Natasha Demkina, a young girl living in Saransk, Russia, began to receive a lot of media attention around the middle of last month. It started with an article in Pravda, which hailed her as the 'Girl with X-ray vision'. You see, Natasha possesses the unusual ability to peer through human flesh and spot diseases and injuries that are lurking unseen within people's bodies. Or, at least, this is what Pravda claimed. It didn't take long for more newspapers to catch onto the story. The British Sun has been the most relentless about pursuing it. They've actually flown Natasha to London and are now parading her around like some kind of weird curiosity. Does Natasha really have x-ray eyes? Well, I doubt it. But I'm sure The Sun is going to milk this for all it's worth.
Comments
In medicine the standard level of support required is 95% confidence. Even if that confidence was exactly correct, and (say) the hypothesis that homeopathic remedies have no more effect than a placebo is true, we'd still expect one in 20 trials to support homeopathy having an effect, of which about one in 40 would show improved effect over placebo.
We'd expect one in 40 trials to support homeopathy. Experimental or design flaws could raise the probability of a "significant" result (misconduct such as incorrect experiment design and/or analysis, to outright fraud), so we'd expect more than one in 40 trials to support homeopathy. Add the tendancy to report "positive" results more often than "negative" results, and we'd expect there to be fair proportion of published studies supporting homeopathy, even if there is no effect over and above placebo. If people select only those publications that support homeopathy, then you get a long list of publications saying that homeopathy works!
I believe that it's important for society to make sure that rubbish claims are exposed for what they are. But, doing so is extremely difficult, with little chance of making much of a benefit ("I don't care what those scientists say, rubbing powdered rats testicles on my tummy cured my diahorrea within days"). Debunking has to be done with as few flaws as humanly possible, or opponents have an excuse to try and argue away the results of the debunking so that they can go on doing what they are doing and/or believing what they are believing.
I would be prepared to volunteer *some* time for checking the design of experiments intended to evaluate, erm, "paranormal claims", where there is no profit motive. I wouldn't put myself forward as the sole person, but I could at least do some double checking.
Cheers,
Ross-c
Hey, I've already said that I'm not a mathematician. I'm a member of the general public. So it was a member of the general public that pointed out that "the scientists got it wrong" in a small detail by calculating the approximate rather than exact probabilities.
But I didn't do that in order to give ammunition to proponents of pseudoscience. I did it because I don't accept that science is always unconditionally right, and everything else is rubbish, pseudoscience, and wrong. I don't think the world is divided into a high priesthood of clear-eyed, knowledgeable scientists and a mass of dumb, ignorant, and gullible proles.
And also I don't think this is an an either-or matter of either Natasha has X-ray vision or she's a a blatant fraud. From what I saw she seemed quite impressive, but I didn't believe for a moment that she actually had X-ray vision. I simply thought that she was probably a sensitive, sympathetic, highly intelligent, and probably well-read girl who had something of a gift for looking people over and detecting signs of infirmity or disease. There are probably thousands, if not millions, of doctors who take one look at someone and see the symptoms of disease X or Y or Z. Some people are just better at doing some things than others. Some people play chess very well, some people can perform astonishing feats of mental arithmetic, and some people have extraordinary memories, and so on and on and on. And in many cases, this is a natural aptitude. There's nothing paranormal about this. It doesn't threaten the foundations of science that this is so. After watching the programme, I half felt that the whole issue had been hyped up by both sides into a titanic collision between science and superstition, when it was actually nothing of the sort.
If it had been down to me, I guess I would have presented Natasha with several hundred people, all suffering from some known disorder (but unknown to Natasha), and seen how many she got right. There wouldn't have been a "pass mark". There would have been an assessment ranging from "hopeless" to "excellent", and let statisticians decide what scores translated to which. If she did very well, I'd have thought no more about it, and maybe have recommended that she become a doctor or something.
And that, funnily enough, is exactly what she's now doing at Moscow university.
I
I said: "You ("skepps") say that the " believers" are avoiding evidence etc. but in much cases (and also in this case) I notice that the "skepps" are avoiding things!"
Askolnick said: Yes, we try to avoid false statements of facts and making irrational arguments.
Ok, I get the point. But who says that your definition of something being irrational is true. Something being irrational ore not isn
You said: Marlon does not understand why we're asking for this, because she believes the paranormal is real. For her, belief comes first, and evidence is just the icing you put on the cake. "I am sure it exists," she says. And for her, that's all that counts.
I admit that I am sure the paranormal exists. That means that it is just as real and useful as the physical reality. So when you use my definition of the word fact (so fact ore not has to do with experience) you can say that the paranormal is a fact for me. What does happen is that
Askolnick says: Marlon hasn't been listening. Sceptics have not been asking for a "thousand reasons," they've been asking for at least ONE sound piece of evidence to prove the existence of the paranormal. Not thousands. Even just one piece of evidence that can stand up to rational examination and be verified would do it. What we get instead are thousands of flimsy claims, testimonials, pseudoscientific experiments, outright fraud, covered with a myriad of excuses and obfuscations. What we want Marlon is ONE. Not thousands. Just one. Give us your best. We don't want you're "weakest." Give us one irrefutable piece of convincing evidence.
Ok. I understand. You want one evidence. I can
Ok, my final worth on this is something I have said before. It all has to do with experience. It really has to do with faith, with surrendering. Without faith in each other we are nowhere. You surrender to science
"Several decades ago it wasn
"It allows people to start quibbling about details, and quibbling about details has a risk of burying the main point"
Ross, the fatal flaw in your logic is that you think that if enough uncertainty is removed from the test, the pseudoscience believers will have nothing to hide behind. Nothing could be further from the truth. They will always find a fig leaf for their naked emperor. There will always be some bit of minutia for them to quibble over and take issue with. If not this slight discrepancy over probability, then the test conditions, or the "negative energy from the sceptics". These charlatins and frauds are always good at passing the "tests" their believers give, but when a sceptic wants to test them, they become prima donnas, whining and complaining over every protocol untill the experiment is fuzzy enough for them to dodge any real judgement.
"I don't accept that science is always unconditionally right"
Science can be neither right or wrong. Science is a method of discerning truth(and has proven to be the very best method throughout history). Scientists, on the other hand can be wrong, but that is usually because they don't follow scientific method properly.
You also said;
"...I didn't believe for a moment that she actually had X-ray vision. I simply thought that she was probably a sensitive, sympathetic, highly intelligent, and probably well-read girl who had something of a gift for looking people over and detecting signs of infirmity or disease."
fomalhaut, I have a knack for being able to identify within a hundred miles or so where a person grew up based on their regional accent. I picked up this skill when I was in the US navy because I met people from all over the US, and because I was a good listener. There is nothing paranormal about this, as many people have this "gift". I would be a liar, however, if I were to tell people I knew where they grew up based on their "aura". This girl is either lying or delusional because she is claiming to use supernatural powers when she is using good 'ol empathy and smarts. That's the issue here.
Those educated enough to know how science works know that it's up to the claimant to prove a claim. It's not up to others to disprove it. We were willing to examine the evidence she could provide. We did so and we found that it does not support her claim that she can see organs and tissues inside of people's bodies.
I especially like Joe's comment on science not being right or wrong. To put it another way, science is nothing but a flashlight that we can use to help us find our way in the dark. We can use the flashlight to find things that help us. We can use it to find things that hurt us. And some people, usually believers in the supernatural, try to use the flashlight of science to hunt for ghosts, goblins, and the other mythical entities. If they look long enough, believers always seem to "find" them in the shadows. A curious thing though: these supernatural entities never seem to appear in the actual beam of the flashlight, so that the rest of us will also believe. They prefer to lurk safely in the shadows of people's imagination and delusions. Funny about that.
Actually I did think (and say, perhaps not clearly enough) that true believers will always find some sort of a fig leaf to hide behind. See my comment on powdered rats testicles. However, there may be some more sensible people who might be prepared to consider both sides. It's for these people that the scientific approach needs to be watertight.
The true believers will always find something to quibble on. But, the more watertight the science, the less justified the quibbling. And, the less justified the quibbling, the more likely it is that third parties will conclude that the quibbling is unfounded.
Cheers,
Ross-c
"Actually I did think (and say, perhaps not clearly enough) that true believers will always find some sort of a fig leaf to hide behind."
I understood your point very well, I think maybe it's me that wasn't so clear. Sorry.
I was speaking of her defenders ability to overwhelm the "...more sensible people who might be prepared to consider both sides... " with either irrelevent quibbles over protocol or outright denial of the validity of the test.
The "sensible people" you hope to sway are often ignorant of things like the significance of a small discrepancy of probability and are bewildered by the ammount and complexity of the arguments the frauds are able to make. Quite frankly, they have too many other things that need their attention during the day, so they are likely to "keep an open mind" to the possibility of pseudoscientific claims.
The charlitan has the advantage no matter how water-tight the experiment because it's easier to spread manure than it is to clean it up.
I spelled your name right this time.
Skolnick wrote: "you are wrong about Puck's statistical calculations. They were way off."
Wrong. They weren't way off. They were exactly right.
The exact probabilities are:
0 - 1854/5040 = 36.79%
1 - 1855/5040 = 36.81%
2 - 924/5040 = 18.33%
3 - 315/5040 = 6.25%
4 - 70/5040 = 1.38%
5 - 21/5040 = 0.42%
6 - 0/5040 = 0.00%
7 - 1/5040 = 0.02%
These were the (correct) probabilities posted by Puck T Benson, on Thu Dec 09, 2004 at 10:58 PM:
0 36.79%
1 36.81%
2 18.33%
3 6.25%
4 1.38%
5 0.42%
6 0.00%
7 0.02%
which you promptly declared to be wrong, but "not as grossly wrong" as in his previous "attack" - when they had been wrong.
b)
Skolnick wrote: "You still claim to be puzzled that Profs. Hyman and Wiseman would use published tables to approximate the odds for this matching problem rather than a computer to caculate the odds more precisely. The simple answer is that more precise numbers were NOT needed because we were going to round the odds off to 2 decimal places anyway!!!"
Wrong again.
On Thu Dec 09, 2004 at 06:02 PM, Skolnick wrote: "the probability of getting exactly four matches in our test is .01533 and not 1/840 (.0012) as he claims. The relevant probability is the probability of getting four or more correct matches which is .01899 (rounded to .02 or 1 in 50)."
The probability of four matches is 0.0138, not 0.0153. Rounding these to two decimal places gives 0.14 and 0.15. Not the same. Also the probability of getting four or more right isn't 0.01899, but 0.01825, but which does luckily happen to round to 0.02.
c)
Skolnick wrote: "Your argument makes no more sense than an obsessive-compulsive mathematician who would criticize an architect for using 3.142 to calculate the circumference of a circular dome rather than calculating pi out to 100 places!"
"Obsessive-compulsive" is some psychological term which has no place in a discussion of mathematics. Mathematicians are usually concerned to get accurate results. This isn't a psychological defect.
I don't think science ever "discerns truth", but only at best gradually approximates towards it. The best Ptolemaic science of 500 years ago had the sun going round the earth. Copernicus had the earth going round the sun. Kepler discovered their orbits were elliptical. Newton showed how gravitational forces resulted in elliptical orbits. And so on. Views are in constant transition. Today's science is always being disproved or shown to be limited or restricted by tomorrow's science.
JoeSixpack wrote: "This girl is either lying or delusional because she is claiming to use supernatural powers when she is using good 'ol empathy and smarts. That's the issue here."
But Natasha Demkina hasn't claimed 'supernatural' powers, but instead some different way of "seeing". I think that when a doctor looks at a patient, or a mathematician at a set of figures, they are "seeing" them in a different way than most people see. It's not supernatural. And perhaps that's all that Natasha means - she looks at people differently.
I don't see that this should have been a question of whether Natasha "sees" in some unusual way like "X-ray vision", but how good she is or isn't at diagnosing medical conditions. If she did well at that, only then would one move on to discovering how she does it - which probably is something like "good ol' empathy and smarts". First things first.
As it is, I'm not sure what this test has shown at all. The more I think about it, the more it looks like a way of making a provocative documentary which will sell well, and more about sales than science.
"I don't think science ever "discerns truth", but only at best gradually approximates towards it."
I got news for you, Every useful modern convenience is the direct result of men and women who used science and the scientific method. That computer you type at, the vaccinations that kept you from getting whooping cough as an infant, the aeroplane you fly in to go visit family far away, the light bulb you have sitting over your desk, penicillin, MRI machines, the telephone, and on and on.
What have the psychics done for us over the past 500 years? Let's see, there's the daily horoscope in the newspaper (for entertainment only), lot's of ex post facto "predictions", and lot's of completely bogus claims that don't stand up under the slightest scrutiny. In a word, nothing.
So if you want to claim, "science doesn't have all the answers", you better come up with something else that DOES have some useful answers to back that up with.
Next, you claim that;
"But Natasha Demkina hasn't claimed 'supernatural' powers, but instead some different way of "seeing"."
That's where you're wrong. She claims to be able to see inside her "patient". Here's what she says in two seperate Sun articles;
"I can see inside the human body"
and in a seperate interview;
" Describing her power, Natasha said bluntly:
Incredibly, you state: "The probability of four matches is 0.0138, not 0.0153. Rounding these to two decimal places gives 0.14 and 0.15."
Helllloooo! Do you ever bother to read what you write? Rounding 0.0138 and 0.0153 to two decimal places gives us 0.01 and 0.02 -- NOT 0.14 and 0.15. You keep making such a fuss because the odds we cited for the test were a miniscule 0.00074 off from the odds you calculated using a better method. And here you are, making calculations that are off by 1400% and 750%! Obviously, you're not the right person to be giving others "math lessons."
And you are so very wrong: Science certainly does concern truth, as Joe wrote. The examples you give to prove otherwise show exactly the opposite of what you want to prove.
As you said,"Copernicus had the earth going round the sun." Contrary to what you would like us to believe, this is as true today as it was when Copernicus first announced his theory. Science has discovered nothing in the past 5 centuries to change that truth. And scientific discoveries are highly unlikely to ever find that the earth does not travel around the sun.
And you are so wrong about what Natasha Demkina claims, it makes me wonder if you bothered to learn anything about her before coming here to enlighten us with false information.
Natasha claims to have a supernatural power to see organs and tissues inside of people's bodies. And that's the claim we tested.
We expected there would be people like you who would try to defend Natasha by obfuscations and arguing that we tested the wrong thing -- that Natasha never said she can actually see inside of people's bodies. Sorry, Fonmalhaut, but I'm here to stop such obfuscations and deception.
You're talking about technology rather than science. And most of technology is produced by inventors and angineers, not scientists. Sometimes engineers use science, sometimes they don't. For example, the Wright brothers weren't scientists, but inventors. The scientists showed up later. Same with early steam engines, all produced by enterprising engineers. Thermodynamic physics came along when they wanted to improve engine efficiency. For the most part, scientists don't invent anything. They simply open doors for enterprising engineers. And, equally often, enterprising engineers oopen doors for scientists.
And I don't give a hang about psychics. I'm not interested in them. I didn't see Natasha Demkina as a psychic, but simply as someone who seemed to be quite good at diagnosing diseases. I took her claims of "seeing" into human bodies as a figure of speech. The word "to see" has many meanings. Like when someone explains something to me, and I say, "I see what you mean." Well, of course I don't literally "see" anything. Do you see what I mean. No, you probably don't, because you take the word "see" literally. I don't believe that Natasha quite literally sees inside human bodies.
But if that is actually what she's claiming, then I have no interest in her. That's definitely paranormal. And I'm not interested in the paranormal. You don't seem to have noticed that I'm not actually a believer in the paranormal and the supernatural. I guess you can't "see" it.
------------------------------
Correct Probability
0 42.09%
1 36.74%
2 15.77%
3 4.37%
4 0.89%
5 0.12%
6 0.02%
-------
Total 100.00%
The probability of Natasha getting 4 or more conditions exactly right is 0.89 + 0.12 + 0.02 = 1.03% or 1 in 97.
-------------------------------------
These odds are much closer than the ones he had first posted, but they are still very much wrong. The odds are approximately 2% not 1.03%!
Formalhaut's attempt to repair Puck's (his own?) credibility will be futile. Puck came here to attack our test of Natasha Denkina using whatever numbers he could cook up. When they failed he tried new numbers and arguments. There was only one thing consistent about Puck: he was intent on trying to discredit the test, valid reasons or not. This too seems to be Formalhaut's agenda.
"For example, the Wright brothers weren't scientists"
Ever hear of a guy named Bernoulli? The Wright bros. did. They did quite a bit of reading about him while they were inventing. They also did something called "experimentation", an important part of scientific method.
The difference between a scientist and an engineer has more to do with their job title than their methods. The scientist's "invention" is his (or her) hypothesis. And it's tested. Rigorously. just like Watt tested his invention and the Wright Bros. tested theirs. Here's an "inventor" who doesn't use scientific method or knowledge;
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/2296/
Not surprisingly, he, like Natasha, is also having trouble demonstrating that his "invention" actually works.
You claim " I took her claims of "seeing" into human bodies as a figure of speech". She has said nothing to indicate she meant anything other than literaly. Maybe NOW she may wish to equivocate because she can't demonstrate that ability. I mean, one day she says "I can see everything inside a human body" and the next day she can't see a metal plate in someone's head. Suddenly her "gift" doesn't seem so special.
skolnick wrote: "Incredibly, you state: "The probability of four matches is 0.0138, not 0.0153. Rounding these to two decimal places gives 0.14 and 0.15." ... Rounding 0.0138 and 0.0153 to two decimal places gives us 0.01 and 0.02 -- NOT 0.14 and 0.15."
You're quite right. My mistake. But having produced the correct figures - 0.01 and 0.02 - you're demonstrating yourself that even rounded to 2 decimal places, your probabilities are still wrong.
skolnick wrote: "it makes me wonder if you bothered to learn anything about her before coming here to enlighten us with false information."
The only thing I've done is to work out the exact probabilities for the matching problem. That's what I've been primarily concerned with. And you yourself have accepted my figures as "more accurate". I've been puzzled that a non-mathematician like myself can, in an afternoon, do better than two professors. 90% of what I've written has been concerned with that.
skolnick wrote: "We expected there would be people like you who would try to defend Natasha by obfuscations and arguing that we tested the wrong thing -- that Natasha never said she can actually see inside of people's bodies. Sorry, Fonmalhaut, but I'm here to stop such obfuscations and deception."
I'm not trying to defend Natasha. I don't give a damn about her. I neither believe that she has paranormal powers, nor that she is a fraud. I'm not interested in whether she claims to "see inside bodies" or not, but whether she has an unusual ability to diagnose disease. That is what I would have tested first. And that is what wasn't tested. And I'm not even sure that she was even tested to see if she could "see inside bodies".
The more I look at it, the more I think that the whole thing has just been a scam to produce a highly contentious and profitable TV documentary, by hyping an interesting case into a grand clash of "science" and the "supernatural". This wasn't so much science as entertainment. Science (including accurately calculating probabilities) took second place to headline-grabbing titles like "The Girl with X-ray Eyes", and a few hokey experiments. This was all about making some money by putting on a bit of theatrical science. I just hope that Natasha got a slice of the action, as the star of the show. Perhaps that's how she's managed to find the money to go to university.
I guess I should congratulate you on an interesting bit of entertainment. I look forward to "The Wolf Man", and to "The Night of the Living Dead".
You state:
"I took [Natasha's] claims of "seeing" into human bodies as a figure of speech. The word "to see" has many meanings. Like when someone explains something to me, and I say, "I see what you mean." Well, of course I don't literally "see" anything. Do you see what I mean. No, you probably don't, because you take the word "see" literally. I don't believe that Natasha quite literally sees inside human bodies."
What I see is someone who just makes things up as he goes along to fit his agenda. Anyone who has bothered to find out what Natasha Demkina does KNOWS that she claims to see tissues and organs inside of people's bodies. But here comes Puck/Formalhaute telling us that no, Natasha was only saying this as a "figure of speech"!
Puck/Formalhaute, no matter what screen name you've used, you have yet to post anything here but misinformation in your effort to defend Natasha and discredit our test of her claimed ability to see inside of people's bodies.
"The more I look at it, the more I think that the whole thing has just been a scam to produce a highly contentious and profitable TV documentary, by hyping an interesting case into a grand clash of "science" and the 'supernatural'."
It's been made clear that you're not "looking at it" at all. You're just making things up as you go along, without bothering to learn the facts. You post absolute nonsense about what Natasha claims. You haven't a clue about the test or the documentary. We, the CSICOP and CSMMH investigators, had nothing to do with the production of this documentary other than to design and conduct a preliminary test of Natasha Demkina to see if there was evidence of her claimed powers that would justify further study. We were contacted by the producer/director and asked if we would test her. Neither CSICOP or CSMMH received any compensation for our work. The production company paid our travel expenses. Puck/Formalhaute's insinuations that our test was a money-making scam is as nonsensical as the rest of his statements.
I posted the correct probabilities. That's not misinformation.
As I've now repeatedly said, I'm not interested in defending Natasha. I have no interest or belief in the paranormal. I don't have an agenda. But I am getting very annoyed.
What interested me about "The Girl with X-ray Eyes" was that Natasha got 4 out of 7 right, when, as I watched the show, I'd guessed she probably would only get one right, maybe none. I then began to wonder what the probabilities were of her randomly getting right answers. That led me to write a computer program to precisely calculate the odds. My first posting here was to give those odds. Ross-c then confirmed the figures. And they were different figures than the ones used in the experiment.
Since then, I've faced a growing storm of abuse from askolnick, including being called "obsessive-compulsive", and identified with another poster, and labelled as a believer in psychics and the paranormal with an "agenda".
Faced with this storm, and with attempts to belittle and argue away my probabilities, I've simply concluded that you people aren't serious about probabilities, aren't serious about science, and that the whole thing has just been a piece of entertainment dressed up as science. The stream of derision and abuse from askolnick, who seems to be the voice of CSICOP and CSMMH round here, and his refusal to state how their probabilities were calculated, simply serves to strengthen my growing conviction that this is more show business than science.
And there's nothing wrong with show business. I watch it all the time.
You posted up some quotation from some a (probably imaginary) professor Hyman which said:
"I painstakingly worked out the correct probabilities using the formulae in Frederick Mosteller's Fifty Challenging Problems in Probability With Solutions. I believe this is still available from Dover Books. The critic might find it useful to carefully follow the argument in this book. My other source was Hoel, P.G., Port, S.C., and Stone, C.J. (1971). Introduction to Probability Theory. This latter source provides some useful approximations for those who do not have the patience to calculate the exact probabilities."
That does not constitute an explanation of how the probabilities were calculated. It amounts to saying: "I read something in some old book somewhere." What was that something? What was the formula? What was the "useful approximation"? Why can't you just state the formula or the method?
The answer, I suspect, is that you have no idea what the method was, nor do you care - because you're no mathematician or scientist, but most likely some sort of dickhead psychologist (given that "obsessive-compulsive" garbage). And so, instead of doing the simple thing - which would be to supply the formula or method - you resort to abuse, innuendo, and insult.
And the worst of it is that I'm not even someone who believes in the paranormal, the psychic, the astral plane, spiritualism, or the supernatural. I don't even believe in Natasha Demkina. I'm not one of "the enemy" with whom you imagine yourself to be at war. The mere fact that I dare question inaccurate probabilities is sufficient, it seems, for you to lump me together with them, conflate me with somebody else, and call me an "obsessive-compulsive" and, latest of all, a liar.
But in doing so you bring nothing but discredit upon yourself and the organisations for which you purportedly work. Asked a simple question, you have replied with insults. You disgrace yourself, and you disgrace CSICOP or CSMMH.
If CSICOP or CSMMH wish to present themselves as respectable, bona fide organisations, they would make a good start - by firing you.
"You posted up some quotation from some a (probably imaginary) professor Hyman which said:"
Had you seen the documentary as you have been pretending, you would know that Prof. Ray Hyman is a well-known psychology professor at the University of Oregon in Eugene and was the proctor of the test. He was interviewed at length in the documentary -- which you never saw.
You've just exposed yourself as a chalatan.
If this Professor Hyman exists, why the hell can't he explain how he got his probabilities - since you obviously can't.
And that's the only possible reason you would suggest that Prof. Ray Hyman was made up by me. Anyone who saw the documentary would know that Prof. Hyman moderated the test and was one of the three major people who were featured in the program.
You just pretended to see the program in order to make your lame and bogus arguments about Natasha's claims and about what our test accomplished.
You've been busted by your own statements.
No. I saw the documentary. Your accusations get wilder and wilder.
askolnick wrote: "Anyone who saw the documentary would know that Prof. Hyman moderated the test and was one of the three major people who were featured in the program."
Why? I'm not in the habit of remembering details of documentaries, particularly if it's something I've just switched on to idly watch. If I'm really interested, I usually video a programme.
In this particular case, pretty much only one thing stuck in my head, and it was that in the test facing 7 individuals, Natasha Demkina (whose name, incidentally, I didn't remember either) got 4 out of 7 right, and the pass mark was 5 out of 7. While I was watching the programme, and it built up towards the point where the score was going to be announced, I guessed that her chance was something like 1/7 and she'd score 0 or 1. So I was rather surprised that she got 4/7.
Next day, discussing the matter with a friend, I realized that the probabilities weren't so simple to calculate. My friend wrote a program to generate 10,000,000 random answers to get the approximate probabilities of getting different numbers of right answers. I wrote a program to go through all 5040 combinations, to get the exact probabilities. Our answers agreed (as did Puck's and Ross's).
But then there was your post stating that a Professor Hyman had said that the probability of getting 4/7 was 0.0153, when all the results we had said that probability was 0.0139. Close reading of Hyman's comments revealed that some sort of approximation had been used to get this figure. My questions was, and remains: what was this approximation, and why was an approximation used instead of exact numbers?
Your bizarre response to both Puck and me (and indeed to just about everyone from the outset of this thread) has been to simply be abusive. I think you have some sort of psychological problem, and you shouldn't be the Executive Director of CSMMH (if someone as abusive as you could actually be such a director). Feel free to continue insulting me. You appear to be incapable of anything else, anyway. And it says far more about you than it does about me.
Given the abuse you hurl around, I don't see any reason to believe a word an asshole like you says about anything. And that includes the alleged comments by the alleged Professor Hyman.
http://www.tricksterbook.com/ArticlesOnline/CSICOPoverview.htm
---------------------
...In response to an article by physicist George Lawrence in Rocky Mountain Skeptic, John Wilder (1988) wrote:
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/propaganda/index.html
"A statistically very significant result was obtained in the quantitative part of the investigation, but the experimenters concealed the fact with their talk of 'failing the test'. The investigation claims to be science, but fails almost every test of good scientific practice. Does this matter for a TV programme? I suggest that if a program pretends to be science then it does matter, and its failure to conform to scientific norms is a serious matter."
And Skolnick ain't a psychologist like you thought. He's a journalist. Here's his home page.
http://www.aaskolnick.com
"you should know it's standard practice for male-dominated CSICOP"
What sexist rock did you climb out from under? Shall I assume that men are naturally hostile? What about women? Any sweeping generalizations to make about them?
" Prof Hyman does exist, and he's a magician. Also prof Wiseman exists, and he's a magician too!"
Regardless of the fact that they have both been professional magicians, they are both now doctors of psychology.
Four correct guesses out of seven isn't that impressive when you consider that she had four hours to make her choices. If she really was able to do what she claimed she can do, she would have hit all seven in a few minutes.
The fact that Dr. Josephson is a Nobel lauriate is not reason enough to accept his endorsment of Natasha's "gift", either. Many Nobel lauriates have shown poor judgment outside their speciality. For example, William Shockley was a white supremicist, and Linus Pauling was a promoter of "orthomolecular" medicine, which has been shown to be not just usless, but harmful. (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.html)
Now it seems to have descended into a slanging match, first with two parties neither of whom was prepared to let the other have the last word on an unimportant point on the calculation of probabilities. Then, into an irrelevant, unproductive mud-throwing session on which of the two groups of people are actually the nicer group of people. What depth will this conversation fall to next? I don't know exactly who in the argument is male or not, so I can't suggest that the argument is solved by having the participants submit appropriate photos, and whichever one has the largest penis wins.
Not sure if anyone's interested, but I'll give my opinion on the whole thing. The experiment was crucially flawed in that she was given too much time, and allowed too much leeway in contacting the outside world. From previous comments, it appears that this was insisted on by the producers of the program. However, the scientists may also be to blame for allowing a flawed experiment to take place (was this really better than nothing?), and for not (was this edited out?) being clearer about what happened during it.
For any progress to be made on finding out what (if any) paranormal phenomena are real two things must happen. Scientists with appropriate training must design good experiments to test for the phenomena, including ruling out alternate explanations. Those who claim paranormal powers must be prepared to submit themselves to proper testing, including repeated testing. Until both of those events happen, true progress will not happen.
Cheers,
Ross-c
Cheers,
Ross-c
Actually I meant centuries, but 2000 years ago by a greek, ik admit I didn't know that! Smart guyes those Greeks!
There are more things that were discovered and then forgotten.
But that was realy my last opinion obout this (at least temporary).
Oh, one question. I would like to know the scientific definition of reality.
Thank you
Your second post was much more disturbing, in that it appears that CSICOP is a crusading organisation that uses extremely aggressive techniques to advance its cause. And so Skolnick appears to be behaving in some approved standard fashion. I said yesterday that I thought he was unfit to be executive director of CSMMH, and in fact doubted that someone so abusive could hold that post. Now I think that you probably have to be sneering and abusive and contemptuous to run an organisation like that. I wonder how they treated Natasha Demkina off-camera, if this is how they work behind the scenes?
All I can say is that, in my case, the attack Skolnick has launched on me, for simply wanting to get to the bottom of this probabilities puzzle, has resulted in me thinking that a) Skolnick is an asshole, and b) (thanks to your post) CSICOP are probably a bunch of assholes as well. And this is from someone who hadn't heard about Natasha Demkina or CSICOP before seeing "The Girl with X-ray Eyes" on UK Channel 4 Bodyshock at 9pm 14 Feb 2005. Skolnick has made me an enemy both of himself and of CSICOP in just 10 days flat. And I'm not even a believer in the paranormal.
Given Skolnick's performance, which seems to be standard for CSICOP, I'd guess they're making themselves enemies everywhere, and I predict that what appears to be their single minded crusade against psychic and paranormal claims is going to fail - simply because they're such a nasty bunch of people that they're going to get more people's backs up than they persuade to agree with them.
Good to see someone sweetly reasonable back! And, in my case, it was a slanging match that Skolnick started, by posting abusive replies. I didn't want that, but he obviously did. And you're right that there was a perfectly reasonable conversation beforehand. Or was when I came in.
As for your idea of getting people to swallow indigestible pills, I was thinking along those lines, except having them simply eat different meals, and ask Natasha which one had eaten peanuts, which one sweetcorn, which one pickled onions, etc.
But I'm really not too interested in Natasha's supposed "X-ray vision". I just don't believe she has any, and regardless of what she claims. What seems much more interesting is whether, by whatever means, she is able to diagnose medical conditions with unusual accuracy using her normal methods. And on this programme, she wasn't tested for that. But it seems that she's been tested in Russia, and done very well - though I've not seen any of those results. I doubt there's anything paranormal about it, but that's what I would want to investigate.
Instead, it just seems to me, particularly given CSMMH's director Skolnick's attempt to personally trash me, that this experiment was designed to trash Natasha Demkina, and that was the whole point, and even if she had got all 7 right, they would have rigged the results to force her to fail. They're running a crusade, not a scientific investigation.
But, there are problems with the idea of identifying food. (i) its shape changes with mastication and digestion. Vomit usually looks the same. And, (ii) the smell of food is often detectable on people's breath. Especially with some of the foods you mention.
Cheers,
Ross-c
There is one very truthful statement that Fomalhaute just made for which he should be applauded:
"And you're right that there was a perfectly reasonable conversation beforehand. Or was when I came in."
If and when he leaves, I believe the conversation will return to being reasonable -- not to mention free of gutter language.
Ross, you posted:
"The experiment was crucially flawed in that she was given too much time, and allowed too much leeway in contacting the outside world. From previous comments, it appears that this was insisted on by the producers of the program. However, the scientists may also be to blame for allowing a flawed experiment to take place (was this really better than nothing?), and for not (was this edited out?) being clearer about what happened during it."
From the very beginning, we stated that we were not allowed to conduct a well-controlled test, that the test would only be a preliminary exam to see whether we found evidence that would warrant a more carefully controlled study of Natasha's claimed powers.
As you pointed out, the test -- because of conditions dictated by requirements of the program and Natasha's breeches of protocol -- had some notable flaws. But all those flaws would have helped increase Natasha's score, not lowered it. She still failed to meet the agreed upon target score that would justify further testing. Therefore, those flaws clearly do NOT undermine the test results. But they do explain how Natasha may have done better than some had expected.
And please do not be deceived by Fomalhaute's false assertions that we had anything to do with the production of the Discovery Channel program, other than designing and conducting the test. We had no control and absolutely no imput into any other part of the program, nor did we have a financial interest in its outcome.
If you read the test protocols (http://www.csmmh.org/demkina/demkina.protocols.doc), you will see that we were asked to conduct a preliminary test to see if further study is waranted. We stated up front that our test would not be rigorous enough to determine definitively if Natasha's claimed powers are real.
It would have been marvelous if we were given an opportunity to conduct a truly blinded study under strictly controlled conditions. But we were not given such an opportunity. We made the best of the hand we were dealt. By playing that hand, we were able to observe and report that Natasha's readings are indistinguishable from the cold readings of the average astrologer or palm reader. We found much evidence of cold reading and no evidence of any paranormal power. And that, we believe, is a worthwhile contribution to public understanding of this dubious phenomenon.
Just a minor point. It wasn't me who posted that you were a journalist. I'm disinterested in who people are, just in what they say and do.
It's quite easy to quote nobel prize winners who have said (or done) rubbish, and it's also possible to point out 11 year olds who have designed excellent scientific experiments. Anyone here know who I'm thinking of in the latter case?
Cheers,
Ross-c
Ask her to pick out the one person who has a large metal plate covering a large section of surgically removed skull from six other people with normal heads.
Wait! We tried that already. And she failed.
You are talking about non-other than the remarkable Emily Rosa, who exposed the folly of "Therapeutic Touch" practitioners in what has become a classic study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in 1998. BTW, I was one of the peer-reviewers for the study. I also nominated Emily Rosa (well actually Dolores Krieger) for an Ig Nobel Prize. Emily came to the Ig Nobel Ceremony at Harvard to accept the prize on behalf of Krieger, the founder of Therapeutic Touch. She gave a most remarkable key note address that got a standing ovation.
You're absolutely right about there being fools among the Nobelists. And likewise, some (but not all!) of the Ig Nobelists are nobody's fool.:cheese:
However (and please note, I intend this as reasoned friendly debate, not nit-picking), I believe the experiment with the swallowed capsule is better because the person who swallowed the capsule does not have to be aware of what the word is. They could be blindfolded when swallowing, and the people who chose the word would not have to be present when she tries to read it. Someone with a metal plate in their head who is stared at for four hours by someone that they know is trying to find the plate may well scratch their head self-conciously more than would be expected or something.
I'm off to the printer to pick up an article by Ray Hyman on the psychology of deception.
Cheers,
Ross-c
I personally think that Emily's design was one of the classic experimental designs of science. If I didn't know of her experiment, then if I was trying to think about how TT could be tested, I'd be at a loss. You can single blind a TT experiment by using a "bogus intervention", but how could you double blind the experiment? ... Oh wait, you don't have to!
Cheers,
Ross-c