Psychic convention cancled due to unforseen circumstances

I hate charlatans. Specifically the ones who claim to have some sort of supernatural power, talking to the dead or reading minds. These people are the worst. At best they bilk people out of a few dollars at a carnival, at worst they defraud bereaved people in the most ham fisted way possible.

They make shit tons of money doing it too. Ed and Lorraine Warren, famous for the parts the played in the supposed real life events depicted in the movies "Amittyville Horror" and "The Conjuring". "The Conjuring" made $318 million from a $20 million budget, making it one of the highest grossing horror films of all time. This couple was also accused by two of the children from the Amittyvile Horror case of telling the Amittyvile family that they would become millionaires when the film rights sold if they helped play up the demon possession angle (also investigators found multiple holes in the case).

John Edward charges $150 a ticket for the cheap seats and up to $850 for a private reading. When I checked his website most of his shows for the next few months are sold out. He was caught using "hot reading", which uses knowledge gained prior to the official reading and passes it off as gained from another method, during a dateline NBC interview. Basically he defrauds grieving people looking for closure for personal gain, which has earned him the title the biggest douche in the universe.

Uri Geller was a psychic in the 70s that used spoon bending as "proof" of his power. He has published several books most of which have sold a decent amount of copies. This became a wildly popular phenomenon that is considered by many to be proof of psychic powers. The problem is that his spoon bending has been recreated by stage magicians, and thus might just be a fraud. When he went on the British TV show "Noel's House Party" he was seen to have bent the spoon with his hands at two times. But then again, he never said he didn't use his hands.

These charlatans prey upon the weaknesses of others to make a quick buck but also cause another problem. What if there are actually psychics out there? I don't think that there are, but what if. These frauds make that person less likely to "come out" as it where because they might be called crazy or a fraud just on the face of it. This is especially true when it comes to how we test for ESP or other poorly understood/ "paranormal" phenomena. A recent study at Harvard showed that there is no evidence of anything out of the ordinary when using neuroimaging on subjects taking tests to see if they have any ESP ability. This test seems good but it bases itself on the assumption that ESP is a brain based effect, but to be fair that is a very logical assumption. What if we don't have the tools yet to test this thoroughly enough to discount ESP as a possibility? What if ESP has nothing to do with the brain? What if the subjects have no ESP ability?

I am not saying that ESP exists. I don't tend to believe in paranormal stuff, but I think not investigating it fully (or at all because "they are all frauds" ) might be a misstep. I bring up the charlatan thing because while they are causing plenty of harm just on the surface they are also creating tons of evidence for people to just disregard the abnormal wholesale, and I think that this is short sighted. I don't think we have adequate tools yet to test the theory (I believe that the Harvard study takes us in the right direction on that front by the way despite my poking at it earlier). Basically, keep an open mind, just don't open your mind to much or your brain will fall out.