Skeptics Predictions

History

Skeptics Predictions was the annual prediction list issued by the Phoenix Skeptics from approximately 1990 onwards. The format was a press release, contact person Michael A. Stackpole, distributed each January under the headline "For Immediate Release" with predictions for the following 14 months and beyond. The 1996 list, dated to predictions made at the 18 November 1995 meeting, identifies that year as the sixth in the running experiment. The 2007 list, dated to predictions made at the 2 December 2007 meeting, identifies its year as the fifteenth. The archive holds three issues: the 1996 list, the 2006 list, and the 2007 list.

The methodological thesis stated in the introduction to each year's release is consistent across the eleven-year span the archive samples: "a dozen or so reasonably well informed individuals can accurately predict events in the near future without reliance on any supernatural powers". The Phoenix Skeptics then scored their own hit rate against the previous year's predictions and published the score in the introduction to the new list. The 1995 predictions returned a hit rate of 33 out of 54 (61 percent). The 2005 predictions returned 45 out of 56 (80.4 percent). The 2006 predictions returned 53 out of 60 (88.33 percent). The 2007 release introduced a "Hall of Fame" tier for predictions that had been correct so often in previous years that they were treated as reliable to repeat.

Specific predictions from the held lists locate the editorial register. The 1995 hits included the death of Rose Kennedy, the Newt Gingrich ethics scandal, Steve Forbes's Republican primary entry, and the retention of Arizona's state income tax. The 2005 hits included the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Britney Spears's marital problems, the Phoenix-metropolitan housing-price spike, the emerging influenza-pandemic spectre, and the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. The 2006 hits included the Mark Foley page scandal, the Democratic Party's November 2006 election sweep, the e. coli outbreak in raw spinach, Mel Gibson's July 2006 arrest, and the year's record stock-market high. The mixed-domain pattern (political, celebrity, financial, public-health) was constant across the run, as was the comparative framing against the professional-psychic prediction industry.