Checking for normal things first

Funnily enough some of the best skeptical parasychology researchers do this exact thing. Dr Callum E Cooper has talked about his knowledge of cold and hot reading and uses it in demonstrations while teaching parapsychology to his students. To be a good investigator you have to know all the tricks, and it's why old mediumship tests use to bring in cold readers, skeptics, professional charlatans and magicians to make sure that mediums were using NO tricks.

That's what impresses me about parapsychology although even these people can be tricked by a creative and clever illusionist.  The best we can have is a "best we can say" situation - but then that describes a whole lot of science too.

Funnily enough some of the best skeptical parasychology researchers do this exact thing. Dr Callum E Cooper has talked about his knowledge of cold and hot reading and uses it in demonstrations while teaching parapsychology to his students. To be a good investigator you have to know all the tricks, and it's why old mediumship tests use to bring in cold readers, skeptics, professional charlatans and magicians to make sure that mediums were using NO tricks.

Oh I agree this mythology that the SPR were all fools and poor investigators is perpetuated by pseudo-skeptics who at times have no actual evidence of fraud but write a lot of possible ways in which fraud could have been done.

This isn't to say I completely disregard the skeptical claims, if I were to see a celebrity medium in person I'd probably check the price of the ticket against investigations that cold/hot reading is how it's done. But I think most of us aren't getting strung along by some medium or fortune teller and instead have a general interest in the paranormal.

If I weren't reading about the paranormal I'd probably spend more money on a nice OLED TV + 4-8K bluray player or something like that, so I am arguably saving money regardless.

edit: worth revisiting this quote ->

"We have done all that we can do when the critic has nothing left to allege except that the investigator is in the trick. But when he has nothing else left he will allege that... We must drive the objector into the position of being forced either to admit the phenomena as inexplicable, at least by him, or to accuse the investigators either of lying or cheating, or of a blindness or forgetfulness incompatible with any intellectual condition except absolute idiocy."
 -Henry Sidgwick, from his 1882 address to the SPR