Psychic crime detectives are people who are supposed to aid the police and FBI in solving crimes using their extraordinary psychic abilities. I guess when you're desperate for an answer, you'll try anything, but a psychic? The way these people work is that they see flashes of letters, places, numbers, words and try to piece them together to locate a person or find suspects. Most of the time, they're far off predictions, as we've learned with Noreen Renier. How can these psychics know all these details? If I were to guess, I'd say they only speak of their predictions after the crime and try to fit their theories to the actual crime. If the proper correlations are made, it will seem that they truly are psychic and that they helped solve the crime.
[Police + Psychic Detectives] According to the website linked above, there are many so-called psychic detectives that have no substantial evidence from the police, FBI, or groups they've said they helped. Some even claim they are certified, by who I have no idea. Some reasoning behind why these people do this is for media attention and the money. They have no more psychic ability than an average person.
Noreen Renier, as we spoke of in class, is one of the most popular. She's even writing books about all of this. She was tested and her abilities weren't as good as she said they were, apparently not even close. There are many claims against Noreen Renier, too many to talk about here, but they're all on the website linked above.
My opinion on this is that they are clearly fake. If they knew how to find all of these people that were harmed or missing, then why are there still cold cases and unsolved crimes? Why couldn't they stop a murder before it even happened? It seems to me that they're only psychic after the crime happened and they fit their 'predictions' to the case when it's solved, which probably makes me just as psychic as they are.
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I know it is just a TV show but on the show Psych on USA network the "psychic detectives" work with the police to solve crimes. In the show it is illistrated that the psychics pay more attention to detail and notice things that noone else does. I'm aware this is a show but this is just one example of how it could be done
ReplyDeletethere is also a show on A&E or something along those lines that has a show called psychic kids and they sometimes have kids help out on a missing persons case. In show they get pretty close to finding the person. but a part of me wonders if its just really good editing or subtle hints that gives these kids the ablity to come to pretty good guesses. Psychic crime detectives may also be getting these hints. The lecture we had in class talk about how ordinary people are just as good as being psychic detectives then an actual "psychics". It is exciting when they get clues to a case and they are accurate but perhaps I'm being misled?
ReplyDeleteBeing that I am studying psychology and criminal justice, I find it very unnerving that psychic detectives are supported at all by law enforcement. In a field where there should be a strong support for objective testing and investigation, this should not be taking place. Finding victims and apprehending the CORRECT perpetrator are extremely important and cannot afford to be affected by pseudo-scientific ideas. Thankfully, these hacks are not given much credit and are not able to meddle to far into investigations.
ReplyDeleteI’m very skeptical of people who say they have psychic abilities. It seems very unlikely that a person with no FBI training could solve crimes. That highly trained people in the FBI couldn’t solve.
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