It would interesting to compare how effective they are in aiding investigations.

It would be useful to have a similar database to assess the work of psychics, and Truzzi and Lyons referred to ongoing efforts to gather data of this sort, but I didn’t find out yet if this is still ongoing. But even if it only confirms what intuition led them to in the first place, the FBI is gathering data which will hopefully allow them to not only examine their theories and see if there is any truth to them, but to look back and assess their own effectiveness. The Blue Sense authors, for instance, described policing as more clinical art than forensic science.

This helps reveal patterns in a more systematic, scientific way. I have to point out that in addition to providing profiles that may help law enforcement find suspects, the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit also maintains a database on violent criminals and crimes. Gladwell compared what FBI profilers do to “cold readings,” the technique some psychics use to gather information from the people around them in a way that makes it look like they pulled the data out of thin air. “… none of the three groups scored better than they would have if left to chance, but the psychics produced 10 times as much information, increasing their likelihood of a chance hit.” She pointed to the results of a 1982 study that compared the responses from psychic sleuths, college students and homicide detectives. “Psychics often speak in a stream-of-consciousness style, piling on impressions,” Jill Neimark wrote in Psychology Today. A forensics science professor I emailed called Hurkos’s technique “a pastiche of common sense, stereotypes, and popular mythology.” If you throw enough out there that might fit the given situation you’re bound to get something right. In fact, explanations that are made to explain away psychics could also be applied to profilers. In a 2007 New Yorker piece about criminal profiling, famed FBI profiler John Douglas is quoted as saying, “If there’s a psychic component to this, I won’t run from it.” This was a skeptical piece about profilers, and the author Malcolm Gladwell intended this quote as further evidence that the work of profilers is suspect. He thought Catchings was just highly observant and would have made a good police detective. But Stinnett didn’t think Catchings had supernatural powers. Stinnett of the Maryland State Police credited Dallas psychic John Catchings with helping them find the body of murder victim Mary Cook Spence in the 80’s. Some people don’t think the process is different, however. That is similar to what profilers do, the difference is the information gathering process. At best, they supply information which may lead to find a missing child, a body or a suspect.

In essence, what psychics do is help with investigations. While stories of psychic’s abilities were exaggerated, they weren’t as insubstantial as debunkers insisted, and Truzzi and Lyons compared them in usefulness to FBI profilers. Marcello Truzzi and Arthur Lyons, the authors of The Blue Sense, a study of psychics and their work solving crime, concluded that the existing evidence of a “blue sense” did not yet meet the burden of proof, but they added that a lack of proof does not equal disproof, and that more study was required. “We do not know enough about the abilities we are studying to be able to apply them reliably … The worst part of it is that there is no adequate assurance that the impressions that come to the mind are due to ESP and are reliable even when they actually are.” (Italics mine.) Rhine tried to point out to the father of the missing California boy, who had asked him for the names of psychics: And, as it turned out, he supplied genuinely useful information, although no one knew this at the time, which is the problem J. However the other psychic in the chapter, Harold Sherman, went out of his way to respond honestly and compassionately. It’s largely a negative chapter because of one particular psychic, Peter Hurkos, who I believe acted irresponsibly. I wrote a chapter in my book about two psychics who had gotten involved in a case of a missing boy in California. I had intended to talk about the similarities between psychics and criminal profiling. As usual, once I’m on the radio I forget what I wanted to say.

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