About the Museum
The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about dubious- sounding claims, and whatever else strikes our fancy. The site is also home to the Hoax Photo Database, the Hoax Forum, and the Hoaxipedia.

Web Hoax Museum

RUDE ROVER
The Christmas dog with no class! He sings and toots Jingle Bells.
INFLATABLE TREE
Who needs the hassle of a real Christmas tree?
FARTING SANTA
Go ahead and pull his finger!

Hi Ross-c

I realy don't matter you got my name wrong. That can happen to anyone.

I find the things you have written very interesting. I can learn something from you. I will read it again. Hopefully we can all learn something from eachother.

Thank you,
Marlon

JoeSixpack, we were required by the producer/director to bend over backwards as much as possible to accomodate Natasha Demkina's requests (as long as we didn't allow her to circumvent the main controls of our test). To accomodate her, we told her that she could take as long as she needed. We NEVER imagined that she would take more than four hours! It was a miracle that the subjects put up with it for so long. I was afraid that one or more would have had to leave. They were volunteers and remarkably patient and generous with their time. Natasha takes about 10 minutes to give a person a reading of virtually every organ in their body. So you can imagine why we were surprised that she took more than 4 hours to find just six clearly defined organ targets when told what to look for and where to look in the body. As for her use of a cell phone to send text messages, we never imagined she'd do that and we were not looking for it. She did it during breaks. Did she use the phone to have someone look up information about any of the target medical conditions? We do not know. As for your doing as well as Natasha, don't underestimate her. She's had more than 6 years of practice. You can read the test protocols on the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health's web site: http://www.csmmh.org/demkina BTW, please by me a lottery ticket.

Marlon says:

"You ("skepps") say that the " believers" are avoiding evidence etc. but in much cases (and also in this case) I notice that the "skepps" are avoiding things!"

Yes, we try to avoid false statements of facts and making irrational arguments.

She says, "You only respond on the "lacks" in our stories. You don't see the story as a whole and don't look at our whole experience."

A premise based on false facts is not a true premise. A belief based on error is in error. A belief based on a lie is a lie. Marlon's solution for avoiding reality is to look past contradictory facts in order to embrace the conclusion she wants to believe.

Marlon continues: "That's the problem with the whole world. A lot of times we are focused too much on details. Focussing on details is oke but not at te cost of our picture of the whole. In my opinion everything would change if we would concentrate more on the whole."

By "details" Marlon means "facts." When facts get in their way of our beliefs, she says we should look past those troubling facts and just embrace the beliefs.

She then offers us this falsehood: "If we give then thousend reasons why we believe or know that the paranormal excist, you find that reason that is the 'weakest' in your opinion."

Marlon hasn't been listening. Skeptics have not been asking for a "thousend reasons," they've been asking for at least ONE sound piece of evidence to prove the existance of the paranormal. Not thousands. Even just one piece of evidence that can stand up to rational examination and be verified would do it. What we get instead are thousands of flimsy claims, testimonials, pseudoscientific experiments, outright fraud, covered with a myriad of excuses and obfuscations. What we want Marlon is ONE. Not thousands. Just one. Give us your best. We don't want you're "weakest." Give us one irrefutable piece of convincing evidence.

Marlon does not understand why we're asking for this, because she believes the paranormal is real. For her, belief comes first, and evidence is just the icing you put on the cake. "I am sure it excists," she says. And for her, that's all that counts.

Sorry, Marlon, that's not good enough. If we stuck with beliefs instead of facts and reason, we would still be fighting smallpox by casting out demons and burning witches instead of finding out the true cause of the illness and then eliminating it from the world.

Marlon says, "Reality has everything to do with experience. In kind of a way everything you experience is reality. We shouldn't focus so much on whats real and what's not."

I remember "Son of Sam" (David Berkowitz) who experienced voices from his neighbor's dog commanding him to shoot and kill young women and their boyfriends who were necking in their cars. Wow! I guess those voices must be real afterall. In this case, I think we need to set David Berkowitz free.

All in favor say, "Aye! I'm crazy too."

Tali Karoola says that the CSMMH-CSICOP investigators called Natasha Demkina "deluded." That's not true. We did not call her "deluded."

Cranky Media Guy, Marlon doesn't even have a pair of deuces in her "hand." But she believes she's holding the winning hand and, in her view of reality, a good belief will trump any real hand of cards. It is because she wishes it to be. She makes her own reality simply by believing it so. Don't you wish you could do that?

Marlon said, "Now, someone here told me that the universities where she got the grades in Theology and Philosophy are not regocnized in some states. He showed me some sites."

That's not what I said. I said those "universities" are non-accredited diploma mills and the degrees they offer are bogus.

And she says, "I didn't really understand those sites but I think he told the truth by saying that these universities aren't regocnized by some states."

The only reason she doesn't want to "understand those sites" (which are simply lists of schools offering bogus degrees that are posted on Michigan and Oregon state web sites) is because they contradict her "reality." Marlon is never interested in any truths if they disagree with her beliefs. And it comforts her to believe that her teacher has doctorate degrees in theology and in philosophy and that the B.A. degrees her teacher's school offers are also real. Any honest, rational person would be troubled to learn that their teacher's credentials are bogus. But Marlon is never troubled by facts, when she's got her beliefs to keep her happy.

askolnick said:

"Cranky Media Guy, Marlon doesn't even have a pair of deuces in her "hand." But she believes she's holding the winning hand and, in her view of reality, a good belief will trump any real hand of cards. It is because she wishes it to be. She makes her own reality simply by believing it so. Don't you wish you could do that?"

Yes and no. Yeah, it's tempting at times to wish that I could believe in stuff just because I want it to be real. After all, I had 12 years of Catholic school; I was taught a LOT about things that don't have any basis in fact. I confess that there's a (small) part of me that might wish that I could just turn off the section of my brain that says, "Oh yeah? Show me!"

The thing is, though, that I just don't want to be a "mark." I see so much in contemporary life that's based on lying to the public at large. I see intelligent people actively working at suspension of belief so that they can rationalize their political convictions. It's sad and, I believe, dangerous for society to ignore reality. That way lies madness and collapse. Nazi Germany was based, in large part, on unsupportable beliefs.

Ever seen the play, "Rhinoceros?" The protagonist, whose name I forget, finds everyone around him turning into a rhino (I'm told it's supposed to be a metaphor for Nazism). Part of him wants to conform but he just doesn't have it in him to be a rhino too. I don't mean to sound pompous, but sometimes I feel like that.

My local Fox TV affiliate lead their 10 o'clock news the other night with a "story" about a local "psychic" who said that a missing woman was buried in a shallow grave in a wooded area! Uh, you know any murdered people buried in a DEEP grave in the middle of town? This is especially sad when you know that a majority of Americans say that they get all or most of their news from local TV newscasts. I just don't want to be one of the rhinos who believe in "psychics."

I can sympathise with people's need to believe. I used to have a favourite cough medicine, which seemed to work better than others. Hence, any cold and cough, and out I went to buy it. Then, it's reported that proper investigation of cough medicines revealed that they were all useless. So, now when I have a cough, there's nothing to do. Still, I found myself tempted when I last had a cough, just so that I could do *something*.

Cheers,

Ross-c

Askolnick, I see you have returned to the thread.

Ross-c and I discussed last week some of your earlier posts concerned with calculating the probablities of the matching problem. We concluded that the probabilities had been slightly miscalculated.

Are you able to state exactly how the probabilities were calculated?

Fomalhaut, I would like to point out that I thought that either the probabilities were incorrectly calculated, OR, that both you and I had made the same incorrect assumption. That is possible, and maybe Askolnick could discuss what model s/he used.

In any case, the variations in numbers are small. I think it's important not to get too mired in the details and lose sight of the big picture.

Cheers,

Ross-c

I don't think we miscalculated the probabilities, Ross. Several other people have reached the same figures as us by different computing methods.

I think we simply used accurate computing methods that the testers did not. It's fairly clear, from Slotnik's earlier postings, that they used another less accurate approximation to arrive at their numbers.

The only question is: what was that approximation method? And why did they use that rather than compute the figures accurately?

Oops. That should be "Skolnik" above.

And I think the little details are part of the big picture.

Formalhut, I don't understand why you're obsessed with this non-problem. The source of the odds we used was explained to you. One of your previous posts answered this question. The odds for the test were worked out by Prof. Ray Hyman and Prof. Richard Wiseman. Here is what Prof. Hyman wrote -- and you quoted:

"The problem we are dealing with is known as the matching problem. The mathematics for calculating the correct odds is not self evident. Indeed, it is very complicated. I painstakingly worked out the correct probabilities using the formulae in Frederick Mosteller's Fifty Challenging Problems in Probability With Solutions. I believe this is still available from Dover Books. The critic might find it useful to carefully follow the argument in this book. My other source was Hoel, P.G., Port, S.C., and Stone, C.J. (1971). Introduction to Probability Theory. This latter source provides some useful approximations for those who do not have the patience to calculate the exact probabilities. Richard Wiseman was able to check my probability calculations using tables provided by the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Our probabilities agreed."

What earthly reason are you obsessed with the minor difference between the approximate odds Profs. Hyman and Wiseman calculated using tables published in books and the more precise odds you calculated by brute force using a computer? A difference that makes no difference is no difference. Would you critize someone for using 3.14 instead of 3.141159 to calculate the circumference of his swimming pool?

If as you say the little details are part of the big picture, why should anyone trust YOUR comments. Not only did you mispell my name, you mispelled it again when correcting your error! It's Skolnick.

Excuse my typo. I meant to type "3.14159".

askolnick, looks like you're the one with pi on his face.

Good one, Joe.

The joke was begging to be made. I couldn't stop myself.

O.K. But next time you get that urge again, stop, take a deep breath, and count to pi.

"take a deep breath, and count to pi."


I only counted to e.

A Skolnick wrote: "What earthly reason are you obsessed with the minor difference between the approximate odds Profs. Hyman and Wiseman calculated using tables published in books and the more precise odds you calculated by brute force using a computer?"

I wouldn't call it a 'brute force' method. It's the method outlined in your earlier postings, but dismissed as 'unwieldy' (which it is, performed manually). I think Puck upthread used a brute force method - of generating 10 million answers and scoring them - in order to arrive at answers less accurate than mine and Ross's.

But in answer to your question, I guess I'm puzzled why approximate probabilities were calculated using what appear to be 35-year-old pre-computing methods, rather than accurately calculated with a computer. Are the professors unaware of such computing solutions? It doesn't take long to write the program.

Natasha's was a high profile case, with a TV programme to go with it. Pretty big bucks, I'm sure. In those circumstances it would appear appropriate to have allocated a few bucks to get some bullet-proof mathematics - particularly for a test that principally depended upon calculating probabilities. Or put it this way: I think that an an extraordinary case demands extraordinarily accurate mathematics.

A Skolnick wrote: "A difference that makes no difference is no difference. Would you critize someone for using 3.14 instead of 3.141159 to calculate the circumference of his swimming pool?"

Well, I might criticize.

But why, if "a difference that makes no difference is no difference", did you bother to correct your slightly incorrect value for pi? If it made no difference, why correct it?

A Skolnick wrote: "If as you say the little details are part of the big picture, why should anyone trust YOUR comments."

There's no need for anyone to trust me. It's not me who's just spent thousands of bucks running a televised high profile test, without having bothered to accurately work out the fundamental probabilities involved.

It's like someone all dressed up smartly for their wedding, but with a gravy stain on their necktie. Sure, it's a minor detail. No part of the big picture. Most likely nobody, least of all the mother-in-law, will notice.

Hi everyone. This is part 1 out of 2!

It's true that the difference in probabilities is very small, and does not affect the result. It is easy for scientists to know that the difference in probabilities is very small, but this is beyond the understanding of much of the general public. All they know is that someone is pointing out that "the scientists got it wrong" in some small detail, and this is something for proponents of pseudoscience to start working on. (Piltdown man is still quoted by creationists). Any excuse that can be pounced on to allow them to maintain their beliefs seems enough. To debunk pseudoscience, the debunking needs to be more than just "good enough" but damn near perfect.

I am concerned about the use of tables that gave an approximate result. The alternative method (I posted a link earlier on) which calculates the probabilities exactly would be easy to complete by hand by anyone using a calculator with a factorial button. Mathematically, the differences to be a non-issue, I would still like to know why tables were used. It allows people to start quibbling about details, and quibbling about details has a risk of burying the main point.

I would like to ask whether the people who designed the experiment are aware of (and the need for) such things as p-value adjustment, and the situations where bayesian statistics suggests that the confidence suggested by "standard" statistics are unreasonably high. I personally think that there is grave risk that debunking is going to be counter-productive for the following reason: No matter how good the statistical experiment, there is always a non-zero chance of the wrong result occurring by chance. Natasha could have been 100% correct by random chance. If the paranormal is tested over and over and over again, then eventually one trial will come up supporting the paranormal. And when that happens, the single result will be trumpeted far and wide by paranormalists, and the other experiments conveniently forgotten about. This can happen even with properly designed and analysed experiments.