Here’s all you need to know about “The Ethical Psychic Project” and the website that supposedly advances it. One of the ethical topics covered in the ethical forum section is “Animal Communication”:

“Our animal friends need help, too! Ask one of our Psychic Animal Communicators to connect with your pet, either on the Earthly plane or crossed over!”

Sounds ethical to me! I was surprised not to see other topics of similar ethical weight and credibility,  like “Want to win in at the slot machines?” and “Ever wonder what Joe Biden will say next?”

There appears to be nothing whatsoever ethical about the The Ethical Psychic Project, except that a bunch of people who decided they couldn’t make enough money selling phony deeds to imaginary uranium mines thought that the word “ethical” might suck in some marks. Oh, there’s an ethics code on the site, all right. This psychics code is considerably worse than the last one I wrote about, and that won no prizes. This one is funnier, though, because with a little tweaking, it could just as well serve an ethics code for Superman or Green Lantern, or the Good Witch of the North. It contains such self-validating blather as:

• Use your abilities wisely and for the good of all.
• Do not use your abilities to control, manipulate or program another.
• Take full responsibility for your own energy, setting and running it accordingly.
• Never use your abilities for ego, personal gain or personal power.

Other than that, it appears to have been written by Carnac the Magnificent (Oh, go ahead and look it up; make me feel old) or Bernie Madoff while visiting the bathroom. What’s fun is to try to read the minds of the psychics who wrote this PR piece, because many of the bullet points leave significant thoughts unexpressed; For example,

• Use your abilities with positive intention and positive thought [ Soak those suckers for all they’re worth!]

• Never pass judgment on a sitter or a client. [Other than thinking they must be gullible, or they wouldn’t be there.]

• Avoid dwelling on the negative and focus on enriching the positive. [“The positive” being your own bank account.]

• Never decide for the client or impede their free will. [That way, they can’t blame you for giving them bad advice.]

• Read the past and present with only a reference to the probable and possible futures of the sitter, thus allowing the sitter the freedom to create their own future. [Let the mark fill in the blanks and convince themselves: that’s how this scam has worked for centuries]

• Never conduct a psychic reading on a person/sitter/client/bystander/stranger, etc. without their permission. [Because you’ll never get paid that way.]

Using a supposed code of ethics as a way to reel in trusting and overly-credulous customers is not isolated to the spirit world; Goldman Sachs has a Code of Ethics too. “The Ethical Psychic Project” is just more obviously a scam than most. For example, the home page for “the Project,” which is never described, notes that when you choose among their listed psychics (asking questions costs a fee, of course), “if you see the letters EPP following someone’s name, then they are one of our proven Ethical Psychic Project Professionals!”  What does that mean and how are they “proven”? There is no clue. And why isn’t it “EPPP”?

Using the word “ethical” as window dressing to enhance the credibility of people who have no idea what ethics is certainly isn’t restricted to psychic charlatans; PETA is one prominent example.”The Ethical Psychic Project,” however, is particularly shameless about having no content to justify the inclusion of “ethics” and a lot of elements that render the term an oxymoron. If there are some real vetting and ethical standards being applied to the participating psychics—Credentials? Absence of conflicts of interest? Police records? Statements of what each psychic considers unconscionable and dangerous? Reporting misconduct?—what are they?

Are we supposed to read their minds?