Wednesday, November 18, 2020

One of the many nice things about not having the long shot pull off a win this election is that we don't have to listen to endless told-you-sos from people who stumbled into a correct guess.

Given that, it seems like a good time to remember the 20th Century prognosticator who may have set the record for building a career on a lucky guess.

From Wikipedia:

Career as a psychic

Dixon reportedly predicted the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the May 13, 1956, issue of Parade Magazine she wrote that the 1960 presidential election would be "dominated by labor and won by a Democrat" who would then go on to"(b)e assassinated or die in office though not necessarily in his first term". However, this premonition was reversed in 1960 when, as the election date neared, she incorrectly predicted that Nixon would instead win the election. She later admitted; "during the 1960 election, I saw Richard Nixon as the winner", and at the time made unequivocal predictions that JFK would fail to win the election.

Dixon was the author of seven books, including her autobiography, a horoscope book for dogs, and an astrological cookbook. She gained public awareness through the biographical volume, A Gift of Prophecy: The Phenomenal Jeane Dixon, written by syndicated columnist Ruth Montgomery. Published in 1965, the book sold more than 3 million copies. She professed to be a devout Roman Catholic and she attributed her prophetic ability to God. Another million seller, My Life and Prophecies, was credited "as told to Rene Noorbergen", but Dixon was sued by Adele Fletcher, who claimed that her rejected manuscript was rewritten and published as that book. Fletcher was awarded 5% of the royalties by a jury.

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President Richard Nixon followed her predictions[citation needed] through his secretary Rose Mary Woods, and met with her in the Oval Office in 1971. The following year, her prediction of terrorist attacks in the United States in the wake of the Munich massacre spurred Nixon to set up a cabinet committee on counterterrorism. She was one of several astrologers who gave advice to Nancy Reagan.

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The Jeane Dixon effect
John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined the term 'the Jeane Dixon effect', which references a tendency to promote a few correct predictions while ignoring a larger number of incorrect predictions. Many of Dixon's predictions proved erroneous, such as her claims that a dispute over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu would trigger the start of World War III in 1958, that American labor leader Walter Reuther would run for president of the United States in the 1964 presidential election, that the second child of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his young wife Margaret would be a girl (it was a boy), and that the Soviets would be the first to put men on the moon.


And while we're on the subject, if you haven't seen it before, hold a mirror up to your monitor and check out the story "Mail Order Prophet."



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