The Telepathy Tapes

[jimmyslippin]

I hope some of you will take the time to listen to the podcast. There are so many stories, doctors, studies, parents, teachers, anecdotes referenced it's impossible to wrap it up in a video for y'all to debunk. In the podcast episode about akil there are tests when he is in a different room, but they aren't pictured on their website.

Speaking just for myself (though I would not be surprised if many other people feel this way), I'm not interested in stories and anecdotes after decades of ufology. The stories people tell are what they perceive (or in some cases, completely made up) and do not always align with reality. I'm interested in verifiable evidence. I'm interested in testing performed using the scientific method with controls in place to eliminate outside influence. I'm not going to get any of that by listening to a podcast.

Look at the reaction from these two "facilitators" when double-blind testing debunked Facilitated Communication in the early 90s. I bet they had a lot of stories and anecdotes to tell before suddenly coming to the realisation it is pseudoscience.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox7cShA6OOM

 

[analiennamed]

These videos come from the Telepathy Tapes website. But you gotta sign up and hand over $9.99 to watch them. No thanks.

@analiennamed I understand there's a video where Akhil performs a test while his mother is in a separate room. Are you able to provide that one?



The mothers have an undeniable influence in all of the videos I've seen so far. As I pointed out before, Houston and his mother are using RPM, and you can clearly see in the video that the mother is positioning the board each time so the symbol needed is closest to the pointed pencil in Houston's hand. If the symbol is on the top row of the stencil she holds it low. If it's on the bottom row she holds it high. If it's on the left she holds the stencil closer to herself. If it's on the right she holds it further away. It's clearly a product of facilitator induced responses that RPM is known for. To further highlight how ridiculous this is, Houston can actually verbalise the symbols using his own voice, and does so as he "selects" them on the stencil. So why is the mother even needed to hold a stencil at all?

Then there's Mia, who is blindfolded while performing different tests. In one, she sorts coloured popsticks into different piles. In another, a coloured ball is placed in front of her while blindfolded, and then afterwards she types its colour. In both of these tests Mia's mother has her hand placed directly across Mia's forehead!

I agree with your sentiment that the mom is there doing stuff. And I wish she wasn't. I know what website I'm having this discussion on. The podcast has soooo much more in terms of stories, anecdotes, references to studies, descriptions of the tests, but everything available for 9.99 is debunkable because the kid can see their parent. I'm hoping the documentary under production gives us better test circumstances / controls, but idk when it's coming out. The podcast is free, it's entertaining and if you're interested you should listen, even if only to reassure your debunk is sound.

 

[Gaspa]

That's a lot of sophisticated coordination

You keep saying that. But it's not sophisticated. It's just cuing one letter at a time. They don't need to cue any complex idea.

People have written entire books like this. https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/books

 

[Charlie Wiser]

I hope some of you will take the time to listen to the podcast. There are so many stories, doctors, studies, parents, teachers, anecdotes referenced it's impossible to wrap it up in a video for y'all to debunk. In the podcast episode about akil there are tests when he is in a different room, but they aren't pictured on their website.

I have listened to the podcast and watched all the videos.

No, there are not "tests" when he's in a different room. There is one informal moment on the podcast where he goes to another room to watch YouTube (this appears to be his reward for performing his tricks) and while Ky is telling the cameraman to get in there (he doesn't get there in time), Akhil calls out a "telepathic" answer. That's it.

 

[analiennamed]

I have listened to the podcast and watched all the videos.

No, there are not "tests" when he's in a different room. There is one informal moment on the podcast where he goes to another room to watch YouTube (this appears to be his reward for performing his tricks) and while Ky is telling the cameraman to get in there (he doesn't get there in time), Akhil calls out a "telepathic" answer. That's it.

So do you dismiss this as a lie?

 

[Ann K]

I agree with your sentiment that the mom is there doing stuff. And I wish she wasn't.

But she was, and that should be acknowledged.

The podcast has soooo much more in terms of stories, anecdotes, references to studies

But anecdotes are not verified facts, and THAT should be acknowledged as well. Most of us are simply unconvinced that there is sufficient evidence to take the matter seriously, especially since there is no plausible mechanism postulated for such a phenomenon. Most of us, however, trust science and trust the facts that are verified, and IF and WHEN such evidence is verified and presented, we can always revisit the subject, but that time is not now.

 

[John J.]

If you read that article, there is no way you will still think he's a good faith actor. If in your reply you mean to simply call Sheldrake mean names, don't bother responding please. Engage substantively, or not at all.

That's your opinion, but I think you're incorrect on this one (you'll probably think I am!)
I don't know Richard Wiseman, but I've met him a few times, seemed a genuinely nice guy. His published academic criticisms /rebuttals of extraordinary claims (e.g. Hal Puthoff's remote viewing claims) are very careful to be polite and focus on methodological and/ or interpretive errors.

Rupert Sheldrake has made a career from promoting pseudoscientific theories and running experiments of questionable rigour, sometimes with media involvement, which tend to support his views but whose findings are not reproduced by others.

Seeing as Susan Blackmore was mentioned, Re. Sheldrake's Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home (1999),

Reviewing the book, Susan Blackmore criticised Sheldrake for comparing the 12 tests of random duration—which were all less than an hour long—to the initial tests where the dog may have been responding to patterns in the owner's journeys. Blackmore interpreted the results of the randomised tests as starting with a period where the dog "settles down and does not bother to go to the window," and then showing that the longer the owner was away, the more the dog went to look.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake

And what breakthroughs have been made in Morphic Resonance research since 1981?
If it's a guiding principle for the Universe, or at least all life, what has Sheldrake, or any of his supporters, done to investigate or detect the field(s) and/or force(s) that must be involved?

 

[analiennamed]

But she was, and that should be acknowledged.

But anecdotes are not verified facts, and THAT should be acknowledged as well. Most of us are simply unconvinced that there is sufficient evidence to take the matter seriously, especially since there is no plausible mechanism postulated for such a phenomenon. Most of us, however, trust science and trust the facts that are verified, and IF and WHEN such evidence is verified and presented, we can always revisit the subject, but that time is not now.

There is a bit of a catch 22 there no? How do you get support for scientific testing when you're already certain there is no mechanism possible? Seems like you're done before you started

 

[jimmyslippin]

I have listened to the podcast and watched all the videos.

No, there are not "tests" when he's in a different room. There is one informal moment on the podcast where he goes to another room to watch YouTube (this appears to be his reward for performing his tricks) and while Ky is telling the cameraman to get in there (he doesn't get there in time), Akhil calls out a "telepathic" answer. That's it.

Huh! Do you at least hear him calling out the answer?

In any case, it sounds very suspicious. Why wouldn't they just get Akhil to do it again with the cameraman there?

 

[analiennamed]

Huh! Do you at least hear him calling out the answer?

In any case, it sounds very suspicious. Why wouldn't they just get Akhil to do it again with the cameraman there?

I'm waiting for the documentary, but the podcast sounds sober and not new age weirdo.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

But do you think these folks would have the sophistication of support to answer dozens of random questions, reading multiple people's thoughts (the podcast discusses how cameramen got to participate and also had their minds read), random numbers... That's a lot of sophisticated coordination to have a 100% success rate no?

Listen carefully to the description of how the production assistant (not cameraman FWIW) participated. Ky tells us that Houston's mom told him (Sam) to write down a word. He wrote FRIEND. Then Houston spelled the word. Notice what's missing? Ky doesn't tell us if Houston's mom saw the word first.

Ky does this a lot - I've written about it on Twitter and the page linking to all my threads is here - she misrepresents in the podcast what we see on the videos, especially to make things sound more amazing than they are. Therefore, I don't trust her description of this event. I think she omitted the part where Houston's mom looked at the word, then "transmitted it telepathically" to Houston (which is the only telepathy we ever see or hear about relating to Houston - it always involves mom).

It's easy to say "answer dozens of random questions, reading multiple people's thoughts" etc. etc. but when you break it down and look at each individual incident, it's really not impressive. Repeating an unimpressive thing dozens of times doesn't add up to something impressive.

Here's an example of Ky misrepresenting what actually happens - we have the video to compare it to. In the Mia episode she describes the popsicle test in the audio podcast: Mia is blindfolded, mom hands her colored popsicle sticks, and Mia sorts them into the correct piles. Two problems:
1. Ky fails to mention that mom's hand is across Mia's forehead the entire time. It certainly looks to me like she's pushing and pulling to direct Mia's movements. Mia "requires" mom to touch a finger(s) to her forehead to focus her concentration, allegedly, and we see this in other tests, but for this test, for some reason, mom does it differently.
2. Ky describes the set-up as 6 colors: 2 rows of 3. We clearly see in the video that it's one row of 4 colors. (Did the 2x3 setup fail to demonstrate telepathy?)

We have 6 different colored popsicle sticks, yellow, purple, blue, green, etc. We're spreading the sticks out on a round end table… We have placed different colored popsicle sticks about 6 inches apart from one another in 2 rows of 3... We notice that our piles are so far spread apart that she's having trouble moving her body in such a way as to reach the far yellow pile. So we move the piles a bit closer together and she continues with her accuracy.

and another misrepresentation:

In fact what you see on the footage is that she put the greensticks where the green sticks go, the red sticks where the red sticks go, the purple sticks where the purple sticks go, etc. etc.

There is no "etc. etc." – there's only one other pile, the yellow sticks.

Source: Telepathy Tapes ep 1

For education and critique:


Source: https://youtu.be/hZpb_BSBxbA

 

[analiennamed]

You keep saying that. But it's not sophisticated. It's just cuing one letter at a time. They don't need to cue any complex idea.

People have written entire books like this. https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/books

Doing it at 100% for like half a dozen kids with learning disabilities involving multiple test types and people who are being read sounds sophisticated to me. In not all tests (my impression) did akils mom, or houstons mom, see the answers to the questions or know the words in the various camera people's heads.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

I'm waiting for the documentary, but the podcast sounds sober and not new age weirdo.

The podcast claims these kids can talk to the dead and cure cancer. It's new age weirdo.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

Huh! Do you at least hear him calling out the answer?

In any case, it sounds very suspicious. Why wouldn't they just get Akhil to do it again with the cameraman there?

Given mom's reluctance to do a simple flashcard test with a different telepathic sender, I honestly believe Akhil's case involves some trickery. In the tests that appear the most "amazing", both mom and Akhil are using ipads/phones. We don't see what's on Akhil's screen, so screensharing can't be ruled out.

ETA: Yes he calls out an answer describing a randomly generated image of a London phone booth: He calls syllables, "te-yeah-pumma" - mom repeats them more clearly "te-le", then he says "telephone" and "red".

 

[Charlie Wiser]

So do you dismiss this as a lie?

I'm pointing out your tendency to exaggerate. You do it again here:

see the answers to the questions or know the words in the various camera people's heads.

Who are these "various camera people"? Specify them. Because the podcast doesn't claim any such thing.

 

[Ann K]

There is a bit of a catch 22 there no? How do you get support for scientific testing when you're already certain there is no mechanism possible? Seems like you're done before you started

"Nobody will support the research" is an excuse, but it contains the seeds of the reason for that: "Nobody wants to support unproductive research". This is, of course, not entirely true, because there have always been some people with deep pockets who are willing to invest in highly speculative endeavors. But, as with the ganzfeld studies, they either did it sloppily, or got negative results when it was done rigorously.

Sorry, that's not our problem.

 

[John J.]

There is a bit of a catch 22 there no? How do you get support for scientific testing when you're already certain there is no mechanism possible? Seems like you're done before you started

There must be thousands of new psychology undergrads in the western world each year, many will be eager to run ESP experiments (or will have to as a classroom exercise).

There is nothing to stop pretty much anyone conducting a telepathy experiment at relatively low cost, if they can safely and ethically recruit enough subjects. There was huge interest in "psy" in the 60's and 70's, including from national governments (including the USA, USSR); interest waned precisely because no rigorous and replicable experimental methodology indicates that psychic powers exist. Not one.

Telepathy would be useful. Really useful. But the "best" telepaths use their skills on the light entertainment circuit.
Not finding lost children. Not communicating with the oppressed or imprisoned in foreign lands. Not to send crucial specialised information from, say, a trauma doctor to someone at the scene of a car crash in some remote place.

 

[metac3]

Seeing as Susan Blackmore was mentioned, Re. Sheldrake's Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home (1999),

It's incredibly tiring talking about this topic with people who are ankle deep, and who don't read the opposing views work.

This is why Blackmore thought there was a problem: "Sheldrake did 12 experiments in which he bleeped Pam at random times to tell her to return..... When Pam first leaves, Jaytee settles down and does not bother to go to the window. The longer she is away, the more often he goes to look."

Blackmore's theory is that she think that for the first hour the owner leaves, the dog ignores going to check the window, and only after the first hour has passed, does the dog start checking for the owner coming home.

In the light of Blackmore's comments, I have reanalyzed the data from all 12 experiments excluding the first hour. The percentage of time that Jaytee spent by the window in the main period of Pam's absence was actually lower when the first hour was excluded (3.1%) than when it was included (3.7%). By contrast, Jaytee was at the window 55.2% of the time when she was on the way home. Taking Blackmore's objection into account strengthens rather than weakens the evidence for Jaytee knowing when his owner was coming home, and increases the statistical significance of the comparison. (Including the first 60 minutes of Pam's absence in the analysis, by the paired-sample t test, t=-5.72, p=0.0001; excluding the first 60 minutes, t=-5.99, p<0.0001.) Blackmore's claim illustrates once again the need to treat what sceptics say with scepticism.

As it turns out, if you exclude the data from the first hour, the dog actually ends up spending less time at the window for the period where his owner is NOT coming home. In other words: Jaytee went to the window MORE often in the first hour, than afterwards. So excluding the data from first hour from the experiment, actually made it MORE clear that Jaytee only chose to spend long periods of time at the window WHEN his owner was coming home.

https://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/the-psychic-pet-phenomenon

 

[jimmyslippin]

There is a bit of a catch 22 there no? How do you get support for scientific testing when you're already certain there is no mechanism possible? Seems like you're done before you started

That's not what Ann is saying. It's pretty clear the testing currently being done is using flawed methodology. There appears to be little or no controls in place to mitigate against outside influence, which is a big red flag when taking into account the pseudoscientific nature of FC/RPM/S2C, etc..

When the method improves it may be worth examining again. But based on what is currently presented it seems to be of questionable credibility.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

"Nobody will support the research" is an excuse, but it contains the seeds of the reason for that: "Nobody wants to support unproductive research". This is, of course, not entirely true, because there have always been some people with deep pockets who are willing to invest in highly speculative endeavors. But, as with the ganzfeld studies, they either did it sloppily, or got negative results when it was done rigorously.

Sorry, that's not our problem.

I wish I could find it but I can't: I recently saw a post from Dr Powell (featured in the Telepathy Tapes) where she asks for telepathic kids who are telepathic with someone other than their facilitator, as she wants to test them in a lab setting. She realizes that apparent "telepathy" between the child and facilitator doesn't pass scientific scrutiny.

Anyway, she is interviewed here by Zaid Jilani and seems less than happy about how Ky Dickens presented the subject. (Emphasis in original)

When I raised the criticisms put forward by Lutz and Beale of the methodology used for Mia, she was actually sympathetic to their concerns.
She told me she regularly gets emails from families who use facilitated communication with their nonspeaking autistic children and turns down the opportunity to do her experiments with them because of all of the controversies around this communication method.
"I'd say that until the child is able to type independently, that they couldn't be a subject in my research," she told me. ...
"Ky has included people in the podcast that she sort of on her own talked with who used [Facilitated Communication]... to me, you're not going to be proving telepathy if that's what you're doing," she acknowledged. "You need something to be independently typing, and that's what I'm interested in. And that's what she has yet to film."

Source: https://www.theamericansaga.com/p/the-telepathy-tapes-is-taking-america

 

[metac3]

Geez! The guy does some meaningless, cargo-cult science, post-hoc analysis of the data to misrepresent the findings of their study in his book. And Sheldrake's fanboys think it's Wiseman who acts in bad faith. Go figure.

What Sheldrake says to the accusation of post-hoc analysis. https://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/the-psychic-pet-phenomenon

Wiseman, Smith & Milton try to justify ignoring the pattern shown by their data on the grounds that it was "post hoc". I cannot accept this argument. First, I had been plotting data on graphs right from the beginning of my research with Jaytee. Second, their dismissal of post hoc analysis would deny the validity of any independent evaluation of any published data. The whole point of publishing scientific data is to enable other people to examine and analyze them. Of necessity, the critical analysis of published data in any field of research can only be post hoc. And third, the plotting of graphs is not normally regarded as a controversial procedure in science. Consequently I do not agree with them that my representation of their results in my book (Sheldrake, 1999, Figure 2.5) is "misleading".

For the love of God, just read the original paper. It'll take you like 10 minutes to go through it and it'll answer many of the things you don't understand. Page 247 might be of particular interest to you as it shows the result of the control experiments where Pam doesn't come home, and Jaytee doesn't ever go to check the window. AKA window checking behavior only occurs when Pam IS coming home. The paper: https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdf...e_Videotaped-Experiments-and-Observations.pdf

 

[John J.]

In the light of Blackmore's comments, I have reanalyzed the data from all 12 experiments excluding the first hour. The percentage of time that Jaytee spent by the window in the main period of Pam's absence was actually lower when the first hour was excluded (3.1%) than when it was included (3.7%). By contrast, Jaytee was at the window 55.2% of the time when she was on the way home.

As it turns out, if you exclude the data from the first hour, the dog actually ends up spending less time at the window for the period where his owner is NOT coming home. In other words: Jaytee went to the window MORE often in the first hour, than afterwards. So excluding the data from first hour from the experiment, actually made it MORE clear that Jaytee only chose to spend long periods of time at the window WHEN his owner was coming home.

You've seen Sheldrake's published data?
(There's no appendices with raw data in the link to his paper).
Sheldrake's other data also supports "morphic resonance"; not many other researchers support his findings.

As a child, I thought there might be something to his worldview- the "unexplained" spread of birds pecking at silver foil milk bottle tops in order to get to the cream at the top, an example of morphic resonance.
But it doesn't take much knowledge of ornithology, or British milk delivery/ bottle collections in the 1970s, to come up with a prosaic explanation that doesn't require the birds to be acquiring knowledge through some quasi-mystical force.

 

[Gaspa]

experiments where Pam doesn't come home, and Jaytee doesn't ever go to check the window

That's not what it says.

The dog doesn't stay by the window as long, but he checks on it. And we don't know what happened after 10 pm.

Sample size is very small. There could be some sort of information leakage that cue the dog. The times when she came in by train or by bicycle, the dog would be able to smell her for minutes before she arrived, and just a few instances of that sort of thing would skew the data.
The whole thing is very unconvincing.

 

[MapperGuy]

for the record, the set up of the Randi show (and it was a show, with audience and lights etc) is bs. that set up is just as disingenuous as the tv psychics.

the thumbs down wasnt because of randi, it was for calling metac an ignoramus.

There is a lot more to the career or James Randi than whichever show you are talking about. I would suggest people not familiar with him should visit his wikipedia page and read the long list of his publications and public appearances. He exposed many charlatans and publicized how they performed the psychic tricks. His career covered a lot of ground and helped set the standards by which psychics were tested. With the result that many of them refused to participate in events with him. Seems that his mere presence in the building prevented their psychic powers from functioning (or so they claimed).

James Randi

 

[metac3]

There could be some sort of information leakage that cue the dog

My only purpose in bringing up that study was to show that Wiseman lied about his replication efforts for years; showing that he's a bad faith actor.

The ganzfeld rebuttal paper, where the authors admit that autodigital-ganzfeld replicates with a 300 to 1 signal, shouldn't be disbelieved simply because Wiseman, of all people, declares that psi hasn't been established. That was the entire point of this tangent.

 

[jimmyslippin]

Ok, I just watched all of the Akhil videos and there were a few things that instantly stood out.

As @Ann K pointed out earlier, when Akhil is spelling out CROCODILE the mother makes the same hand gesture for both C's, and another same hand gesture for both O's. I also noticed that when Akhil was asked for a word describing the image his mother was looking at (PAINT), the hand gestures for P, A and T are very similar to the ones she used when Akhil was asked to spell PATTE.

But the most glaring example is when Akhil is asked to say HOUSE. First, the mother chooses the word herself and writes it on a piece of paper. Then there is this exchange:

Mother: "Akhil, what is this? Ha!"
Akhil: Ha
Mother: Ha
Akhil: Ha
Mother: Ugh
Akhil: Ha
Mother: How
Akhil: Oh
Mother: Oh
Akhil: Seh
Mother: What is it?

She CLEARLY cues him with the "Ha!" at the end of her question. Given she chose the word herself makes me highly suspicious of what is happening here, and suggests this may have been rehearsed.

The mother is a giant red flag in ALL of these videos.

 

[jimmyslippin]

I wish I could find it but I can't: I recently saw a post from Dr Powell (featured in the Telepathy Tapes) where she asks for telepathic kids who are telepathic with someone other than their facilitator, as she wants to test them in a lab setting. She realizes that apparent "telepathy" between the child and facilitator doesn't pass scientific scrutiny.

Anyway, she is interviewed here by Zaid Jilani and seems less than happy about how Ky Dickens presented the subject. (Emphasis in original)

When I raised the criticisms put forward by Lutz and Beale of the methodology used for Mia, she was actually sympathetic to their concerns.
She told me she regularly gets emails from families who use facilitated communication with their nonspeaking autistic children and turns down the opportunity to do her experiments with them because of all of the controversies around this communication method.
"I'd say that until the child is able to type independently, that they couldn't be a subject in my research," she told me. ...
"Ky has included people in the podcast that she sort of on her own talked with who used [Facilitated Communication]... to me, you're not going to be proving telepathy if that's what you're doing," she acknowledged. "You need something to be independently typing, and that's what I'm interested in. And that's what she has yet to film."

Source: https://www.theamericansaga.com/p/the-telepathy-tapes-is-taking-america

I did get the impression that Powell wasn't happy with the popsicle test. She says "I was thinking that we would just have her... ummm..." and her voice trails off because they're moving ahead anyway.

Clear manipulation of the child's head by the mother in this one.

 

[FatPhil]

The podcast claims these kids can talk to the dead and cure cancer. It's new age weirdo.

By new age, do you mean "old testament"?

1 In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, "This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover."
...
7 Then Isaiah said, "Prepare a poultice of figs." They did so and applied it to the boil, and he recovered.

-- 2 Kings 20.
A "boil" that's fatal? That's a tumor, mate.

Talking to the dead? That's so prevalent in old-testament times Jahweh specifically bans the practice.

 

[FatPhil]

That's not what it says.
View attachment 76162

Those error bars make no sense.

 

[tinkertailor]

It's clearly a product of facilitator induced responses that RPM is known for. To further highlight how ridiculous this is, Houston can actually verbalise the symbols using his own voice, and does so as he "selects" them on the stencil. So why is the mother even needed to hold a stencil at all?

The FC answer to this is that autistic folks have difficulty following motor plans given to them by their brains. The word "apraxia" is often used. I know of the kind of apraxia seen after brain injury and stroke, and I know many autistic kids who have trouble with fine motor control, but I haven't yet researched this thoroughly enough to state whether it's true or not.

Most of the people using RPM or Spelling to Communicate or whatever rebranded form of FC out there can feed themselves, navigate to YouTube on a tablet, use TikTok etc. Somehow, the belief is that they can't speak or spell without support despite their extant strengths in other areas.

I would like to remind everyone that augmentative and alternative communication exists and is evidence based and efficient. It is like FC, but wholly independent and taught via modeling instead of maximal support.

I hope some of you will take the time to listen to the podcast

It would be easier to do that if you would provide us timestamps or, better yet, a transcription for each of the claims you name in the podcast. I would love to, but I have places to be and things to do. Many of us here have similar restrictions.

 

[tinkertailor]

But do you think these folks would have the sophistication of support to answer dozens of random questions, reading multiple people's thoughts (the podcast discusses how cameramen got to participate and also had their minds read), random numbers... That's a lot of sophisticated coordination to have a 100% success rate no?

Answering questions is very easy to train through behavioral methods alone (see: the applied behavioral analysis therapy that many autistic kids get in the US), questions aren't hard. I avoid questions with kids because they usually provide a false sense of mastery: kids can answer yes/no and multiple choice very easy, even fill-in-the-blank. Kids also get really good at giving adults the answers they think will make the adult happy. I have many clients who do 100% with questions but still can't explain why something is or come up with it independently.

"Random numbers" meaning out of 5? Out of 10,000? 1,000,000? Yeah, I could see it happening with FC. I've seen nonspeakers get college degrees while using FC.* When you're facilitating, anything can happen.

Basucally I believe anything is possible if a facilitator is in control, just like I believe any type of illusion is possible in a magic show. Take control away from the magician and my belief falters, just as with FC. I don't trust facilitators to be realistic about abilities.


*Nonspeakers are totally capable of things like getting degrees, but I can't say it's fully independent when it uses FC

 

[Gaspa]

My only purpose in bringing up that study was to show that Wiseman lied about his replication efforts for years; showing that he's a bad faith actor.

But you didn't show anything of the sort.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

By new age, do you mean "old testament"?

Everything old is new again.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

Ok, I just watched all of the Akhil videos and there were a few things that instantly stood out.

A few more things about Akhil's videos. Note: these earlier ones are from several years ago when Deepak Chopra visited (along with Dr Powell). We don't know what the protocol for those tests was - i.e. who provided the flashcards (random words) and did Akhil have the chance to see them at some point? If he did see them, and (say) there's only one word starting with each letter, then he can guess (remember) the entire word after mom cues him with the first letter.

Word: RETIRE
Mom says "Ready?" and Akhil starts (Mom again is making jerky movements constantly as he types letter by letter on a laptop, independently)
Akhil: types R
Mom: R...eeh.
Akhil: types E
Akhil always the keyboard aggressively, and when he hits the wrong letter mom says "hit it" or "fix it" (over and over and over) which tells him to delete and try again.

Word: MARBLE
Mom says "Go ahead - mmm?"

In both tests above, mom gives him the last letter E by saying: "And then, ee."

This test proves, to me anyway, that Akhil is getting letter-by-letter information rather than "seeing" the entire word via telepathy and then typing it:

Word: JMRAQ
After a false start (with mom saying "hit it, hit it", telling him to delete and try again), Akhil types JM with one aggressive jab at the keyboard. (M is right below J on the keyboard.)
Note that the needed word happens to start with JM. But Akhil deletes the M, because he knows it was accidentally hit and therefore wrong. If he knew the entire word before he started, he'd have left the M even though it was accidentally typed. This tells me he's being fed each letter one at a time. Mom talks and moves so much (including tapping his shoulder) that I don't know if she's giving him the answers herself or if some other trickery is involved.

Recall that with CROCODILE he starts typing, then halfway through he realizes what the word is and starts to laugh. (That's my interpretation.) This would happen if he's being fed the letters one at a time, but we're supposed to believe he saw the image of a crocodile in his mother's mind.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

I did get the impression that Powell wasn't happy with the popsicle test. She says "I was thinking that we would just have her... ummm..." and her voice trails off because they're moving ahead anyway.

Clear manipulation of the child's head by the mother in this one.

Also note that at the very start of the popsicle test, something goes wrong. Mia is holding the first stick and doesn't know where to put it. Possibly she doesn't know where her "home position" is - everyone is talking at once and perhaps her head is in a random position. Mom takes the stick away, while simultaneously moving Mia's head to face her, then gives her another one and moves her head slightly (one click left) which is position 2. Mom gives her another stick but doesn't move her head at all, which is position 1. Third stick, mom moves her head two clicks left, which is position 3... etc.

I don't think this is necessarily deliberate on mom's part, but given mom says Mia can "see everywhere" (not just what's in mom's mind), there's no reason the piles of sticks can't be hidden from mom's view.

We're not told that any other child is given this popsicle stick test. Did mom suggest it because Mia's done it before and mom has the sticks ready to go? When Uri Geller was tested in the 70s (pure trickery in that case) he suggested many of the tests because those were the specific tricks he knew how to do. For example, the "guess which container has the ball-bearing in it" trick, where, bizarrely, he had to eliminate all the empty ones before landing upon the correct one. (Randi suggested he was creating vibrations that made the empty ones wobble, hence he couldn't pass the test when the container had something light inside, like a piece of paper, but did pass when it had a ball-bearing or water inside.)

Oh, and they tested Mia with her father as the facilitator and she was unable to spell any answers at all. Nothing. If she can "see everywhere", why does it matter who's holding her spelling board?

 

[deirdre]

Doing it at 100% for like half a dozen kids with learning disabilities involving multiple test types and people who are being read sounds sophisticated to me. In not all tests (my impression) did akils mom, or houstons mom, see the answers to the questions or know the words in the various camera people's heads.

you do realize if they 100% of the time (or even 50%) with just a nanosecond glimpse of what their mother is thinking/seeing, can repeat it, that means they know EVERYTHING their mother thinks ALL THE TIME... do you honestly think moms, esp with severely disabled children, 100% of the time have warm and fuzzy thoughts about their children and their children's futures?

even the possibility a child might be this tuned in to his moms internal thoughts so easily, depresses the ever living hell out of me. you obviously dont know the nightmare scenarios caring parents with severely disabled children [rightfully] think and fret about.

 

[JMartJr]

I hope some of you will take the time to listen to the podcast. There are so many stories, doctors, studies, parents, teachers, anecdotes referenced it's impossible to wrap it up in a video for y'all to debunk.

Yeah, a feature of MetaBunk is to (try to) focus on one claim/incident at a time. This avoids the Gish-gallopy effects of, for example, videos where many cases are presented. You might pull what is, in your opinion, the best, most convincing case presented in the podcast and start a thread about it.

 

[deirdre]

There is a lot more to the career or James Randi than whichever show you are talking about.

the 'show' is the set up of the million dollar challenge. and he knew the set up was a problem because testees did much better in his pre-tests then they did on stage. (not that i would want to give away a million dollars either!)

Randis continuation of Houdini's work was fine and good.

 

[JMartJr]

So do you dismiss this as a lie?

For what it's worth, and just speaking for me and not being the one you asked -- I don't know if it's a lie, but it need not be a lie to be wrong. People relate things that they sincerely but wrongly believe to be true pretty frequently. Going straight to "are you calling so-and-so a liar" is a tactic UFOlogists use to make it seem rude and confrontational to question them. I do not believe that was your intent, but it can read that way in a board full of people who have had the tactic used on them over the years.

 

[Gaspa]

I hope some of you will take the time to listen to the podcast. There are so many stories, doctors, studies, parents, teachers, anecdotes referenced it's impossible to wrap it up in a video for y'all to debunk.

Just to echo the sentiments of others: we have seen enough points of data to show that, whatever else they have to say in their stories, they are very poor judges of what is going on. They included these examples in the video, certainly, because they found them all to be so impressive and good evidence for their beliefs. They are evidence of self-deception at best.

We know by now that this was made by true believers who are very gullible and very bad at evaluating things. I feel like, at this point, anyone who remains convinced that there is anything to it, is just being a victim of wishful thinking. Any sort of "but what about this? and what about this one?" is stubborness.

I mean, sure, I bet it can be shown "how the trick is done" in each and every case, but that's not necessary to conclude that the whole thing is bunk.