Psychic Kids and Professorial WTF

From ABC News Nightline, 2011-08-16, comes a preview of an episode of ABC's “Beyond Belief”, in which we see a psychology professor pathetically squirming when posed questions a kindergarten student would think of.

There was a short segment about A&E's show “Psychic Kids” (woo extraordinaire), ending with an interview with a professor who has/had some involvement^[1] with the show. I don't know how to insert a link to the video on ABC's page (but with basic search skills you should be able to find it — the Nightline segment is called “ 'Psychic Detectives' Put to the Test ”), but I made a transcript of the aforementioned squirming.

First, though, I would like to say that I mean no disrespect to the interviewer when I describe the questions in relation to a kindergarten student. Quite the contrary: the interviewer seems to realize that the only way to talk to anyone who believes any psychic crap is at a kindergarten level.

OK, on with the transcript^[2].

(JC: Interviewer, Juju Chang of ABC.)
(LM: Lisa Miller, Assoc. Prof. of Psychology and Education, Teachers College Columbia University.)
JC: Do you ever think that it's being used fraudulently or disingenuously?
LM: I think that any human faculty can be used for a broad range of purposes. Things can be used positively, I, I, I, anything…
JC: But surely you don't believe that everybody out there who—
LM: [interrupting] I'm sorry, I apologize, but I'm finding it kind of hard to relate to this discussion. Are we about done?

WTFFFFF^[3]? “I'm finding it kind of hard to relate to this discussion”? She's a^[4] “leading scholar in the area of spirtiuality [sic] and wellness” who has “spoken internationally and on Capital [sic] Hill to policy maker [sic] on spirituality and wellness in youth” whose “research includes school based spiriutally [sic] oriented interventions for children and adolescents”, and she can't relate to a kindergarten-level discussion about her own fucking research^[5]?

On the one hand, this isn't surprising, because the whole subject is bullshit, so any question is hard to answer (without spewing more bullshit). On the other hand, it is surprising, because it seems to suggest that nobody has asked her this sort of question previously, which says something about her peers, colleagues, journal editors and reviewers, students, the entire “academic” community of spiritual & psychic bullshit.

Out of curiosity, I looked at her complete list of publications, and the abstract of [M] (the one listed first as of today) includes this:

Spiritual psychology is well poised to contribute to the field of psychology by extending a map of human experience beyond materialism. We can expand scientific inquiry to explore consciousness as it pertains to states other than matter. Several of our sibling fields in science have moved well beyond strict materialism, such as academic physics, which includes a branch of quantum physics reliant on consciousness.

Psychic bullshit is not a science. If psychic bullshit has any siblings (astrology and numerology come to mind), they are not sciences.

(The bit about quantum physics reliant on conciousness is, at best, a gross misinterpretation of any legitimate physics. There are, unfortunately, plenty of woo-meisters who peddle the quantum-is-spiritual bullshit.)

I know there are plenty of other people out there who believe psychic bullshit; my scorn is by no means limited to Dr. Miller (as I said before, the entire community seems suspect).

By the way, a lot of the Nightline segment featured Banachek and his work debunking the woo. Thank you, Banachek, for your efforts, and thank you Juju Chang for a nice report.

Notes
1. ^Wikipedia says she hosts the show, but Nightline said she was a former consultant
2. ^Immediately before this extract, JC asked LM something about the children in “Psychic Kids”, and LM (correctly) would not address the issue because she has worked with the children.
3. ^WTFFFFF: Ripping off Cartman from the South Park movie "Bigger, Longer, & Uncut, “FFFFF”=“Fuck Fuckity Fuck Fuck Fuck”. One “F” doesn't suffice for this purpose.
4. ^Quotes taken from her Faculty Profile page
5. ^Yes, this conversation is directly about her research. The questions are about the psychic abilities of children, and she researches spiritually oriented interventions for children. Her notion of spiritual includes psychic.

Bibliography
• [M]Watching for light: Spiritual psychology beyond materialism. Miller, Lisa. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Vol 2(1), Feb 2010, 35-36. doi: 10.1037/a0018554