physical cause and
effect should be borne in mind when his interpretation of the evidence is presented.
Derek was connected up to an EEG machine, which measured
his brain-wave patterns whilst he was doing a typical reading of his (a child with its parents present). The results of the test showed that Derek had a
much higher than normal level of activity in one area of his brain: the area that deals with non-verbal communication (imagery, body language, emotion,
etc.)
This is where the programme became rather unsatisfactory and reliant upon ambiguity and obfuscation. Gluck was asked what these results
meant and he replied that they were consistent with what Derek was claiming. But we weren’t told with which of Derek’s claims!
Derek claims
that when he’s communicating telepathically he gets images, pictures or movies in his mind and it’s these that he interprets whilst giving a psychic
reading. Now, if we accept that Derek does indeed get vivid mental imagery in his mind (and this is not anything unusual) then the results of his EEG
scan are consistent with this.
They are not consistent with psychic ability, however, simply because Derek failed to
show any psychic
ability: the results cannot explain an ability that does not exist! The EEG results are consistent with a person having rich, possibly even
hallucinatory, mental imagery but for them to be consistent with, or a possible explanation for, psychic ability that ability would have to have been
demonstrated in the first place.
The programme did not make this point clear and this was probably done on purpose as it all seemed designed
to
infer that the EEG results meant a psychic ability was there. All it really provides is a possible explanation as to why Derek believes he
has psychic ability even though he clearly doesn’t.
Conclusion
There are many reasons why psychic abilities can
appear to be real: the interactive nature of readings, people’s confirmation bias, subjective validation, and prior beliefs, for example. To
test for psychic ability,
and only psychic ability, these other factors need to be controlled for (eliminated from the investigation). The
scientific experiment, or hypothesis testing, is designed to do this. In hypothesis testing only one single variable should be tested for at a time
(although there are more complex testing procedures that can do more) so that when the results of the experiment are examined, they can only be due to
the single thing being measured.
This was done twice with Derek Ogilvie. Twice extraneous factors were removed and tests designed so that he
could only pass them by using the telepathy he claims to have. In both tests he scored at exactly chance level. This indicates that his claimed psychic
ability doesn’t exist and that any positive results he gets out ‘in the field’ are due to psychological and interpersonal factors rather than psychic
ability. In other words, when Derek is operating in his own way (with no test conditions imposed) then he’s simply cold reading the parent(s) of the
child.
