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Professional psychics become professional because, one might suppose, they are good at their jobs. American tabloids such as the National Examiner, the Sun, the Globe, and the National Enquirer like to gather panels of “top psychics” annually to offer their predictions for the coming year. Just as annually, ‘skeptic’ Gene Emery combs through these predictions at the end of the relevant year to check how accurate the seers have been, and publishes the results in the Skeptical Inquirer. Among their failed predictions for 1997 were the following remarkable non-events, all of which are worthy of the old Mad magazine’s series ‘Scenes We Would Like To See’:
• Pamela Anderson Lee and Howard Stern would star in a rock musical version of Gone With the Wind
• US talk show hostess Kathie Lee Gifford would disappear for five weeks, “setting off a massive search in several countries”.

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