Helen Parry-Jones Cold Reading Double Fail

Here's a cold reading double-fail by self proclaimed spiritual healer Helen Parry-Jones on Ireland's Late Late show.

Notice all the questions she asks, and how vague the advise is, and how the advise evolves depending on the feedback she gets. All cold readers ask lots of questions and base their advise on the responses they get - either verbal or non verbal.

The advise is vague and if you think about what is being said, would apply to pretty much everyone.

i.e. a cold reader might say "You have a box of old unsorted photographs in your house" or "Your father passed on due to problems in his chest or abdomen." Most older people have a dead dad and most people die of problems in that area, and who hasn't got a box of jumbled up pics at home!.

The only remotely accurate thing about the two readings in this particular video was that the girl had some sort of accident at some stage in her life, which when you think about it is a statement that applies to everyone. Helen starts off by saying the girl has a beautiful singing voice - a statement the girl disagrees with- and so she moves onto say 'I think it's more that she is going to be in the public eye'.

With the other guy Helen's reading is totally inaccurate and you can see by his expression at the end that he hasn't a clue what she is talking about.

Cold reading is a fun form of entertainment and clever showmen like Derren Brown use it to great effect in their shows (although Derren freely admits it is trickery and nothing more), however it becomes a bit more sinister when people like Helen go and actually claim that they are genuinely communicating with the dead kids of distraught parents and curing people with horrible illnesses.

It is something I feel pretty strongly about because this is basically just conning vulnerable people out of their money and that is reprehensible.

James Randi is a famous american sceptic and advocate of the scientific approach and several years ago he offered a million dollars to anyone who can scientifically prove that they have such supernatural abilities.

The million dollars is, to date, still available and still unclaimed.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Cold
• Reading
• Fail
• Helen
• Parry-Jones
• Late
• Show
• RTE
• Ireland
• Ryan
• Tubridy
• Raidió Teilifís Éireann
• The Late Late Show

[dleesnuts]

I like to record audio on my toaster too...