samedi 10 décembre 2016

Psychic dream detective Chris Robinson debunked

I have been looking for skeptical material on the alleged psychic dream detective Chris Robinson.

I managed to find this reported by Richard Wiseman in his book Night School (2014), so thought I would share it:

Quote:

A few years ago I tested top 'dream detective' Chris Robinson. Robinson believes that his dreams can be used to solve crimes and avert national disasters, and claims to have predicted several terrorist incidents, including the attack on the Twin Towers and the London Underground bombings. The subject of numerous television programmes, Robinson frequently informs the police about his psychic tip-offs.

I investigated Robinson's alleged abilities as part of a television programme looking into psychic detection. We approached Scotland Yard's 'Black Museum', and they kindly loaned us three objects; a scarf used by a rogue milkman to strangle a customer, a bullet that had killed a policeman as he tried to arrest two car thieves, and a shoe that had belonged to a murdered woman. We placed each object in a separate box, and labelled the boxes 'A', 'B' and 'C'. Even though Robinson was unaware of the nature of the objects or crimes, he claimed that he would be able to obtain information about them in his dreams. In addition, two other alleged psychics handled the objects and tried to divine the nature of the crimes.

As a control, a group of my students were asked to look at the objects and guess what had happened during each of the crimes (I have since seen the student's exam results, and can confirm they have no special abilities). A panel of researchers judged the accuracy of their comments, with the results revealing that the psychics performed no better than the students.
Source:

Richard Wiseman. (2014). Night School: Wake Up to the Power of Sleep. Macmillan. pp. 201-202

Wiseman's paper originally appeared in 1996:

Wiseman, R; West, D; Stemman, R. (1996). An Experimental Test of Psychic Detection. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 61: 34-45.

Does anyone else have any skeptical coverage of Chris Robinson?


via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2goGqi4

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