Contrary to views screened in some TV crime shows, developing successful criminal profiles depend on the rigour of the scientific method rather than psychic powers, according to the winner of the 2000 Eureka Prize for Critical Thinking, awarded last week in Sydney.

Richard Kocsis, coordinator of the Australian Criminal Profiling Program and currently an academic with Charles Sturt University at the NSW Police Academy in Goulburn, won the $10,000 Australian Skeptics Eureka Prize prize from the Australian Museum for his study Evaluating the Skills of Effective Criminal Psychological Profiling.

The study sought to identify the abilities that contribute to effective performance in profiling criminals from a closed murder case. The abilities of criminal profilers were critically compared, including police detectives, psychologists, university science students and professional psychics.

"The research suggested that more education, with a possible focus on psychology, is the most useful skill for accurate predictions in criminal profiling," Kocsis said.

"It was apparent to me that there was indeed method to the madness of sexual murderers. I saw it as my civil duty to develop scientific profiling techniques that would allow detectives to decipher these behaviours and help solve these crimes."

The study also found that the psychics who took part in the research appear to rely on nothing more than the social stereotype of a murderer in producing a criminal profile.

Mr Kocsis and the Australian Criminal Profiling Program is currently studying the assessment of violent threats and the criminal profiling of extortionists and serial arsonists.