Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Long Island Medium" in English language version.
Caputo does what's known in my trade as "cold reading." The very best practitioners can pick up enough information in what seems like innocent, idle conversation to convince you that they know very specific things about you. The scientific phenomenon is called the Forer effect — giving credence to vague observations that seem personal. [...] Mediums cannot show they do anything more than cold reading nor that what the TV audience sees is just selectively edited to show "hits" and ignore the "misses."
I'm pretty skeptical about all the psychic medium stuff...She seemed nice, and she was fun, but I just think [...] if you say to a room of 300 people, you know, "somebody here has lost a sister," there's a good chance [of that]...So I am skeptical. I think people just so want to believe in things [like that]. But you know, I am open to possibilities, I just want to see actual proof, and until that happens I just sort of feel like it's my job to be skeptical.
