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This article presents only the skeptical angle and although it does use neutral language the conclusions are very one sided. The external links also only point to specific 'skeptic' sites. I feel the article needs some restructuring and more discussion of the possible merits of this kind of work. -- Solar 10:32, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
(moved here by — BillC talk 22:58, 11 May 2017 (UTC)):
There are no "documented cases" of psychics helping solve any crimes. This article is incorrect. Psychics have been repeatedly proven to be fakes. Recall Sylvia Browne telling a couple on TV that their son was dead, which he wasn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.153.50.110 ( talk) 20:11, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
The article seems pretty balanced for a contentious topic, and looking at the comments above it seems to have been improved a lot over the years. The one thing I noticed reading through it though was that the Prominent cases section has all the failed cases first, followed by all the successful ones. Though it might be difficult to gauge, wouldn't ordering them in terms of their prominence (or failing that, chronologically) be a far less biased approach? ‑‑ xensyria T 00:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
Personally, I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint that there have been many false claims of people portraying themselves as psychics and, thus, have sometimes seriously hampered criminal investigations. However, since there are documented cases--albeit rare--where psychics have been able to accurately give information that they could not have known otherwise, the article, in my view, needs to tone down the language used in favor of the "skeptics" viewpoint and attempt to balance this more carefully with the "pro-psychic" viewpoint. (I strongly suggest avoiding, for example, the use of the world "claim" wherever possible.) The fact that the subject is contentious should not be justification, in my opinion, for trying to prove one viewpoint over the other; both can co-exist. Also, the many "failures" by would-be psychics does not disprove the existence of legitimate psychics, no matter how infrequently those true psychics may be successful. As a result, I'm reluctantly going to re-place the NPOV tag. Of course, the tag can be removed at any time. But I hope only after the article has been moved significantly closer to that of neutrality. WallyFromColumbia ( talk) 15:26, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://skepdic.com/psychdet.html. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)
For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. /wiae /tlk 13:41, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Psychic detective article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 730 days |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article presents only the skeptical angle and although it does use neutral language the conclusions are very one sided. The external links also only point to specific 'skeptic' sites. I feel the article needs some restructuring and more discussion of the possible merits of this kind of work. -- Solar 10:32, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
(moved here by — BillC talk 22:58, 11 May 2017 (UTC)):
There are no "documented cases" of psychics helping solve any crimes. This article is incorrect. Psychics have been repeatedly proven to be fakes. Recall Sylvia Browne telling a couple on TV that their son was dead, which he wasn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.153.50.110 ( talk) 20:11, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
The article seems pretty balanced for a contentious topic, and looking at the comments above it seems to have been improved a lot over the years. The one thing I noticed reading through it though was that the Prominent cases section has all the failed cases first, followed by all the successful ones. Though it might be difficult to gauge, wouldn't ordering them in terms of their prominence (or failing that, chronologically) be a far less biased approach? ‑‑ xensyria T 00:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
Personally, I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint that there have been many false claims of people portraying themselves as psychics and, thus, have sometimes seriously hampered criminal investigations. However, since there are documented cases--albeit rare--where psychics have been able to accurately give information that they could not have known otherwise, the article, in my view, needs to tone down the language used in favor of the "skeptics" viewpoint and attempt to balance this more carefully with the "pro-psychic" viewpoint. (I strongly suggest avoiding, for example, the use of the world "claim" wherever possible.) The fact that the subject is contentious should not be justification, in my opinion, for trying to prove one viewpoint over the other; both can co-exist. Also, the many "failures" by would-be psychics does not disprove the existence of legitimate psychics, no matter how infrequently those true psychics may be successful. As a result, I'm reluctantly going to re-place the NPOV tag. Of course, the tag can be removed at any time. But I hope only after the article has been moved significantly closer to that of neutrality. WallyFromColumbia ( talk) 15:26, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://skepdic.com/psychdet.html. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)
For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. /wiae /tlk 13:41, 12 March 2017 (UTC)