Jaycee Dugard Abduction Case Highlights Failure of Psychics

Jaycee Dugard, the woman who was abducted at the age of 11 in 1991, was recently discovered living in a virtual prison in the back yard of a couple's come in Antioch, Calif., as has been widely reported. She had been there for 18 years, confined and horrifically abused, even giving birth to her rapist's children. They were kept prisoner and isolated, never having attended school or seen a doctor.

Amazingly, a Reno psychic is now claiming the case proves the accuracy of her abilities.

Dayle Schear, who was paid by Jaycee's parents to help locate their daughter, says she told Jaycee's mother not to give up searching for her daughter: "I looked her in the eyes and I said... eventually she'll walk through the door, you're going to see her again."

Schear also claims that she correctly described the general area where Jaycee was being held. The psychic's "information" is typical of what happens when missing persons are eventually found, dead or alive. Psychics come forward years later after the person was found to make retroactive claims about how they "knew" certain pieces of information.

Yet the psychics conveniently ignore the fact that their information was either wrong or so general and vague that it was useless. If Shear's psychic powers told her that this poor girl was being kept in the most horrific conditions - being subjected to continual sexual and physical abuse for nearly two decades - then it's puzzling that Jaycee was not found 18 years ago.

What police and searchers need is not general, vague "I told you so" information after the missing person has been recovered through police work, but accurate, useful information that leads police to the victim.

"Psychics," are real.

They are people who somehow pick up on clues too dim for the rest of us. For example, a dog's ability to read facial expressions is not shared by many people, just some, for example, the people hired to train customs agents and police investigators who can just "naturally" tell when folks are lying.

"Psychics" do exist. Unfortunately, they are not like machines who can be turned on and off, so they might develop a little (or a lot) of sort of annoying show-biz shedazzle to make up for those times when they are dead wrong. Which is fairly often.

But no reasonable man can deny that they have often helped the police fill in parts of puzzling cases. They are definitely worth a shot in some of those puzzling cases, because sometimes it works to a greater or lesser degree, even if just corroborating evidence the police already have, or moving the investigation in a more productive direction.

I don't think any reasonable person would advise the cops to put all their investigative eggs in a "psychic's" basket. But, keep an open mind.,

There are people who call themselves "psychics", but there isn't the faintest shred of evidence that they actually have paranormal powers. Check out The Amazing Randi's million dollar challenge, which has been offered for decades to anyone whose psychic abilities can hold up to scientific scrutiny. Not one person has come even close to winning.

As per the original article: "Despite repeated claims to the contrary, there is not a single documented case of a missing person being found or recovered due solely to psychic information." If you throw enough darts at a target, it's inevitable that some of them would be somewhere near the center. It's not surprising that some "psychics" have an occasional lucky guess agrees with the evidence in a vague way. If they were genuine, why couldn't they simply say "go to 324 1st St, she's in the basement"? Instead, it's always something along the line of "I sense....water. And something green. And some that starts with the letter "C"..."

I don't think any reasonable person would advise the cops to put all their investigative eggs in a "psychic's" basket. But, keep an open mind.,

In the interest of keeping an open mind, should the police also use dowsers, astrologers, and fortunetellers? Let's just stick to evidence and forensics, please.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.