Need to retrieve someone's LJ pointer

[drwex]

I read this some days ago and I'm hoping someone on my friends list can re-point me to it. It was a posting on someone's blog that pointed out how some serial killer profiles used fortune-teller tricks to say both one thing and its opposite but in ways that made it appear specific.

Anyone remember that posting?

EDIT: rmd hit it - it was a pointer from Schneier's blog to a New Yorker story.  See her URLs below.

Comments

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

Well, NPR had a story on profilers recently, so you could search their archives, and perhaps achieve the same information...

[rmd.livejournal.com]

i think i read it via schneier's blog: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_sham_of_cri.html

actual article was in the new yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_gladwell

[drwex]

Yes, thank you that's EXACTLY it.

[heinleinfan.livejournal.com]

I wish I could remember more of my Psych 101 class in college, specifically a little "activity" we all did in the computer lab. There was a disk (3x5 floppy, of course, Delta State was so modern in 1996) that contained a psych profile test thing we had to all go take. At the end of it, it gave us a "profile" that we could print out, then a little questionnaire that had us rate how accurate the profile seemed to us. I remember my roommate and I getting the same result, and agreeing that it made sense, because we were roommates that had met during band camp, and got along and seemed a lot alike.

When we got to class, pretty much everyone agreed that their psychological profile was pretty accurate.

Turns out, *every single* profile description was exactly the same for everyone, regardless of any answers given to all the questions. It was an exercise to show how vague profiling could be, and how people could read into them what they wanted to read.

...

Which really has nothing to do with your post, other than the article linked reminded me of that and I thought I'd share because I'm a jabber-er.