page_title: Mark Edward
section_title: Skepticism
hierarchical_section_title: Mark Edward / Skepticism
caption_attribution_description: English: Sylvia Browne protest led by mentalist Mark Edward TAM 2012
context_page_description: Mark Edward is a professional mentalist who specializes in magic of the mind. He has written several books on mentalism, séance theory and production and appeared on television as both primary consultant and on-air performer in such diverse programming as A & E's Biography: "Houdini, the Great Escape," NBC's "The Other Side" and "Psychic Secrets Revealed," The Sci-Fi Channel's "Mysteries, Magic and Miracles," The Discovery Channel's "Forces Beyond," and on two episodes of The Learning Channel's "Exploring the Unknown." His featured segment as a spirit medium on the pilot episode of Showtime's "Penn & Teller's Bullshit!" series entitled "Speaking with the Dead" helped secure an Emmy Award nomination for that episode in 2002. Mark Edward is not related to John Edward.
context_section_description: Edward's involvement in the skeptical movement has been extensive. In an interview with Skeptical Inquirer, he stated his skeptical history goes back to the 1970s, when he became involved with searching out the methods of Uri Geller. Years after working for the Psychic Friends Network, Edward decided to blow the whistle on the $2 billion a year industry. He said the industry soars when the economy tanks. People have moved, changed jobs, and even divorced after receiving a consultation, but psychics have no special abilities. They use specific techniques designed to be vague, flattering, and drawn out. They use generalities that are true about everybody. Psychics at the 900 hotlines were trained to scam callers out of their money. They were told to keep people on the line as long as possible, and to ask for their birthdays, names and addresses. Then the hotlines would start spamming people. The callers would get letters telling them they're in danger and that they need to call their psychic friend immediately. Another trend involved seeing a psychic over Skype, whereby the customer paid in advance by credit card for the psychic session, upon which the ‘psychic’ on the other end would not only receive the money but was able to see the payer’s itemized credit card history. Then the psychic had information on the sitter and would seem even more credible.
  Edward has been very public about exposing celebrity psychics and the techniques they use to fool their audiences. On the premiere episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, he demonstrated how television psychics, John Edward, James Van Praagh, and Rosemary Altea, convinced their subjects that they were actually communicating with the dead. On Inside Edition, he showed how Theresa Caputo used similar techniques to give the appearance that she can contact the deceased. He also appeared in the Halloween 2017 episode of Adam Ruins Everything with Adam Conover, in which he explained cold reading. Often, what is perceived as psychic powers, is nothing more than a simple magic trick, as in Uri Geller’s famous spoon bending trick. Edward performed one of several possible techniques in the TV series, Weird or What? 
  Edward pointed out that if communication with the dead was possible, psychic hotlines and celebrity psychics would be obsolete, and the scientific community would give this type of phenomena a great deal of attention; however, sufficient evidence is lacking. "What is more likely" Edward asks, "that somebody can talk to dead people, or they're just conning you?"  He made a similar argument for haunted houses. If we could prove ghosts were real, it would be the greatest scientific achievement in history, and we wouldn’t be paying twenty dollars for a Hollywood ghost tour.
  Despite his efforts to expose psychics as frauds, Edward found that some people's beliefs cannot be changed. Even though he was introduced as a fake on the Jeff Probst Show, one of the audience members requested a reading from him. On the TV series Brain Games, Edward demonstrated that the planchette on the Ouija board is controlled by the live participants and not by someone who has passed, and yet some of his sitters were convinced they had received messages from beyond the grave.
  Edward said that he was always a skeptic. At the same time he was working the 900 numbers, he was also on the editorial board of Skeptic Magazine. He was a member of the team for the network television pilot The Skeptologists, working with Yau-Man Chan, Steven Novella, Phil Plait, Kirsten Sanford, Michael Shermer and Brian Dunning. The program never aired.
  Edward was a steering member of IIG West, a group aimed at investigating paranormal claims. He has also worked with Investigation Network, teaching workshops and exposing psychic frauds, like Sylvia Browne and John Edward.
  Edward has been a speaker at a number of skeptical conferences. At Dragon*Con 2012 Skeptrack, he performed psychic readings and demonstrated techniques celebrity psychics use, like hot and cold readings, in front of an audience packed with skeptics. In his talk
caption: A protest against Sylvia Browne led by Edward
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