Sylvia Browne - Predictions

Predictions

Although Browne has made many public predictions, scientific skeptic James Randi says her accuracy rate has been no better than educated guessing. Among her claims were:

• That Bill Clinton was falsely accused in the Lewinsky scandal – proved incorrect.
• That Bill Bradley would win the 2000 U.S. presidential election with the Reform Party coming in second – he did not and they did not.
• The "hiding in caves" of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein – Hussein was found in a "spider hole" in the ground near Tikrit and Osama bin Laden was hiding in a mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
• The death of bin Laden – later revealed by the Central Intelligence Agency, and later by his 2011 killing, to be incorrect.
• A guilty verdict in the 2005 child molestation trial of Michael Jackson – Jackson was acquitted of all charges.
• The cure and prevention of breast cancer by the end of 1999

Janet McDonald, an author of books for young adults, describes her experience receiving a psychic reading via phone, for which she paid Browne $700. Browne predicted a "really long life" for McDonald, who died of cancer at 53 just over four years later.

On September 3, 2001, Browne stated on Larry King Live that she would accept the James Randi Educational Foundation's $1,000,000 challenge to demonstrate supernatural abilities in a controlled scientific test. James Randi stated in 2007 that Browne had not contacted him and no longer wished to reach him.

A January 2007 episode of Anderson Cooper 360 featured Linda Rossi, Browne's business manager for 35 years, and James Randi. Randi proposed a test where Browne would provide readings for ten sympathetic people, each of whom would then identify their own reading among the ten. Rossi declined on Browne's behalf.

A detailed three-year study of her predictions about missing persons and murder cases, by Ryan Shaffer and Agatha Jadwiszczok for the Skeptical Inquirer, has found that despite her repeated claims to be more than 85% correct, "Browne has not even been mostly correct in a single case." The study's authors collected Browne's televised statements about 115 cases and compared them with newspaper reports that are believed to be factual. They found that in 25 cases where the actual outcome is known, she was completely wrong in every one; and in the rest, where the final outcome is unknown, her predictions could not be substantiated. The study indicates that the media outlets that repeatedly promote Browne's work have no visible concern about whether she is untrustworthy or harms people.

Investigator Joe Nickell believes modern day self-proclaimed mediums like John Edward, Sylvia Browne, Rosemary Altea and James Van Praagh are avoiding the Victorian tradition of dark rooms, spirit handwriting and flying tambourines as these methods risk exposure. They instead use "mental mediumship" tactics like cold reading or gleaning information from sitters beforehand (hot reading). Group readings also improve hits by making general statements with conviction, which will fit at least one person in the audience. Shows are carefully edited before airing to show only apparent hits and to remove anything that does not reflect well on the medium.

Browne's performance scheduled for Halifax, Nova Scotia, on April 1, 2011 was cancelled "due to unforeseen circumstances." It was later confirmed that she suffered a massive heart attack while in Hawaii on March 21, 2011.

In 2012, she predicted President Obama would not be re-elected in the presidential election. On September 25 2012, in an interview with WGNO news, she contradicted her earlier prediction and predicted President Obama would be re-elected.