Where great people tell exciting stories about change!

More information at http://www.innotown.com/speakers-2012

More information at http://www.kent.ac.uk/openlectures/pdf/latestopenlecturebrochure.pdf (page 10)

No booking required
Woolf College, Lecture Theatre, Canterbury campus / 6pm
Contact: George Chandler / T: 01227 823902 / E: events@kent.ac.uk

Yesterday, Psychic Sally (aka Sally Morgan) announced that she is suing the Daily Mail for libel. She is taking action against two articles published in the Daily Mail last year in the wake of allegations made in September that Sally uses an earpiece to receive information on stage in order to help her perform apparent acts of mediumship. Sally Morgan has strongly denied these allegations.

You can find out more about the allegations and subsequent controversy in an article by Chris French, and in some blogs by me here, here, here, here and here.

With September’s earpiecegate in mind, I went to see Psychic Sally in three shows late last year. Before discussing the content of the shows, I should point out that Psychic Sally was not wearing an earpiece when I saw her. On each occasion her hair was tucked behind her ears. She has admitted to wearing an earpiece in the past (for stage direction only), but even this was not being used when I attended her shows.

I found her performances to be very disappointing. Apart from the ethical issues and some distasteful readings (in my opinion), she had very few direct hits and spent much of the evenings struggling to give convincing readings (in my opinion).

Her national tour has been a major success with 1,000-seat venues sold out night after night (tickets £20- £25), so I wondered why she was so popular in light of the lacklustre performances that I had witnessed.. Perhaps her current popularity was based on previous success. Maybe her performances had been more impressive earlier in the year. How could I find out if the shows that I had seen were a pale shadow of the sort of mediumship Sally had been capable of in the past?

Fortunately, Ticketmaster allows people to post reviews of Sally’s shows (and other shows) on its website. Reviewers can also award up to five stars. So, yesterday morning I looked at all of the reviews for 2011 and worked out the average star rating for each month. Before I reveal the data, I should point out a couple of things.

1. This was a rush job, so it does need to be checked. I have tried to be accurate, but there were lots  of shows and reviews to wade through.
2. There are some gaps in the data. This might be because Sally was on holiday and there were no shows, or because shows not sold via Ticketmaster are not reviewed on its site.

This is what I found:

January            81 reviews        4.5 stars

February          85                    4.6

March            130                    4.3

April                11                    4.2

May                  7                    4.6

June                29                    4.4

July                  -                       -

August             -                        -          

Sept                12                    2.3

October           90                    2.5

November       100                    2.9

December        -                       -

Technically, I probably should not present this data in a bar chart, but I have already drawn it and this is what the data set looks like. As you can see, fans were much less impressed by her shows at the end of the year. I have shown September as a half-width bar, as all the reviewed shows in September took place in the second half of the month, after the allegations about the earpiece.

So why bother with this exercise? First, those thinking about going to see Sally might be interested to know that she is much less popular than she used to be in terms of her reviews. Second, does it throw any light on Sally’s supposed psychic powers?

There are many reasons why Sally’s performances might have suffered from autumn onwards. For example,

1. Sally might have been nervous and anxious after the allegations.
2. Critics might have posted fake negative reviews in late 2011 – perhaps encouraged by the publicity.
3. Sally’s powers may have genuinely waned and may continue to wane. Maybe she has lost the knack.

Perhaps you can think of other reasons why Sally’s performance suffered from September onwards.

Originally posted on slsingh’s posterous ]]> http://simonsingh.net/2012/01/why-did-psychic-sally-lose-her-powers-in-september-2011/feed/ 0 http://simonsingh.net/2012/01/skeptics-in-the-pub-winchester/ http://simonsingh.net/2012/01/skeptics-in-the-pub-winchester/#comments Wed, 26 Jan 2011 08:09:10 +0000 Simon Singh http://simonsingh.net/?p=1676 Alan Turing & the Cracking of the Enigma Cipher

http://winchester.skepticsinthepub.org/

7pm start

Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial

Trick or Treatment? Alternative medicine on trial.

Originally posted on slsingh’s posterous ]]> http://simonsingh.net/2011/12/can-you-think-of-a-name-for-my-new-thing/feed/ 0 http://simonsingh.net/2011/12/uncaged-monkeys-on-tour/ http://simonsingh.net/2011/12/uncaged-monkeys-on-tour/#comments Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:01:03 +0000 Simon Singh http://www.simonsingh.net/?p=1437 Details here:
Tue 6th O2 Apollo Manchester
Wed 7th O2 Apollo Manchester
Sat 10th Plymouth Pavilions
Tue 13th Hammersmith Apollo
Wed 14th Hammersmith Apollo
Thur 15th Brighton Dome
With Robin Ince, Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh and guests.

Thanks for all your comments on my previous blogpost. Very helpful and very much appreciated.

I have now removed that post as it has done its job.

More news soon.

Thanks again,

Simon.

Originally posted on slsingh’s posterous ]]> http://simonsingh.net/2011/11/medical-researchers-born-in-1943/feed/ 0