Dr. Colin Ross's challenge

[Roma]

Dr. Ross is using his application for the MDC as a publicity stunt to sell product, and probably has no intention to actually take the test. We were nothing more than a means to an end, and for this reason, he should be dropped.

If there is a lawyer type forum member who can give Ross' application a good looking over then dropping Ross would be the least that should be done.
I think it's clear Ross was deliberately using the JREF as free publicity and to provide convoluted legitamacy for his latest book, while attempting to con the JREF out of a million dollars is fraud.

This would not be the first time he was guilty of fraud.

 

[Roma]

exploit \ik - sploit\ verb: to use unfairly for one's own advantage


Well it's not like conning or attempting to defraud a million dollars from the James Randi Educational Foundation is a crime or anything. Is it ?

Past behaviour predicting future behaviour eh ?

Dr.Colin Ross was sued for, among other things, fraudulent concealment.
Ross settled out of court.

The document is embedded in Doug Mesner's article on process.org in the last page provided in the affidavit of Marth Ann Tyo:

here's just the affidavit if you don't have time:

http://sites.google.com/site/memoryabuse/martha-ann-tyo-vs-ross


here's the whole article if you do have time

http://www.process.org/discept/2010...y-the-supernatural-and-malpractice-most-foul/


I know that Dr.Colin Ross is insisting that this thread is only for his million Dollar Challenge discussion ,
however if past lawsuits about fraudulent concealment were successful against him then that could make him a person who would probably use fraudulent concealment again if what Dropzone said is right.

What if Ross was using fraudulent concealment in his application for the James Randi Educational Foundation Million Dollar Challenge ?

Would he get away with it ?

Have a nice day.

 

[Rougarou]

Roma, are you the Roma from the article?

 

[Roma]

Roma, are you the Roma from the article?

Yes that's me,
Dr.Colin Ross was my former psychiatrist.

He probably regrets not killing me,
but I have to give him credit for trying his best.

 

[Roma]

but I have to give him credit for trying his best.

...trying his best to kill me.....

 

[dropzone]

1. note to self: your wife keeps telling you guys are attracted to women who are crazy.
2. Roma self-identifies as being at one time crazy.
3. However, she got over it.
4. Noting the discrepancies, dz gently waves at Roma.

 

[Roma]

1. note to self: your wife keeps telling you guys are attracted to women who are crazy.
2. Roma self-identifies as being at one time crazy.
3. However, she got over it.
4. Noting the discrepancies, dz gently waves at Roma.

Well dz I might still be a little bit crazy

Roma waves back

 

[dropzone]

(ignoring possible flirtation)

Today was beautiful, wasn't it?

 

[Roma]

(ignoring possible flirtation)

Today was beautiful, wasn't it?

Ah yes, I'm looking forward to summer,
after we all "finish off" Colin Ross (manner of speech only)
I am going to ask the CIA to consider me retired
and spend all of my time in the garden.
You can flirt all you want if you have sun screen

 

[Snacky]

If there is a lawyer type forum member who can give Ross' application a good looking over...

I'm a law student focusing on IP law and so my input is just one tiny iota above worthless. With that caveat, I've got this to contribute:

1. An invention doesn't have to be good, or more efficient, or more cost-effective, or really even proven to work to be patentable. It must simply be novel and non-obvious.

2. Inventors need to be careful when getting media coverage and posting in forums like this one: The public dissemination might constitute prior art would would kill chances of getting the patent.

 

[Christian Klippel]

It must simply be novel and non-obvious.

Well, but only in theory. Current practice shows otherwise. Just take a peek at software patents.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[Roma]

Snacky,
that would possibly apply to Ross' application for a patent, but what
I was interested in was looking over Colin Ross' JREF forum membership application.
Did Ross violate that membership agreement by intentionally and fraudulently using his new JREF membership for personal gain through the exploitation of the JREF reputation to provide legitimacy for the latest Colin Ross crack-pot book about energy fields?
If so, would Ross' application then be fraudulent?
Would the exploitation and fraudulent application for the million dollars be fraud or attempted fraud or fraudulent concealment ?
Also, Dr.Colin Ross was attempting to defraud a million dollars from the JREF, that is pretty clear, so is he going to get away with that?


Of course everyone knows that I have a personal interest here.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Snacky,
that would possibly apply to Ross' application for a patent, but what
I was interested in was looking over Colin Ross' JREF forum membership application.
Did Ross violate that membership agreement by intentionally and fraudulently using his new JREF membership for personal gain through the exploitation of the JREF reputation to provide legitimacy for the latest Colin Ross crack-pot book about energy fields?
If so, would Ross' application then be fraudulent?
Would the exploitation and fraudulent application for the million dollars be fraud or attempted fraud or fraudulent concealment ?
Also, Dr.Colin Ross was attempting to defraud a million dollars from the JREF, that is pretty clear, so is he going to get away with that?


Of course everyone knows that I have a personal interest here.

That would surely be getting into the realm of motives; and it would be impossible to make judgments based on speculation about a person's motives.

This thread's hardly done anything for Ross's reputation though; he could claim his book was carefully researched because after all, behold, he's a member of a grand skeptical organisation; but I doubt he would; it would be unwise for him to do such a thing, as he's probably very well aware, since anyone curious could look up his activity here and quickly find things that seemed pretty damning.

I mean, I put the search string '"colin ross" jref' into Google, and the first thing I found was this thread, where his claims don't come out looking too good, and he admits to trying to defraud the JREF to prove a point about the paranormal. The very start of the thread will get people's prurient-gossip juices flowing, wanting to know what allegations have been made about him, since at the very beginning, Tricky links to your "Colin Ross Exposed" thread to give comtext to the first bit of what Colin Ross says, and then we have him saying,

I encourage JREF form members to view these allegations against me with the same skepticism they would bring to a claim that the reality of the paranormal was being hidden by a conspiracy involving the JREF, the government and several other official bodies. What would be the standard of evidence required for such an allegation to be taken seriously? Clearly, affidavits by psychics would not constitute evidence. Just to correct a few inaccuracies in prior posts: dissociative identity disorder is still in the DSM and will be retained in DSM-V. I never worked for the VA. I never met George Bergen or any of his relatives and none of them were ever treated at the hospital I worked at. His relative committed suicide in 1986, a year after I completed my psychiatry residency - I left Canada in 1991 and first wrote in public about Satanic Ritual Abuse in my 1995 book of that name published by the University of Toronto Press. There is no mention of ritual abuse, cults or the CIA in any of my books or papers prior to 1995. ...

That's bound to make at least some people curious to look at the other thread.

The second thing listed in Google was something on this site about Ross getting the Pigasus Award, and what they are.

... Category #1: To the scientist or academic who said or did the silliest thing related to the supernatural, paranormal or occult:

Dr. Colin Ross, a psychiatrist in Texas. He is a lettered man, having published many articles in peer-reviewed journals, and you might think he would be the last person to earn a Pigasus... until you look a bit deeper.

Dr. Ross claims that he can send electromagnetic beams out of his eyes.

Now, to be fair, this was long thought to be how vision worked... in the Middle Ages. However, we now understand that light emitted or reflected by external objects enters the eye, and that's how we see. But Dr. Ross claims to have reversed this process, and not only can he send EM beams from his eyes, but he has rigged up a system to detect it. He applied for our famous Million Dollar Challenge with this idea, and when we sent it to our team of experts, they objected, saying it was the movements of Dr. Ross's eyes that triggered his system. ...

Being given the Pigasus Award in itself would make it highly unlikely he'd want to claim he was a proud line-towing skeptically-correct JREF member. (I wouldn't want to claim I was myself.)

Besides, he criticises James Randi for mocking him. Another one of the top ten sites listed in Google for the search string I put in was the recent news article Psychiatrist's Research Finds You Really Can Feel a Person's Stare that makes the controversial claim:

... Dr. Ross previously made headlines by applying to the $1 Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge administered by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) (
www.randi.org). Although Dr. Ross can prove that his eyebeam can make a tone sound out of a computer, JREF insists that no energy can be emitted from the eyes and mocked Dr. Ross with its Pigasus Award. JREF has not responded to Dr. Ross' test protocol.

Misrepresentation? Anyone who reads this thread will get that impression.

About the sixth thing listed in Google was a thread from a different forum which links to Douglas Mesner's article about Ross more than once.

Dr. Colin A. Ross: Psychiatry, the Supernatural, and Malpractice Most Foul
Posted by
Douglas Mesner
on February 17, 2010 at 12:03pm

I wrote up this report regarding some very chilling accusations of malpractice against one Dr. Colin A. Ross. If you've heard of him at all, you probably know him as a recipient of the James Randi Educational Foundation Pigasus Award for his claim - unproven still - that he is capable of emitting detectable beams of energy from his eyes. ...

Another post says:

Dr.Colin Ross did you not read the article posted above by Doug Mesner ? You say that: "There is no documentation of any kind to support the allegation that I was fired or left Manitoba under some kind of coverup." Yet Doug Mesner has gone to the trouble of imbedding in his well written article above a document, a legal affidavit written by the Director in Mental Health for the Government of Manitoba, Alexander Cowan swearing under oath that you did not leave voluntarily and that the hospital concealed that information from the public. ...

 

[Roma]

Ah Baby Nenesis you're probably right,
and it is hard to prove that Ross doesn't actually believe everything he says,
sadly Ross could actually be that crazy and not faking it for free publicity.

He just has this way of getting under my skin.....in a bad way

 

[Baby Nemesis]

Ah Baby Nenesis you're probably right,
and it is hard to prove that Ross doesn't actually believe everything he says,
sadly Ross could actually be that crazy and not faking it for free publicity.

He just has this way of getting under my skin.....in a bad way

Well if his motive for applying for the million dollar challenge was the desire for free publicity, that may have backfired. I put the search string '"Colin ross" randi' into Google, and ... ...

The second thing on the list was ... ...

Oh dear!

... It was your Dr Colin Ross Exposed thread.

Who knows his real motives though.

 

[Cuddles]

I was interested in was looking over Colin Ross' JREF forum membership application.
Did Ross violate that membership agreement by intentionally and fraudulently using his new JREF membership for personal gain through the exploitation of the JREF reputation to provide legitimacy for the latest Colin Ross crack-pot book about energy fields?

No. There is nothing in either the membership agreement or registration agreement that would address this.

If so, would Ross' application then be fraudulent?

No. Memebership of the forum has absolutely nothing to do with an application for the challenge.

Also, Dr.Colin Ross was attempting to defraud a million dollars from the JREF, that is pretty clear

Actually, that's not entirely clear. In a colloquial sense of trying to play silly buggers and find a loophole in the rules, sure. But in a legal sense I can't see that he's done anything wrong. All he's done is try to word his claim in such a way that the JREF accepts a non-paranormal claim as paranormal. According to their own rules, if you mange to get them to do that, you get the money, end of story.

so is he going to get away with that?

What exactly do you propose should be done to him? He has caused no harm to the JREF, so they could hardly sue him to get their money back, and there are certainly no criminal offences being committed. The most that can be done here is to expose his nonsense, turn down his application, then sit back and point and laugh. As far as I can tell, the JREF have that well in hand.

 

[Roma]

What exactly do you propose should be done to him?

Exactly ? Precisely ? In great detail ?


Oh never mind........just watching him publically humiliate himself
is gift enough for me.......and tomorrow is another day

 

[technoextreme]

From the video, you can see the machine's box with its mass-produced molds for safe keeping. This is just off-the-shelf stuff used by therapists; he just changed the configuration to play an extra creepy sound.

You know what the ironic fact is. Given Dr. Ross's history with mind control guess where you have seen that EEG box before. The episode of Mythbusters where they tested mind control. Its this thing:
http://brainmaster.com/

Any fool can submit a paper; and the poor, unsung journal editor has to review it -- at least as far as he detects blatant nonsense or incompetence. That's why having a papere under review doesn't get one promotions or tenure in academia. It's no substitute for having a paper accepted.

And even then it doesn't mean the paper isn't crap. Mind you I've read the paper and that brought up some amazing issues that Ross skirted over.

 

[Baby Nemesis]

... it doesn't mean the paper isn't crap. ...

Unfortunately, it seems peer-review doesn't protect the public from some very harmful theories indeed. I can't be sure about that, but Ross having around 140 peer-reviewed papers does make me wonder. Hence a post I wrote several days ago about his peer-reviewed views on multiple personality disorder in the anti-psychiatry thread.

 

[technoextreme]

Unfortunately, it seems peer-review doesn't protect the public from some very harmful theories indeed. I can't be sure about that, but Ross having around 140 peer-reviewed papers does make me wonder. Hence a post I wrote several days ago about his peer-reviewed views on multiple personality disorder in the anti-psychiatry thread.

The fact that the paper that referred to his device was actually published is actually quite telling.