Fallibility and idiocy combine in psychistry

[GeoffP]

This event takes the cake. It's bizarre enough that it seems almost dubious...yet, knowing humans, it actually seems statistically likely that it would happen sooner or later. I give you:

The Tale of the Psychotic Psychic

Psychic Nearly Destroys Family

Benjamin Radford
LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist
LiveScience.com
Thu Jul 17, 9:05 PM ET

Many people go to psychics for a handful of typical reasons. They want to know if they will get their dream job soon, or make a big move, or end up with the hunky new guy who seems shy but might just be The One.
Most of the subjects are personal, minor, and relatively inconsequential. If the information seems valid, then the client is happy. If none of it comes true, then the subject just chalks it up to a bad reading and only loses a few bucks. No real harm done.

Aside from the bucks.

But what happens when the psychic lies to the client (or is wrong), telling her information that is not true about something with real-world consequences?

Consider the case of Colleen Leduc, a single mother of an autistic eleven-year-old girl in Barrie, Ontario. On May 30, she left her daughter Victoria at her elementary school. Leduc was soon called back to the school urgently, and confronted by the principal, Victoria's teacher, and a teacher's aide (educational assistant, or EA). Puzzled and alarmed, Leduc asked what was going on. The group told her that they believed that Victoria was being sexually abused. They had contacted the Children's Aid Society, a case file had been opened, and her daughter might be taken from her "for her own safety."

Horrifying and shocking. And how was this known?

Leduc was shocked by the explanation: "The teacher looked at me and said: 'We have to tell you that Victoria's EA went to see a psychic and the psychic asked her if she works with a little girl with the initial V. When the EA said yes, the psychic said, 'Well, you need to know that this girl is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'" The EA reported it to the teacher, who then went to the principal, and so on.

Because Victoria is autistic, the child couldn't speak for herself about the alleged abuse. Leduc didn't believe the psychic's allegations, and said they could not be true since her daughter did not even come in contact with any men of those ages. Furthermore, Leduc could prove it: Because of Victoria's disability, Leduc had equipped her daughter with a GPS tracking system and a continuous audio recorder. A review of the audio proved that at no point was Victoria sexually abused in any way by anyone.

The case was eventually closed, but Leduc was stunned that it had gotten as far as it did based on such dubious evidence. The psychic has not been identified nor arrested for providing false report of a crime. (For more on this, see www.WhatsTheHarm.net, a web site the tracks the damage done by psychics.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience...troysfamily;_ylt=AnmAcaEWR7bKfZiATtdv5dazvtEF

Astounding. And yet some propose to legislate such uncontrollable minutiae as the food preferences of children, under the blithe assumption of the fairness of the human mind.

Geoff

 

[cosmictraveler]

Because Victoria is autistic, the child couldn't speak for herself

Autistic children can speak for themselves, just because they have a learning disorder doesn't make them stupid to what is going on to them.

Autistic: a variable developmental disorder that appears by age three and is characterized by impairment of the ability to form normal social relationships, by impairment of the ability to communicate with others, and by stereotyped behavior patterns. (dictionary)

 

[GeoffP]

True. She must have been an extreme case if she had a recorder on her the whole time. I have to admit I'm not so well read on it.

 

[cosmictraveler]

Or she might have been very very young. One thing to remember is that autisim doesn't mean that people can't remember what's happening to them.

 

[GeoffP]

I will remember it alw...er..alllw...what was I talking about?