Online Psychics: Best Predictions of the Year?
>> Saturday, January 9, 2010
The predictions for 2009 of about 50 psychics and astrologers have been scrutinized by GWUP, a group of German skeptics. While these skeptics have not been exactly impressed by the precision and accuracy of all predictions, they note that the Canadian psychic Nikki (on the picture, wearing a fur hat in his living room) was slightly ahead of the psychic group by announcing in advance the death of pop singer Michael Jackson and the emergency landing of an airplane on the Hudson River, in New York. Amazing, isn't it? Uh... but let's have a closer look. ;-)
Unsurprisingly, the report of GWUP skeptics (it's in German, here you have a rough translation by Google) mention that psychics and astrologers do not make accurate predictions, or that they predict very common events (which have a high probability of occurrence, such as hurricanes in the Caribbean or flooding in India).
However, a few predictions for 2009 seemed to be fairly accurate, including one regarding the future of emotional life of Boris Becker. The GWUP group notes nevertheless psychics and astrologers discussed so much about the love life of the tennis player that all the possibilities were covered, and that somebody was bound to be right.
The GWUP report also mentions the two "spectacular" predictions by Psychic Nikki, which I mentioned earlier. This Psychic Nikki, who says she has the two gifts of clairvoyance and clairaudience (that is to say that she claims to see and hear events of the future), participates fairly regularly in radio and television shows. She also writes a blog about horoscope on a website for women. Nikki also posts its world predictions on her personal website since several years, and this is how she actually ended up in the psychics and astrologers selection of GWUP, who gathered 70% of their 2009 predictions on the Internet.
On the homepage of its website PsychicNikki.com, the psychic proudly announce that she has predicted Michael Jackson death and the crash of an aircraft on the Hudson, its two major achievements for the year 2009. But if we look in the archives, we note that, for this past year, Nikki had made 78 worldwide predictions, 49 on Hollywood stars, 17 predictions of extreme weather, 13 upcoming events for the British royalty and others on sports, fashion, etc. This means that she had a total of 188 predictions, not to mention dozens of celebrities and stars on her health and death watch list.
Let's say that two seemingly right statements on more than 200 predictions is not really a stellar performance (even though Nikki claims to be "Psychic to the Stars"). But things do not improve when we see that Michael Jackson was already on the list of celebrities whose life (or health) was supposedly in danger since 2003. And as for the airplane in trouble, Nikki predicted a "plane crash near Hudson, New York," and not on the Hudson. And, of course, no exact date had been provided by the psychic.
We can have more fun by browsing the complete list of predictions. For 2009, Psychic Nikki foresaw the capture of the Loch Ness monster and the Bigfoot, the assassination of Barack Obama, the discovery of a new planet with life, the discovery of a green bear in China, and that animals will be coming into cities because of global warming.
And, according to Psychic Nikki, we won't get bored in 2010, since we're supposed to find the lost city of Atlantis, to see terrorist attacks, wars and tsunamis around the world, to discover another planet where there is life. And Barack Obama will be assassinated again...
What should we think about these predictions? It really looks like that these lists are copied and pasted from one year to the next, with some additions, withdrawals and permutations of countries or cities.
One last detail about Psychic Nikki: she claims that she predicted Anna Nicole Smith death five years before it actually happened! Amazing, isn't it? But wait a minute... For this kind of event, I thought that the accuracy of a psychic would be more impressive if she made her prediction just before the death happened. If we change the rules, I can do even better by announcing that all persons currently alive will pass away in less than 150 years! ;-)
