Part Two of the Verbose Occam's Razor Debate

"I disagree there Ward Manager!

Occam's Razor takes on two main forms
1) Don't add more to a hypothesis than is necessary to explain the topic
2) Given two competing hypothesis, the less complex is usually the correct one

Now, with your Clemens example, you have two competing hypothesis:
1) They're fake
2) They're not fake
both of which are equally "simple". I think this differs from the psychic discussion because there we are saying
A) It's fake
B) It's not fake, but it looks the same as if it were fake and requires making numerous assumptions (there is an afterlife, that we can contact it, etc)

Now, by itself Occam's Razor would not eliminate Browne, but coupled with her unwillingness to submit to controlled tests, her profiteering, her abysmal track record at predictions (man does she ever rely on people remembering the hits and forgetting the misses) etc it does reinforce the claim that she is a fraud.

I completely agree that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" and we can never prove that psychics don't exist (neither can we prove that Invisible Pink Unicorns don't exist); neither is proving Browne to be a fraud proof that all psychics are frauds. Which comes back to the testing. There are protocols that can be used to show if they can demonstrate a statistically significant deviation from random chance.

Hrumpf! Hrumpf!"