The VFF Test is On!

like, is anyone going to tell me how you all know this has happened or not
I'm not a remote viewer nor a clairvoyant, and I figure none of you are either of the challenge would be a bit of a sham
:D
so is there a link to where this is all coming from ?
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Yup. A guy in the audience says he used normal means (fidgeting seen from a distance) to get 2 right.

Terrible protocol.
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Given that she had to get all three right to score a pass, I would say the protocol worked fine. (even though it IS possible to get all three right by chance alone)
 
Marduk said:
like, is anyone going to tell me how you all know this has happened or not
I'm not a remote viewer nor a clairvoyant, and I figure none of you are either of the challenge would be a bit of a sham
:D
so is there a link to where this is all coming from ?
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The webcast was linked a few pages back. I am pretty sure it is all over by now, but they did record it and will hopefully post a link to an uploaded version.
 
Hokulele said:
The webcast was linked a few pages back. I am pretty sure it is all over by now, but they did record it and will hopefully post a link to an uploaded version.
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And please god, let them edit it a bit!
 
BTMO said:
Given that she had to get all three right to score a pass, I would say the protocol worked fine. (even though it IS possible to get all three right by chance alone)
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seconded!

Well, it was a fail, end of subject for me. Unless you all really enjoy picking on her the threads should be quiet now :p
Thankyou Anita for doing the test. Please accept that you are ordinary after all.

ETA Thanks, my slow post missed the previous response for where it was happening.
 
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Sun Countess said:
eta: I see where dlorde noted the audience member said the 2nd target was the most fidgety. From there, it's 50/50 on whether the missing kidney is right or left.
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Unless you take into account the slight bias for missing left kidneys that has been noted.

(All of Anita's guesses were left. That's pretty much akin to Sylvia Browne guessing that a kid missing longer than 6 months--Shawn Horbeck??--is dead.)
 
BTMO said:
Given that she had to get all three right to score a pass, I would say the protocol worked fine. (even though it IS possible to get all three right by chance alone)
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I disagree. I made this point repeatedly before this test too: a protocol cannot be only conclusive if the claimant fails. (ETA: In other words, the fact that she failed does not mean the protocol "worked".)

ETA: Also, many of the issues I have with the protocol weren't reflected in how the test was actually conducted. For example, the protocol did not specify that all the subjects would have the same color and style t-shirt and wear the same straw hats and head cloths. It also didn't specify that they'd all be sitting backwards in chairs resting their arms on the cushioned chairbacks (which doubtless reduced a lot of the fidgeting). It also didn't specify how the groups of subjects were selected or assigned.

The biggest is probably the issue of the length of time. It didn't fit with her claim and only opened up the opportunity for information leakage (through fidgeting, perspiration or whatever).
 
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BTMO said:
Given that she had to get all three right to score a pass, I would say the protocol worked fine. (even though it IS possible to get all three right by chance alone)
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From a chatboard I (for some obscure reason) followed the whole "saga" on I recall seeing that the odds for getting it all right were under 2000/1.

Norm
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
I disagree. I made this point repeatedly before this test too: a protocol cannot be only conclusive if the claimant fails.
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Sorry, but you are wrong.

Read what I wrote back in post 703, after someone calculated a p-value for the test, of 0.19.

"In other words, slightly tighter odds than tossing a coin twice, and predicting the outcome correctly.

Or... not really significant at all.

To put it into stats 101 terms:

Ho = "There is nothing happening here" (P>0.05)
Ha = "There is something happening here that isn't adequately explained by random chance. Investigate further" (P<0.05) "

What this means is (simplistically) that all experiments have a "Ho", or null hypothesis. Your starting assumption should *always* be ... nothing interesting is happening in your experiment (or demonstration, or test) UNLESS something can actually be shown to be happening, with a better than statistical chance.

This takes you out of the headspace that you are seeing something exciting when you really aren't.

Your alternate hypothesis (Ha) is that (with proper statistical support), yes, your experiment really did demonstrate something interesting.

The level of statistical power that is commonly accepted to indicate something may actually have happened is 5%, or a P-value of 0.05.

In other words, if Anita had demonstrated something that only had a 5% likelihood of happening due to chance alone, we'd all be looking at it and going "holy crap - something might actually be happening here. Let's take a closer look"

But what she demonstrated could be done by *any* random person off the street, approximately 1 in 5 times.

That isn't paranormal. It is luck. It isn't even particularly good luck.

ETA: removed grumpy face on the post - I must have hit the button that does that accidentally! Sorry!

Further edit: I think I see what you are getting at with this bit "a protocol cannot be only conclusive if the claimant fails."

Actually, yes it can. Let's assume Anita had gotten all three people right, and all three kidneys right. Does this indicate she can do what she claims? No, it doesn't. It demonstrates she did it once. In any random trial, you'd expect that to happen approximately once in 1700 attempts. Pretty thin odds, but it *could* happen by chance.

So you'd do it again.

Now you're getting up around 1 in 1,000,000 odds. Very unlikely - but still possible through chance. So you'd try again. Now we are closer to 1 in a billion odds. Extremely unlikely - but still possible through chance alone.

You also spend a lot of times doing the experiments. And you'd never truly know that she has a skill or not.

Now turn it around - if Anita failed first time, it is much more likely she can't do what she claims than she can and just had an off day today.

This is the way we do science, and why we design experiments that falsify rather than "prove" something is happening.
 
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desertgal said:
Now we just wait for the spin from Anita. :rolleyes:
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Predicted spin: "Actually, this test does not falsify my paranormal claim. In fact, it demonstrated that when I am not tired I am able to identify people with missing kidneys in two out of three trials - on one trial, my powers were simply warming up. And on that third one, its not really a miss at all, since I detected the right subject and it just so happened he was moving and his vibrational atoms were moving around to much to tell which side it was on."

I hope I am wrong. I hope Anita realizes she should see a mental health professional and live a normal life. But I highly, highly doubt it...
 
A saucy puppet show would have been far more productive in my opinion. I don't have a problem with how the test was conducted (other than being dull) but now we are going to have another god knows how many pages where Anita insists that she had/has a 50% success rate (she counted picking the right person/wrong kidney as a half-hit in the post test interview despite saying that she was tired and only guessed on that trial before she knew the results) and waffling through explanations continuing to ignore simple logic. I was hoping for 100% either way, win or lose, to avoid this, possibly increasing the odds that she might actually say, "OK, well that claim is ********." Not gonna happen.

By her logic I was also 50/50 by guessing alone.

But... at least she went through with it. I'll give her a point for that. Of course, I'm pretty sure she'll be back at zero soon.
 
Anita's magical x-ray vision performed exactly the same as the non-magical body language cues an audience member used to make his guesses. Will she admit she used that same technique?
 
I found the whole thing horribly sad. The spectacle this girl is making of herself in order to maintain an illusion that does not benefit her in any real way. One can only hope that she'll realize she didn't lose, she was thrown a life-line. She can now escape the trap she's built around herself and move forward into a happier adulthood that is less reliant on silly props and pronouncements. I wish her all the best.
 
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