Skeptical Inquirer • September/October 2009 1 Wiseman/French/Watt — ‘None of This Is True’: Do Television Disclaimers about the Paranormal Really Work? (Commentary) 6/22/2009 (2nd Proof) COMMENTARY ‘None of This Is True’: Do Television Disclaimers about the Paranormal Really Work? RICHARD WISEMAN, CHRIS FRENCH, and CAROLINE WATT he last few years have seen a sub- Likewise, the British media regulatory stantial growth in the number of body Ofcom notes that any demonstra- Ttelevision programs claiming to tions of paranormal phenomena “. contain paranormal phenomena. View- that purport to be real (as opposed to ers are now routinely offered the oppor- entertainment) must be treated with due tunity to accompany teams of “ghost- objectivity” and that if a demonstration hunters” wandering through allegedly is for entertainment purposes, “this haunted buildings armed with little must be made clear to viewers.” more than EMF meters, voice recorders, Program creators and broadcasters and high hopes of a second season. usually attempt to comply with such Alternatively, they can play the role of guidelines by presenting onscreen “dis- sick voyeur and watch mediums stand claimers,” essentially informing viewers before groups of recently bereaved peo- that such shows may not be exactly as ple and pretend to channel their they appear, and thus should only be deceased loved ones (“I am hearing the taken seriously by the hard of thinking. voice of a woman. She’s in her mid-thir- However, such messages are often shown ties and couldn’t care less about any of for a very short period of time and tend you. Oh, I’m sorry, that’s the producer”). to contain long and rather tortuously It would be nice to think that viewers worded messages displayed in a relatively are canny enough to realize that such small font. Although such disclaimers shows contain considerably more fiction may satisfy legal and regulatory guide- than fact, and that they might use their lines, we wondered whether they had any precognitive powers to hit the “off” but- real psychological impact on viewers. We ton on their TV controllers before the hypothesized that if people genuinely programs begin. Unfortunately, research believed that a program containing suggests that a significant percentage of seemingly impossible phenomena was the public really do believe that such developed to entertain rather than programming depicts genuine paranor- inform, then they should be less likely to mal events and thus come away more believe that the phenomena shown con- convinced than ever about the existence stitutes evidence for the paranormal. But of such phenomena). Perhaps because of do the types of disclaimers typically used this, various official bodies and pressure actually affect the way they view the evi- groups have urged those producing such dential nature of the phenomena shown? shows to act responsibly. The Commit- To help find out, we conducted an ini- tee for Skeptical Inquiry’s Council for tial study. We recorded a ten-minute seg- Media Integrity has suggested that cer- ment from a well-known television show tain paranormal programming should in which an alleged medium gave readings carry “entertainment” or “fiction” labels. to various audience members. The clip Skeptical Inquirer • September/October 2009 2 Wiseman/French/Watt — ‘None of This Is True’: Do Television Disclaimers about the Paranormal Really Work? (Commentary) 6/22/2009 (2nd Proof) ended with an eighty-word disclaimer as use of general statements and feed- explaining that the show should be seen as back from people’s verbal and non- entertainment, that people varied in their verbal behaviour. opinions about the nature of alleged Once again, this was placed onscreen for mediumistic abilities, and that the pro- ten seconds. We showed this version to gram content should not be construed as two more groups of students, with one fact. This long paragraph was broadcast in group seeing it before the show and relatively small type and remained on the another after. Did this have any effect? screen for about ten seconds. No. Once again, there was no statistical We showed the clip to a group of difference between the ratings of these undergraduate psychology students and groups and the ratings of those that saw asked them to rate the degree to which no disclaimer at all. they thought the program provided evi- At present, we don’t know why the dence of “paranormal” powers, using a type and position of the disclaimers scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) tested have no significant effect on the to 7 (strongly agree). Next, we created a way in which people view the evidential second clip by editing out the disclaimer nature of the alleged paranormal phe- altogether, showed this clip to another nomena in the program. It could be, for group of students, and had them make example, that our participants couldn’t the same ratings. There was no statisti- be bothered to read the disclaimer or cally significant difference between the that any influence it had was out- two groups’ ratings, suggesting that the weighed by the much more dramatic disclaimer had no effect on the way in material in the rest of the clip. Either which the students perceived the para- way, the results suggest that there is a normal content of the program. pressing need to develop a form of We wondered whether the lack of any wording and presentation that really gets effect was due to the disclaimer being the message across. Until then, the situ- shown at the end of the program. After ation remains grim. Next time you see a all, participants had probably made up paranormal program briefly presenting their minds about the alleged paranormal one of those long “for entertainment phenomena by then, and the near-sub- only” disclaimers you might be tempted liminal presentation of the long paragraph to think, “Oh well, I guess it’s better was unlikely to influence them one way or than nothing.” Our research suggests another. To test this idea, we edited the that you are wrong. l clip yet again, this time placing the dis- claimer at the start of the show. This new edit was shown to another group of stu- [Please provide short author bios—JL] dents, who again went on to rate the degree to which it provided evidence of paranormal powers. The results? Once again, there was no significant difference between their ratings and the ratings of those who didn’t see the disclaimer. Undaunted, we toyed with the notion that perhaps the disclaimer was simply too vague and so produced our own shorter, more strongly worded, version: The alleged mediumistic abilities of the individuals featured in this pro- gram have not been subjected to con- trolled scientific investigations. In addition, some scientists have sug- gested that anecdotal evidence in sup- port of such abilities could be due to several psychological techniques, such.