Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[Barry Karr <SkeptInq@aol.com>]

Dear CSICOP List Reader,

Each year for the past ten years or more, we have published an end of the
year look-back at the predictions made by alleged psychics and astrologers
for that year.  It seems that pretty much each New Year every newspaper in
the United States and elsewhere feels obligated to run such a story, and we
figured it would be good to try and get these papers to run a story about the
dismal failures the previous predictions turned out to be.

The writer who regularly does the feature for us did not want to do the
roundup this year.  He rightly thought that the events of September 11 made
it painfully clear and obvious how capable psychics and astrologers were at
predicting the future.

Instead he proposes a challenge to psychics and astrologers, as outlined
below and on the following website:
http://www.csicop.org/groups/osama-form.html

Barry Karr
CSICOP



The suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001, exacted a terrible toll but
offered several lessons. One of them: psychics and astrologers cannot
predict the future. The folks who tell you with great certainty where you
misplaced your TV remote control were never able to pick up enough vibes to
warn authorities and thwart the attacks, even though the tragedy was
destined to resonate throughout the psyche of the Western world.
     As someone who has retrospectively reported on published psychic
predictions every year since 1979, I wasn't surprised. Almost invariably,
the psychics and astrologers miss the big, unexpected news events of the
year, from the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster to Princess Diana's death.
     Nonetheless, all it takes is one real psychic to demonstrate that such
powers could exist. To that end, I propose giving the psychics and
astrologers another chance with this challenge:

Identify the date that Osama bin Laden is captured or his body is found

     Let's see if any psychic comes close and if non-psychics can do as
well. If someone succeeds, then we can ask them for a few other specific
predictions to see if their powers are real, or they were just lucky.

Gene  Emery