Science is a conspiracy

Well, not debating the ins/outs of science conspiracy I can say that it was just a very poorly designed experiment.

If a viewer like yourself can have the common knowledge that what they are testing for MIGHT have some flaws/contradictions with what abilities she has, then the doctors/testers SHOULD too.

That being said, the glorious thing about scientific experiments ... you can do them again and/or change them.

I mean if I viewed that as you did and wasn't satisfied with the conclusion, then you know what that says ... test again, no matter what the scientists came up with.

Granted, you can't do that yourself in this case but I believe the skepticism stems from the results and particular methods of these doctors rather than the scientific process itself.

Originally posted by mindtrip02
i totally agree with curiosity. he makes some great points.

the one thing i can say, is that science changes almost , if not, everyday. the one thing that has stayed the same is faith. faith in people, faith in eachother. why not have faith in god.
there is no faith is science. it can be changed so drastically, so quickly. why believe in something, that 5 minutes later will be something totally different?
the one thing that has stayed the same is religion. whether it be catholicism, christianity, baptists, or penecostal. they all believe in the same thing. their practices may vary, but they got the point. like i said before, science is for people that are too proud to beleive that there is something " above" or "higher" than them. they want to believe that we are the higher power, well WE'RE NOT. thats why when scientist test something it will change, its not constant,. there will never be a definate answer. so keep believing in your " theories", but until we know the infinite truth that only god can give us. we will never know how we got here.

im out
-mindtrip02

Ok, so religion has stayed relatively what it's been for awhile, than you should mention Buddhism (which is nearly a millenia older than chritaianity), or hinduism, or islam, or any other various world religion, since the ones you mentioned are changes in the religion.

Science IS NOT for people who are to proud to believe in a higher power.
Many scientists, especially in America believe in the christian god, but they keep there scientific career and persoanl religious beliefs seperate as they should, so don't try and pass that bunk.
Even myself, who most would describe as an Atheist, I don't believe I, or humanity is the most powerful being/s in existance, but I also don't believe in a god.

Also, we, as in the human race "got here" through a process of millions of years of evolution, which was started when the first single celled organisms formed.

Let's look at this closely, then, since the topic seems to invite it. Here's the report made by the skeptic's society:
www.csicop.org...

Let's note a few things:
Natasha's parents and others agreed on the testing protocols
They wanted her tested for 100% accuracy (their claims)
They say she can diagnose any condition.

She was confronted by a group of people and given a set of diagnoses on a card. She had to pick one.

Okay, now, those of you who feel the scientists are wrong -- how would you test such a claim? Testing it is a valid and viable thing to do, because there are a LOT of healer-frauds around.

Now, reemember that Russia is a poor country and "miracle-workers" can earn a lot of money for themselves and fo their family.

How would you set up the experiment to determine whether she's genuine OR whether she's a dupe set up by her parents who want to turn her into a moneymaking machine?


Oh yes... do note that in some of the cases where she makes a missed diagnosis and picks another problem ("you have a bad shoulder"), the patient will actually say "Oh, she caught a problem that I didn't know I had and that my doctor didn't know I had!"

But those AREN'T true.

So what are the odds that she's a dupe being trained by her parents?

Originally posted by Byrd
Let's look at this closely, then, since the topic seems to invite it. Here's the report made by the skeptic's society:
www.csicop.org...

Let's note a few things:
Natasha's parents and others agreed on the testing protocols
They wanted her tested for 100% accuracy (their claims)
They say she can diagnose any condition.

She was confronted by a group of people and given a set of diagnoses on a card. She had to pick one.

Okay, now, those of you who feel the scientists are wrong -- how would you test such a claim? Testing it is a valid and viable thing to do, because there are a LOT of healer-frauds around.

Now, reemember that Russia is a poor country and "miracle-workers" can earn a lot of money for themselves and fo their family.

How would you set up the experiment to determine whether she's genuine OR whether she's a dupe set up by her parents who want to turn her into a moneymaking machine?


Oh yes... do note that in some of the cases where she makes a missed diagnosis and picks another problem ("you have a bad shoulder"), the patient will actually say "Oh, she caught a problem that I didn't know I had and that my doctor didn't know I had!"

But those AREN'T true.

So what are the odds that she's a dupe being trained by her parents?

First I'd just to say I agree with you 100% Byrd.

As for how I would set up an experiment for her, well I'd do the same things the CSICOP people did, except I'd think how to make the test where it's not gonna have people questioning it, or atleast the questioning would'nt be backed by anything except people wanting it to be true.

From a commenter on my blog site, I got the information about "Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries" by Jonathan Eisen which per the book reviewer at www.nutech2000.com...

begins by examining the ties that bind the medical establishment to powerful pharmaceutical corporations. Then it details the struggle of the independent researcher against Orthodox Science and its code of conduct, the Scientific Method.

The review also says the author:

has collected over forty intriguing stories of scientific cover-ups and programs of misinformation concocted to conceal some of the most phenomenal innovations in mankind's history. These 'no-holds-barred' accounts force us to confront the naivete - and danger - of trusting our academic and political leaders to act always for the common good

The commenter also indicated the book comes in a pdf format.

Another link with a LOT of info about the book AND links for other similar sources can be found at:
indypeer.org...

Edited to add: The link above does give info about the book, but some of the links are apparently out of date, however if you google the names of the publications you can find most of the ones listed there.





[edit on 28-7-2006 by curiousity]

[edit on 28-7-2006 by curiousity]

Well, it's what you get with the government that rules the U.S.,
just because the scientists have kept quiet about technologues
does'nt mean they're bad, it just means they'd like to keep their
life and the life of there loved ones.
Atleast I get the feeling that was a kind of attack on scientists,
sorry for being overtly defensive if it was'nt.

Ah, yes, CSICOP - the name says a great deal. From the linked article on Natasha:

Other features of Natasha's readings foster the illusion of accuracy. When she tells clients something that agrees with previous medical diagnoses, they credit her with a hit.

Why not? What's wrong with that, exactly? And...

This allows for her generally vague utterances to be retrofitted to what the client or observer knows to be true. An example of such retrofitting occurred when Natasha was doing a reading in London. Dr. Chris Steele, described by The Daily Mail (January 29, 2004) as one of her champions, was observing. The newspaper quotes him as saying, "Natasha doesn't know any medical terms at the moment. With one person this week she was trying to describe a kidney stone, and her translator came up with the words, 'sand' and 'gravel' before I suggested stones. When kidney stones start off, they do look like sand." Dr. Steele gives her credit for correctly diagnosing kidney stones. Yet we have no idea what Natasha was "seeing" or what she had in mind. Dr. Steele made the medical diagnosis, not Natasha.

Yes, obviously this doctor is an idiot who will take Natasha's "generally vague utterances" and translate them into proper medical language. I've had small kidney stones, and they were described to me - by a doctor - as being like sand. I am not convinced in the slightest that this is "retrofitting".

I also would LOVE to see conventional doctors trying to diagnose their patients with some of the same restrictions imposed on Natasha. I think their hit rate might go down... but does that mean they're just picking up on subtle kinesic cues?

I'd have designed an experiment with a much larger sample of subjects who were actually ill right at that moment. I would videotape each diagnosis from as many angles as I could, but unobtrusively. I would also have some control subjects who were in a good state of health (some older people in that group, ideally) and give them a thorough medical before they walked in to see her. If she diagnosed any condition with the control subjects I'd double-check that they didn't have what she suspected.

I would allow Natasha to interact normally with half the test subjects, and impose the restrictions devised for the CSICOP test with the other half. I would not, however, impose arbitrary definitions of success or failure on the results before they came out.

Ever since Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery, the dogma has been that you can't prove any assertion, you can only disprove it. This has led to a philosoply of "testing to destruction" that can mask subtle effects. I think it's time that this was moderated with a more genuinely open-minded approach.

There is a lot more to the universe and to human beings than CSICOP care to acknowledge. I know from my own dealings with skeptics that they're not necessarily smarter than anyone else, but they are usually more arrogant and prepared - indeed sometimes desperate - to dismiss evidence that contradicts their narrow view of the world.

I saw this girl on a UK TV show. The show was called this morning on the ITV channel. She was kept seperate from the patients and didn't get to speak to them, she got them all wrong apart from one. She even misdiagnosed something in the doctor on the show which got him worried and he went and had an MRI becuase of it. Nothing at all showed up.

Has anyone seen Derren Brown Messiah? In this program he accurately tells someone he has never met, without looking at them their complete medical history. Derren Brown constantly states that he is nothing special in terms of human beings, he uses science and over things to get his results. I reckon this girl is running a scam.

I am sure someone will call me an utter skeptic, not true honestly i believe in humans having higher abilities than we know of. This one however has not shown enough evidence. If she could do it accurately then yes i would agree she is amazing. Sadly even under ideal conditions where she can see the person clearly she gets it wrong.

On the TV show i saw i believe there were 5 people and she got one partially right.

[edit on 29-7-2006 by ImaginaryReality1984]

Derren Brown is brilliant.

I'm not sure about this girl, but, like you, I think that people have abilities greater than the CSICOP skeptics countenance. I just think that if there's going to be a scientific investigation it should be designed in such a way as to try to find out what is going on rather than to eliminate the effect altogether. It's the old "hammer to crack a nut" thing.

DB did do one demonstration that I'd absolutely love to figure out. He was with some woman at a window overlooking a London street. He asked her to pick out someone walking on the street, and then, when she wanted that person to stop, to say the word "stop". It worked. The camera crew interviewed the woman in the street who stopped, and she couldn't tell why she'd stopped walking - it was like one of those moments when you walk into the kitchen for something but can't remember what.

Derren Brown's disclaimer is actually kind of vague. He says he doesn't do anything unnatural or impossible... I can't actually remember the precise words he uses but there's a little bit of wiggle room in there....

Have you ever seen Chris Crudelli? He's a martial artist who fronted the BBC3 series Mind, Body, and Kick-Ass Moves. In each programme he does a little demonstration of how chi can be used to affect people. On one occasion he was standing about 20' away from a guy who was standing, facing away from him so he couldn't see him. CC put his hand out, and "pulled" the guy towards him, and as he did this, the guy staggered backwards.

There are certain similarities in this demonstration that make me wonder how it was that DB did what he did. This assumes that neither of them used stooges, of course, but as I say, I'm convinced from personal experience that CC at least did not need to use a stooge.
I've been doing chi gung for several years now and have been lucky enough to meet people who can do this kind of stuff and much much more, and had my own experiences that convince me that this stuff works. But try telling a skeptic about it...

Originally posted by mindtrip02
i totally agree with curiosity. he makes some great points.

the one thing i can say, is that science changes almost , if not, everyday. the one thing that has stayed the same is faith. faith in people, faith in eachother. why not have faith in god.
there is no faith is science. it can be changed so drastically, so quickly. why believe in something, that 5 minutes later will be something totally different?

Why believe in something that changes? Because science has the guts to admit it was wrong. That is a very admirable trait. The core concept of science is truth. Scientists attempt to explain things to the best of their ability. Typically, change comes from a different generation of scientists learning from the works of their predecessors, and continuing their studies. Some things, believe it or not, take a long time to work out, and most of the time these things are not done in one go.

And you can thank science's advance, its constant changes, for everything around you that makes your life easier. Everything that keeps you warm, well fed, safe and secure has been brought to you by the tireless advances of science. And thanks to that push, you can use the computer in front of you to post on this forum that could never have existed without the scientific advances made in your lifetime.

the one thing that has stayed the same is religion. whether it be catholicism, christianity, baptists, or penecostal. they all believe in the same thing. their practices may vary, but they got the point.

It's sad, yet outrageously funny that you say that. Religion staying the same and refusing to adapt has led to what? Take a look at the Middle East to see the glorious results of unbending, unswayable religion. Don't forget that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are three strands of the same thread. They are closer to each other than most realize.

like i said before, science is for people that are too proud to beleive that there is something " above" or "higher" than them. they want to believe that we are the higher power, well WE'RE NOT.

No, science is for everyone. Everyone who wants to make a difference, everyone who has questions about our world, everyone who just wants to know how things work, how to make things happen and how to create new ideas, concepts, and things. With this one blanket statement, you have insulted every god-knowing individual who studies the natural world. Of which there are many.

thats why when scientist test something it will change, its not constant,. there will never be a definate answer. so keep believing in your " theories", but until we know the infinite truth that only god can give us. we will never know how we got here.

One day we may very well know how we got here. And even if we figure it out, there will always be the blind faithful such as yourself who will say we are wrong. Science changes because that is how it was designed. It was never meant to sit happily, content in "the truth". We are always discovering more. We are always learning new things. We are always adapting our ideas to fit new, more correct models. While you may mock our "theories", keep in mind that they have done more for your health than any book of stories ever has. Take them away, and you'd be left cold, hungry, and out in the dark with the wolves circling in. That is a truth.

many 'experiments' are a charade, if you look at them closely, you will see that the results are fabricated and the circumstances were artificial and arbitrary, bearing no resemblance to life as we know it, but as soon as it's 'peer reviewed' and published, it becomes a source of undeniable truth. when the next guy looks it up, there's no way to know, unless he takes the time to take a gander at their procedures, which is prohibitively time consuming and difficult in the face of obstruction.

example: testing of hazardous side effects of radio band frequencies. continous exposure to levels well within the official limits (which are too high by a factor of 100 or more) results, among other problems, in general exhaustion and breakdown of the immune system... so what to do? raise all lab rats in a sterile environment, so they won't catch the flu (the rat equivalent of course) and die.

sure enough, many more rats developed cancer in the exposed group compared to the control group. too bad, ain't it? well, the authors used bait&switch and claimed that the natural occurance of cancer is higher anyway... non sequitur, but who cares 20 years later?

if this simple mechanism fails, there's still ridicule, withdrawal of grants, unfavourable 'peer review' or in especially severe cases, the tools 'suicide' or 'accident' will be used. wait, i forgot.. if it's remotely medical, you can call them quacks and throw them into prison.

I agree that scientists sometimes becomes too sceptical to even want to study something. To really find out how things work the way they do, you pretty much need to have an open mind, be open to lots of ideas.. then you can study the various ideas and discard the ones that turn out to be untrue..

Science is not done in TV shows; it is done in labs.

Get over it, it is television. There is a 100% chance that dozens of scenes were edited. She does not a have X-Ray vision either.

Faith is for ignorant, conservative savages who are afraid of anything new under the sun and think that an all knowing invisible sky daddy will save the human race.

Science is for intelligent, liberal open minded human beings who realize the reality ,of the human races', prediciment on this rock. If we don't save ourselves were doomed.

Science is bluff.
They don't know what light IS,
And they don't know what gravity IS.
They know what it dos.
Apples fall from trees!
And then go on to give you a big mathematical equation.
But they still don't tell you what it IS!
Don’t let them fool you they are stupid.

Well I'm an actual scientist. A geologist to be exact. I also work for the 'evil oil & gas' companies in the search for more petroleum reservoirs.
Anyways I can tell you with 100% conviction that my science is all made up as we go along. Nobody was around to measure time geologically speaking of course.
I can't begin to count the times we have pulled core samples out of the ground, take them in the lab, analyze them and lo & behold micro fossils, sponges, trilobytes, and all kinds of simple prehistoric creatures that were already suppossed to be extinct for a couple a hundred million years OR were not suppossed to have evolved yet for at least a few dwcades of millions of years.
All any one says is "oh must have been a fault zone or some kind of anomoly" but it hppens so much it has lead me to beleive the Earth is not as old as public school & Hollywood wish us to believe.
As for my own experience, geology is a made up science to help foster the idea of evolution.
But hey, the oil companies pay good, so if you want a great paying job become a geologist. No math, and the world is running out of resources.

Originally posted by curiousity
Firstly, they never once asked her if she could physically "see" inside the person being looked at,

What does that have to do with science? Who performed these tests, the filmakers investigating the report? That hardly says anything about science.

Two of the symptoms she missed were a "steel plate in the head" and "staples in the chest". The testers harped on those two in particular because "if she had x-ray eyes" (their term for her and never mentioned by her herself) "she surely would have picked up on metal."

How scientific is that?

She claims to be able to 'see through things', ala superman. So it seems like a pretty sensible test.

The conclusion was, for this test, and now making clear how the "scientific" outlook is not scientific, in the classic sense of studying and making sense of things, so much as it is skepticism gone amok.

How does this say anything about science? You are criticizing a few people involved in the production of a film. Regardless of the validity of your criticism, they seem to have demonstrated that she can't see through things. Why worry about whether she claims to emit x-rays, or have it happen 'spiritually' or 'psychically', she can't see through things in the first place.

This skeptical view of life in general is so engrained in the thinking of mankind, at least as it is represented in America, that it will take an extraordinary event to uproot it and show it for the prideful nonsense it truly is.

You'd rather have us all 'ooh' and 'aaah' when someone claims to have x-ray vision? To just naively accept it and any other bizzare claim without any support?
Er, no thanks.

Originally posted by In nothing we trust
Faith is for ignorant, conservative savages who are afraid of anything new under the sun and think that an all knowing invisible sky daddy will save the human race.

Science is for intelligent, liberal open minded human beings who realize the reality ,of the human races', prediciment on this rock. If we don't save ourselves were doomed.

Tha's the ats forum poster I know and love, the open-minded, unopinionated, "see it and call it" poster who can make blanket statements about subjects he knows nothing about with a certain aplomb.

If you, as no doubt you do, count yourself amont those "i, l, o, m," who know about all reality, tell us how you think we can save ourselves.

If you say science, then tell me what discoveries have to be made to "save" us.

Originally posted by masterp
Science is not done in TV shows; it is done in labs.

BINGO!

The original poster is complaining about a television programme! I find it hard to believe that its the first time a documentry has made him question their scientific validity. Ive seen so many documentaries that ignore other evidence, spin evidence or just outright using logic filled with holes.

That isnt science, that is television.