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By: John Ibbitson &Jake Galea

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This is a Youtube video produced by the Richest that looks at supposedly real cases of psychic detectives. This video appeals to those who believe in psychics as it is only saying positive things. This in the red flag of ideological support, because those that already believe will willing accept this as true.  This builds on the reason for belief of ideology, again because the target audience of this video are those that already believe in the use of psychic detectives to solve crimes and mysteries. On another note there is no way to know if these facts are actually true or if the Richest is posting this video as a click bait.

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10 Real Psychics Who Helped Solve Mysteries

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The Hollywood Medium is similar to Theresa Caputo in that he is a famous personality trying to uncover deceased family members and connect them with their loved ones, the only difference is that Tyler does his readings on famous people. In the video below it states that Tyler brings up facts that could be found by anyone who has access to google. Tyler capitalizes on emotional disconnectedness because he is talking about deceased loved ones. He also uses the red flag of conformation bias because he brings up things that even if there super little, the clients will make a big thing out of it if it relates at all. We have to remeber that the organization that posted this video, Nickii Swift, is a celebrity gossip organization, and is looking for views likes, ect. This organization may be biased towards Tyler in order to achieve more fame for themselves.

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Proof That Hollywood Medium Is Totally Fake

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Theresa Caputo is a very popular medium in the mainstream media, she works like a psychic detective to uncover things about someones loved one that has passed. Below is a video that is making a claim that Theresa is in fact a fraud. It states that Theresa is using a "Shotgun method" firing off a bunch of ideas in hopes that one fits, in pseudoscience this is also know as the red flag of proof by verbosity, because she is saying so many different things about this person she must really be able to talk to the dead. Theresa also capitalizes on emotional contentedness, because she is talking about dead loved ones and who wouldn't want to be able to communicate with their loved one, one last time. This video is obviously made by someone who believes Theresa Caputo is a fraud, this could be due to a wrong doing by another medium towards this person. This has a lot of bias against mediums and psychics with no real proof to back it up. This person could be deploying the same tactics, that they claim Theresa is deploying.

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Theresa Caputo exposed as a FAKE medium and a FRAUD!

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http://www.scifake.com - Caputo is another in a long line of con artists like Sylvia Browne, James Van Praagh, and John Edward who all claim they can talk to the dead -- and that the dead speak back to them, which is the harder part, of course.

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Noreen Renier is a Psychic detective, who on her website states that she has worked on over 600 unsolved cases, lectured at the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, and has several positive testimonies from people she has worked with. Noreen is using her appeal to authority as a reason for belief, but she doesn't state how many cases she worked on came out with a positive result, really there is no negativity at all, directed towards her on her website. Noreen quite clearly uses the " Unexplained" reason for belief because she cant explain what she does, and theres no proof is shes telling the truth. She uses proof by verbosity by stating facts about the work she has done to make her seem more of a catch.

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Noreen Renier is a well known psychic detective working over 380 unsolved cases with city, county and state Law Enforcement Agencies in 38 states and 6 foreign countries.

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Ghost whisperer is a popular television series that follows the life of a Melinda Gordon who has the ability to see, and talk to ghosts, and often works as a detective to figure out what is preventing the ghosts from crossing over. This is a mainstream show and with mainstream shows people often feel connected to the show and watch it often, because of this peoples observations from the show may make them believe that supernatural powers can be real beyond this show. A pseudoscience red flag would be conformation bias, this is because people get connected to the show and try to apply principles from the show into real life, e.g. some people can see and talk to ghosts. At the end of the day Ghost Whisperer is just a television series, and the producers have never claimed that there was anything more to it.

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The website attached briefly describes what a psychic detective is. They explain a psychic detective as "a regular old psychic with an added quirk". It goes on to explain that there have been no documented cases of success, but people would still believe this because of the ideology reason for belief. People that believe in the power of psychics, are usually self proclaimed psychics so therefore they have the ideology instilled in them that there are supernatural powers at work, and some individuals have access to them. Appeal to authority would be a pseudoscience red flag because it has been seen in many supernatural T.V shows and movies that law enforcement uses psychics to help solve a case. In movies this appeals to authorities, and in some cases in the real world, but it does not mean that it is accurate. This website is a wiki, so therefore it is just someones random opinion but this website i feel is very balanced as it does state that there have been no documented cases, and describes some cases that a psychic may have helped law enforcement.

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A number of controlled double-blind tests have been conducted, in which experimenters presented would-be psychics with photos of or evidence from actual crime scenes, asking them to describe the crimes which had taken place. So far, no psychic detective has done better than chance. Surveys among police departments also haven't yielded any positive results.

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Red Flag: Appeal to Authority- the red flag appeal to authority is very prevalent in this show because it uses its audience to and media personalities to depict the existence of psychic detectives, when there is not evidence of the psychic detectives actually doing much besides making some good guesses. All this trickery is to bring in money
Reason for Belief: Emotional connection- this is evident due to the connection the show tries to make you build towards the case, through the backstory of the people involved in the cases presented.
The motivation for the creation of such a show most likely in my mind boils down to people exploiting others belief for monetary gain.

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Dennis McKenzie and the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and other cases solved by psychic detectives

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Dennis McKenzie and the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and other cases solved by psychic detectives

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Red Flag: Ideological Support- In most of the cases presented in this website people either are predisposed to believe in psychic detectives or put their trust in them due to the family not wanting to give up on the search.
Reason for Belief: Emotional Connection- This is because all of the cases are due to someones emotions getting the best of them a calling for procedures that they would not normally ever have undertaken. I just so happens that most of the cases were solved, most likely due to the rule of big numbers.
These cases are presented very briefly and done show much of the evidence presented in these cases and how correct the detectives were. many of the people in theses cases also seem to have many biases in favor of the detectives.

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Psychics often claim they help police solve crimes, help locate missing people and catch killers with their clairvoyant abilities. Here are just a few psychic detectives who believe they've helped solve a mystery.
UK: Dennis McKenzie and the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman

In August 2002, 10 year olds, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman went missing from a family barbecue in Soham.

Desperate for answers, Holly's family contacted a psychic - Dennis McKenzie.

'I am really sorry, but both girls are dead,' he told them, believing they'd been murdered.

He went on to describe a woman with a 'shrew-like face' with brown hair and a man in his 30s - both with Northern accents.

He also told the family the girls had been transported in an old red car and wrapped in something like carpet or bubble wrap. He even described the view from the killer's house.

Soon the girls bodies were found and a man and woman matching McKenzie's descriptions were arrested.

Ian Huntley claimed the girls had died at his home by accident. The view from the Huntely's home matched McKenzie's description.

He was eventually found guilty of murder and his girlfriend Maxine Carr was convicted of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Holly's family have since praised McKenzie for his help in solving what happened to the girls.

Australia: Debbie Malone and the murder of Maria Scott

In 2003, the badly decomposed body of Maria Scott, a 27-year-old prostitute, was found dumped on a farm.

She'd been stabbed five times. Mark Brown, a farm worker who'd met Maria in rehab, was police's main suspect.

But their investigation came to a halt when they discovered he'd moved to another area and committed suicide, before they had a chance to interrogate him.

Four years later, an investigator decided to seek help from Debbie Malone - a well-known psychic.

She lead police to a cabin where she believed Maria had been killed. She even located the exact knife used in the murder which was found lodged in a drainpipe.

She also told investigators she felt the murderer walk through her as she entered the cabin - something that could only happen if he was a ghost.

This fitted their theory that Brown had killed Maria before committing suicide.

Australia: Phillpe Durant and the murder of Paula Brown

In 1996 a popular hairdresser, Paula Brown, 30, from Sydney Australia, went missing after a night out with friends.

Her fiancé was desperate to find out what'd happened to her. So he enlisted the help of psychic Phillipe Durant.

Durant used a lock of Paula's hair, a plumb line and a grid map to pinpoint where he believed police should focus their search.

Later her body was discovered by a passing truck driver. It was less than two kilometers from the spot where Durant had pointed out.

Police later acknowledged the accuracy in Durant's information.

USA: Etta Smith and the murder of Melanie Uribe

When nurse, Melanie Uribe, 31, missed two days of work in 1980, her friends and family were concerned.

Her disappearance was reported but searches failed to turn up anything.

Clairvoyant, Etta Smith, was sure police weren't looking in the correct places. She believed Melanie's body was in a bush, in a rural area of Los Angeles.

She relayed her visions to police then decided to investigate herself. She went searching for Melanie with her children and niece and found Melanie's dead body in the exact location of her psychic vision.

Doubting her story, police arrested Smith on suspicion of murder. However, she was released four days later and never charged.

Later, the real murderer was caught and convicted.

USA: Pascarella Downey and the murder of Penney Serra

In 1971 Penney Serra, 21, was brutally murdered in Connecticut.

A detective at the time decided to ask psychic Pasacarella Downey for help in solving the murder.

Downey claimed the murderer had the smell of oil and had worn a mechanic's uniform. She also claimed to see the letter 'E' on a nametag.

She predicted the killer wouldn't be caught immediately but that 'blood can tell.'

Sure enough, 26 years later Edward Grant was convicted of the murder thanks to DNA testing and fingerprint matches.

He was also a mechanic at the time of the murder proving Downey's predictions to be spookily accurate.

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Psychic detectives claim to have helped catch killers - do you believe them?

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Psychics often claim they help police solve crimes, help locate missing people and catch killers with their clairvoyant abilities. Here are just a few psychic detectives who believe they've helped solve a mystery. In August 2002, 10 year olds, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman went missing from a family barbecue in Soham.

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Red Flag: Confusion of Correlation with Causation- This red flag fits with this case Donthe was arrested for a crime he did not commit due to a psychic detective described a man that looked like him at the scene of a crime, and security camera footage found him at the scene when police suspected the crime to take place. He was later dropped of all charges when none of the evidence held up.
Reason for Belief: Unexplained- This is because the police could not find any other suspect for the case and so they believed the psychic detective because they could not come up with other answers them selves.
The police assumed the detective was correct due to a lack of their own evidence and thus arrested.