When I first met CSI Fellow Richard Saunders, the producer and host of The Skeptic Zone podcast, at CSICon 2017 in Las Vegas, I had no way of knowing that in less than a year I would be writing for the Skeptical Inquirer website. That was totally unexpected, and I certainly didn’t see it coming. Why would I predict that? I wasn’t a writer for any other publication, had no writing history, and didn’t have any writing ambitions. I also had no way of knowing that once I had that job, my first article would be an interview with Saunders (to mark the 500th episode of his podcast). I also had no way of knowing that several years later I’d be working with Saunders for several hours every week over the course of a year and a half as part of his twelve-year project researching Australian psychic predictions—a project that became known as the Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project (GAPPP).
Of course, if I were psychic, then I should have had a way of knowing all that, right? I could have easily predicted these otherwise unforeseeable events in my own future.
Or could I have? Could anyone have done that? Can self-proclaimed psychics predict unlikely future events with any greater accuracy than chance? That’s precisely what Saunders first set out to determine when he began this project over a decade ago. The project was described in the Australian Skeptics’ publication The Skeptic as follows:
The Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project is an analysis of over 3800 psychic or otherwise paranormal predictions, made by 207 people in Australia claiming to have knowledge of future events. All were published in Australian media … covering a 21-year period (2000 to 2020).
The Skeptic published a preliminary report, Not for Prophet, about the GAPPP in March 2021. This was written by one of the project’s participants, Adrienne Hill, and it describes both the creation and the work of the team assembled to score the massive number of predictions. It is available here.
The project’s final results have just been published in The Skeptic, and the results are striking. As Saunders summarized it:
- Psychics are appallingly bad at predicting future events. Only 11% of predictions are “correct.”
- Most predictions were too vague, expected, or simply wrong.
- Most of what happens is not predicted, and most of what is predicted does not happen.
Interestingly, the 11 percent figure kept popping up regardless of how we analyzed the data: by high-level category, by publication, by year, by decade. As long as the sample size wasn’t very small, around 11 percent correct seemed to be the “magic” number. So, the team started calling that “The Saunders Number.”
I must point out that 11 percent is generous. One example demonstrating this point is our scoring for the prediction: “Australian cricket team does very well on tour this year” (Heather Alexander, 2009). We scored that as CORRECT. But clearly, that was a 50 percent possibility; the team would either do well or they would not. If every prediction was like that, the average for CORRECT psychic predictions would have been 50 percent—maybe higher if the psychic had some reasonable knowledge about the teams. And let me point out that the more of that type of prediction that psychics make, the closer to 50 percent CORRECT—the closer to a coin flip—their average will get. And they make a lot of those.
There are also many predictions regarding births, or lack thereof, for celebrities. One such example was “Kylie Minogue: No pregnancy / children” (Milton Black, 2006). We scored that as CORRECT, but isn’t not having a child in any one-year period more likely than having one? That was a safe bet with substantially over a 50 percent likelihood. If that were a legitimate way to judge psychic ability, I could predict that same thing—no children this coming year—about every female celebrity I could think of. If I made no other predictions, I’d come out as The World’s Most Accurate Psychic. (I’m wondering now if I should delete that line because it may be taken as advice by some psychics!)
The fact that the GAPPP team was often overly generous in scoring 50:50 and some even more likely predictions as CORRECT should make it clear that we were not determined—as I predict will be claimed by the psychics—to prove them wrong. When psychics rate themselves, they always come out smelling like roses. As Saunders points out in the GAPPP article in The Skeptic:
It is not uncommon for those making predictions to pore over their work and highlight successes either real or perceived. An example of psychics assessing their own predictions can be found in an archived web page from Sarah Kulkens and her mother Kerry Kulkens dated from 2006, where 176 predictions were listed going back to 2001. The predictions they considered to have come true are marked with a tick and those equate to about 75%. These include:
- The start of major Earth changes
- Strange storms and torrential rains very severe weather patterns indicated we may have to learn to live with
- Wild storms and bush fire danger
- Using anti-gravity to lift heavy objects will become a reality instead of a dream.
Damn! Did I miss the deals on anti-gravity devices on Amazon during this past month’s Cyber Monday sales?
Another thing psychics do to increase their apparent accuracy is to make predictions regarding things that are already anticipated to happen. Sorry, psychics, but we did not score this 15 percent of items in the database as CORRECT but instead marked them as just EXPECTED. If I predict that the sun will rise tomorrow morning or that Biden will still be president in January 2022, and those things come to pass, do I get a prize? Here are some examples of predictions we scored as EXPECTED:
- Certainly, one area that is going to do fantastic stuff is the Internet, specifically areas like shopping. (Simon Turnbull, 2000)
- Wild storms and bush fire danger. (Kerry Kulkens, 2004)
- Australia will experience some of the hottest days in many, many years. (Mitchell Coombes, 2013)
- I see large earthquakes happening in several parts of the world in particular California (USA), Mexico, China and Japan. (Harry T., 2015)
- A major bank will experience a severe cyber hacking situation that will dramatically impact on many of their customers. (Suzy Cherub, 2017)
- Snowstorms in Germany. (Julie McKenzie, 2020)
A common tactic is for psychics to make many vague predictions. In this way, they can claim these were correct by retroactively finding something that sort of fits. Having a large set of these also drives down the percentage of absolutely wrong predictions. So now let’s look at the type of predictions we scored as TOO VAGUE and thus unverifiable as to being either CORRECT or WRONG.
- Before the end of the year, we’ll also see a lot of underhand things revealed in politics and business. (Angelica Danton, 2001)
- Upheavals and shocks in intuitional [sic] and political life. (Kerry Kulkens, 2003)
- I feel that George Bush and his daddy, well they’ve put a lot out and it’s coming back. So I feel relations for them will be very difficult. (Jacquelene Close Moore, 2005)
- A recent agreement with a man close to her [Elle Macpherson] will attract a breakthrough love-wise, but she is unsure whether the compatibility issue will wash. (Simon Turnbull, 2006)
- Unexpected objects falling to Earth. (Sarah Kulkens, 2007)
- As a universe we will respect money more and there will be a better and more efficient economy. People will use money wisely and as a result become more spiritual and use it to serve humanity rather than only for material uses. (Madeleine Marie, 2009)
- The entry of the Planet Uranus into Aries sign will bring in new political leaders [globally]. (Edgar Winter, 2011)
- A visit to the Coast by a celebrity couple, possibly involved with the movies. (Lisa-Marie Rose. 2012)
- A prominent figure will fall in Japan. (Kim Dodgson, 2013)
- I see a purple flower from a cactus being used to prevent brain bleeding. It will be beneficial to brain surgery. (Kim Dodgson, 2013)
- A global charity could appeal to her [Nicole Kidman’s] soft-hearted side. (Jenny Blume, 2016)
- Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will have an extremely challenging year, especially in February, March, June, July, November and December. (Milton Black, 2017)
- Joe Hildebrand—going into a spiritual year—being creative. (Rose Smith, 2019)
- Who will win the US election? … The numerology shows that both Mr Trump and Mr Biden have a chance of winning the next US Presidential Election. It is still up to the people to decide. (Sarah Yip, October 21, 2020)
Yes, Sarah Yip actually had the chutzpah to predict—just two weeks before the U.S. presidential election—that “both Mr Trump and Mr Biden have a chance of winning.” You can’t make this stuff up, but I’m sure Yip scored that as a correct prediction for herself.
I should note that in many cases we did not dismiss these types of predictions immediately but spent some time trying to determine if there was anything at all on the internet to either validate or refute them. Could we find anything regarding involvement with a global charity by Kidman in 2016? If so, that would have been scored as CORRECT. We found no news on this, so one might argue it should be scored as WRONG. However, we did not do that, realizing we could have just missed something, or perhaps whatever may have happened just wasn’t newsworthy. And it’s not like we could get Nicole on the phone and ask. This is another example of us being fair (some might say overly fair) to the psychics. In my opinion, we should have scored a larger number just plain WRONG. “Unexpected objects falling to Earth” in 2007 and the “purple flower from a cactus being used to prevent brain bleeding” from 2013 are prime examples I could point to—but this was a collaborative scoring effort.
So, now let’s look at a sample of the predictions that we scored as absolutely WRONG. This set amounted to a slight majority of the total: 53 percent.
- Using anti-gravity to lift heavy objects will become a reality instead of a dream. (Kerry Kulkens, 2001)
- I don’t think authorities will catch Osama bin Laden next year. I don’t think they’ll ever catch him. I think it is likely he has had plastic surgery to hide his identity. (Sandor, 2005)
- Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and their relationship won’t last beyond another year. (Mitchell Coombes, 2007)
- Barack Obama … will fall from grace. … The incident seems to involve pork in the futures market or farming or will he just take a toasted ham sandwich to a synagogue. (David J. Chambers, 2009)
- Health problems around Queen Elizabeth will mean that the subject of succession can no longer be ignored. She will likely step down by the end of the year and hand on the reins of power due to health problems. The successor will in all likelihood be Prince Charles. (Heather Alexander, 2010)
- A terrorist attack in a major US city. (Sarah Kulkens, 2012)
- I also see Sydney being hit with a rather large earthquake, which will cause a lot of damage, within the next few years. (Rebecca Millman, 2013)
- Hillary Clinton will be the next President for the USA. (Kris Currier, 2016)
- May die [Regarding Stevie Wonder]. (Julie McKenzie, 2019)
- Joe Biden will be nominated but will drop out before election. Donald Trump to win election. (David the Medium, 2020)
Perhaps that last one is why Trump has yet to concede his loss. After all, a psychic, David the Medium, predicted he would win a second term. Who could argue with that?
Maybe you are now thinking that 53 percent WRONG doesn’t seem too bad. But let’s look at it this way: if the items that were scored as EXPECTED (15 percent), TOO VAGUE (18 percent) and UNKNOWN (2 percent) are all eliminated from the data, leaving only verifiable, non-obvious predictions, then the percent WRONG becomes 83 percent. Pretty much anyone would agree that a number that high would make any psychic look awful—almost like they actually had no supernatural ability and were just guessing. But making many, many, many vague and expected predictions obfuscates this reality, making psychics seem far less wrong than they actually are.
One last thing: when combing through their own past predictions to rate success, no psychic ever mentions what they didn’t see coming. To showcase this, the GAPPP team spent some time determining newsworthy Australian and global events we thought should have been too big to miss but that had no equivalent predictions in the database.
If these people could predict relatively uneventful things—such as this item we scored as CORRECT: “South Australia: moderate showers in March” (Elizabeth Jensen, January 2007)—then predicting the big ten items we documented for each year the project covered should have been a piece of cake. Here is a small sample:
- 2000: Stalemate in U.S. presidential election. Supreme Court decides the winner.
- 2001: The 9-11 attack on the U.S. happens.
- 2002: Worst drought in 100 years for Australia.
- 2003: The Space Shuttle Columbia burns up on reentry, the first such accident in the U.S. space program.
- 2004: An Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami on December 26 kills an estimated 227,898 people in fourteen countries, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.
- 2005: Four coordinated suicide bombings hit central London, killing fifty-two people and injuring over 700.
- 2006: Australian wildlife expert and television personality Steve Irwin dies by a freak accident when he is struck in the heart by a stingray barb.
- 2007: Apple introduces the original iPhone, beginning a new era of smartphones.
- 2008: Adelaide experiences a national record heat wave for an Australian capital city, recording over ten straight days of temperatures over 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
- 2009: Pop singer Michael Jackson dies at the age of fifty.
- 2010: An 8.8-magnitude earthquake, one of the largest in recorded history, occurs in Chile, triggering a tsunami in the Pacific killing at least 525.
- 2011: A tsunami triggers the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
- 2012: Sandy Hook school shootings.
- 2013: Deadliest structural failure in history occurs in Bangladesh when 1,134 are killed and 2,500 injured after the Rana Plaza building collapses.
- 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears.
- 2014: A storm, described as a once-in-a-century event, hits Sydney.
- 2015: NASA announces that liquid water has been found on Mars.
- 2015: The first observation of gravitational waves. (Announced in 2016.)
- 2016: Barack Obama visits Cuba, marking the first time a sitting U.S. president visited the island nation since 1928.
- 2017: ’Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object, is detected passing through the Solar System.
- 2018: France experiences its worst civil unrest since the protests of 1968. Hundreds of people are injured and thousands are arrested. Over 100 cars are burned, the Arc de Triomphe is vandalized, and numerous other tourist sites are closed in the capital and elsewhere in the country.
- 2019: A fire engulfs Notre-Dame in Paris, destroying much of the cathedral.
- 2020: The COVID-19 global pandemic begins.
- 2020: The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffers the largest point drop in history and the second largest percentage drop ever.
Failing to predict a single one of the over 210 items like this we recorded should be downright embarrassing to people claiming clairvoyance. It’s almost like none of these people are actually psychic. To me, this is the most damning evidence against the proposition that any of these people (or by extension anyone claiming such abilities) are actually psychic. Sometimes absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
After the GAPPP report was published in The Skeptic, I asked Saunders what he would suggest be done differently if anyone else was contemplating doing this analysis for another set of data, especially in the United States with a much, much larger population of psychics. He told me:
If I was doing it all over again then very early on, I would enlist the help of an international team to help me online like we did via Zoom. But when I started, that didn’t exist. Apart from having lots of people work on the project, it was invaluable to have arguments and debates about particular predictions. I would also point out that a similar project covering the United States over similar period of time would probably be impossible.
Finally, let me say that it was a great privilege to be part of this project, and I encourage readers to access the full report as published in The Skeptic here. Also, you can hear Richard Saunders discuss this project with the editor of The Skeptic, Tim Mendham, in Episode 688 of The Skeptic Zone (at the 18:22 mark) here. As of this date, the following episode (no. 689) is scheduled to include a reading by Saunders and Adrienne Hill of the entire GAPPP report from The Skeptic.
Other Skeptical Inquirer articles by Rob Palmer pertaining to psychics and mediums:
Presentations and interviews by Rob Palmer on the subject of the harm in having these beliefs: