This month we’ve watched from the sidelines as self-proclaimed psychic to the starts, Sally Morgan, pushed forward with legal action against the Daily Mail for writing that she might not have psychic powers after all. The terrors. We’ve also watched open mouthed as she seemed to communicate with the ghost of  person who has never even been alive. 

Anyway, while that has all been happening the Project Barnum team have all been rather busy learning how to be magic and mind read thanks to Doug Segal, a “mind reader” or “psychological entertainer” who has been described as “the UK’s best kept entertainment secret” by TimeOut Magazine.

When Hayley got in touch with Doug to tell him about the things we get up to at Project Barnum he told us that Project Barnum “is so up my street it’s paying my council tax”. We looked into this and Doug is now paying his own council tax, and all is forgiven.

Below he has provided some examples of generic Barnum statements that are often employed by those pretending to know things about you that they might not know. Vague statements that seem personal to us all when in reality they fit most people. Do they ring true for you?

We decided that our March action was going to be:

Read peoples minds

It’s addictive and fun and a great way to engage with people over what Barnum statements are and how they might encounter them in their day to day life. Remember, you’re probably not psychic, but with ourt tips you could be very convincing (so, if you’re reading this, Sally…)

We’ve already created Barnum statement cards that you can practice with, and there’s a great poster available that explains exactly what a Barnum Statement is in our Resource pack.

We dare you (double dare, in fact) to turn to the person sitting next to you* and try to cold read them. Choose one of our statements, or copy what Doug says in the video and see if you can convince people you are psychic, and then teach them how to use Barnum statements too.

*we cannot be held liable should the person next to you: be scared by your powers/hit you because you don’t know them/be dead and you discover you’re actually psychic.

However, this is something called ‘confirmation bias’. We remember something that fits because we are prompted to do so, when there could be other reasons what we remember happening, happened.

For example, in the video on the BBC website a dog called Dexter escaped and found his way home on the same day his owner, Nicole, was flying back from holiday. The VO asks ‘how did Dexter know Nicole was on her way back?’

This is where the first mistake is made, because we are presuming that he did! It’s more likely that his escape and journey home happening on the day his owner was travelling back is just a coincidence. A coincidence that is more likely than the dog being psychic.

Not a mystery at all. Yet, a link is made because humans are pattern seeking creatures. X must have happened because of Y.

There is a phrase used by many - Correlation does not imply causation. This means, just because X happened at the same time as Y, doesn’t mean they were both linked or that X caused Y. It’s a bit like when you think your dad is going to phone you and then he does. This doesn’t mean you are psychic, it just means you happened to think he would phone you just before he did.

It is us who places the potential psychic ability onto that coincidence.

The BBC report cuts to a piece about Rupert Sheldrake and his research with a dog named ‘Jaytee’. Several experiments were done with Jaytee in the early 1990′s. The dogs owner, Pam, would go out, and then at a random time, would travel home and the dog would seemingly know when Pam was on her way home and would wait at the window or door for her. This, it is claimed, suggests that the dog is somehow linked to its owner.

However, research carried out by Richard Wiseman, Matthew Smith and Julie Milton came to a different conclusion. You can read their full paper here. To summarise though, they found that Jaytee visited the window and door numerous times while Pam was out, and thus it was likely coincidence that the dog went to the window or door while Pam was travelling home. They monitored this by filming the dog and the window/door area (all documented within the paper.)

Richard Wiseman has written his further thoughts in an unpublished paper here.

It is very unlikely that dogs are psychic, and what some percieve to be behaviour indicative of psychic ability is most likely to just be natural behaviour that, occurring at any other moment in time, would not be seen as significant.

We believe ( and research shows) that Sheldrake is barking up the wrong tree.

To take part in the January action, ‘The Horoscope Challenge’, click to read the details.

You can read a response to the Strange Quarks criticisms by Hayley on here personal blog by clicking here. 

On the streets outreach

If you are interested in using Project Barnum resources to engage with people visiting psychic shows or similar then feel free to get in touch. You can read about some people who did similar here, and see the results they got. It’s better to do this sort of outreach work in a small group rather than alone.

Get in touch if you’re interested, and someone will email you back with further details.

Podcast/radio/video plug

If you are a podcaster, broadcaster or vlogger perhaps you’d consider using our Project Barnum audio trailer to help spread the word? Click below to open the audio trailer, and then ‘right click’ the player that pops up in a new window and click ‘save as’ to save it onto your computer.

Project Barnum audio trailer

Dunninger used to offer a reward of $100,000 to any medium who could produce by psychic or supernatural means any physical phenomena that he couldn’t reproduce by natural means or explain in convincing materialistic terms.

You can read a summary of what Tannice and Myles got up to by reading Tannice’s blog post here. Tannice (pictured, left) said:

 ”…curiosity got the better of me and I approached a group of three women. My cold reading skill told me that they were clearly related. Breezily, I asked them if I could ask them a few questions.

They had indeed been to see Sally, they had heard the media reports of her alleged cheating, but they weren’t put off by them. Sally had apparently covered that in her show and moved on to what she does. They hadn’t received a reading themselves, but they were hoping to hear from their deceased grandmother/mother.

I asked them whether they thought it was for entertainment purposes but they clearly didn’t believe that. They seemed to understand that theatres had to say it was for entertainment purposes only to cover themselves, but didn’t recall that there was any information about that on the tickets or at the venue. After asking them a few more questions about whether they believed in Sally’s powers (they were paying for their parking), we skipped off. I was fairly happy to have got some answers to my questions, but they were perplexed as to why we asked them. It probably helped that we only asked questions, we didn’t try and push our agenda. That wasn’t really our aim.

Their curiosity piqued, they caught up with us, asking why we wanted to know. Myles had a few posters from the Project Barnum website in his hand and we showed them what we had.

…after speaking to them a while and gently putting my point across about the techniques that some psychics and mediums employ (using the ‘Spot a cheat‘ sheet from Project Barnum) and talking about Randi’s million dollar challenge they suddenly seemed a little uncertain about Sally’s powers and we gave them another poster with a link to Project Barnum’s website to seal the deal.”

Engaging people about Psychics, and their belief in Psychics has to be done correctly to avoid making the situation a ‘them and us’ situation; after all the trickery we cover on this site is something that everybody should be concerned about whether they believe psychics exist or not. What Tannine and Myles achieved was brilliant and I hope if the people they spoke to at the theatre do visit this site they can gain an understanding of how to spot a potential cheat.

As it stands we are working on resources that people can use in a similar way – posters aren’t the best thing to hand out so we’re working on flyers and ‘tip cards’ that people can download to print for free, or order from us for a small price (to cover the postage and printer costs.)

Approaching people can be scary, so we hope that our resources will help you engage others in the discussion about psychic scams. If you are part of a ‘skeptics in the pub’ or similar grassroots group, or simply an individual interested in getting involved in Project Barnum outreach campaigns please get in touch to be added to our campaigner mailing list. 

Check out our resources today, read the blog post by Tannice and see how a little encouragement CAN help people think rationally about the claims they encounter.

Project Barnum founder, Hayley, has written up a conclusion that can be read by clicking here.

Please continue to sign our petition and make sure you spread the word to your friends, family and colleagues. Help us to help them see them coming…