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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

The timing of this article is interesting given that John Oliver just did his show about this topic on Sunday. I wonder if that forced them to publish this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhMGcp9xIhY

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Forced them? Or they decided to ride a wave of interest and publish what they already have ready?

In the journalism world, that's kind of the same thing if you've been working on an article for a while and have to publish early. My main question is, was this always the day they planned to release this?

Was about to say this. Opened the article to expect some reference to the John Oliver show, but still haven't found any.

Probably a coincidence, this article likely wasn't written in a day, and I doubt NYTimes and Last Week Tonight are talking to each other.

No I'm sure this article was many months in the making. What I'm wondering is if it was always planned to come out today, or if they had to rush to an early finish because of Oliver "scooping" them.

As part of the team which does these stings with Gerbic, I can tell you it was a pure coincidence regarding the timing of the Oliver Psychic segment and the NYT article. The Thomas John sting happened in 2017 and it took THAT long for the NYT to get this article out. The pub date kept slipping for all sorts of reasons, and a few weeks ago it got hot, final fact checking happened, final edits were done, and an actual publication date was set.

So, it's just a bad month for psychics. But Oliver NEEDS to be given an award this year from some Skeptic organization.

BTW, check out the Wiki article for Thomas John... now including all the new stuff, as well as links to articles written by Gerbic with the inside scoop on the sting, as well as the con that is John's "Seatbelt Psychic" show! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_John_Flanagan

Also, I write for Skeptical Inquirer, and have interviewed PI Bob Nygaard about his psychic-busting career. Read it here to get an idea of the magnitude of the problem caused by these TV psychics (it's Pt2, but Pt 1 is linked at the top): https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/introducing_psyc...

Also, one of our undercover "agents" just published his insider tale of our latest sting operation against Matt Frasier: https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/undercover_at_a_...

Yikes. I've never watched John Oliver before. His presentation is so cringey. It's hard to watch. I miss John Stewart.

Perhaps, but he explores subjects with nuance and detail that is unfortunately lacking in the present day Trevor Noah Daily Show.

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