The Man Who Doesn't Contact The Dead

Psychological illusionist and psi-skeptic Derren Brown investigated alleged medium Joe Power in a T.V. special called "The Man Who Contacts The Dead":

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5


Click here if you live in the U.K. and can't watch the Youtube videos.

I was disappointed that Joe Power refused to do the testing that Brown and Richard Wiseman suggested. His rationale was that he needs live interaction with the sitters, which is extremely suspicious. He's saying that he can't get good results unless he's in a situation where cold and warm readings can be done. Perhaps he means that he just needs some relevant human interaction. If that's the case, then why not use proxy sitters? Stranger X (who doesn't know anything about Y) could sit in for Y, although Y would still have to be largely unknown to Joe Power for the experiment to be worth doing. But I suspect that he would decline to do proxy sittings as well.

My impression is that Power is a fraud (and also kind of a jerk), but my opinion would change if he's able to reliably produce intimate hits under controlled conditions.