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Possible application candidate

I'm not a surgeon but here's something I dredged up from an article Copyright 1993,4 Wired Ventures, Ltd.

Visual prosthetics is still a long way from offering any major breakthroughs, though several promising directions are being explored. The goal of most of these schemes is to implant electrodes into the visual cortex of the brain to stimulate discernible patterns of phosphenes which can then be interpreted by the user. Phosphenes are those tiny dots (the proverbial stars) that can be seen after rubbing one's eyes or after getting beaned on the head. These phospenes originate in the brain and are responsive to electrocortical stimulation. Recently, Dr. Hambrecht and fellow researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) implanted a 38-electrode array into the visual cortex of a blind woman's brain. She was able to see simple light patterns and to make out crude letters when the electrodes were stimulated.
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Gene
 
I am extremely suspicious about this. The IR rays are only just outside of the visible spectrum. In fact most digital cameras can detect IR from remotes. Just point one at a camera and press a button. You will be able to see a red dot coming from the remote. They do not have any heat. And very little actual energy.

Then add the fact that he is wearing clothing over his leg would make it hard for any IR to hit the wounds.

To make it even worse the only person who can apply for the $1 million challenge is your uncle.

I am so sorry.
 
Well, I'm still going to test him now, just because he made me write all this stuff. :)
 
TheBoyPaj said:
OK.
I'm starting to think that the best way is the simple "Is this remote working?" test. It's a simple 50/50 shot each time.
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This is not a good test. I would like to avoid any possible psychosomatic response as someone mentioned above.
 
IR light from a remote is pulsed light. Light from most other sources such as the sun is not pulsed.

I can imagine a piece of shrapnel very near the skin surface being vibrated on a molecular level by the IR pulsed radiation and irritating a nerve. I don't think this would be paranormal.
 
Burner said:
This is not a good test. I would like to avoid any possible psychosomatic response as someone mentioned above.
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The test does exactly that. If he is unable to distinguish between a working remote and one where the batteries are reversed, it's not the remote that's causing the pain.
 
Jim_Mich said:
IR light from a remote is pulsed light. Light from most other sources such as the sun is not pulsed.

I can imagine a piece of shrapnel very near the skin surface being vibrated on a molecular level by the IR pulsed radiation and irritating a nerve. I don't think this would be paranormal.
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I'm no expert in wave physics, but someone in another post pointed out that IR does not penetrate deep enough for him to feel it and he was wearing clothes. No wait.. I just checked that and the signal from the remote goes trough clothes easily.

The test does exactly that. If he is unable to distinguish between a working remote and one where the batteries are reversed, it's not the remote that's causing the pain.
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Negative. Just the sight of me using the remote could trigger psychosomatic reaction. Him not seeing the remote and thus not knowing when it is pressed avoids this completely, not to mention the odds of him guessing it going down significantly.
 
Jim_Mich said:
IR light from a remote is pulsed light. Light from most other sources such as the sun is not pulsed.

I can imagine a piece of shrapnel very near the skin surface being vibrated on a molecular level by the IR pulsed radiation and irritating a nerve. I don't think this would be paranormal.
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Interesting. IR pulsed light does seem to have a better penetrating capability than say, ordinary sunlight. You may have just found a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.
 
Jim_Mich said:
IR light from a remote is pulsed light. Light from most other sources such as the sun is not pulsed.

I can imagine a piece of shrapnel very near the skin surface being vibrated on a molecular level by the IR pulsed radiation and irritating a nerve. I don't think this would be paranormal.
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Whops, already replied to this1.
 
Burner said:
Negative. Just the sight of me using the remote could trigger psychosomatic reaction. Him not seeing the remote and thus not knowing when it is pressed avoids this completely, not to mention the odds of him guessing it going down significantly.
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If no one in the room (including you) knows whether the remote control is working, what does it matter if he sees you press the button?

If he cannot tell the difference between a working and a non-working remote, if he reacts the same in both cases, the test is failed.

That's what a double blind test is.

But it's your mystery. If you want to obscure the button presses, go ahead.
 
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I think Burner's desire to hide the button presses comes from not wanting to inflict unnecessary pain on his uncle. The statistics don't care if it is a false positive, but it makes a difference to him and his uncle.

Even though the pain may be psycosomatic, it still hurts. The results (for the statistics) are the same if uncle doesn't react when he is zapped (but can't see that the remote was activated) as they would be if he reacted falsely when "pseudo-zapped" (pain when a button is pushed on a remote with reversed batteries.)

We're dealing with people here, not marshmellows.

For this case, I think the best test is to see if he reacts to a stimulus when he can't see it.
 
In that case, use Burner's suggestion of 10 minute trials, where the uncle must react in a specified short period. But don't bother with the dummy remote part. It complicates the stats, and if the remotes are hidden there's no need for a fake.
 
UPDATE:

I have just talked to my uncle in more detail about the proposed test. Thing is, when he gets zapped with a remote it can take hours, even a whole day for the pain to lower to usual level. The only possibility I see here is to test him once, maybe twice in a very large time frame. He needs to tell me:" OK. I am feeling no pain(or usual pain for him) let's start the test." After that, if he can tell correctly a 3 second zap within 5 seconds of appliance in a 20 min time frame, that's like a 1 in 400 chance he guessed it correctly. Which is 99.75% probability of failure. If I recall my statistics correctly in any kind of science literature a 99.75% equals 100% significance. Anyway, it would be more than enough to convince me.
 
20 minutes = 1200 seconds. Divide by 5 (the target period) to get 240.

So a single trial has 1 in 240 odds.

As a rule of thumb, a successful million dollar challenge would need odds of about a million to one, so he would have to do this at least 3 out of 4 times.

Of course, you'll probably want to try this out before going to the hassle of applying.
 
The ability to sense IR isn't a paranormal event. Snakes do it every day. It is unusual for a person to have the sensitivity of a snake but it isn't paranormal. There are some people that have a good nose for gold and can smell it better than a bloodhound. That may explain how some dowsers work.

Gene
 
Well, I was curious about the same thing. However I have asked Mr. Jeff Wagg if he can guarantee that this thing is 100% paranormal and he said YES. So I'm going ahead with the tests and if they succeed with the application.
 
AgingYoung said:
The ability to sense IR isn't a paranormal event. Snakes do it every day. It is unusual for a person to have the sensitivity of a snake but it isn't paranormal. There are some people that have a good nose for gold and can smell it better than a bloodhound. That may explain how some dowsers work.

Gene
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Gold has an odour?
 
Certainly Reno, gold has an odor. It isn't humanly perceptible as far as I know but some people have a keen ability to infer the quantity of its odor, and hence its amount, by observing the actions of people who are in possession of it. Lawyers and politicians usually have a very keen ability to sniff gold out.

Gene
 
Burner said:
... However I have asked Mr. Jeff Wagg if he can guarantee that this thing is 100% paranormal and he said YES. ...
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This is very curious. It would seem that jref is acting as a willing participant in a fund transfer. I know of someone that can make gerbils appear out of their hat. As they're talking to you they do a slight of 'hat' by sitting on the hat and most don't notice the 'squat'.

This is an interesting development.

Gene
 
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Please note.
What Jeff Wagg says and what Burner says Jeff Wagg says are two different things and are not to be confused with each other.
 
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