The VFF Test is On!

One success out of three trials is not a "narrow miss". Again, her performance is quite consistent with someone who is good at reading people, and not at all consistent with someone who can actually see inside bodies.


Actually her performance was about the same as a half dozen grade school kids in an average sized classroom correctly guessing how many fingers I'm holding up behind my back. Quite unremarkable.
 
Having read VfF's comments on her site, it does look like she might have a (weaker) claim that could still be tested. She now claims that her abilities don't always work, but that they work sometimes and she can know when they work and when they don't.
I wonder if it would be possible to design a test with a higher number of trials, wherein she has the option to "pass" and it's not held against her in the protocol. This would remove the pressure for her to "guess", which according to her is what she did on Trails 1 and 3.
 
Actually her performance was about the same as a half dozen grade school kids in an average sized classroom correctly guessing how many fingers I'm holding up behind my back. Quite unremarkable.

She correctly found two of the three individuals who were missing a kidney. Again, her behavior is very consistent with someone who was, consciously or unconsciously, reading the subjects to arrive at answers. It's not likely that she would have picked two of the three correct by accident; it's very likely that an experienced reader could have picked them out in that manner but be unable to figure out which kidney.
 
Hey, Rodney, you missed this one...

According to the protocol, how much credit was to be given for guessing the person missing a kidney, but guessing the wrong kidney?
No, I saw it, but ignored it. :) By your "logic", if there had been 12 rounds and Anita had come up with the correct person each time, but had missed the locations, you would conclude that she has no paranormal ability and that there is no need to investigate further.

What you and the rest of the folks here who fancy themselves to be skeptics need to do is consider the following hypothetical: If someone developed a novel hypothesis regarding early detection of cancer, and conducted a study that produced a P of .0567, would you say that the hypothesis should not be evaluated further?
 
She correctly found two of the three individuals who were missing a kidney. Again, her behavior is very consistent with someone who was, consciously or unconsciously, reading the subjects to arrive at answers. It's not likely that she would have picked two of the three correct by accident; it's very likely that an experienced reader could have picked them out in that manner but be unable to figure out which kidney.


Roll a die three times in a row. Hit a particular number, say a six, twice. Big deal.
 
Why?

Am I missing out on the joke or did that errant ring tone **** the test?
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That ring tone potentially ****** the test, and since we don't know whether it was a message or not, the whole thing needed to be stopped at that point
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Roll a die three times in a row. Hit a particular number, say a six, twice. Big deal.

Happens 15 in 216 times, or less than 7 percent of the time. That's rare enough to look for an explanation.
 
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Having read VfF's comments on her site, it does look like she might have a (weaker) claim that could still be tested. She now claims that her abilities don't always work, but that they work sometimes and she can know when they work and when they don't.
I wonder if it would be possible to design a test with a higher number of trials, wherein she has the option to "pass" and it's not held against her in the protocol. This would remove the pressure for her to "guess", which according to her is what she did on Trails 1 and 3.

Judging from her behavior during the trial that is not correct.

In the first run she claimed to be undecided between 2 subjects-> but she was wrong about both. So she didn't know that she didn't know

In the 2nd run she claimed to be sure and was correct

In the 3rd run she claimed to be wrong because she was tired-> but it turned out to be the right person anyway after which she exclaimed: "how do I know this" . Then it turned out to be the wrong kidney. In that case she also didn't know she didn't know

Not to mention the fact that before the test she claimed to be always right, only after failing is she amending this to being sometimes right.
 
No, I saw it, but ignored it. :) By your "logic", if there had been 12 rounds and Anita had come up with the correct person each time, but had missed the locations, you would conclude that she has no paranormal ability and that there is no need to investigate further.

What you and the rest of the folks here who fancy themselves to be skeptics need to do is consider the following hypothetical: If someone developed a novel hypothesis regarding early detection of cancer, and conducted a study that produced a P of .0567, would you say that the hypothesis should not be evaluated further?


Your ignorance is noted, but please, do try again. This isn't that tough.

According to the protocol, how much credit was to be given for guessing the person missing a kidney, but guessing the wrong kidney?
 
Happens 15 in 216 times, or less than 7 percent of the time. That's rare enough to look for an explanation.

No, with claims like these a chance of 1:1000 is generally agreed to be rare enough to look for an explanation.
 
By your "logic", if there had been 12 rounds and Anita had come up with the correct person each time, but had missed the locations, you would conclude that she has no paranormal ability and that there is no need to investigate further.


Exactly. This is because the protocol, flawed though it was, was blinded for kidney detection, not for people detection.
 
Judging from her behavior during the trial that is not correct.

In the first run she claimed to be undecided between 2 subjects-> but she was wrong about both. So she didn't know that she didn't know

In the 2nd run she claimed to be sure and was correct

In the 3rd run she claimed to be wrong because she was tired-> but it turned out to be the right person anyway after which she exclaimed: "how do I know this" . Then it turned out to be the wrong kidney. In that case she also didn't know she didn't know

Not to mention the fact that before the test she claimed to be always right, only after failing is she amending this to being sometimes right.

Actually, in the second run, she was also wavering between 2 subjects - though she did say she was surer that is was one of those 2 than she was in the first test.
 
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Happens 15 in 216 times, or less than 7 percent of the time. That's rare enough to look for an explanation.


Okay, we'll go with your 7 percent. In an average size grade school classroom, about 25 kids, two kids correctly guess how many fingers I'm holding up behind my back. Shall we look for an explanation? Let's say four kids guessed correctly. Do we look for an explanation then, or do we understand that every now and then an extra kid and a half will pick the right number?

And as to the significance of picking a person who is missing a kidney, but seeing a kidney where there was actually an empty space and seeing an empty space where there was a kidney, I'll ask you the same question that Rodney seems so reluctant to answer...

According to the protocol, how much credit was to be given for guessing the person missing a kidney, but guessing the wrong kidney?
 
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And as to the significance of picking a person who is missing a kidney, but seeing a kidney where there was actually an empty space and seeing an empty space where there was a kidney,

My point exactly. It's evidence that she can read people, not evidence that she can see inside them.
 
No, I saw it, but ignored it. :) By your "logic", if there had been 12 rounds and Anita had come up with the correct person each time, but had missed the locations, you would conclude that she has no paranormal ability and that there is no need to investigate further.

And she would have failed her claim again. Her claim was that she could use her x-ray vision to actually see the kidneys. She was not looking for or at people she was looking for kidneys. That was her claim and you cannot simply wish it away, and make another claim on her behalf, which she would not even agree to, because it is not what she believes in.

If the claim was simply that she could detect people with missing kidneys then an entirely different protocol would be required to the one used.

Norm
 
Anita has repeatedly rejected any and all simple and conclusive tests. She made her position very clear with this statement...
Originally Posted by VisionFromFeeling
I won't agree to test conditions under which my claim fails.

In reference to using paranormal vision to detect whether a person was/was not behind a screen...

There was also the short-lived shoe thread, based on seeing whether a shoe contained a foot. It was supposed to eliminate the problem that VFF said she had of telling whether a person was behind a large screen. She said she needed to see their body shape as revealed by their clothing. VFF initially responded positively to the idea, but nothing came of it.
 
You forgot to mention that her descriptions of said ghosts were factually inaccurate, clearly being based on popular misconceptions rather than any actual meeting.
Ghosts manifest themselves as we want them to be not as they really are. The observer affects the observed. Duh!

I disagree with this part. I don't see anything that suggests Anita has any observation skills at all, let alone particularly good ones.

I don't want to rehash the entire saga, so I'll just share some bullet points based on having read everything here, on her site, on my site, and in about 85,000 words of private chats.

* While she has been caught in a few lies, her stories actually remain remarkably consistent. She spins things, but once spun, they remain spun and don't change.

* Taking her at her word, she has been "accurate" in a number of seemingly unrelated observations ranging from neck pain to menstruation to full bladder.

* Contrary to her assertion, each and every "confirmed" observation could have been accompanied by information accessible by ordinary and mundane means.

* In all but one trial in her study on induced information, she scored above "chance" but never so much to indicate that she had the powers she claimed. The *one* time she did worse than chance was when it was completely dark, and she couldn't see the subject at all.

Taken as a whole it points to a likelihood that she has some good skills of observation. Take menstruation for example. At any given time probably 1 in 5 women of child bearing age is menstruating. She's never performed a series of trials to see if she can detect this significantly above chance.

However, it *appears* that the one time she had this perception, she was right. She had a chance to observe the woman for a few hours. Maybe she saw her pop some Motrin and take her purse to the bathroom instead of leaving it with her boyfriend. Maybe she noticed swollen ankles or the woman wincing from cramps. It's no guarantee that the woman was menstruating, but I'm willing to bet it increased the odds.

This is why Anita's observations are so varied. In fact she almost never repeats an observation. Each one has a separate set of circumstances that lead to an educated guess. She has managed to weave them together with her fantasies to create her sooper powers.

Having good observational skills is not mutually exclusive with pulling hits out thin air, ignoring misses, postdiction, or twisting results around to look like a hit.

Though Anita had just a 23% chance of getting one completely right at the IIG just by rolling a die and flipping a coin, I would not have bet against her without getting odds on my money. There was simply too much information available to her to make this a "pure chance" scenario like with Connie Sonne.

I'm also not surprised in the least that she identified two people missing a kidney even though the odds were 13 to 1 against because those odds are wrong! Those odds assume no other information was available when in fact there was a lot of information available to her. 13 to 1 is just the worst case scenario where she couldn't see the people at all.

I, like everyone else, knew that Anita was not detecting kidneys. She was looking for the person most likely to be missing a kidney and then guessing "left" because the odds were better.

You seem to contend that pure chance was at work. I've already established that there was a wealth of information that could be used to better the odds of getting the right person. If you're right, she ignored all that information and beat 13 to 1 odds. If I'm right, she used some skill to increase her odds while still guessing. I think my scenario is far more likely.
 
Having read VfF's comments on her site, it does look like she might have a (weaker) claim that could still be tested. She now claims that her abilities don't always work, but that they work sometimes and she can know when they work and when they don't.
I wonder if it would be possible to design a test with a higher number of trials, wherein she has the option to "pass" and it's not held against her in the protocol. This would remove the pressure for her to "guess", which according to her is what she did on Trails 1 and 3.

Why don't you and Anita go ahead and do that? Nobody is stopping you. Meanwhile, you can look at testing some of her other claims that "sometimes" work.

* Chemical identification
* Lactobacillus detection
* Menstruation detection
* Diaphragm (birth control) detection
* Ovarian cyst detection
* Bone fracture detection
* Full bladder detection
* Vasectomy detection
* Ovulation detection
* Remote viewing (she can sense people being in a room at a distance)
* Immunity to alcohol
* Becoming intoxicated by looking marijuana
* Surviving without water for 8 days
* Smelling inside the human body
* Hearing blood cells scrape against blood vessels
* Identifying crystals
* Detecting color blindness
* Detecting deafness
* Urine identification (she can tell you whose is whose)
* Telepathy
* Remote smelling (she can smell things in the distance)
* Tasting what others taste
* Detecting what others have recently eaten
* Analyzing plant molecules via Vibrational Information
* Detecting clenched fists
* Detecting hands in ice water
* Detecting if a violent crime was committed at a location
* Drawing fetuses inside the womb
* Sensing Bigfoot
* Detecting medicinal properties of vegetables
* Using Vibrational Algebra to find cures for cancer and flesh eating bacteria
* Speaking with the dead
* Detecting how insects communicate
* Being a star person from Arcturus
* Seeing UFOs

No, I'm not making up any of this. She has made all these claims. But, by all means, let's test her *again* because she might have an ability unknown to science. How sad it would be if we missed the most gifted and unique person on the planet, even if she's a star person and not human.
 
My point exactly. It's evidence that she can read people, not evidence that she can see inside them.


If three or four kids in a classroom guess correctly how many fingers I'm holding up behind my back, you may think that's evidence that those kids are able to read people. I'd think it's just what we might expect out of a room full of kids playing such a guessing game. My point was that she didn't perform significantly better than purely random guessing, certainly not enough better to pique my interest. Particularly not when it comes to supporting her claim, which was to be able to see, using some heretofore unknown powers of magical x-ray vision, an empty space inside a human torso where a kidney ought to be.

Several times now I've asked what seems to be a pretty straightforward question, and I note that you, too, choose ignorance over a straightforward answer. So I'll try this another time. According to the protocol, which is publicly available, how much credit was to be given for guessing which person was missing a kidney if she guessed the wrong kidney?
 

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