| |
|
I don't claim to know what mechanism Natasha uses to do her diagnoses. I do believe that the test was flawed in many ways and I also believe that her successes warrant rigorous scientific testing.
I agree that the test was nowhere near optimal, but I don’t think it could really be made persuasive unless Natasha changed her requirements. For instance, an obvious way to test a claim of non-visual perception would be to simply disable her vision—place an opaque screen between her and the observation subjects, or conduct the test in the dark. Again, if you want to rule out the possibility of her getting information from third parties, everyone except Natasha, the test administrators and the observation subjects should have been required to leave the room. But she and her associates wouldn’t agree to these conditions...so there was no way to test her under conditions which ruled out her acquiring information via any number of “ordinary” channels. Given that, a truly rigorous test was virtually impossible, and the only way for it to have any power whatsoever was to make the success criterion more stringent—risking Type 1 error, but more importantly reducing the chance of Type 2.
I’m all for further testing if someone has the time and the interest. It would be very nice to have a larger pool of observational subjects, with accessible and detailed medical records. And an independent (hopefully Russian or bilingual) test administrator would be a must. But if either the conditions of the test or the success criterion are relaxed, without making the other correspondingly stricter, the tests will be meaningless.
Anyway here is another take on the story of the test.
Linky
And linky
Both seem unconvincing to me. The argument that“4/7 hits are well above chance” is irrelevant when the null hypothesis is obviously not that Natasha’s guessing at random. And arguments that an unfamiliar environment and (alleged) subject awareness and/or hostility disable her power are not only post-hoc, and but imply that no one should really be bothering to test her or rely on her for readings in the first place!
In particular, re: the first link you provided...a supposed “biologist” is apparently arguing either that artificial hips aren’t overwhelmingly found in the elderly, or that if they are Natasha’s too ignorant to know it. It’s hard for him to have any credibility in my eyes after that point. Having read the test protocols, I think he’s also simply wrong when he says that two of the medical conditions were“alien” to it.
After reading sTarbaby and other material about CSICOP, I can't really say that any one associated directly with CSICOP *can possibly* be trusted to be in any way unbiased. They lie and they cheat. These people seem to be as close minded as the worst creationists.
I’m well aware that some CSICOP/Skeptical Inquirer/Free Inquiry staff have personality problems; I used to live next door to one.  And I have heard that Paul Kurtz has some control issues. That said, most of their personnel have always seemed quite reasonable to me, and I’ve never seen any emotional problems they may have spill over into testing protocols.
And Dennis Rawlins, the author of sTARBABY, is hardly a reliable source given his later career (particularly his Googleable failed claim of fraud in the Peary expedition). He seems to be both a careless researcher and very prone to labelling scientific opponents as “frauds,” “conspirators,” “grotesque” and the like. I don’t have any reason to think he’s consciously misrepresenting his time in CSICOP, but neither do I place any trust in the accuracy of his memory.
You can see Philip Klass’ original reply to sTARBABY here. It’s detailed (and mentions the Peary thing), although also infested with needless capitalizations—written in the heat of the moment, I suppose.
They refuse to look at evidence.
Given that the claim referred to by the above link was that someone could live indefinitely on nothing but water, I don’t really blame Randi for refusing to test it. Not only would it be something of a hassle—legally as well as in terms of time, money and manpower—to lock someone in somewhere for weeks with round-the-clock surveillance, but it threatens the claimant’s own health, which as I understand is against JREF policy. Put another way—if the claim was “I can shoot myself through the head and walk away afterwards,” what kind of evidence could you ethically ask for?
That said, it certainly would be inaccurate to claim they’d “tested” that claim and refuted it. But Randi didn’t say that—he simply said he wouldn’t bother testing it in the first place, which isn’t dishonest at all.
James Randi has been quoted to say "I always have a way out".
Quoted from memory, by Dennis Rawlins, who's hardly an unbiased source. In any event, Randi was not involved in this test, nor has he been a CSICOP member for ten years or so.
*Edit* Dang, that was long. Didn't look that way when I was writing it...oh well. What better way to spend a Friday night? |
|
|
