JREF Gives Anita New Life

Several months after the IIG Challenge, Miss Ikonen had seemed to quiet down. She was repeatedly suspended from the JREF Forums for personal attacks and harassing the moderators. We thought that perhaps we had heard the last of her, but it was not to be. Jeff Wagg, the Communications and Outreach Manager for the JREF, invited Miss Ikonen on his skeptical podcast radio show. It was a joke of an interview where he and the other hosts allowed her to spew her nonsense without being questioned critically. If you can believe it, Mr. Wagg even called her results "interesting" and encouraged her to proceed with her investigation.

Huh? Beating 1 in 4 odds is interesting? On what planet?

It didn't take long for Miss Ikonen to start quoting Jeff Wagg on her website. She seemed to approach her claims with renewed vigor. Many of us, myself included, told Mr. Wagg what would happen. I started a thread on the JREF Forums about it. Many people laid into Mr. Wagg and the cast of Rational Alchemy for the poor way they handled their uncritical interview. Mr. Wagg claimed that he wasn't acting on behalf of the JREF, but that's a dubious claim at best. When somebody is the Communications Director for an organization, they typically do not speak publicly in other capacities in order to avoid confusion. They certainly do not speak out about the very subject about which the organization they represent is concerned and then claim they are not representing the organization when they do. Does a Coca Cola delivery guy drink Pepsi? I won't go into it here, so I encourage you to read the thread to see just how incompetently Mr. Wagg handled the interview and the uproar that ensued on the JREF.

Shortly after the interview, Miss Ikonen was banned from the JREF Forums just as she was banned from these forums. She started her own forums. It is quite sad and pathetic, actually, that she is the only one posting there. She even responds to herself. Desperate for attention, she even quoted myself and others on her forums and wrote responses. It was great that everyone was ignoring her, because she deserves no attention. Maybe I could finally rest and call this site a success.

However, in June of 2010 she began dropping hints that she was going to be tested or at least give a demonstration. Wardenclyffe over at the JREF Forums sniffed it out and speculated that she was going to give a demonstration at the next TAM hosted by the JREF. "No way," I figured. That would be ridiculous. Dr. Carlson, who is well known to the JREF, said she is not worthy of investigation. The IIG, a sister organization of the JREF, tested her, and she failed with flying colors. And Miss Ikonen was banned from the JREF Forums after being one of the hottest topics for a year. Surely they wouldn't waste time on her. Mr. Wagg wouldn't give her more attention.

I was wrong.

It turns out that for some stupid reason the JREF gave the stage over to Miss Ikonen to "demonstrate" her skills. There were no controls, so any positive result would have been meaningless. But, seriously, does anyone think Miss Ikonen wouldn't have used a success to bolster her outrageous claims? Fortunately, Miss Ikonen failed to find the person with a missing kidney. She's a lousy guesser.

What's sad, though, is that the mentalist, Banachek, who is taking over the JREF MDC said, "in this case the result was negative and would been just as non important if positive." That's foolish and disappointing to hear from a skeptic. The demonstration was geared to fully allow Miss Ikonen to demonstrate her abilities, and she failed. This is important. It further demonstrates that no ability exists. Sure, a positive result would mean nothing since no controls were in place, but a negative result is a negative result.

Here's a clue, Banachek: More controls to prevent a false positive do not make a negative result more meaningful. What is the point of conducting challenges like the MDC if failures are considered unimportant? The whole point is to demonstrate that these claimants cannot do what we know to be scientifically impossible. We skeptics, quite frankly, need to hold up these failures for all to see. We need to shout from the rooftops that these claims are patently ridiculous and deserve no respect or attention. To call them unimportant renders the MDC and all other challenges unimportant. What were you thinking? Or were you?

Here's another clue, Banachek (and the JREF): You were used. Yep, you were used by Miss Ikonen in her bid for attention. I said over a year ago that she was touting this missing kidney claim as a grab for attention in response to last year's TAM Challenge with Connie Sonne. Amazingly, Miss Ikonen got the very stage she wanted despite her repeated failures. You disrespected the IIG, who spent an enormous amount of time and effort testing Miss Ikonen. And you disrespected the membership and moderation team of the JREF Forums by giving the stage over to someone who was banned from the forums for personal attacks and harassing the moderators. The whole thing was a joke.

If you wanted to demonstrate how difficult it is to test claimants, you should have interviewed the IIG members who tested Miss Ikonen. They were at TAM. It would have been a lot more useful than giving a narcissist the stage. You screwed the pooch on this one, big time.

Personal note to Mr. Plait: I didn't see your presentation about how skeptics shouldn't be a dick, but sometimes being a "dick" is precisely what's needed, and I think this is one of those cases.