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Here is the word doc answering the questions form the assignment.

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What did you learn about the topic that most surprised you

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This is a live audience reading from talk show Studio 10, where John Edwards reads the audience and talks about lost loved ones.

This video shows an excellent example of emotional connection and agenticity with the audiences connection when John Edwards does a cold reading on Studio 10, involving the audience directly and gathering information using open ended questions, letting audience members essentially answer their own questions because of emotional relevance.

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John Edward Audience Readings | Studio 10

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This is John Edwards official website, where he sells services such as readings and merchandise.

This website as well with other claimed psychic medium websites uses confirmation bias to help sell and support their services. Information given through this website or services offered through the website enable people who are biased in their belief of the afterlife to better reinforce their opinion, given that they believe factual information can be obtained via websites such as this one.

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If so, you've come to the right place. For the last 3 decades, John Edward has been helping people like yourself reconnect with their lost loved ones through his work and is one of the world's most recognized psychic mediums and teachers in this field.

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This image shows the characteristics of cold reading practices.

Cold reading is the practice of observing ones reaction to open ended questions, then using generic statements to make the recipient feel a connection by filling in the blanks.

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This article on John Edwards is from Eyes for Lies, a claimed deception and credibility expert website.

This article discusses various red flags, such as the extremely obvious connections John makes with the audience on Dr. Phil (which is the video the website is observing), such as linking emotional connection and almost complete obvious fact. For example, a women is asked about a loved on who has recently passed, to which she answers yes and explains that she lost a loved one in a large fire recently. John then asks if this made the news, to which the women agrees and seems to be shocked that he would know this event would make the news. This links back to emotional connection and ideology being a large factor in ones belief.

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John Edward did his "psychic reading" on Dr. Phil this past week. I do not believe in psychic mediums or psychics at all. I think these are people who read people to some degree, and use people for pure profit.

I have yet to watch one person in nine years who I believe. Not one.

When I watch this segment with John Edward, if you watch it closely, he is playing statistical odds in an audience (that people will relate to generic statements), asking for them to fill-in-the-blanks, etc.

When he talks about a fire, he watches facial expressions. If I say fire to a victim, there is likely going to be a response on a person's face affected by a traumatic fire. He then waits for people to give him signals. You notice he asks them to answer a lot of questions, too.

The two women talk about a woman who was dismembered and burnt. The John acts like its psychic to then later say, "Did this make the news?" Of course it would. You don't need psychic abilities to say that!

John says he sees an older male energy and he waits for them to come up with someone. It's playing on their emotions! And then he says he sees "smoke and fire" - DUH! That's not psychic. And then he plays on it more by saying it "has to do with their passing". Well, DUH, again! They told us that.

Then he talks about the fire being set to get rid of evidence. Most crimes of dismemberment and fire are usually for that purposes. Hello. That's just a good logical deduction. Score for John Edward: Zero.

When he says is someone now pregnant, and that again, is likely to get a hit. If not with these women, with someone near by. He waits for a hit! When you look at the ages of these women, their children are close to that age or will have cousin who is-so its a sure fire hit again. He let's the women fill in the blanks. Nothing shocking going on.

When he finds out that the crime victim was pregnant, he says there were two people. Yeah, hello, of course they will find a connection. Usually a pregnant woman has a spouse or a boyfriend, and if she was killed, they either killed her or got killed. Good guessing, right?

So then John asks again, "So I don't know if we are talking about two people involved in this case?" You see, he knows NOTHING. He has to ask everything or make logical deductions to move forward.

I find this so disturbing!

He then brings up "S" names. Most people can come up with someone, but these two fail to do so. Then later they make a connection. They will always make a connection, if they believe. He catches people in the heat of the moment, in need of answers, who are emotional! They are the most vulnerable victims. They will find understanding. They need it for comfort.

Keep watching.

He has to ask people a ton of questions because he truly has nothing. Then he watches their faces, reads what he can, makes logical assumptions and asks more questions. He loves these women because they are "true believers"-his best candidates. When he gets someone who shows doubt, I can assure you he moves on quickly. That's part of the game.

John then asks if there is a similarity in the two cases. Hello! Yes! Both are murders!! We know that already. What a dumb statement.

Then he brings up DNA. Well in any crime, isn't DNA going to be a topic of discussion? It sure is! Nothing psychic there.
I find this utterly creepy.
When John Edwards says there is a younger female, and the women in blue offers doubt, he moves on right away! He has to find a subject who bites and statistically speaking some young woman will find a correlation, and boom, you think John is psychic. Do you see the game?

And now the believers remember someone with an "S" or an "Sk" - nothing shocking at all but boy if you didn't take statistical odds and averages, you might believe wow! But the amount of people who know someone with an "S" or an "Sk" is quite high.

Every now and then, it will look like he knows something, but he just got a lucky hit- a true believer who thought through things, or made a good correlation for him. It is likely to happen statistically-no magical odds.

If a true psychic or medium existed, they could do readings behind a curtain and never see the people they are giving a reading to, but as you see that never happens. For a reason.

Sadly, I believe I could do this to people, and pray on their emotions and vulnerabilities and be wildly rich, but I have a conscience that won't let me pray on victims like this. I couldn't do it and I could lie and get rich off of the vulnerabilities of other people. I would feel like slime, and rather be dead.

Please if you are tempted to go to a psychic medium or a psychic, don't waste your money. It's pure rubbish.

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My Thoughts On Psychic Medium John Edward

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John Edward did his "psychic reading" on Dr. Phil this past week. I do not believe in psychic mediums or psychics at all. I think these are people who read people to some degree, and use people for pure profit. I have yet to watch one person in nine years who I believe.

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This video shows John Edwards giving Dr. Phil & his wife a reading, claiming his father is reaching out to him.

Here John Edwards sits down with Dr. Phil to discuss his late family members and other present studio directors. Using observational and perception techniques as well as emotional connection, John Edwards is able to cold read Dr. Phil and his wife when talking about his late father, as well as make various comments about a directors roommate in the same room.

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Dr. Phil Receives a Reading from Psychic Medium John Edward

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Dr. Phil, an admitted "healthy skeptic," sits down for a reading with psychic medium John Edward. http://drphil.com Buy The 20/20 Diet: http://bit.ly/drphil2020diet Buy Life Code: http://bitly.com/LifeCodeDP Subscribe to Dr. Phil: http://bitly.com/SubscribeDrPhil LIKE us on Facebook: http://bitly.com/DrPhilFacebook Follow us on Twitter: http://bitly.com/DrPhilTwitter

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This is a concept image of the "Third Eye".

The Third Eye is a concept used within the spiritual community as the invisible eye that senses and provides perception beyond physical sight. (Eg. the afterlife and etc.

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This website deconstructs the various practices John Edwards uses when performing his claimed psychic ability.

This post explains in depth HOW John goes about his readings, and why they are successful (or appear to be). Techniques such as cold reading, warm reading and hot reading are used by all claimed mediums to bait information from their prospected individuals. It also talks about perception and observation, and how they effect our thought process and decision making, thus why individuals fall for these techniques.

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opyright 2001 Michael Shermer, Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, e-Skeptic magazine (

CROSSING OVER ONE LAST TIME TO EXPOSE MEDIUM JOHN EDWARD

By Michael Shermer

History is not just one damn thing after another, it is also the same damn thing over and over--time's arrow and time's cycle. Fads come and go, in clothing, cars, and psychics. In the 1970s it was Uri Geller, in the 1980s it was Shirley MacLaine, in the 1990s it was James Van Praagh, and to kick off the new millennium it is John Edward. Edward's star is rising rapidly with a hit daily television series "Crossing Over" on the Sci Fi network and a New York Times best selling book "One Last Time." He has appeared, unopposed, on Larry King Live and has been featured on Dateline, Entertainment Tonight, and an HBO special. He is so hot that his television show is about to make the jump to network television, as he is soon to go opposite Oprah in CBS's afternoon lineup.

Last month Skeptic magazine was the first national publication to run an expose of John Edward in James "The Amazing" Randi's column (in Vol. 8, #3, now on newsstands and bookstores or at www.skeptic.com), a story that was picked up this week by Time magazine, who featured a full-page article on what is rapidly becoming the Edward phenomenon. There is, in reality, nothing new here. Same story, different names. In watching Edward I'm amazed at how blatant he is in stealing lines from medium James Van Praagh. It reminds me of entertainers, commedians, and magicians who go to each others' shows to glean new ideas.

Time's reporter Leon Jaroff, quoting from the Skeptic article, wrote a skeptical piece in which he reported the experiences of an audience member from an Edward taping. His name is Michael O'Neill, a New York City marketing manager, who reported his experiences as follows (quoting from the Skeptic article)

"I was on the John Edward show. He even had a multiple guess "hit" on me that was featured on the show. However, it was edited so that my answer to another question was edited in after one of his questions. In other words, his question and my answer were deliberately mismatched. Only a fraction of what went on in the studio was actually seen in the final 30 minute show. He was wrong about a lot and was very aggressive when somebody failed to acknowledge something he said. Also, his "production assistants" were always around while we waited to get into the studio. They told us to keep very quiet, and they overheard a lot. I think that the whole place is bugged somehow. Also, once in the studio we had to wait around for almost two hours before the show began. Throughout that time everybody was talking about what dead relative of theirs might pop up. Remember that all this occurred under microphones and with cameras already set up. My guess is that he was backstage listening and looking at us all and noting certain readings. When he finally appeared, he looked at the audience as if he were trying to spot people he recognized. He also had ringers in the audience. I can tell because about fifteen people arrived in a chartered van, and once inside they did not sit together."

Last week an ABC television producer flew out from New York to film me for an investigation of Edward they are conducting. The segment began as a "puff piece" (as she called it), but a chance encounter in the ABC cafeteria with 20/20 correspondent Bill Ritter, with whom I worked on an expose of medium James Van Praagh a few years ago, tipped her off that Edward was, in fact, a Van Praagh clone and that his talking to the dead was nothing more than the old magicians' cold reading trick. After waching the 20/20 piece the producer immediately realized what was really going on inside Edward's studio. She began to ask a few probing questions and was promptly cut off by Edward and his producers. ABC was told they would not be allowed to film inside the studio and that they, the Sci Fi network, would provide edited clips that ABC could use. The ABC producer became suspicious, and then skeptical. She has been trying to get an interview with Edward to confront him with my critiques, but they continue to put her off. In fact, she just phoned to tell me that Edward's publicist just left a message on her voice mail (with a date and time) stating that Edward was not available for an interview because he is out of state, yet the producer just caught him on television live in studio on CBS New York! Something fishy is going on here and I know what it is.

The video clips I was shown make it obvious why Edward does not want raw footage going out to the public--he's not all that good at doing cold readings. Where I estimated Van Praagh's hit rate at between 20-30 percent, Edward's hit rate at between 10-20 percent (the error-range in the estimates is created by the fuzziness of what constitutes a "hit"--more on this in a moment). The advantage Edward has over Van Praagh is his verbal alacrity. Van Praagh is Ferrari fast, but Edward is driving an Indy-500 racer. In the opening minute of the first reading captured on film by the ABC camera, I counted over one statement per second (ABC was allowed to film in the control room under the guise of filming the hardworking staff, and instead filmed Edward on the monitor in the raw). Think about that--in one minute Edward riffles through 60 names, dates, colors, diseases, conditions, situations, relatives, and the like. It goes so fast that you have to stop tape, rewind, and go back to catch them all. When he does come up for air the studio audience members to whom he is speaking look like deer in the headlights. In the edited tape provided by Edward we caught a number of editing mistakes, where he appears to be starting a reading on someone but makes reference to something they said "earlier." Oops!

Edward begins by selecting a section of the studio audience of about 20 people, saying things like "I'm getting a George over here. I don't know what this means. George could be someone who passed over, he could be someone here, he could be someone that you know," etc. Of course such generalizations lead to a "hit" where someone indeed knows a George, or is related to a George, or is a George. Now that he's targeted his mark, the real reading begins in which Edward employs cold reading, warm reading, and hot reading techniques.

1. Cold Reading. The first thing to know is that John Edward, like all other psychic mediums, does not do the reading--his subjects do. He asks them questions and they give him answers. "I'm getting a P name. Who is this please?" "He's showing me something red. What is this please?" And so on. This is what is known in the mentalism trade as cold reading, where you literally "read" someone "cold," knowing nothing about them. You ask lots of questions and make numerous statements, some general and some specific, and sees what sticks. Most of the time Edward is wrong. If the subjects have time they visibly nod their heads "no." But Edward is so fast that they usually only have the time or impetus to acknowledge the hits. And Edward only needs an occasional strike to convince his clientele he is genuine.

2. Warm Reading. This is utilizing known principles of psychology that apply to nearly everyone. For example, most grieving people will wear a piece of jewelry that has a connection to their loved one. Katie Couric on The Today Show, for example, after her husband died, wore his ring on a necklace when she returned to the show. Edward knows this about mourning people and will say something like "do you have a ring or a piece of jewelry on you, please?" His subject cannot believe her ears and nods enthusiastically in the affirmative. He says "thank you," and moves on as if he had just divined this from heaven. Most people also keep a photograph of their loved one either on them or near their bed, and Edward will take credit for this specific hit that actually applies to most people.

Edward is facile at determining the cause of death by focusing either on the chest or head areas, and then exploring whether it was a slow or sudden end. He works his way down through these possibilities as if he were following a computer flow chart and then fills in the blanks. "I'm feeling a pain in the chest." If he gets a positive nod, he continues. "Did he have cancer, please? Because I'm seeing a slow death here." If he gets the nod, he takes the hit. If the subject hesitates at all, he will quickly shift to heart attack. If it is the head, he goes for stroke or head injury from an automobile accident or fall. Statistically speaking there are only half a dozen ways most of us die, so with just a little probing, and the verbal and nonverbal cues of his subject, he can appear to get far more hits than he is really getting.

3. Hot Reading. Sometimes psychic mediums cheat by obtaining information on a subject ahead of time. I do not know if Edward does research or uses shills in the audience to get information on people, or even plants in the audience on which to do readings, but in my investigation of James Van Praagh I discovered from numerous television producers that he consciously and deliberately pumps them for information about his subjects ahead of time, then uses that information to deceive the viewing public that he got it from heaven.

The ABC producer also asked me to do a reading on her. "You know absolutely nothing about me so let's see how well this works." After reviewing the Edward tapes I did a ten minute reading on her. She sat there dropped jawed and wide eyed, counting my hits. She proclaimed that I was unbelievably accurate. How did I do it? Let's just say I utilized all three of the above techniques. After the show airs on ABC New York this week (Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday I'm told) I'll reveal the details in another posting. Most of the time, however, mediums do not need to cheat. The reason has to do with the psychology of belief. This stuff works because the people who go to mediums want it to work (remember, they do the readings, not the mediums).

The simplest explanation for how mediums can get away with such an outrageous claim as the ability to talk to the dead is that they are dealing with a subject the likes of which it would be hard to top for tragedy and finality--death. Sooner or later we all will face this inevitability, starting, in the normal course of events, with the loss of our parents, then siblings and friends, and eventually ourselves. It is a grim outcome under the best of circumstances, made all the worse when death comes early or accidentally to those whose "time was not up." As those who traffic in the business of loss, death, and grief know all too well, we are often at our most vulnerable at such times. Giving deep thought to this reality can cause the most controlled and rational among us to succumb to our emotions.

The reason John Edward, James Van Praagh, and the other so-called mediums are unethical and dangerous is that they are not helping anyone in what they are doing. They are simply preying on the emotions of grieving people. As all loss, death, and grief counselors know, the best way to deal with death is to face it head on. Death is a part of life, and pretending that the dead are gathering in a television studio in New York to talk twaddle with a former ballroom-dance instructor is an insult to the intelligence and humanity of the living.
www.skeptic.com and skepticmag@aol.com). Permission to print, distribute, and post with proper citation and acknowledgment. Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Director of the Skeptics Society, the host of the Skeptics Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and a monthly columnist for Scientific American.

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Expose of John Edward - Deconstructing the Dead

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opyright 2001 Michael Shermer, Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, e-Skeptic magazine ( CROSSING OVER ONE LAST TIME TO EXPOSE MEDIUM JOHN EDWARD By Michael Shermer History is not just one damn thing after another, it is also the same damn thing over and over--time's arrow and time's cycle.

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Here John Edwards takes a caller on KIIS 1065 to answer a callers question about her son being woken up every morning.

Through ideology of the afterlife and emotional connection, John Edwards is able to cold read a caller regarding her son being woken up by whom is assumed to be a family member. If you are to listen closely, I believe John is successful with this reading because the caller is clearly under the premise of ideology of the afterlife, meaning any kind of connection John can make, the caller will take as factual, even if the questions asked are so very vague

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Don't Believe In The Afterlife? You Will After This

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This image displays the apparent levels of Chakra.

Chakra is said to be what our "lifeforce" is made of and acts as our energy that we can harness and use. Various chakra's host various abilities.