Bryan Farha, Ed.D.

On December 29, 2004, when my niece Briana Harroz was a 4th grader at the Heritage Hall elementary school in Oklahoma City, Sylvia Browne made her annual predictions for the year 2005. Sensing an opportunity to test her accuracy, I asked Briana’s teacher, Mrs. Roxanne Warner, to allow me to ask her students to make predictions on the same items. She graciously permitted me to use both of her 4th-grade classes—a total of 31 students. Some of Sylvia’s predictions were so vague that lots of possible events might enable her to claim that a prediction was correct. (For example, her prediction that President Bush would “step up to the plate” could be interpreted in many ways.) To avoid this possibility, I chose eleven predictions that …