E166: (Failed) Psychic Predictions w/ Rob Palmer

Recovering From Religion

This week on RfRx, Rob Palmer will be joining us to discuss psychic predictions. In 2021, The Skeptic Zone producer and CSI Fellow Richard Saunders completed his 12-year project dubbed the Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project (GAPPP) – an analysis of almost 4,000 published paranormal predictions made by over 200 people claiming paranormal powers in Australia. The scoring of the predictions was performed by an international team of volunteers of which Rob was a member. In this presentation, an expanded version of the talk to be given at CSICon 2022 in a few weeks, Rob will share details and the results of this unique investigation into the precision (or lack thereof) of the published predictions of prominent, public, paranormal practitioners.

Rob Palmer has had a diverse career in engineering, having worked as a spacecraft designer, computer programmer, and software systems engineer. He began writing for Skeptical Inquirer in 2018, and to date has had 60 articles published by Skeptical Inquirer and other skeptic media (on three continents!). Rob writes about contemporary skeptical issues, and for his column he has interviewed individuals as diverse as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller), John de Lancie (Star Trek’s Q!), Thomas Westbrook (Holy Koolaid), Drew McCoy (The Genetically Modified Skeptic), and Seth Andrews. Rob is also a public speaker and has given talks for various skeptic and humanist groups, (including RfR). He has been a speaker at Dragon Con, and twice (so far) at CSICon, the annual conference of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He has also been interviewed about his work on various podcasts and YouTube shows, including The Skeptic Zone, Big Picture Science, Banachek’s Brain, and The Thinking Atheist.

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