The skeptic versus the psychic

Last Wednesday (26^th Nov, 2008), UK-Skeptics were contacted by Shannonside Northern Sound Radio in Longford, Ireland to see if we could supply a skeptic to take part in a live debate about psychics and Cold Reading: the techniques psychics use to convince people they are passing messages from the dead or that they are telling them things they couldn’t possibly know and such like.

We don’t normally take part in these ’skeptics versus believer’ debates as they usually turn out to be of little value – skeptics often being included simply to provide some token opposition. UKS forum member Richard Sutherland decided that he would, however, represent the skeptics’ side of the debate; and this conversation turned out to quite different to the usual:

The first point of note was that the radio station were not doing the programme simply to promote the psychic. Host Joe Finnegan actually sounded rather sceptical of psychics’ claims himself and did a good job of allowing both sides of the debate to be heard.

The second point of note was the the psychic, who calls herself ‘psychic Anna’ (Anna Brennan), agreed live on air to take the JREF $1,000,000 paranormal challenge.

Listen to the broadcast here:

UKS Media: listen to the skeptic vs the psychic programme (MP3)

Despite the usual insults and personal attacks by the psychic (“you’re negative”, “you’re cold”, “I’d like to know what happened to you as a child to make you this way”, “I feel sorry for people who can’t open up to possibilities”, etc.), Richard did a superb job of getting information pertaining to the debate over and did a sterling job in representing skeptics and skepticism.

The main purpose of this commentary, however, is to leave a permanent record of ‘psychic Anna’ (Anna Brennan) agreeing to taking the JREF $1,000,000 challenge live on air.

It is extremely unlikely that she will actually go through with this and if she’s pressed on the issue will undoubtedly come out with the old and tired excuses – but we do have a record of her agreeing to it.