The Smug Baldy Speaks

33 Responses to “How Well Did Sylvia Browne Do With Her 2007 Predictions?”

1. Mister Zippy
   January 22nd, 2008 at 4:18 pm

   

   Raltegravir had a good chance to be a success.

2. Smug Baldy
   January 22nd, 2008 at 4:38 pm

   

   Indeed it does - and this was widely known in 2006, which provides enough “reasonable foreknowledge” to not count any event surrounding Raltegravir as a hit or miss.

3. Webs
   January 22nd, 2008 at 4:52 pm

   

   And the thing that pisses me off about the false alarms, is when one does materialize, right away or down the road she will claim success on predicting it. What her and her followers don’t understand is the “Normal Bell Curve” theory and statistical probability. Eventually with enough misses you will get one right.

   BTW, you might want to link this on Les’ blog post on this topic.

4. Mr. Nosuch
   January 23rd, 2008 at 6:46 am

   

   With this fine track record, she should probably consider changing her career. Perhaps she could become a meterologist, or an economist.

5. Smug Baldy
   January 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 am

   

   As long as Sylvia doesn’t hire on as an iceberg lookout on a luxury liner, I’d be happy.

6. dr rick
   January 23rd, 2008 at 3:07 pm

   

   The patent of Raltegravir was from 2003, just a correction. But since every single compound that has entered Phase 3 trials has then made it market and that Raltegravir was the first integrase inhibitor to reach Phase 3 in about 2005, pretty easy prediction to make that a new/novel drug for HIV will be available in 2007 (also add in Pfizer’s Maraviroc).

7. Smug Baldy
   January 24th, 2008 at 11:53 am

   

   Thanks Rick - I’m not so smug that I don’t accept correction when it’s offered. Still, as you point out, Sylvia had reasonable foreknowledge to base her vague “prediction” upon.

8. Lisa
   January 26th, 2008 at 1:40 pm

   

   The point that Webs makes is a good one. I believe the vernacular expression would be something like ‘If you throw enough shit at the wall some of it is bound to stick.’ Seems pretty appropriate for Sylvia’s “predictions”. I predict that Sylvia will continue to bamboozle many folks in 2008 and will make a lot more money than she deserves. And that she will probably use her ‘church’ to avoid paying taxes on most of her earnings.

9. =o)
   February 9th, 2008 at 11:06 pm

   

   hey you got a lot better at structuring and citing your argument…mad props to you!

10. Smug Baldy
    February 10th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    

    Thanks for that, big nose smiley face. Every year I hope to get a little bit better.

11. metoo
    February 10th, 2008 at 6:10 pm

    

    man, i was looking forward to you using SDT! where’d it go? you didn’t even find the proportion correct (since those are looking at hits and correct rejections, not false alarms)! sorry, i’ve had to do so much performance-related stats recently, and when i saw you were going to use SDT i got all excited for a minute. nope, i’m not a geek at all…

12. Smug Baldy
    February 11th, 2008 at 9:29 pm

    

    The data are all there - I was leaving the calculations as an exercise

    Of course, if you absolutely must have the solution:

    You can calculate the proportion correct using the following: P(C) = (Hits + Correct Rejections) / (Hits + Misses + False Alarms + Correct Rejections) = (2 + 0) / (2 + 0 + 23 + 0) = 2/25 = .08 = 8%

13. Yvette
    April 19th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    

    Boy am I ever thankful you have so much time on your hands. Sylvia Brown has been able to explain things in my life. Some things I knew and some I didn’t. I take my hat off to her for helping to ease my mind and see things for myself with alot more clearity.

14. Alyssa
    April 28th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    

    I would like to know if my uncle Mison suffered when he passed away in June 2007?

15. Smug Baldy
    April 28th, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    

    Hi Alyssa - If anyone ever claims to be able to answer you question, then feel free to tell them to quit lying. It’s natural to wonder what our loved ones go through at the moment of their death, and it’s unfortunate that we’ll never know. It is upon this curiosity that fakers and charlatans like Sylvia have built their job security. My advice would simply be to ask yourself how you would react if you actually knew the answer. If your reaction is something that deeply troubles you, then consider talking to someone about it - a counselor or therapist, or even a very good friend. Don’t take the word of wingnuts that say they can talk to ghosts, though. They’ll eventually find a way to have you pay them and still leave you to deal with your own troubles by yourself.

    Talk to someone that cares about you instead.

16. Stephanie
    May 18th, 2008 at 10:30 pm

    

    Your “hit rate” and “false alarm rate” are wrong. It’s not hit divided by hit plus miss.. it would be hit divided by number of usable predictions (the ones that you were able to analyze). The false alarm rate would be the same thing. You have to have 100% total between hit, miss, false alarm and whatever your other thing was. With just hit and false alarm right now you have 192%.. go back to school.

17. Smug Baldy
    May 28th, 2008 at 8:17 am

    

    Thanks for the suggestion Stephanie, but you’re wrong. If you read the first part of the post and the linked articles about signal detection theory, you’ll find the rationale behind the calculations. In SDT, a hit can only occur in the presence of a target event. In terms of psychic predictions, this equates to a situation in which the psychic positively predicted something and it actually occurred. In the current data set, Sylvia has a 100% hit rate for the two predictions that she actually got right. A false alarm occurs when there’s a prediction of an event, but it didn’t occur as predicted.

    Interestingly, your comment prodded me to once again check my math, and I did find one error. You were right in claiming that my false alarm rate metric was wrong, but not for the reason you specify.

    The false alarm rate I have listed is actually the “false alarm ratio” - or the fraction of predicted events that turned out to be non-targets. This is .92 or 92%.

    The false alarm rate, also known as the probability of a false detection, is simply the ratio of false alarms to total non-occurring events. It turns out that this is easily calculated as #False Alarms / (#False Alarms + #Rejections). Plugging in the numbers, you see that this is 23 / (23 + 0) = 23/23 = 1.00 = 100%.

    Given that, for the 2007 data, Sylvia has a hit rate and false alarm rate of 100%, the best statistic is to look at the overall percentage of correct predictions. As stated before, this is calculated as:

    P(C) = (Hits + Correct Rejections) / (Hits + Misses + False Alarms + Correct Rejections) = (2 + 0) / (2 + 0 + 23 + 0) = 2/25 = .08 = 8%

    So there you have it, you’re partially right, but for the wrong reasons, and I don’t have to go back to school yet.

18. Todd
    May 28th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    

    Okay Sylvia Browne is a human being shes not a fuckin angel sent from heaven so she cant always be right. she is an amazing women who has been proven right in over thousands of cases. so i honestly think ur 2007 sylvia predictions are bullshit and u have no idea what ur talking about. Montel wouldnt have her on his show if she is a liar and neither would other television and radio stations. she has been proven right and wrong. I myself am a self proclaimed psycic,medium. And let me say that you and everybody else have the same gift as me and sylvia. All you have to do is become spiritually connected to ur inner soul. Meditate,keep a dream journal,beleive ur first instinct. you will soon relize that you can not only use the part of yur brain that can predict the future, you can also connect to the spirit world. please comment back because i would love to hear what you have to say about that.:)

19. Smug Baldy
    May 29th, 2008 at 10:55 am

    

    Wow, Todd - your spell checker must be smoking hot! No, seriously, there’s a reason that there are rules in a language, not least of which is that we communicate our ephemeral and insubstantial thoughts clearly to others. But I digress.

    Your central claim appears to be that Sylvia has, “been proven right in over thousands of cases.” What evidence or information do you have that would make you say that? I’ve presented the data from the predictions she made on camera for 2007 and checked them against the facts, and she’s batting 2 for 25. In 2006, she went 3 for 61. Now, maybe you’re privy to information that I can’t find, but if someone makes a claim like, “I can predict the future” and then turns out to be right less than 10% of the time, then what’s a person to do? I tell you what I’m not doing - buying anything from them.

    As Carl Sagan and others have said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” In the case of Sylvia Browne, we just get extraordinary claim, but even a cursory review of the evidence fails to support them. As for the entertainment media, like Montel’s show, extraordinary claims are clearly enough to put asses in the seats while Sylvia’s on, and more importantly, while the commercials run. Pun intended.

20. Rachel
    May 31st, 2008 at 3:18 am

    

    I just happened to stumble on this site and have to say that I USE to be a big Sylvia fan until I stupidly paid a couple hundred dollars for a “reading” with her so called psychic son, Christopher Dufresne. She talks very highly of him and says that he is the next best thing if a person cannot talk to her personally. None of his predictions have come true and I now feel like a total fool and am totally let down. I have even waited a couple years past his predicted timeframes for things to come to pass, but have only gotten a big old nothing! I have the reading on tape and have listended to it several times to make sure I heard him right, but unfortunately I am now positive that he is just a total scam artist and thief just like his mother. I would love to know what his accuracy rating is!!!
    By the way, I heard Sylvia on the Montel Williams show a while back saying that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election-appears that will be labeled a ‘miss’.???

21. Simply S 1968
    June 11th, 2008 at 11:05 am

    

    I don’t understand why there is so much to be worrying about , we need to just leave the women alone. things could be worst. If she did make those preditions, We don’t have to hear what she have to say, you dont have feed into what she is saying, don’t listen , and stop trashing her.

22. Krissie
    June 11th, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    

    Okay, so the reality is that Sylvia Browne is in fact a human being and allowed to make mistakes. Which happens…often. I do find it very alarming that she inaccurately markets her abilities and rips off more people than she helps, for hundreds of dollars. For all the believers, keep on keepin on, if she gives you hope, faith, clarity and direction more power to you. Our opinions shouldn’t waver your undying faith, they in fact should just roll off your back. For the rest of us, it’s just a little insight on how to maybe or maybe not spend our hard earned money, which would go a lot further in our gas tanks right now, than on a SELF proclaimed psychic who continues to fail to deliver. Also, I do realize that the association with Montel causes many people to believe she is the real deal because he is such a respected figure. I wonder how his ratings are on days when Sylvia appears? My guess is probably very high. As Sylvia has proved, there is a lot of money to be made when people think you can give them answers.

23. Smug Baldy
    June 12th, 2008 at 8:56 am

    

    Thanks for the comments Simply S 1968 and Krissie. To Simply S’s question, the issue I have isn’t so much with Sylvia - but with the hoards of people who buy into her snake oil. She’s offering people hope, but it’s false hope. She offers comfort, but it’s based on a lie (one that lines her bank account). My question to Sylvia supporters is this: at what point does the fact that she’s not really psychic make a difference? I wouldn’t write anything about her if she marketed herself as a fantasy writer, but instead she repeatedly makes false claims and people eat it up. To me, that’s profoundly interesting.

    To Krissie - couldn’t have said it better myself. I suspect you’re on the right track with your insight about believers. Quite often when people deeply hold a belief and facts come along that run counter to it, we reject the fact rather than reevaluate our belief. For some believers, there are simply no facts powerful enough that can shake their beliefs. That’s the one thing that’s provided job security for snake-oil salesmen, religious wing nuts, and totalitarian dictators throughout history. Heck - look at the continued debate that we’re having about Evolution and Creationism. Evolution is a fact (and Darwinian Evolution is the Theory that explains it), but it’s extremely inconvenient to evangelical types who take an idolatrously literal interpretation of the Bible. You think a mere thing like demonstrable scientific evidence will shake anyone’s faith that the earth is more than 6000 years old? It hasn’t yet, and I’ll bet that some folks are simply immune to the facts.

24. Karen
    June 23rd, 2008 at 4:42 am

    

    NO!. The problem is this is simply not a case of “okay, so Sylvia is human after all and does make mistakes”. That is not what she is about at all. What she does is not some silly little form of harmless entertainment for the masses. She is a cold-heart, conniving, maniacal witch, who scams, deceive, tricks, lies and rips off honest, decent, good-hearted, trusting and grieving people. She is so cruel, inhuman and deceitful. She charges $750.00 for a 30 minute reading, in which you sit there on the phone for 30 minutes while she rambles on and on about the most stupid, idiotic, and unimportant crap!!. she get’s away with this because no one is holding this slug accountable for her deplorable actions and behavior. In addition to all the money she makes doing fraudulent personal and private readings, she also makes tons of money for fraudulently claiming she writes her books, when in fact, they are all written by a ghost writer who simply changes all the words around and uses the same recycled crap over and over again, but uses a different title. Sylvia is just not smart enough to write book, haven’t you ever seen the Montel Williams show??. Proof positive she’s an idiot. She also makes money on cruise’s, personal and private appearances, TV and radio appearances, jewelry, miscellaneous stuff and anything else she can scam people out of!!. She makes millions of dollars ripping people off every year, claiming to be something she is not - a physic!

    Sylvia Browne, John Edwards, James, Van Prague, Allison Dubois, Lisa Williams, and any other person you see or hear on TV are all frauds, every single one of them. Not one of them can tell you anything about your personal life; about your family; about your friends; about your job; about your life; about where you live; about the future; how many children you have; how many kids you’re going to have; who or if you will marry, or when; anything about a crime, etc, etc, etc,… They simply cannot give you any genuine information because they are all frauds, fake, phonies, charlatans, and criminals who should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I have been following these people on TV for a long time and have found out a great deal of information on them, the same exact way they are able to find out any type of information they need on people they are going to read/scam, or giving a fraudulent reading to. It’s very easy when you have many people helping you to retrieve information on people that you plan to scam, deceive and rip off!!. If you want to find out something about anyone, then do what private detective do. These charlatans are using the same techniques incorporated, employed, and practiced by private investigators. These “EVIL” TV physic’s that you see on TV are nothing but huge, huge frauds, who are deceptive, lying, misleading, and ripping off thousands of honest, innocent, good-hearted, grieving, trusting, kind, and naive people. It’s very sad and disgusting that TV would help these charlatans in this horrific and unforgiving way, simply outrageous. I am quite shocked that they have gotten away with this type of financial fraud, con, and scam for ssssoooooo many years now, and have not been held accountable for it. It is just amazing and I can’t understand why?

    These scam artists employ both “HOT” and “COLD” tricks to deceive, fool, trick and convince people they are the real thing, when in fact, they are only the opposite!!. It makes me sick that no one is going after them and holding them accountable for ripping off good people. None of these scam artists you see on TV have any supernatural gift or talent whatsoever. These people are very cruel and they don’t give a dam who they rip off. Just go to the “StopSylviaBrowne” website and you can read many stories on just that one website. She, like all the other frauds, charge people $750.00 for a 30 minute fraudulent reading. Still think it’s entertainment and not hurting anyone??.

    This is exactly the same as if I went to a physciatrist, psychiatrist, doctor, dentist, chiropractor, or professional, for help and they claimed they were professional, could help me and then they performed procedures or treatment on me. When in fact they had never went to school, been trained, could not really do what they claimed, were not authorized or licensed to practice or perform surgeries or treatment on me, but charged me anyway. And this is also no different then if my air conditioner or refrigerator quit working and I had to hire a competent, skilled, trained and licensed technician to repair it. I expect that when I call someone and they come out to repair my appliance, that they are going to be legitimate, honest, trained, experienced, licensed and everything they claimed to be. You can’t go around charging people $750.00 for a 30 minute procedure, treatment or reading that you are not qualified, trained, licensed, or legitimately able to perform. And, if you do, then you should be held accountable for it, period!!.

    Our civilization was not built on a pack of lies or liars. You cannot have a successful civilization and have people lying and claiming they are something they are not, or claim they can do something that they cannot!!. it just doesn’t work like that. What if everyone were to lie??. What you should do is set a trap for these frauds. Invite them to be guests on your show. Be very nice and tell them whatever they want to hear. Then once you get them their and on TV, then bring out people they have never met in their life and make them do a reading, just like the one’s they do over the phone. Don’t give them any upfront information or let them ask any personal questions, this is a trick to get personal information from them. Sylvia is notorious for making people ask personal questions, which gives her important personal information on that person, then all she has to do is simply make stuff up, anything at all!!. However, her reading, which are only one on one conversations between her and the caller, she will not let that person ask any questions until the end and then they can only ask one simple question. She is so conniving, manipulative, deceitful, a liar and truly “EVIL”!!. Montel’s staff used to supply Sylvia with any and all the personal information they could get from each of the guests who were scheduled to appear on his show, well in advance. This was done because she is a complete fraud and she would always been informed as much as possible about that person/guest prior to the show. Montel’s show would not allow any person to appear on any show with Sylvia unless they agreed to give the staff as much upfront information as they possibly could. The staff also employed certain tactics, tricks and techniques to get information out of people as well. They also had “RINGERS” in order to legitimize and make Sylvia look and appear as credible, trustworthy and legitimate as possible. There was so much going on behind the scene’s that people had no idea it was going on. In essence, all the Montel Williams show was for Sylvia, was an hour long info-commercial to drum up business for her. I am sure they both made millions of dollars from TV and radio guest appearances, phone and personal readings, private and public appearances, cruise‘s, conventions, book sales from books she claimed that she wrote but really didn’t, jewelry, her church, recorded stuff, miscellaneous stuff and whatever else she had her hands into.

25. Smug Baldy
    June 23rd, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    

    Wow Karen, thanks for the great comment!

26. Katrina M
    June 26th, 2008 at 8:37 am

    

    Flooding in the south.

    False Alarm: This is a pretty safe prediction, but Sylvia still managed to raise a false alarm for 2007 instead. The real southern story was one of catastrophic drought, not flooding.

    WELL, well, well… I guess she missed it by a year! LOL

    What you don’t seem to understand is that time has no real meaning on the other side. Personally, I wouldn’t bother to try & give anyone a heads up if I were in Sylvia’s shoes. Too easy to miss with the time factor…particularly among skeptics. And I DO thank you for putting everything in such an easy to read format…I can make my own judgments regarding foreknowledge.

27. allison
    June 27th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    

    i as well think sylvia is a fraud. i am a christian and believe God gives people certain gifts and i believe some people today as well as in bible times have those special gifts to see the future. i do know one thing for sure, if its a gift from God you don’t charge money to help people. thats just aweful and not even biblical.

28. Jason
    June 28th, 2008 at 2:42 am

    

    I considder myself to be open minded, but very skepticle of things that seem to good to be true. My question is this. Why would a psychic, supposedly a spiritual one that says she helps people, waiste her time on fortelling what star is getting married or breaking up? Who cares? And every one needs to earn a living, but why would people spend good money on a psychic that has such a poor record doing false prdictions on the stars?!!!!?

29. Ed
    July 11th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    

    Wow, Karen. So many adjectives… you must really know what you’re talking about. XD You could have said everything you typed in that novel in a single paragraph if you weren’t constantly repeating yourself and reusing the same adjectives over and over to describe the same thing you described in the sentence before. lawl

30. Kamille
    July 11th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

    

    Karen,
    If you got ripped off, or put faith in someone’s dubious “spiritual” revelations and got burned, it’s understandable that you would be angry - However, that doesn’t make everyone who has the ability to utilize senses not common to most humans a charlatan.
    There are, and have been throughout history, a number of psychics and prophets who were able to break through the physical illusion and access information which you and I generally are not privy to.
    I am not a psychic, but I have had several unexpected paranormal experiences, which confirmed to me the plausability of such phenomena.
    For one, 38 years ago at a party, I had headphones on and loud music. Suddenly I felt someone poke his head into the room behind me… I didn’t hear or see him, I just felt him - but more than that, I instantly “knew” this stranger inside and out (like as if I were in his head). I quickly ran into the kitchen where the host couple sat, and breathlessly told them all about this weird knowing I had that this guy was someone people generally disliked, but who is really a very sweet sensitive soul and greatly misunderstood… and so on. I went on for five minutes about his personality and circumstances - without having ever seen him or spoken to him or heard of him in my life. When I was done my friends confirmed that I had nailed his story to a “T”.
    I never had a repeat experience like that one, but the one I did have not only proved psychic ability to me, but how it feels to a psychic, what it is like to irrefutably and solidly “know” something that you couldn’t otherwise know. It was very much akin to the way I know who I am and what I like and dislike, and what my personal traits are. I know because I have access to my own mind. But on that day I had access inside a total stranger’s mind.
    As I was writing a letter to a young woman who had been very special to my late father, I wanted to be able to give her a message from him. I said “Dad, I’m going to meditate now and try and hear you. What would you like to say to Tanya?”. I didn’t know if I could do it, but even if I did “hear” something, how would I know it was pure, i.e. not from my own thoughts? Nevertheless, I gave it a go. After a while I seemed to hear something that felt like it came to me rather than a thought I concocted myself. I wrote: “Tanya, I don’t know if this makes any sense, if it has some symbolic meaning, or even if it’s real, but I asked my dad to try and relay a message to me for you, and this is what I got: ‘Tell Tanya I love her and tell her to take good care of the car’”.
    Some months later while talking to my sisters about this one of them said “Oh you know what that means. Its about the car he gave her”.
    I was floored. “He gave her a CAR!? Are you kidding me! A car!”. The fact that my father had given someone a car at a time when I really needed one to get work, well, that really pissed me off. No, I had no idea about that when I received his message. It was the kind of thing I wouldn’t forget. So much for it being a “symbolic” message. But people, when they are on “the other side”, often come up with off the wall stuff merely to let us know that it really is them.
    I never win anything. 55 years of living and I’ve won virtually nothing - unlike my sister the gambler who wins at bingo and even got a ten thousand dollar instant win. But one day I was at my best friend’s father-in-law’s company picnic, where they had given out a number to everyone, including me, for a prize drawing event. The prizes were trinkets, but there were tons of them. I think they gave away at least fifty prizes. The “big” prize was a bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey. I was a teetotaler and couldn’t care less about winning a bottle of booze. Nevertheless, I told my friend’s daughter right from the start, “I’m going to win the Wild Turkey”. I wasn’t trying to make an affirmation. I just KNEW I was going to win it. 45 minutes to an hour later there was just one prize left: the whiskey; and yes, I won it (much to the dismay of the people who actually worked for that company).
    I could go on with about 20 other experiences which include psychic info, materialization of something not of this world, messages from the dead, prophetic dreams, an interdimensional shift, past life regression, warning from (an angel or guide), and more. But that’s just me. I don’t expect anyone to accept anything on faith alone. God knows I don’t! I just wanted to share a tidbit of my otherworldy experiences in order to proffer another point of view.
    I have have countless psychic readings over the past 40 years. Some were really good. Some were a waste of money. That’s why I stick with the guy I go to now; at least I know he is legit. The first time I went, he said (as soon as I sat down) “You are single, divorced, your son is going to break up with his girlfriend”. All true. I didn’t mention having any kids let alone one son, who shortly after did break up with his girlfriend. He said “your mother is deceased. She died of breast cancer. She didn’t like your father much at all; they were too different. On the other side she is helping children who were abused and murdered. She counsels them, gives them love and helps them to make the transition”. What Bill M. did not know was that my mother was always trying to help abused children because she had been abused as a child. All of it was true. There were no records. We were from another state and didn’t know many people here. The Internet was yet to gain popularity.
    Four year later I went to see the psychic again. He reads for at least a thousand ppl per year. Before I even sat down he said “David is here and has something to tell you”. He then relayed words from an ex-boyfriend who had died 15 years earlier and it was very specific. It included not only facts about our relationship and how he died, but that he wanted to thank me for having told him what happens to us when we die and how to deal with it. My ex was a skeptic. In fact, I heard that one of the things that drove us apart was my “spookiness”. He couldn’t accept anything he couldn’t see or touch. “David said that when he found himself separated from his body, he remembered what you told him about transition, and that made it easy for him instead of frightening. He wants you to know that even though he had been skeptical at the time, he remembered it and is so grateful to you for sharing that information.”
    Bill is superb. Not a hundred percent all the time, but specific enough so that most ppl are amazed. His predictions frequently come true - such as last year when he told me a relative in Canada would pass away soon. When he told me this I was sure it would be one of my old aunts or uncles. But it wasn’t. It was a fairly young cousin who suddenly died of a rare genetic disorder that none of us knew ran in our family.
    Anyhoo, enough about why I know some psychics are valid. As for Sylvia Browne, I used to think she was the creme de la creme of the gifted ones. I based this on how right on she was with some audience members. But something about Sylvia disturbed me almost from day one.
    How can someone who presents themselves as compassionate and caring, become so exasperated with the individuals who are honored to be in her presence? Consistently roll their eyeballs as if to say the readee is daft? Can groan “Isn’t that what I just said!” when all someone was doing was confirming her statement in an effort to validate Sylvia? It’s a courtesy they extend - and their thanks is to be made to look like idiots on tv.
    Even worse than the eye-rolling, forehead smacking gestures and sarcasm - is the dismissive, unconcerned manner in which she often handles parents of missing or dead children. They come to her (often from afar and at costly expense) with fervent hope that she will give them some sweet scrap of information or a message from their child, and she’s pretty much “Uh-huh. He’s on the other side. He’s doing fine”. I mean, puh-leez, can’t you even TRY to feign compassion for these people, Sylvia?
    I couldn’t watch her anymore. I was just so angry when someone on the show said “But when I saw you, you TOLD me that I was going to win the lottery” and Sylvia cut her off abruptly and became very agitated. She went off on a rant about how the girl jumped to conclusions. She tried to make it look like the girl was a nut case. Montel rescued her and they went to commercial. But my friend and I, who were watching the show, both agreed that we heard the young lady say that Sylvia personally told her that she would win. There was no misunderstanding that.
    When I found this website and read what many had to say about Sylvia - especially people who had dealings and relationships with her - and I learned of the cold and unfeeling things she’s done to so many - I understood where the disdainful expressions she makes came from: she’s just a capitalistic opportunistic egotistical phony. Now don’t get me wrong, she may have some ability or she may not (I think some start out with it and then lose it with abuse), but irregardless of any possible psychic ability, she is a phony personality.
    I would hope that people reserve judgment about other psychics and mediums and all things spiritual, and not base their assumptions on disappointments over a few rotten apples. (For what it’s worth, I think John Edwards is legit). I have found, in 40 years of my quest for spiritual truths, many frauds, so-so talents, pompous asses, and a lot of greedy phonies. I avoid them - lesson learned - and move on. After a while you begin to recognize feasibility from laughability in the claims of those who tout spiritual gifts.
    Remember too, that even scientists are discovering some unbelievable revelations now about our universe; for example, that it is a hologram. That we are not solid. That quantum particles behave on one way or another based on observation - not “scientific laws”. We really are beginning to realize that not only is anything possible, but that nothing is the way we think it is. It behooves us to have open minds, even when we feel like giving up. Life has always been difficult and confusing, but never more than in this time.
    Whew! I gotta go to bed now. When I get on a roll…..

31. May
    July 13th, 2008 at 9:46 am

    

    LOL U obviously have nothing better to do with ur time than try to “disprove” the great and wonderful Sylvia Browne. It would seem to me, that anything she said that did actually happen, u start saying she gathered the info somewhere else, or the info was just to “vague”. Gimme a break. She has gone to great lengths to help others in need, and brings some peace to those, in knowing that when we “die”, its really not so terrible at all. Get a life and and keep ur negativity to urself. Ur what she calls a dark entity…O and I saw someone say she shouldn’t be charging money for this. We all have to live, and make a living. She is powerful enough and so well liked, that if she didn’t charge crazy prices, she would have NO free time, and every joe blow on the street would come in for a reading, which im sure she doesnt want. And Karen, hahaha, did u ever think that maybe psychics can’t read u because ur a terrible person? A dark entity that just keeps getting recycled back to earth, no spirit guides, nothing. Psychics can’t read people like that…just think about it.

32. Abby
    July 14th, 2008 at 9:36 am

    

    May - I think you’re an idiot. Maybe it’s not that psychics can’t read dark entities. Maybe they’re just faking and they can’t read anybody.

33. May
    July 16th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    

    Hahaha. No. Research a little, then get back to me when u retain some knowledge…