Shoehorning
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Shoehorning is a ploy alleged by skeptics to be used by psychics as a way to make it sound like their prophecies or those of earlier prophets had come true. The process involves taking an earlier prophecy and attempting to affix a current event to it, with the event apparently "fulfilling" the prophecy, even though this has been realized after the fact. Shoehorned prophecies usually take vague prophecies and twist them to "mean" the event in question even if the evidence for the connection is shaky. Also, many psychics, such as James van Praagh, are accused of stating after the fact that they had predicted the event, even if evidence proves otherwise, also being an example of retroactive clairvoyance.
Some alleged shoehorned prophecies include:
- The Bible Code
- Jeane Dixon's prediction of the assassination of John F. Kennedy
- Many prophecies of Nostradamus
- Other September 11 prophecies, particularly by van Praagh, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson
- Prophecy of the Popes
A metaphor sometimes used to explain this process is that of the target shooter who improves hir appearance of accuracy by drawing bull's eyes around hir hits.
