The VFF Test is On!

[Kariboo]

Agreed, but aren't you more interested in knowing whether she has any paranormal ability to determine whether a person is missing a kidney than you are in whether she can do so perfectly?

No, since she isn't doing better than 20% of people who are sitting at home guessing. So that proves there is no paranormal ability. Also any tests she has done before put her squarely in the 'chance' category.

There is no such thing as a paranormal ability where you consistently guess as well as would be expected of chance.

 

[Pixel42]

VfF claims to be able to see a person's kidneys, or the space where one should be. In the person she picked out in the third trial she not only failed to see a kidney where there was one she saw a kidney where there wasn't one. In no way can that be regarded as even a partial hit. It's a double failure.

 

[Kariboo]

VfF claims to be able to see a person's kidneys, or the space where one should be. In the person she picked out in the third trial she not only failed to see a kidney where there was one she saw a kidney where there wasn't one. In no way can that be regarded as even a partial hit. It's a double failure.

Same in the first trial. She claims she couldn't see kidneys in 2 participants where there were. And she saw kidneys in the person missing one.

 

[GeeMack]

Agreed, but aren't you more interested in knowing whether she has any paranormal ability to determine whether a person is missing a kidney than you are in whether she can do so perfectly?

Not so much. I was interested in whether she could back her outlandish claim with a solid demonstration of exactly what she seems to believe, and has stated unambiguously, that she can do. There isn't a dimmer switch on her imaginary magical powers. She said it works, surely, and it has never ever failed. She set that standard of perfection for herself and accepted the protocol as designed. When it came down to the task of supporting her claim, she failed miserably.

I don't see any need to compare the guesses of the audience members with the guesses of the performer to know that her odds were something like 1 in 1750 of meeting the terms of success according to the protocol. And I don't need a tally sheet of other people's guesses to calculate that her actual success was roughly equal to correctly guessing how many fingers I'm holding up behind my back.

 

[GeeMack]

If the test is to determine which person is missing a kidney, and not on which side of which person she can't see a kidney, then the test protocol, particularly the number of subjects, trials, etc., would likely have been very different, especially in order to make sure that the chances of success by pure luck would be ruled out.

A test designed to determine one thing may not be proper to determine another thing.

Anita claimed to be able to see a person's missing kidney, not to be able to determine which person was missing a kidney. As Pixel42 pointed out, picking the person with a kidney missing, but failing to identify the correct left/right kidney, is two failures. She saw a kidney where there was none and saw an empty space where a kidney existed.

VfF claims to be able to see a person's kidneys, or the space where one should be. In the person she picked out in the third trial she not only failed to see a kidney where there was one she saw a kidney where there wasn't one. In no way can that be regarded as even a partial hit. It's a double failure.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Agreed, but aren't you more interested in knowing whether she has any paranormal ability to determine whether a person is missing a kidney than you are in whether she can do so perfectly?

But her claim is that she can see inside a person. If she can see inside people, then she should have passed this test perfectly. There is absolutely no reason to think she has any kind of paranormal power.

Again, why would you think she does?

The fact that she failed the test also doesn't rule out that she has an ability to levitate, but she didn't claim an ability to levitate and the test wasn't addressing that possible power. Also, there's no reason to think she can levitate.

So again, why do you think it's significant that she picked the correct person but the wrong side for the missing kidney? Are you suggesting the test can be generalized to test some other paranormal power that she doesn't even claim to have? (If so, then why don't you also believe she has the power to levitate?)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

VfF claims to be able to see a person's kidneys, or the space where one should be. In the person she picked out in the third trial she not only failed to see a kidney where there was one she saw a kidney where there wasn't one. In no way can that be regarded as even a partial hit. It's a double failure.

Exactly.

As I said, you could imagine that each round consisted of 12 possible kidney slots, and she had to identify which slot was empty. That she picked one right next to the empty slot is still a wrong guess.

 

[Maia]

Not so much. I was interested in whether she could back her outlandish claim with a solid demonstration of exactly what she seems to believe, and has stated unambiguously, that she can do. There isn't a dimmer switch on her imaginary magical powers. She said it works, surely, and it has never ever failed. She set that standard of perfection for herself and accepted the protocol as designed. When it came down to the task of supporting her claim, she failed miserably.

I don't see any need to compare the guesses of the audience members with the guesses of the performer to know that her odds were something like 1 in 1750 of meeting the terms of success according to the protocol. And I don't need a tally sheet of other people's guesses to calculate that her actual success was roughly equal to correctly guessing how many fingers I'm holding up behind my back.

I do see what you mean. However, it does seem as if something would have been at least worth following up on if, say, more subjects were involved (maybe enough so that there were 10 trials instead of 3), and Anita had then correctly identified every person who was missing a kidney without necessarily picking all the correct sides. Or maybe there were three separate groups of 50 people each, and each group had only one person with a missing kidney; Anita picked the correct person in each group, but she got the side wrong every time. In those cases, her original claim wouldn't have been proven at all, but I think you do have to admit that something interesting would have been happening. If something about the experiment had been changed so that the final result simply could not have happened by chance-- even though it wasn't exactly what Anita predicted-- then I think we'd all be very interested in it now. At the very least, another and future experiment with better protocol should have been designed in that case. As it is, of course, that would be a waste of everyone's time and money.

 

[Kariboo]

I do see what you mean. However, it does seem as if something would have been at least worth following up on if, say, more subjects were involved (maybe enough so that there were 10 trials instead of 3) and Anita had then correctly identified every person who was missing a kidney without necessarily picking all the correct sides. In that case, her original claim wouldn't have been proven at all, but I think you do have to admit that something interesting would have been happening. If something about the experiment had been changed so that the final result could not have happened by chance-- even though it wasn't exactly what Anita predicted, such as getting the person wrong and the kidney right, but with a much larger number of people-- then I think we'd all be very interested in it. At the very least, another and future experiment with better protocol should have been designed in that case. As it is, of course, that would be a waste of everyone's time and money.

Yes, if the test was set up differently the outcome might have been beyond chance. But it wasn't

To compare. Trying to describe her current results as interesting would have been the equivalent of having her look at 10 trials and trying to see who is missing a kidney. If she would then pick completely wrong, 1 x right and 1 time the person next to the person with a missing kidney. She would score as well as she did this time. You could then argue that she is able to see which group of 3 people is missing a kidney and set up a new test etc.

(If someone can do the actual math on this I'd appreciate it, I hope you get the gist)

 

[Hokulele]

I do see what you mean. However, it does seem as if something would have been at least worth following up on if, say, more subjects were involved (maybe enough so that there were 10 trials instead of 3), and Anita had then correctly identified every person who was missing a kidney without necessarily picking all the correct sides. Or maybe there were three separate groups of 50 people each, and each group had only one person with a missing kidney; Anita picked the correct person in each group, but she got the side wrong every time. In those cases, her original claim wouldn't have been proven at all, but I think you do have to admit that something interesting would have been happening. If something about the experiment had been changed so that the final result simply could not have happened by chance-- even though it wasn't exactly what Anita predicted-- then I think we'd all be very interested in it now. At the very least, another and future experiment with better protocol should have been designed in that case. As it is, of course, that would be a waste of everyone's time and money.

I would admit that it is likely that there is some cold reading going on. If just picking the people, rather than the kidneys, had been the claim, having VfF go up against control kidney-pickers, including those with cold-reading experience, would be more likely to generate useful results.

IIRC, the last time she peformed her "medical perception" along side of control "perceivers", she came in 3rd out of 4. Personally, between that test and this one, I can't see any reason to design future experiments.

 

[chillzero]

That wasn't in the protocol.

True ... however ...

The protocol stated that 5 subjects in each group have both kidneys.

...was an assumption based on the word of the volunteers, not on any evidential confirmation.

Since there was nothing else in the protocol about how the subjects were chosen and assigned to groups, as written, it would require that 5 people in each group actually had both kidneys. If there were two missing kidneys, it would certainly change the probability of her guessing correctly.

But then again, it wouldn't surprise me that this point was ignored (and as you say that there was actually a chance for more than 1 missing kidney in each group).

This point was ignored, and does not seem to have been checked up on afterward. I would be delighted if I am wrong, but what I have gleaned from discussion of how the subjects were chosen is that one person knew who the volunteers were and who was definitely missing a kidney so that they could ensure one target per group of six volunteers, but that they did nothing to confirm the existence of all the other 30 kidneys (2 per volunteer - 5 volunteers per group).

This is what happens when a protocol is not sbmitted for peer review among people like yourself and Gzuz, Jackalgirl,etc, who have shown a clear ability to identify holes and areas for concern.

 

[GeeMack]

[...] If something about the experiment had been changed so that the final result simply could not have happened by chance-- even though it wasn't exactly what Anita predicted-- then I think we'd all be very interested in it now.

We don't know that it wasn't that way. It might be that she picked the only person wearing red underwear in each of the three rounds. Or the only person with a wart on their toe. Or the only color blind person. Certainly if the show was designed differently, and the outcome was different, we'd all have a different reaction. But it was what it was. She failed to support her claim.

 

[wardenclyffe]

Perhaps they DID check everyone's kidney count ahead of time. They must have known it was a possibility that one of the subjects might be unaware that they were born without a kidney. Maybe they decided it wasn't worth the hassle to check, but they would have given her a hit if she found it. At that point, the odds would have been recalculated since she had two targets in that particular group.

This is a group of volunteers, not a multi-million dollar research facility, right? When I think of the volunteer groups that I know of, I can't think of many that could pull something like this off.

Some would argue that only multi-million dollar research facilities should be allowed to test paranormal claimants. I disagree. I expect that if it were MIT instead of IIG, things might have been done a little differently. But she failed the IIG test at the cost $.10 instead of failing the MIT test at the cost of $10,000.

I think we'd all like to encourage grassroots skepticism. Of course without the controls that big money and big institutions can afford, things might not always be completely perfect. And also, there's no gurantee that big money and big institutions would conduct the study properly, either.

And if someone gets lucky, they get lucky (even at MIT). People win the lottery every day. VfF got one number right in Saturday's "Pick Three." There are no half numbers in the lottery.

Ward

 

[bookitty]

Anita has repeatedly stated that she wanted this test in order to "falsify" her claim. Given the vast number of talents she claims to have, it would have been much, much easier to set up a test that revolved around any one of those. - Picking which glass of water had sugar or salt, or identifying the ice cream flavor a subject was eating, for example.

Many of these side claims involve inanimate objects, there would have been no need for human subjects. So there could have been a small, simple but effective test with no possibility of argument after the fact. Had she passed a test like that, it would have made sense to set up a much larger test with many human subjects in different age-groups, better blinded, etc etc.

But, as we have all seen, Anita is adamantly against a controlled experiment with inanimate objects. So the smaller test was done with human subjects under less than ideal conditions. It took years to come up with an agreeable protocol and was a logistical nightmare to organize.

But it worked. It disproved the idea that Anita might have magic-vision. Had she passed, a much more perfect protocol would have been required for the real test.

 

[Rodney]

No, since she isn't doing better than 20% of people who are sitting at home guessing.

Again, what would have been expected purely by chance is for about 58% of the people guessing to have gotten none of the three people missing the kidney and for about 35% of them to have gotten one of the three. I realize that the test also involved judging which kidney was missing, but still, you wouldn't have expected Anita to have gotten two of the three people right since she had only a 7% chance of doing that by chance alone. So, I would like to see what percentage of the audience got at least two people right. If most of them did, I would conclude that the test was flawed.

 

[Hokulele]

Again, what would have been expected purely by chance is for about 58% of the people guessing to have gotten none of the three people missing the kidney and for about 35% of them to have gotten one of the three. I realize that the test also involved judging which kidney was missing, but still, you wouldn't have expected Anita to have gotten two of the three people right since she had only a 7% chance of doing that by chance alone. So, I would like to see what percentage of the audience got at least two people right. If most of them did, I would conclude that the test was flawed.

Chance alone does not play into picking people out of a lineup based on medical conditions. People aren't dice or cards.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Again, what would have been expected purely by chance is for about 58% of the people guessing to have gotten none of the three people missing the kidney and for about 35% of them to have gotten one of the three. I realize that the test also involved judging which kidney was missing, but still, you wouldn't have expected Anita to have gotten two of the three people right since she had only a 7% chance of doing that by chance alone. So, I would like to see what percentage of the audience got at least two people right. If most of them did, I would conclude that the test was flawed.

The test was flawed because Anita had information that was not necessary for her to exercise her claimed ability ..

Again, what is paranormal about guessing which person in a group of six, is missing a kidney, when you know up front that one of them is missing a kidney ?

If you actually have the ability to see inside a body , there is no such thing as a wrong guess...

 

[GeeMack]

Again, what would have been expected purely by chance is for about 58% of the people guessing to have gotten none of the three people missing the kidney and for about 35% of them to have gotten one of the three. I realize that the test also involved judging which kidney was missing, but still, you wouldn't have expected Anita to have gotten two of the three people right since she had only a 7% chance of doing that by chance alone. So, I would like to see what percentage of the audience got at least two people right. If most of them did, I would conclude that the test was flawed.

Anita claimed with certainty that she could detect a missing kidney. She didn't claim to be able to detect a person with a missing kidney. This wasn't about dowsing for missing kidneys where the willow branch wiggles when it's somewhere in the vicinity. This was about magical x-ray vision that works every single time, right down to the atomic level. When she picked the person with a kidney missing, but failed to name the correct kidney, she was not half right. She was wrong twice.

 

[wardenclyffe]

She has updated her website:

http://www.visionfromfeeling.com/paranormaltest.html

Ward

 

[fromdownunder]

Again, what would have been expected purely by chance is for about 58% of the people guessing to have gotten none of the three people missing the kidney and for about 35% of them to have gotten one of the three. I realize that the test also involved judging which kidney was missing, but still, you wouldn't have expected Anita to have gotten two of the three people right since she had only a 7% chance of doing that by chance alone. So, I would like to see what percentage of the audience got at least two people right. If most of them did, I would conclude that the test was flawed.

How many times must it be said? Anita was looking at kidneys, not people. She "found" one missing Kidney out of the three possible.

Norm