Michael Shermer Stumped by Astrologer?

[nasher168]

Taken from a show by Shermer, from the late 90's or early 00's by the looks of things:

The first experiment is plain old cold reading, but the later parts are, I have to admit, pretty impressive... at least at face value. The lack of a second part makes me very suspicious of the idea that Shermer wasn't able to refute it in any way. After all, if he can't refute it and the programme just ends, then one would expect the astrologers to also post that everywhere they could, cackling madly.

I've been hunting around for the rest of the programme, but can't even seem to find the name of it. :|

Anyone know where to find the rest of this programme? Or see anything wrong with the tests carried out?

 

[RichardMNixon]

I googled it and found another forum where someone contacted Shermer curious about it.

My memory on what we were trying to do that day of filming is a little vague, but if I recall correctly there was to be another stage of the experiment where Armstrong had to match his astrological readings with the profiles of a group of new subjects, and then have them do the same, picking out their reading from a batch he produced, and then compare them. But we ran out of time. Here's how it works in the film/television industry: camera crews are unionized and have strict rules about working only so many hours in a day, after which they get paid double time and even triple time, need a certain number of breaks in the day, etc. Our budget for that show required that we were done by 5pm, and we simply ran out of time and the producer called the shoot over, and there was nothing I could do about it. Very frustrating.

You can post this as well. In fact, maybe you can post it on the YouTube video of it, and anywhere else you find it playing.

 

[Pulsar]

The clip is from a TV series called "Exploring the Unknown" (1999). It has been discussed on James Randi's forum, and they got a reply from Shermer himself:

The short story is this: we ran out of time at the end of the filming day to conduct any more experiments with Armstrong. I protested that it was going to make it look like he was successful, but to no avail as I did not have final authority over what was produced for the show, Exploring the Unknown, and so I just hoped that in the editing process it would be cut in a way that dealt with that problem, but it wasn't and I couldn't do anything about it, so it aired and no one noticed back then (in 2000), but someone posted the clip you reference and now we're dealing with the fallout from it. It is an unfortunate reality of the series that I didn't have enough control over the production and filming process.

My memory on what we were trying to do that day of filming is a little vague, but if I recall correctly there was to be another stage of the experiment where Armstrong had to match his astrological readings with the profiles of a group of new subjects, and then have them do the same, picking out their reading from a batch he produced, and then compare them. But we ran out of time. Here's how it works in the film/television industry: camera crews are unionized and have strict rules about working only so many hours in a day, after which they get paid double time and even triple time, need a certain number of breaks in the day, etc. Our budget for that show required that we were done by 5pm, and we simply ran out of time and the producer called the shoot over, and there was nothing I could do about it. Very frustrating.

Edit: damn, Richard beat me to it