Thought you would be interested in this.

Proving, I suppose, that at least 700 of the people watching the show either didn't have an "off" button on their TV set or, if they did, they didn't know how to use it!

Interesting that over half the complaints were received before the show even went to air... perhaps the majority of people thought it would be something that it wasn't.

The producers are lucky pyres are still not in fashion.

Most people who complain about the Harry Potter movies haven't seen them, either. Nor have they read the books. It just goes to show you the true meaning of prejudice.

Anyone see the connection between prejudice and ignorance?

There is a loud and ignorant minority who complains about such things and in my experience such active protests are actually "organized" by a group who—without investigation—decides the matter presented is against their religion. They then take the tack, which I feel is legitimate, to organize a campaign to let their OPINION be known in light of their belief.

Where I feel ignoarance comes in is when they demand everyone else think the same way and have their choice of media censored. Most often I have found the groups making the complaints do so in a most authoritarian way—as the arbiters of good and evil.

I was once married to a woman who felt Halloween was an evil celebration...and our kids missed out on a lot of folk lore fun. My grandkids, however, have parents who join right in the lore as what it is—a folk festival in the US, and a commemorative "Day of the Dead" in other cultures.

Is it not possible that these same people who complained about the "Seance Show" are also the ones who complain about too much sex on TV??? (I guess that we cannot complain about the violence, since mostly that is the news lately.)

If we all try to do shows that are "politically correct" we can forget about having any social or entertainment efficacy.

And if you really want to know some of my thoughts along these lines, go to the Genii forums under Buzz and the 108 message thread on "Controversial uses of Magic." It takes a different stand on presentation of material in our shows.

Here is a sobering thought. Half of the population is below average intelligence. Things like these complaints reflect that situation.

People are always more willing to jump to a conclusion than to listen to reason. And we are all guilty of it at one time or another.

I have a friend whose name everyone on this forum would recognize that if you are going to tell him a joke, you need to tell him it's a joke first, or he will take it seriously. That's a big problem sometimes.

Hmmmm... if "half" in a population are below something then how does one obtain a true "average" to measure against?

Not disputing that many in the population are below average intelligence, but I wonder if intelligence is really the key factor. Lack of critical thinking, no training in dialectic or rhetoric, a general lack of "wisdom" seems more likely. You see this even in people of average or above average intelligence. The intelligent fool is one of the worst offenders.

What I can't figure out here is why are you all complaining about the "complainers"?
That was exactly the type of reaction that was planned. The show was calculated to be provocative and it apparently succeeded very well. Hopefully, the fact that Derren self-exposed it as a hoax taught some people a lesson about maintaining a healthy skepticism.

Any publicity is good publicity and this is proved with Derren's road show selling out.

Chmara writes: ". . .they demand everyone else think the same way and have their choice of media censored."

Not unlike some magic groups over the issue of exposure!

This reminds me of when a person my older son saw maybe an hour a week told him that magic was evil. I had a rational discussion with this person (and trust me, it took a lot of composure on my part not to start yelling), and I discovered that she had never seen a magic show, nor met a magician, nor had any desire to do so. I ended the conversation with telling her that my son's spiritual upbringing was up to me, and she needed to refrain from pushing her ideas to my son. If I discovered that she was continuing that line of conversation with my son, I would complain to the owners of the after school activity place, and it would not be pleasant. Of course, I'm sure she put me on the prayer list at whatever church she attends.

Margarette

I know that this is an silly quibble, and I'll admit that it's been a long time since I took a statistics class, but I think this statement is confusing a "median" with a "mean."

I'm expecting that Mr. Brown is mighty grateful for that lower half, though, because they've given him more publicity than money can buy.

--Chris

A median is the middle value in a data set when it is arranged in order. The mean, which is what most people commonly refer to as an average, can be quite misleading because of how much outliers can throw it off, for one thing. For example, if you have a group of 5 people, and 4 have an IQ of 100 (average or just below average IQ), and 1 has an IQ of 200 (super-genius category), the group's average (mean) IQ would be 120. This doesn't accurately reflect anyone in the group. There are similar problems with using a median for something like this. Using the "mode" in this case might be helpful, which is the most frequently occuring value in the data set.

Of course, using an average can be a problem for other reasons. If everyone was a genius, but two or three people were absolutely fantastically intelligent, you would still have half (or more) of the population "below average intelligence". What would that really mean?

What I find interesting about this is that the number of complaints seems to be quite a small number compared to what I assume the viewing audience was. Unless the show was a complete and total ratings flop, I would think this number would only represent a fraction of one percent of the viewing audience. Do numbers this low really tell us anything about the effect a show has on an audience that probably numbered in the millions?

The truth is that radio or TV callers don't provide any real measure on the level of success or failure of a show. These kind of data only have a use as a publicity tool (and as you may see due to the nature of this post, it's a very effective one), because people don't have a clear idea of the little percent of people that these calls represent.

Anyway, WHO the hell calls or writes to TV stations anyway?!

My wife's sister upon noting that I had a coffee table book about witchcraft asked my wife if I was going over to the dark side. While I find my sister in-law to be an intelligent person, I realize that her life is colored by her religious beliefs. And that's okay.

I've never found it nescessary to tell her I'm an atheist. I think it would completely change her opinion of me. Religion and rational thought rarely share the same stage.

So I guess my reaction to this story is; only seven hundred complained?

Just for the record, I know a lot of Christians who are very rational about magic, love the Harry Potter books, and enjoy a good magic show. (nobody enjoys a bad magic show)

Sure, I've met a lot of kooky religious folk.

But I've met a lot of kooky atheists, too.

In the UK, the current Church Times has an article on this, suprisingly giving exactly the opposite viewpoint to what you would expect. Saying how Christians should keep an open mind, and that if they had watched the show they would have seen the 'this was all illusions' message at the end.

How many of the 700 complaints were made by psychics or mediums that were probably complaining about things that Derren made a mockery out of their (I can't say if its honest or not) living. How many people's businesses (psychic phonelines ect) lost money?

As someone who has just graduated from a science degree and specialised in research methods and measurement concepts issues of natural science I am very familar with the text "how to lie with statistics?" Some complaints were probably from people who didn't like the time and dayit was on rather than a genuine "I completely ofended by this programme".

I'm informed that it got more complaints than a very descriptive program air about 'child sex offenders. That I can understand but Derrens seannce?