Put a Fork in her she's done! VfF

[GeeMack]

Dear Forum poster, please try to refrain from diverting this investigation into an irrelevant discussion about perceived or accused personality characteristics, and try to apply your critical thinking to the claim itself to avoid derail and to accelerate reaching a conclusion, ie. a conclusion which is a little bit more than just "the claim is falsified because... skeptics said so".

Actually there is some explanation for your claims to having magical powers. It is obviously not magic. That has been proven time and again as you have failed in every attempt to demonstrate it. Yet you persist in claiming to believe. As skeptics we will explore the reasons for the claimed belief. If you were the skeptic you say you are you would understand that.

So, same as suggesting swamp gas or weather balloons to explain a UFO, same as suggesting a mangy bear might be mistaken for bigfoot, we will consider the state of your mental health as a possible explanation for you "seeing" what you claim to see. And until you get a thorough assessment from a qualified mental health professional to clear that possibility from the table, it must be part of the discussion. Your continued attempts to deflect the issue notwithstanding.

 

[Ashles]

Never mind done - this claim is so overdone it's burnt to a shrivelled crisp lump of carbon.

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

...And Skeptics, I will not be tricked into falsification of this claim. Attempts at calling out my claim as falsified because somebody asks me to try a screen when I already know that a screen (ie. the cloth napkin at the restaurant) blocks the claim from manifesting, ...

Apologies - I obviously misunderstood your previous claimed successes....so when you saw the diaphragm in the passing woman, she was naked? And presumably so was the Doctor in whom you detected the absence of a kidney (though neglected to mention it until he did)?

Do people often wander around naked in front of you? Do they spontaneously disrobe in your presence? If so, that's a way cooler power than any you've been claiming. Where can I sign up to get me some?

 

[devnull]

My view that this is just classic attention seeking behaviour, and fortunately for her she'll received no end of (negative) attention here.

 

[Trent Wray]

Dear Forum poster, please try to refrain from diverting this investigation into an irrelevant discussion about perceived or accused personality characteristics, and try to apply your critical thinking to the claim itself to avoid derail and to accelerate reaching a conclusion, ie. a conclusion which is a little bit more than just "the claim is falsified because... skeptics said so".

I summed you up in a few sentences and cut to the chase. And I hit the mark. A place you're clearly terrified of, sadly, since you can't even address me correctly or look in that direction, even though that's the foundation for everything you do, think, and are ..... claim or otherwise. It's the point. And you're determined to fly right past it as much as you can.

Hmm .... I'm not "Dear Forum poster," so you failed there in your assessment. You shouldn't post to "Dear Forum poster" again, because he won't respond to you again after this. Save it for someone else you're wasting your words with, until you realize you need to take them out of the limelight and treat your words differently

The woos here and the Skeptics here are both driving me crazy. I should go somewhere else.

Bingo. Step one.

 

[Delvo]

VfF, why didn't you just take longer to do the readings properly then? Tell someone at the time you needed more time. Otherwise this is just post-hoc rationalisation (i.e. making up excuses).

Anita seems to be retreating further and further with her goalposts.

Performing a random unplanned rushed test between dinner and going to the cinema without access even to a pen and paper - where do you feel that fits in to a skeptical analysis of a paranormal medical claim?

I haven't been keeping up with this stuff over the months/years, so this thing about not taking enough time and effort and concentration to search for specific individual conditions one at a time is quite new to me. The last time I looked, she was talking about going to a shopping mall and casually seeing the medical conditions of the other people walking by all around her.

you're delusional at best and a pure attention seeker at worst.

With each failure you re-define your abilities, introducing more and more limits / excuses. You have no powers other than on over-active imagination and an over-gullible reasoning ability.

You're a reasonably intelligent, attractive and by all accounts personable young lady and I understand from other posts that you are now in a relationship. I genuinely hope that it'll give you whatever is missing from your life so you lose the desire to invent (consciously or, more likely, unconsciously) powers to make you feel special.

Something's still really way off about that. How could a member of a skeptical organization date someone who's so clearly out of her mind?

 

[desertgal]

The last time I looked, she was talking about going to a shopping mall and casually seeing the medical conditions of the other people walking by all around her.

Not just the people walking around her. She was able to "perceive" the biological differences between two entire races of people by gazing at one black person for "3-4 seconds".

I'd add an eye roll, but it really seems redundant at this point.

 

[GeeMack]

Anyone else care to take Anita up on her invitation to skeptically examine her claims and to come to a reasonable determination?...

Feel free to apply skepticism and call me a liar and a fraud.

 

[Ashles]

I haven't been keeping up with this stuff over the months/years, so this thing about not taking enough time and effort and concentration to search for specific individual conditions one at a time is quite new to me. The last time I looked, she was talking about going to a shopping mall and casually seeing the medical conditions of the other people walking by all around her.

Yes there have been quite a lot of changes to the claimed abilities since the initial amazing claims.

All the changes have involved the ability actually being much, much less observable or detailed or reliable than previously thought.

In fact by now in some ways it almost resembles chance guessing.

(With some modifiers built in so that a correct guess is a hit, an incorrect guess is ignored, except when it is an incorrect guess that Anita was 'confident was incorrect', in which case it sort of becomes a hit again. Somehow.)

 

[Ashles]

I have since come to learn that this skeptic Anita is now dating is Spencer Marks of the IIG.

I have only just seen this post.

Anita I promise you have absolutely no interest in discussing your personal life. It's entirely no-one's business but your own.

But I must ask one question - were you seeing Spencer Marks before or during the IIG kidney test?

I only ask because, as you describe yourself as a skeptic, surely you see how it is obviously relevant if a paranormal claimant is seeing the skeptic in charge of testing her paranormal claim (or at least who has all the knowledge about the secret identities in that challenge).

If you did not know Spencer socially before or at the time of the IIG test then just say 'No' and that will be an end to that discussion as far as I am concerned.

 

[Robo Sapien]

I posted about Anita on my new blog, Skepocalypse. I put it up because I wanted an environment where noone is bound by rules of maturity and respect, and foul language is encouraged. So if anyone needs to vent and say what they REALLY want to, feel free to visit and leave a comment.

 

[Ashles]

As well, Anita claims to have saved the life of an elderly woman with diabetes, by 'detecting' that the woman had diabetes and was in insulin shock. If it hadn't been for Anita's instantaneous 'perception' and immediate intervention, the woman would have died.

Wow I had forgotten about that:

I can only recall two instances where I had detected something seriously dangerous. One was when I detected cysts of the internal reproductive system in a coworker. I was quite concerned but chose not to tell her about it. Months later she shared with us that she had become diagnosed with reproductive cysts and was scheduled for surgery. The other case occurred yesterday as a matter of fact, read about it on http://www.visionfromfeeling.com/observations.html involving a potentially serious and fatal heart problem. This was on a friend and I chose to describe the problem as specificly as I perceived it. I told him that I had never been incorrect yet, but that of course I may be incorrect this time, and that I felt obliged to share this information with him, especially since I detect that there is a way around the problem.

Was she scanning these people for specifically these ailments in order to have found them?

There was one case where I ordered a person to stop taking a medication. I met with a friend of mine and was shocked, I saw that his blood flow was being inhibited, and detected that the cause was a new medicine he had not been taking before. I perceived that this effect would lead to reduced blood flow to the brain, and partial brain damage due to the oxygen deficiency that would result. I told him that this medicine would kill him and that he must stop taking it and have his doctor give him another brand. He told me that yes, he was in fact on a new medication, one that is for high blood pressure.

Again was Anita scanning for specifically these ailments?

And now on to the most relevant of Anita's claims:

I have also saved a life because of my ability. I was working at a nursing home and without even knowing that one of our elders was a diabetic (since I was new to this building and working on the lowest level where I am not required to know all the health information of the residents), yet I detected dangerously low blood sugar which was then confirmed by the other staff and with a measurement of the blood sugar level.

So peculiarly in this anecdotal instance with someone she has just met she gets this diabetic information.

Without specifically scanning for it?

And yet when she is actively scanning someone for health information in an instance where it could be observed and reported by someone... she misses diabetes completely?

How very curious.

These are some terribly contradictory claims.

 

[tsig]

I've been waiting for the right moment to come along for a long time now and finally it is here. This is the first time I finally have a reason to post the laughing dog. Says it all, doesn't it?



Dear woo visitors of this thread (other than me), it is just that I am a Skeptic, or at least I try to be. And you know how Skeptics can be. I am not easily convinced that there is anything paranormal going on with this claim, yet, it remains interesting and has not revealed the "compelling perceptions that I state represent the most compelling of what my claim can produce and to find that those are inaccurate". But surely you must realize, that any similarity in body language or other characteristics of woos does prove nothing other than that similarity, but does not provide evidence in support of the claims that they make, also, I challenge you to question yourself whether these others with paranormal abilities truly have any supporting evidence for their claims of the paranormal, and I expect that they do not.

You must try to be skeptical, because I assure you that with some experience in both worlds of woo and skeptics, the rewards in skepticism are far more satisfying than anything woo tries to promise. Reality is far more awesome than anything imaginary.

And Skeptics, I will not be tricked into falsification of this claim. Attempts at calling out my claim as falsified because somebody asks me to try a screen when I already know that a screen (ie. the cloth napkin at the restaurant) blocks the claim from manifesting, or attempts to falsify the claim simply because of things that I never claimed as one way or another, or other dirty tricks that belong nowhere in real research. It kind of comes across as using trip wire. A sneaky laboratory assistant pouring a secret chemical into the reaction mixture of a colleague knowing that it will ruin the chemical reaction and falsify the hypothesis like they were personally hoping or expecting to see. That kind of thing is nasty.

The claim will be falsified when I state that I have made a compelling medical perception of something either being there or not being there and I state confidence in that this perception represents the very best of what my claim tries to do, only to find that this perception is inaccurate. And that is when the claim can be falsified. And that has not happened yet.

The woos here and the Skeptics here are both driving me crazy. I should go somewhere else.

The above hilites show where the problem lies.

 

[Robo Sapien]

The woos here and the Skeptics here are both driving me crazy. I should go somewhere else.

Please don't go, we need you here. Your statements are so easy to tear apart, without you we'd have to resort to serious inquiries.

 

[tsig]

Anyone else care to take Anita up on her invitation to skeptically examine her claims and to come to a reasonable determination?...

No thanks, yellow is my least favorite color.

 

[kittynh]

Anita, don't you feel it is dangerous to do what you are doing? Because you sometimes get it right but then sometimes don't and miss things? It's like a dowser that sometimes gets "water". Then people waste a lot of money digging. If someone, and I guess there are several someones that do believe in you, follows your reading or advice, even if you are clear you aren't always accurate, that's dangerous. Desperate people, with say a serious medical condition that the doctors can't diagnose right away might ask for your help. Because you seem pretty clear you CAN do this SOMETIMES.

I get nervous. If you aren't using your ability for helping people, you are just having it "tested" by skeptics, than why complain when they test you. You can always say "no". If you indeed have some power, your use of it has been rather wasteful. It's not a game. For instance, if you really have some intuitive ability with medical diagnosis, why not go to school to become a doctor? You could combine your intuitive (paranormal?) ability with the backing of MRIs and CAT scans and other tests. A combination of the two would be remarkable. You are a chemistry major? THat's really difficult, so Med School, while expensive and hard, is almost a perfect fit. The point is if you have this (and I'm unclear about exactly how powerful and exact this is) I don't get why you don't have some real awe about it, that means you have to USE it. Simply proving to skeptics that you have this (or complaining about the testing) makes me go "hey, give that gift to some kid in med school ok!" If YOU know you have "it", then don't worry about proving it to others. Accept it and figure out why you have "it" and then do something with your life that isn't hurtful (such as setting up a clinic where you give "reading")...something like the medical field where real medical tests can work with you. If it's a "gift" don't abuse it.

 

[Ashles]

You are a chemistry major? THat's really difficult, so Med School, while expensive and hard, is almost a perfect fit. The point is if you have this (and I'm unclear about exactly how powerful and exact this is) I don't get why you don't have some real awe about it, that means you have to USE it.

Interesting you should say this.

In this post she says:

In terms of the other forms of information I obtain besides health, I am always curious to check my conclusions against known facts, by looking it up in a book or on the internet. All on my own and independently by using this ability I have obtained information about chemistry, materials, plants, animals, bacteria, foods and medicines that I did not know prior and that could not have been guessed to such detail. What compels me is also that I am so certain of the information when I perceive it. I do not have a single example of when I would have been incorrect.

And in this post she states:

I also used my ability to help me in the chemical identification exercise in a chemistry lab. We were given four unknown compounds that we had to identify through various chemical testing, melting point, IR and NMR spectra. By looking into the molecules, I could for instance clearly see biphenyl, and the nitrogen that was involved in two of the others was clearly detectable and a helpful clue. I have a great advantage. Of course I would not use this ability as a working professional to make final conclusions, especially if working in the medical field involving patients. But when all that is left to do is guess, I will guess with this ability and increase my chances.

So she has stated in the past she can do exactly as you are suggesting.

In fact when doing so she does not have "a single example of when I would have been incorrect".

At this point I guess it's worth reminding ourselves that she was sent a sample of crushed pills by Pup and asked to identify them.
Now bear in mind she was actually told what the samples she had been sent were - she only had to match the crushed sample to the correct substance name.

She could not identify one. She didn't even describe a feeling from one.
Despite there being absolutely no time constraints in place (I think she had the samples for weeks before she eventually told us she could not identify them).

 

[Ashles]

At the risk of belabouring the point, Anita also said:

Oh that was so funny, just from looking at a scanning electron microscopic image on the computer! I also felt strong numbing effects in my lungs when I looked at the drawn molecular structure of codeine before I knew what its medicinal effects should be. And I feel that it is the ether oxygen that does it (the O in the middle left). I can not look at this molecular structure because I feel it so strongly in my lungs.

Bear in mind Codeine was one of the crushed pills Pup sent to Anita.

Which she failed to identify.

 

[desertgal]

Anita, don't you feel it is dangerous to do what you are doing? Because you sometimes get it right but then sometimes don't and miss things? It's like a dowser that sometimes gets "water". Then people waste a lot of money digging. If someone, and I guess there are several someones that do believe in you, follows your reading or advice, even if you are clear you aren't always accurate, that's dangerous. Desperate people, with say a serious medical condition that the doctors can't diagnose right away might ask for your help. Because you seem pretty clear you CAN do this SOMETIMES.

This has been pointed out to Anita several times. Her response has always been that as long as a) she doesn't charge money for it; b) she confines her 'readings' to 'family', 'friends' (and a 'friend' could be someone she just met), and/or 'skeptics; c) she recites an oral 'for entertainment purposes only' waiver before each 'reading'; and d) she advises the person to seek conventional medical attention, then she's covered.

Note: That she is covered has been the extent of her concern. She has shown absolutely no interest or concern on what the outcome of such a 'reading' might be for her subject(s).

 

[Moss]

If she is into parlor tricks she might as well have asked Mark Edward for pointers when it comes to sleight of hand and related activities.