Natasha Demkina

[Robinince]

Firstly, I am not a scientist. Much of this world is new to me, and fast as I read and try to take in information, I am still a long way off from fine tuned scientific critical thinking. Recently, whilst discussing pseudoscience, friends of mine, many of whom veer towards skepticism, have criticised the movement because of this feature about Natasha Demkina.

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/propaganda/

From evidence I have seen, her work is clearly guess work and good judgement, but how can I argue against people who state that because the outcome was far better than chance, she should be tested again? Many of the critics seem to think this is a sign of the bullish world of skeptics.

 

[geni]

http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52632

 

[Ashles]

She's being discussed on this thread .

Her results were better than chance but there appears to be a few explanations for this.

And there is the small matter of a metal plate...

Edited to add: Similar but different thread to Geni's

 

[AOK Tiger]

Robin,

Did you know that Demkina missed obvious things (if you had Xray eyes) like a metal plate in one of the subjects heads ?

She also consulted with her friend and on the mobile phone. She examined the people for 4 hours before coming to her conclusion.

That fact that she got 4 out of 7 right under these condition is NOT paranormal. Experienced people (like Doctors) can predict a person problem.. breath, skin colour, movement etc are all clues if you know the signs,

If she has what she claims then all 7 should have been correct.

If she claimed she is the girl with a good diagnosis ability I would say she passed ! But Xray eyes… BZZZZZT

 

[Robinince]

demkina

My apologies, in my rush to get opinions from people on my first hour on this forum, I rather foolishly failed to thoroughly check previous posts. Nevertheless, if anyone has any specific replies to this feature, I would like to hear them. Thank you.

 

[JamesM]

if anyone has any specific replies to this feature, I would like to hear them.

Josephson wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Having called the test

dubious from the scientific point of view

he can't also claim that

the probability of getting such a score [4/7] is less than two per cent

There are other comments about Wiseman's "highly publicised" tests and stuff about the motivations of the experimenters, but you can argue about motivations till the cows come home, and unless you're a mind-reader, it's all so much hot air. It seems a bit counter-productive too, as there are plenty of proper flaws to be pointed out.

 

[RamblingOnwards]

Re: Re: Natasha Demkina

Summary:
1. The test was flawed, so we have no idea if the results mean anything.
2. The results were better than chance, but less than what she claimed she could do.
3. The program did not do a very good job of explaining why the test should be considered a failure.

Conclusion:
The test should be scrapped and repeated with better controls and a larger sample group but neither side is interested.