Battling the Bands

Gold takes local action against PowerBalance, with encouraging results.

PowerBalance Bands are hideously expensive silicon rubber wristbands with a mylar hologram in them. PowerBalance, an American company, made a killing with these after convincing some popular sports personalities that they had the ability to improve their strength and performance. They achieved this by working “with the body’s natural energy field”. They were shut down in Australia due to the work of a number of people, including Richard Saunders of the Skeptic Zone podcast who did a great informal double blind test with the Today Tonight show and the local distributor1.

After this happened I found that these were all over the place on TradeMe. From memory there were on average 30+ listings for these at any given time. This was when I discovered something quite handy on TradeMe. The site has a Community Watch feature that allows you to report listings for all sorts of reasons. These are checked and the item is taken down if the complaint stands up. With the recent takedown of PowerBalance in Australia it wasn’t hard to convince TradeMe to remove the listings. Within a week the average number of listings was around 3-4 and I would hammer these every few days to keep the number low. As I write there are 10 listings if you search for “power balance bands” on TradeMe. I’ll submit complaints about these after I get this article off.

Recently a local skeptic, who we’ll refer to as Bob, started posting a listing which was a copy of the Corrective Notice from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission2 with a description that explained exactly what PowerBalance bands are, how they fool you into thinking there is an effect (they use a 70-year-old stage magician’s trick that relies on applied kinesiology), and that any proceeds from the sale of the Notice would go to the NZ Skeptics Society as a donation. Despite being very clear about the fact that the product for sale is a printout of the Corrective Notice3 which PowerBalance were ordered to post on their site, the member has been instructed to no longer post these listings.

The Solution? Placebo Bands. The Skeptic Bros4 are a couple of guys from Australia who tracked down a manufacturer for these silicon bands, scraped the money together, had a Placebo Band design made up, ordered the first 1000 (minimum order) and crossed their fingers. The bands sold well. Bob currently has a supply of these that are being listed on TradeMe, so you’ll be able to get your own should you want one. Proceeds (after covering costs) will be donated to the NZ Skeptics Society.

The American company is still active, although they have also recently filed for Chapter 115.

  1. YouTube: goo.gl/dN1i8
  2. TGA ruling: goo.gl/bMVEp
  3. Retraction notice: goo.gl/j8mw4
  4. The Skeptic Bros: goo.gl/NUGWU
  5. Google News: goo.gl/o4XWx

Fraud or Well-Meaning: it´s all the same to me

The paranormal field contains both con artists and the well-intentioned. It’s often impossible to tell one from the other, but in the end it makes little difference. This article is based on a presentation to the University of the Third Age.

People want reassurance about the future. We seek some kind of certainty, whether in the form of three-year political plans, saving for retirement, or looking for comfort in the various forms of crystal ball that try to make guesswork and psychological manipulation look like the truth.

We try to maintain a balance between wide-eyed credulity and close-minded cynicism as we´re bombarded with claim and counter-claim, miracles, astounding revelations, scientific discoveries, technological advancement, belief, faith and fact. We look for explanations.

One of the things that makes us vulnerable to con artists and well-intentioned loonies alike is our tendency to want to believe that someone is being straight with us. If they say they can predict earthquakes, then that’s what they are doing; if they say they can talk to the dead, then they really must be able to talk to the dead.

It’s not considered polite to express any form of scepticism or disbelief. And even those whose job is to do so, such as the members of the Fourth Estate, are often caught out by this. Something has to be really kooky sounding for our warning bells to go off, and there are people more than willing to dress up their favourite scam with all the trimmings of sophistry and science to get us to put hand to wallet, or simply just to believe in them and what they are telling us.

That said, it’s my belief that the vast majority of people in the very dodgy paranormal and pseudoscience businesses are not being deliberately fraudulent. Wilfully ignorant perhaps: unquestioning believers in their own egos and super-powers certainly.

I don’t know if forecaster Ken Ring is a fraud or really believes that he can predict the weather and earthquakes; whether he’s motivated by a desire to sell as many books as possible or simply wants to help the public. I can say the same about Paddy Freaney who said he saw a moa up in the Craigieburn mdash; it may have been a genuine sighting, or a mistake, or simply a clever marketing ploy to get more business for his nearby Bealey Hotel. And Deb Webber of Sensing Murder fame mdash; was it a desire to help desperate parents that saw her claim to psychically connect with missing Auckland toddler Aisling Symes or was it part of her pre-scheduled television appearance to hawk discounted entry tickets to her New Zealand tour?

You be the judge. But if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck… there may be something fowl there.

Sometimes the signs are just too too obvious. And it really helps to be aware of them. Think of a little applied scepticism as consumer protection for the mind.

How good is the information being provided? If the photos are blurry, reserve judgement as to whether you are seeing Bigfoot or a man in a gorilla suit. If the clinical trial has a sample size of 12, all carefully selected by the man looking to connect autism and vaccinations to sue Big Pharma, then it’s not Big Pharma you should be wary of. If the medium claims to be speaking to or about your dearly departed, listen closely to really see if they are telling you anything beyond the obvious.

On Sensing Murder Kelvin Cruickshank once pronounced this as an amazing revelation regarding the funeral of six-year-old murder victim Alicia O’Reilly:

“It sounds a little weird, but she must have been buried in a white coffin.”

But there’s nothing weird about a little girl being buried in a white coffin mdash; it’s a fairly common practice for children’s funerals. Not to mention the fact that the coffin was clearly seen in the widespread television coverage of the funeral. I think he phrased it that way to make it sound more amazing, as if he really was getting knowledge from the beyond, and few of us would stop and say “hang on a minute…”

We all have a lot in common, and the psychic industry exploits that to make the banal sound amazing. There’s a reason why mediums come up with the same names over and over again.

Mediums never come up with names like Piripi Te Aorangi or Sione, but concentrate on relatively common men’s names. A widow-heavy clientele makes that a necessary line but, more subtly, men often have traditional family names. So, instead of names like Dwayne or Dylan, mediums will ask about John or Michael, Charles or Richard, William or David.

It would be surprising if you couldn’t think of someone with the name John in your extended family. Mediums boost the odds by accepting middle names, nicknames, friends and colleagues, and they don’t even have to be dead to count as a hit. That can be explained away by saying the spirit world is watching over the living person. Mediums will commonly fire out a dozen names per reading, so it would be very surprising if they missed getting at least one apparent hit.

Some psychics hedge their bets even further by simply providing an initial. Few get quite as ludicrous as one desperate medium who, on not being able to get his subject to recall any special name beginning with “M”, finally blurted out, “Ah, it&39;s M for Mother&33;”

And we actually help them, with our willingness to suspend disbelief and to provide information, often without realising it. Cunning mediums, particularly those on the professional circuit, know how to exploit this fact, weaving our words into their patter and feeding it back to us as if it was something they knew all along.

TV3 flew me up to a book launch for medium Jeanette Wilson&59; the reporter was very excited that this woman was the real deal because she could provide actual names. We went to the launch and later this investigative journalist gushed about how Wilson had told one audience member that his father was called Frank. Fortunately, we&39;d caught that exchange on tape, so I got her to play it back. It went like this:
JW: Does the name Frank have any meaning for you?
Subject: My father was Frank.
JW: Yes, that&39;s right. I understand.

You don&39;t have to be foolish to be fooled. Those going to psychics or mediums are often desperate to believe, which makes them easy to exploit, but even those whose job depends on careful listening and recall can be easily misdirected.

I&39;ve done this sort of thing myself, when asked to impersonate a psychic and demonstrate the tricks and techniques used by the trade.

So you should listen for obvious cueing and changes of tack, or those spurious affirmations when an error is noted which flips it around to sound as if they knew all along.

Another example from Kelvin Cruickshank, this time looking at Alicia&39;s drawings. He spotted a depiction of her pet, something black and four-legged – her dog, he announced. Off-camera someone said “a cat”. The film crew knew there was a cat in the O’Reilly household, as it had been part of the mother’s story. “Oh cat is it?” said Cruickshank. “Oh it is too.”

What is psychic about that?

It can be really handy if you can identify a clear factual statement that can be checked out. This is harder than it sounds, as unequivocal statements are not part of the psychic stock in trade. It can also be difficult to check facts without having personal contacts or knowledge to draw upon. That said, there was something in the Sensing Murder programme about Alicia O&39;Reilly that could be checked.

Cruickshank made much of Alicia talking about children&39;s television show What Now?, and how that must have been a Saturday morning treat for her, adding that this clearly indicated her murder took place in the 1980s. This was made more dramatic by a voiceover noting that Alicia had been murdered in 1980. However, according to TVNZ, What Now? didn´t go on air until nine months after Alicia’s murder…

Con artists and True Believers alike will provide some kind of ad hoc explanation to either deny or explain away such errors. I often ask people, “how many times would it take for you to get things wrong before you would consider that maybe you aren&39;t doing what you think you are?” People with a vested interest in their own powers will very, very rarely face up to that.

Best yet, look for solid predictions, record them before the event and see how they stack up afterwards.

The most entertaining and regular examples of these are the tabloid predictions made at the beginning of every year. There are two things these regular features have in common:
1. a large proportion of predictions are wrong, even when plausible instead of downright silly;
2. they consistently miss the truly surprising, truly huge news events of the year.

Skeptics around the world track these and see how the “psychics to the stars” do, people who are touted as the best in the business. Back in 2004 the more plausible predictions involved the deaths of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro. All wrong. As were the really off-the-wall predictions of the discovery of live dinosaurs, and US General Colin Powell switching political parties to trounce George Bush and become a Democrat president.

What did the psychics miss that year? Just the massive Boxing Day tsunami that saw 214,000 people die across 11 countries. Surely it shouldn´t have been too difficult for just one of them to feel that sort of death and destruction reverberate through the cosmic ether?

However, of greater concern are those predictions which have a real personal impact on us and affect our behaviour and the behaviour of those around us.

Every year we get the prediction of San Francisco falling into the sea. It&39;s not there yet. But every year it comes back, along with other end-of-the-world scenarios, cometary impacts, giant bat attacks, the rising of Atlantis. They are invariably wrong.

I&39;ve lived through too many end-of-the-world predictions from Y2K to the Rapture to worry too much about them any more. What I do worry about is the very real psychological harm that inevitably accompanies such predictions, particularly when they are reported by an uncritical, uninformed media. Facts may whisper, but fear screams.

I worry about groups like the ominously named Ukrainian White Brotherhood who caused riots and bloodshed in their shaky nation in preparation for their earthquake apocalypse predicted in 2001.

I was worried about having a Minister of Civil Defence who believed that the end times were coming so there was no point preparing for natural disasters and emergencies when God had ordained it and the Bible had confirmed it. Yes, that was a New Zealand Cabinet Minister.

I felt sorry for the believers who sold their businesses and their homes in New Zealand and abroad, to meet the end of the world predicted by a Korean fraudster. I guess one thing to be said for him, at least he didn&39;t tell his followers to bring their world to a real end by mass suicide. It&39;s been known to happen.

I worry about the Cantabrians who ended up with unnecessary psychological stress heaped on an already deservedly anxious frame of mind because they believed in Ken Ring&39;s pronouncements regarding a massive earthquake happening on March 20 roundabout lunchtime. Some 50,000 people believed enough to flee the city that weekend and, despite the huge aftershock&39;s non-arrival, many still choose to believe in a former maths teacher-cum-magician than in real geologists.

Of course, it can be hard to be a judge when you are liable to only get part of the story. Particularly if the person at the centre of it controls the information.

Psychics will often talk about assisting police with missing persons&39; cases. What they don&39;t tell you is that there has been not one substantive case where psychically derived information has been of any significant use. That their &39;assistance&39; often comes down to making a phone call, or that they talked to a search and rescue person about their dream.

Deb Webber claimed to have seen Aisling Symes in a ditch. As one policeman put it, ” If she&39;s said there&39;s a body in a ditch in West Auckland, there are plenty of ditches and we can&39;t do much with that information.” And if police had actually limited their search only to ditches, as defined by almost every normal person and dictionary, then Aisling&39;s body would never have been found. That&39;s how truly useless her comment was. Yet there are people prepared to go on her three-year waiting list to pay her $250 for a half-hour reading. And who are willing to ignore the loud quacking that resulted when she was shown on camera talking to three non-existent dead people when an Australian television crew put her to the test.

People in this industry often claim to be doing it to give families closure, that they are just trying to help. They ignore or dismiss the harm and pain that they often cause. whatstheharm. net lists hundreds and hundreds of cases where families, parents, spouses, friends have all suffered unnecessarily through psychics and mediums exploiting their awful situations for money, marketing exposure and outright ego-boosting.

It&39;s rare for such families to speak out against this. Sometimes they have family members who want to believe. Sometimes they are desperate for any kind of help or assistance. Sometimes they think the extra publicity might turn up real information. Sometimes they have paid over so much money they don&39;t dare believe that it might all be for naught. Sometimes they are just too polite to call a duck a duck.

Here&39;s a heartfelt comment from one chap who had worked knowingly fraudulently as a fake medium, and who came to realise the damage that he had been doing:
“While aware of the fact that I was deceiving [my clients] I did not see or understand the seriousness of trifling with such sacred sentimentality and the baneful result which inevitably followed. To me it was a lark. I was a mystifier and as such my ambition was being gratified and my love for a mild sensation satisfied. After delving deep I realized the seriousness of it all… [W]hen I personally became afflicted with similar grief I was chagrined that I should ever have been guilty of such frivolity and for the first time realized that it bordered on crime.[

That was a very chastened and very honest Harry Houdini.

And, sadly, our ill-trained, inexperienced and under-resourced news media often doesn&39;t help us to assess the claims that are out there. Ken Ring was described in a number of publications as a lunar scientist, which sounds reasonably scientificky and gave him a spurious credibility. What you weren&39;t told was that he believes dolphins are beaming sonar signals to the Moon, and supports the idea that Indo/Egypto/European cultures were present in New Zealand thousands of years ago. Surely that says something about his credibility…
We get psychics who confidently state that missing people will be found near trees or water. Frankly it would be difficult to get away from one or the other in New Zealand. So that&39;s not much help either. And for all those pseudo-documentaries masquerading as reality TV, there have been no cases solved by mediums or their psychic brethren except in their own publicity material.
I have often been asked why the New Zealand Skeptics gives such people the oxygen of publicity. Why do we try to take a public stand against both the well-meaning if misguided individual and the charlatans and fraudsters alike? Why do we bother to point out when claimed scientific evidence is not actually scientific; why do we go behind the scenes to reveal the dodgy dealings of the professional medium; why do we try to make people aware of their own fallibility and vulnerabilities?

To paraphrase a famous quote that we all should bear in mind: For a dangerous idiocy to succeed requires only that good people say nothing.

Newsfront

Autism paper binned

Twelve years after it induced panic among parents world-wide, a paper linking the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism has been withdrawn (NZ Herald, 4 February).

The paper, published in the Lancet in 1998, was withdrawn after a preliminary verdict by a panel from Britain’s General Medical Council found Dr Andrew Wakefield and two of his co-authors had acted “dishonestly” and “irresponsibly”.

“It has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al are incorrect,” the Lancet‘s editors stated. “… In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were ‘consecutively referred’ and that investigations were ‘approved’ by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper.”

The paper was based on just 12 children, some of whom had bowel disorders and autism which had developed after vaccination with MMR. It led to sharp falls in vaccination rates and, said Auckland University’s Immunisation Advisory Centre director of research Helen Petousis-Harris, many preventable cases of disease.

“There are still many parents who are concerned about the Wakefield claims. We hope that this news [the retraction] will add further reassurance that the MMR vaccine is not associated with autism or any other developmental problems.”

The Lancet announced a partial retraction in 2004 after it emerged that Dr Wakefield had received payments for his research from the Legal Aid Board which he had not declared. This was a fatal conflict of interest, the journal said.

Stargazers at odds

Obviously, it came in the middle of the silly season when papers struggle to find copy, but journalist Rebecca Lewis had a lot of fun with astrologers’ predictions for the year ahead (NZ Herald, 3 January).

Pitting one astrologer against another, she checked out what various authorities in the field had to say about Sagittarians. A certain Anne McNaughton picked 2010 as a year in which a full moon in the “financial sector” would get things off to a good start for them. On the other hand Jenny Blume in Woman’s Day reckoned changes at work and home would leave Sagittarians feeling “skint” in autumn.

Someone on the Universal Psychic Guild website calling herself Astrogirl reckoned they would ditch their club-hopping ways and start “nesting”. Marie Claire promised the coming year would be about being daring and outgoing, and astrology.msn.co.nz claimed 2010 would bring out the “practical” side of Sagittarians, with a primary focus on finances.

“Confused?” asked Lewis. “Yup.”

The truth is in there

UFO researchers UFOCUS NZ are excited at the prospect of hundreds of secret files on mysterious sightings which are to be released by the New Zealand military (The Press, 23 January).

The files cover the period 1979 to 1984, and include the famous Kaikoura sightings of December 1978. They were to have been public in January, but are having personal information removed first to comply with the Privacy Act.

UFOCUS NZ director Suzanne Hansen said the group had been in discussion with the NZ Defence Force for many years. “It is frustrating from a research perspective because we would like to collate these sightings with international research.”

New Zealand Skeptics chairwoman (sic) Vicki Hyde said the files would not be as interesting as they appeared. “The Government is required to log these things and it can give a false impression that there is a vast amount of activity out there.

“There is probably intelligent life elsewhere, but whether it has come here to play silly buggers with us in a game of cosmic hide and seek is another matter.”
“It is a big jump from ‘there was something in the sky and I don’t know what it was’ to ‘that was a craft piloted by aliens’.”

Scientologists to the rescue

Among all the tragic stories coming out of the Haiti earthquake was the strange tale of John Travolta flying his own private jetliner to the beleaguered country with 7000lb of medical supplies – and doctors and ministers from the Church of Scientology (NZ Herald, 27 January).

Scientologists at a hospital in the capital Port au Prince said they were healing patients through “the power of touch to reconnect nervous systems”.

Sylvie, a spokeswoman, said: “We are trained as volunteer ministers. We use a process called ‘assist’ to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points”.

“I didn’t know touch could heal gangrene,” said one sceptical doctor.

St Bathans a ghost town?

An Invercargill man on a ghost-hunting trip to Otago has come away with a spooky photo – but not of the building that’s supposed to be haunted (Southland Times, 5 February).

Andrew Watters had gone to St Bathans to have a look at the Vulcan Hotel and its supposed ghost. The pub apparently had only the regular type of spirits and it wasn’t until later that a friend noticed in one of his photos a shape in the upstairs window of the old post office nearby that looks remarkably like an elderly woman.

Vulcan Hotel leasee Jude Cavanagh said it was the first she had heard of a ghost sighting at the post office. “It’s a very spirited town, so who knows?”

The post office, managed by the Department of Conservation since the 1950s, had been vacant for about a year, at least in the bodily sense, she said.

Ghost, or reflection of a cloud? I suppose we’ll never know…

Sweat lodge ends in tragedy

A sweat lodge at an Arizona “spiritual retreat” ended up steaming three people to death last October, according to a leaked police report (NZ Herald, 4 January).

The retreat charged thousands of dollars for five days of motivational talks and spiritual tasks. Following the deaths, self-styled guru James Arthur Ray faces a murder investigation.

The report showed participants vomited, passed out and screamed for help. Ray was outside the only entrance, controlling the flap that let people in and out. One witness said Ray told scared participants three times: “You are not going to die. You might think you are, but you are not going to die.”

The two-hour ceremony followed two days of fasting and not drinking water. When the ceremony was over and people were trying to get the victims out, Ray called attempts to remove blankets from the walls “sacrilegious”. One victim had been subjected to such intense heat his lungs were scorched.
Critics say that such tasks are a sort of confidence trick that exists at the extreme end of America’s US$11.5 billion ($15.8 billion) self-help industry.

‘Ghosts’ find buyer

Two “captured ghosts” sold on Trademe have gone to a company which sells electronic cigarettes (The Press, 9 March).

The “ghosts” were sold by Avie Woodbury of Christchurch, who says they are the spirits of an old man who lived in the house in the 1920s and a powerful little girl who turned up after a ouija board session. They have been kept in holy water which “dulls the spirits’ energy”.

The auction recorded more than 200,000 page views and made international headlines. Safer Smoke NZ had bid $5000, but the final price dropped to $2830 after a last-minute bidder was revealed to be a fake seeking to push the price up.

Ms Woodbury will donate the proceeds to the SPCA – once exorcist’ s fees have been paid.

Apocalypse soon: Unwarranted skepticism and the growth fetish

The dire predictions of the Club of Rome’s 1972 report on The Limits to Growth have supposedly been refuted by subsequent studies, but the refutations have serious shortcomings. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics 2009 conference in Wellington, 26 September.

We belong to a species that dominates the planet. After millennia of steady growth which have altered regional environments and killed off many species, the human population has exploded during one lifetime. Whereas it took millennia to reach the first billion, the human population tripled in 140 years to three billion by 1960, and is currently trebling again in just 80 years, to nine billion in 2040. We have become a plague.

Many scientists, including myself, have been concerned with this picture. There is considerable evidence describing an overpopulated world, threatened by food and water shortages, a shortage of oil supplies, and huge changes due to global warming. Consider the message in the figure on the right, which adds more recent data to the Limits to Growth forecasts of Meadows et al (1972) for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. World population may hit a peak around 2040-2050 and then rapidly decline. My own research, including work with a number of international forecasting projects, suggests that the peak will happen sooner, around 2030.

This model was based on a considerable body of research and is supported by many other more detailed studies. Here we have a picture of a world in which population may plummet following an overshoot-and-decline pattern when limits are passed.

I looked at this some 35 years ago with the eyes of an applied mathematician. I had seen that a model can capture the essence of a situation and provide realistic guidance, just so long as the model is based on the key aspects of a greater complexity. The thought of possible global collapse within one lifetime impressed me and I set off on a new career. I have found that the picture based on physical science can readily be fleshed out by reference to past historical events. It is easy to foresee the repetition of population collapse, social breakdown and war.

So here am I proclaiming apocalypse in just 20 years. What do you make of it? Either I am mistaken or society is just a little bit crazy. J B Priestley made this point in relation to William Blake:

And no doubt those who believe that the society we have created during the last hundred and fifty years is essentially sound and healthy will continue to believe, if they ever think about him, that Blake was insane. But there is more profit for mind and soul in believing our society to be increasingly insane, and Blake (as the few who knew him well always declared) to be sound and healthy.

I introduce this point as I have been treated as a pariah for taking up an extremely important scientific endeavour. Should you be sceptical of those like me who talk of impending catastrophe? Certainly, but consider the alternative which is to put your faith in those who have dismissed the reality of a finite Earth. The Limits to Growth was the subject of widespread denunciation by the supporters of status quo economic growth. Let’s look at the validity of some of the critics; we at the DSIR considered many and found some bizarre arguments.

One key critique was a 1977 Report to the United Nations, The Future of the World Economy, by a team headed by Nobel Prize- winning economist Vassilly Leontief. The Dominion reported that:

Among the most significant aspects of the study are its rejection of predictions by the Club of Rome that the world will run out of resources and choke on its pollution if it continues to expand its economy.

The summary of the report emphasised this theme:

No insurmountable physical barriers exist within the twentieth century to the accelerated development of the developing regions.

Read that carefully. It says “in the twentieth century”. The Limits to Growth‘s authors made a forecast of a possible calamitous population collapse around 2050 – not within the twentieth century. By stopping their model 50 years before, in 2000, the UN team made quite sure that they avoided any possibility of such an event. In fact, as far as they went, their forecasts are very similar to those of The Limits to Growth.

Such sleight of hand is not uncommon. In 1978 I worked for six months with the OECD Interfutures project. While I was able to study an extensive collection of input information, I had no real part in the analysis, which was dominated by a small core group. The 1979 report includes a claim that would be satisfactory to the clients, the wealthy nations of the world:

Economic growth may continue during the next half-century in all the countries of the world without encountering insurmountable long-term physical limits at the global level.

There are two reasons why this statement is misleading. Firstly, all their many computer model calculations stopped in 2000 and did not reach out that far, so this is not in any way based on the work of so many of us in this project. Secondly, they look ahead for just 50 years, thus stopping short of 2050, the forecast time for crisis. It is always easy to dodge a crisis by stopping short of the due date, like the fellow falling off a building who felt that all was well as he sailed down, before he reached the pavement. They knew what The Limits to Growth forecast; they knew what they were doing.

These are examples of the way in which organisations employ expertise to generate desired results and make unjustified claims. Many readers will be sceptical of the warnings of approaching limits. Such scepticism may be better applied to many of the arguments for continuation of growth; here is a New Zealand example.

In 1990 the Planning Council published a report, The fully employed high income society (Rose 1990), which received nationwide publicity due to its suggestion that sustainable full employment with full incomes was possible by 1995 due to high rates of productivity increase – but otherwise continuing current policies.

When I read the document carefully I found some very questionable points:

(a) Estimates of employment requirements commenced in 1988 and ignored the significant loss of jobs between that date and 1990.

(b) Modelling of productivity increases commenced with modelling which has proved unrealistic and overly optimistic, and assumed a further doubling of productivity.

(c) The model run commenced in 1984 with these increases in productivity in order to generate an optimistic result in 1995, thus ignoring the negative experiences of 1984-90.

(d) The model was instructed to produce full employment by 1995 – this was not a consequence of the modelling based on policy changes as represented by input parameters.

(e) Full employment was completely generated by additional capital investment.

The model failed the most basic scientific test of forecasting even before it was published. In the four years from 1986, the date one model run commenced, to 1990, the date of the report, the model had suggested an increase in employment of 38,000, whereas the actual experience was of a fall of 90,000. Nor was that followed by a fully employed society – indeed unemployment was 11 percent in 1991.

The main feature of this work was a failure to produce the required result of full employment within realistic model parameters. The correct process would then have been to report that finding, which would have been in line with what actually happened, but they chose to tweak the model by the introduction of massive capital investment. This artificial process forced the model to say what was wanted and the result was then widely publicised.

Whereas the growth merchants have feet of clay, the limits forecasts from the 1970s hold up well when put to the test. When in 2008 the CSIRO (noted above) returned to the 1972 forecasts of The Limits to Growth and considered whether the real world had followed the forecast trends, the results were convincing. They considered measures of population (birth rates, death rates and population growth), food (and food per capita), services (basic education, electricity and suchlike), industrial output per capita, non-renewable resources and global pollution. All were tracking along the forecast paths towards the coming crisis.

The graph of population on page 3 is typical. These further graphs (right) of food and industrial output per capita, non-renewable resources and global persistent pollution show the same correlation between forecast and observation.

Data since 1972 follow the standard run closely, and do not deviate to follow alternative paths. This result echoes a study I carried out in 2000, when I found that my worrying picture built up around 1980 was robust. Trends have been intriguingly following the expected pattern, including more recently the 2008 oil peak and economic collapse, galloping global warming and the appearance of boat people off the Australian coast.

When I studied the futures literature back in 2000 I found two very different dominant themes. Each followed observed trends and each could describe features of the coming decades. Some of the articles suggested the possibility of food shortages, which would exacerbate the considerable inequalities observed today. That negative scenario may be exacerbated by water shortages and climate change. However a much more prevalent picture was of increasing human capabilities, new technologies and wealth.

No choice is needed; both sets of forecasts may prove robust, as existing trends take different regions or different groups along very different paths. There is then the possibility of the coexistence of two very different societies in the future. This is quite likely; after all it was like that in mediaeval times and in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, and this is the reality in many parts of the world today.

I have described the application of the scientific method to long-term forecasting. This is the way a scientist operates, in a search for the truth. An opposite process is followed in economics, where false analyses are widely publicised, and the fit of forecast to reality is ignored. New Zealand discourse is dominated by shonky science. The key work on global crisis comes from the Australian CSIRO while the DSIR, where I started my work, is no more. Here science is in a straitjacket of controls, totally gutted. In a recent round of grants eight out of nine applications were turned down, and initiative is killed as scientists waste time writing proposals for guaranteed results rather than asking questions and exploring the world. The human cost has also been enormous with the crushing of the lively, questioning spirit in true science. The fun of science is gone. Sadly the spokesman for the scientific community, the Royal Society (RSNZ) is quiescent.

Even in economics much more can be done. In 1989 I was able to foresee the collapsing system we have now. Sometimes I dream that we can recover the spirit of the 1970s when the debate was well-informed, when an initiative in the DSIR was supported and the Commission for the Future was set up. It is nowhere on the horizon. This is a country that is deep in denial, which can sign up to Kyoto and then do nothing as greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2007 increase 39.2 percent for energy and 35 percent for industrial processes. Where is the madness here?

Ignorance goes nowhere. A people which faces the world with eyes wide open can gain a national spirit and decide to work towards a satisfying and full life for all, even in the face of adversity, rather than put up with the massive inequality introduced in 1984 and still touted as the way forward.

Graphs are reproduced with permission from Graham M Turner 2008: A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality, Global Environmental Change 18(3): 397-411.

Psychic hotlines cast a dreary spell

An Auckland University study reveals the costs-financial and emotional-of telephone psychics.

There are no published reports estimating how many people use psychic hotlines in New Zealand, but belief in paranormal phenomena is widespread. It is also not known how much is spent on psychic hotlines in New Zealand, but it is known to be a billion dollar business in the US.

Psychics are encouraged to keep the caller on the phone for at least 15 minutes, generating $40-$60 per call. In America, one service had approximately six million callers spending an average of $60 (NZ$90). Likewise, New Zealand psychic hotlines can charge from $2.99 (excluding GST) to $4.99 per minute.

In this context, psychic hotlines aim to make as much money as possible and exploit human vulnerabilities as quoted on a website:

“In turn, the other end is a person who has been set up with a phone by the psychic company. The scammer will keep the unsuspecting victim on the phone for as long as possible as they are being charged minute by minute and the charges are astronomical. Most of the scammers are just good actors and incredibly skilled at keeping people intrigued.”

Frederick Woodruff, an American telephone psychic, wrote candidly about his experience working on a psychic hotline in his book, Secrets of a Telephone Psychic. He confesses:

“So, imagine sitting by a phone that has been converted into another worldly pipeline-waiting for it to ring. And if rent is due, I am hoping it will ring, and ring a lot.”

One woman, Sarah Lassez, describes her experiences addicted to psychic hotlines in her book, Psychic Junkie. She writes:

“It goes without saying that I couldn’t afford these readings. The issue of my massive debt and barely-there unemployment cheques versus my tendency to spend a lot on psychics was one I knew I had to address, but the problem was that stopping just didn’t seem to be an option. No. I had to think of something else, and was thus quite pleased with myself when I discovered the free three minutes that Psychicdom and a couple other sites offered.”

As a psychologist, I was fascinated to explore why individuals would ring psychic hotlines. I was particularly interested in individuals who were ‘addicted’ to ringing the hotlines. In total, I interviewed 17 women and one male (this study is ongoing). All but one sought guidance for relationship issues. Most were recruited on an online support group for ‘psychic junkies’. The ages ranged from early 20s to 60 years of age. Most of the women were single. Most participants in the sample were raised as Catholics and they either became ‘spiritual’ or changed their religion over time. Most of the women dabbled in other psychic phenomena such as tarot card reading, astrology, runes, numerology, and angel cards. Two of the women considered themselves psychic and one of these psychics worked on a psychic hotline for a short time.

Two of the women were befriended by their hotline psychics. One woman psychic lured a woman to join a psychic development group. The woman was not happy when the development group (after one session) did not provide her with information about her lost cat. The other woman became ‘friends’ with another phone psychic. The woman would visit the phone psychic at her home. The woman disclosed that the psychic told her that she worked as a phone psychic since she lost her teeth and she didn’t want any face to face contact, but she had to provide some income to feed her five children. In exchange for psychic readings, the woman would bring the psychic coffee and lunches. This friendship ended abruptly when the psychic left her five children to be with her lover in Australia (I thought the psychic was worried about her missing teeth?).

What does this small sample of self-selected people say about psychic hotlines? The findings, although limited, suggest that individuals do not ring psychic hotlines for entertainment purposes! All of these participants rang psychic hotlines to provide temporary relief, thus giving them some hope in the short term. One of the callers said that when she rings she feels like a closet alcoholic and she enjoyed being ‘naughty’. She disclosed that her friends would be shocked if they knew. Most reported getting a ‘buzz’ from the readings.

Another interesting finding was the amount of money individuals spent on psychic hotlines. The amount varied, but the average per year in this sample was more than $7000. For example, one person said that she had spent $10-15,000 in two years; another has spent $60,000 since 1993, with a binge cycle to her spending; a third has spent $30,000 in eight years. Others confessed to being binge callers ringing several times a day and then stopping for a few days. The figures are summarised in Table 1. Not all participants answered all questions. Data keeps coming in; a recent participant spent US$3000 in one month, with $1500 on a single session. The record so far goes to a British participant, who spent 40,000 in 10 months.

The View from the Other Side

I also interviewed two women, Stacy and Lydia2, who had worked on psychic hotlines for a short time. These are their stories.

Stacy, a mother of two, worked on a few hotlines for short periods to get her through university. She uses tarot cards during the phone readings. Stacy reports that 90 percent of the queries on her weekend shift were concerning relationships, another 10 percent included queries such as finding a lost item (such as a ring), money and job issues, or queries regarding their children. Sunday morning was the busiest time with the majority of questions involving the breakdown of relationships on the Friday or Saturday night. Her clientele were mainly women, with gay men the next largest group. Interestingly, elderly people would ring up late at night following TV advertisements of psychic hotlines. The elderly would not request a reading, rather they were lonely and they wanted to chat.

Lydia defines herself as a practising psychic as well as a medium. Lydia worked on two psychic hotlines approximately six or seven years ago. She did not stay long at the hotlines. Lydia states, “The people were mainly quite desperate in wanting changes and wanting me to make it for them. I hated it when the calls were looking for the lucky numbers for Lotto, so I put them right about the ‘odds’ and they didn’t want to hear that! And I refused to bluff them, against my integrity to do that.”

Lydia further states, “I found it all much too depressing as I am not responsible for others’ lives. However, I did get some rewards when I got a strong link with spirit to bring them a message from someone who had passed over from this life.”

Lydia reports that the majority of callers were female asking about relationships (Will he come back to me? Is my husband having an affair? Will I ever find the right man?) Men would most likely ask about gambling results (eg Lotto numbers, horse racing).

Overall, one of the hotline psychics depicts the callers as lonely or desperate for some reassurance regarding relationships. The other psychic made similar comments, but added that she didn’t want to be responsible for other people’s lives. However, she would rather practise mediumship and provide messages from beyond the grave. Both psychics reported that callers do not ring ‘for entertainment purposes’ as advertised in the psychic hotline ads. Rather they are looking for relief from uncertainty in their lives.

Interestingly, the Psychic Readers Network “briefly established” the Professional Advisors Network in 1993 to replace psychics with psychiatrists and psychotherapists but no one rang. Unlike the psychics, I will let you come to your own conclusions.