James Randi: TV Psychic Sylvia Browne Wrong Again

The self-proclaimed “psychic” made famous by TV propagators including Montell Williams, Maury Povich and Larry King, is facing the music for giving the family of Amanda Berry false information about her disappearance on The Montell Williams Show in 2004.

Amanda Berry went missing just before her 17th birthday in 2003. Berry’s mother, Louwana Miller, was later told by Sylvia Browne that Berry was dead. Miller would not live to find out that her daughter was indeed alive, held captive for nearly a decade along with two other women -a case that rocked the country. Miller, who died at the age of 43, just three years after her daughter’s disappearance, was convinced by Browne’s words, “She’s not alive, honey,” to the end.

According to Amanda Berry is dead, psychic tells her mother on Montel Williams' show (republished), in an interview with The Plain Dealer’s Stephen Hudak, made shortly after filming the show with Browne, Miller said she was “98 percent” certain about the validity of Browne’s predictions.

UK's Most Haunted to do "Psychic Science" tour

The idea is to "educate the public on the realities of the paranormal."

The US's Ghost Hunters don't have shit on the Most Haunted crew. They can get a ghost to whistle on command! But that's not all,  they also sound "sciencey." Show stars, Derek Acorah and Richard Felix, are holding a "psychic and science" tour on September 15 that includes a psychic fair, audience participation in "experiments" with the duo and conjuring a ghost out of concrete in old York Prison.

It's doubtful that science will have anything to do with this tour, as the MH team are known fraudsters.  Acorah is also known for his frankly embarrassing performance, in which he claimed to have communicated with Michael Jackson's ghost during a live seance broadcast on Sky TV.

Bad medicine: Dr. Oz continues promoting dodgy "radical cures" and pseudoscience

Doctor Mehmet Oz has become a household name of sorts since Oprah helped him land his own show. In that relatively short period of time, Oz has become one of the worst TV doctors out there, propagating bad information about supposed natural cures for cancer and new age 'medicines' which are said to treat any number of maladies, when they infact, do not. A recent episode entitled, "Dr. Mercola's Radical Cures," is made up entirely of this sort of nonsense, and goes to show why he earned a Pigasus award from JREF for the past two years in a row:

The Media Pigasus Award goes to Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has done such a disservice to his TV viewers by promoting quack medical practices that he is now the first person to win a Pigasus two years in a row. Dr. Oz is a Harvard-educated cardiac physician who, through his syndicated TV show, has promoted faith healing, "energy medicine," and other quack theories that have no scientific basis. Oz has appeared on ABC News to give legitimacy to the claims of Brazilian faith healer “John of God,” who uses old carnival tricks to take money from the seriously ill. He's hosted Ayurvedic guru Yogi Cameron on his show to promote nonsense "tongue examination" as a way of diagnosing health problems. This year, he really went off the deep end. In March 2011, Dr. Oz endorsed "psychic" huckster and past Pigasus winner John Edward, who pretends to talk to dead people. Oz even suggested that bereaved families should visit psychic mediums to receive (faked) messages from their dead relatives as a form of grief counseling.