On the 'Put a fork in her - she's done' thread I post the following 13 standard responses to pretty much all of Anita's repetitive claims/comments:

• 1 Do some reliable testing. Come back when you get positive results
• 2 That contradicts your own previous claims
• 3 That simply isn't true - Restating it repeatedly will not make it true and it won't convince anyone it is true in the complete absence of evidence
• 4 That is an entirely unverifiable claim thus completeley irrelevant
• 5 Your claim has not ever been demonstrated. It is simply your claim without any evidence, no different from any one of a million other paranormal claims with no evidence
• 6 Simply repeating the same claim in the absence of evidence is pointless - see 1
• 7 That is a claim you have so far not tested and would be easy to test - see 1
• 8 You have already made inaccurate medical perceptions - in the kidney test, and Wayne's throat
• 9 That is not true and an attempt to put a positive spin on a clear error/failure
• 10 That is yet another change to how you have described your 'ability' to operate
• 11 That is yet another example of you attempting to turn a fail into 'learning yet another new restriction on the ability'
• 12 We know how scientific testing should work. Your posts demonstrate you do not
• 13 Your results are no different to someone guessing/random results

I have posted these to illustrate how dead in the water this claim is. (NB I have changed #4 from unfalsifiabe to unverifiable as this answer is for any of Anita'a many claims along the lines of "When no-one who can confirm this was around I peformed X amazing ability)

I will discuss these points one by one so hopefully we can direct Anita to each answer rather than trawl through each argument over and over again.

There is no new information coming from this claim, no interesting testing, no development of Anita's position towards her fantasies... nothing.

In months and years of discussing Anita's nonsense she has produced the following interesting/significant instances of unusual ability:

0

Absolutely nothing.

She is no different from any other Paranormal claimant - all words, no results.

And I am fed up with how much time and effort other people have gone to in indulging her fantasies and need for attention.

Every test she runs that takes up other people's time, simply results in her failure. And then she has ther cheek to say the test wasn't a failure, it was just showing the parameters of the ability... And then pretends this bears some resemblnce to real scientific research (which it obviously doesn't).

Well no more Anita - do your own tweaking and parameter discovery in your own time. Only come to skeptics with a test that will be a pass fail. A fail will be end of the matter. If you can't agree to that don't bring the claim/test.

To be honest Anita is now getting far too old to expect people to carry on indulging her childish fantasies of having magical ability.

1 Do some reliable testing. Come back when you get positive results

Anita has not succeeded in any of her claims in any test observed by anyone.

She has wasted a lot of skeptics time in the process of failing these tests.

Howvever what is particularly annoying is that Anita has refused to accept the tests as failures and is trying to twist them into some sort of 'research sessions' designed solely to find out more about what circumstances the ability works/doesn't work under.

Only problem is that Anita came with a claim that apparently had no such restrictions.

And these tests were supposed to be tests just to demonstrate whether Anita had the abilty or not.

So no further testing can proceed now that it is clear that no test will yield any useful conclusion. A failed test just means Anita tweaks something slightly then requests more testing. Well that's fine if it's just her own time she is wasting, but not when skeptical testing is at a premium of time and effort.

Sorry Anita - in your own time develop a claim and a test that you can carry out reliably, and only then approach the skeptics with it. You have wasted too much time now.

2 That contradicts your own previous claims

The more Anita posts the more she cannot now help contradicting her own previous claims and/or description of how the ability works/manifests itself.

Already we saw her paint herself into a corner with the 'Reading medical information from photographs' claim, and she was forced to completely retract a previous claims of being able to read celebrities medical information using this method.

Now in the 'Put a fork in her - she's done' thread the contradictions are coming thick and fast. Particularly with regard to her ability to detect diabtetes.

Watching her scrabble around to try and make it not look like a complete contradiction is a classic example of a paranormal claimant point blank refusing to admit error.

Interestingly we are even seeing her develop and evolve her previous story about saving the life of a diabetic.

it wasn't enough she saved a life, in the new version she had the nurses 'yelling' at her in disagreement with hwhat er paranormal vision was telling her - but plucky heroic Anita stood her ground and saved the old lady's life.

It's like a story a 12 year old would write.

But the more Anita writes, the more contradictions abound. She can't keep it all straight in her own head any more, and unfortunately she can't help herself from making new claims. So she comes badly unstuck.

3 That simply isn't true - Restating it repeatedly will not make it true and it won't convince anyone it is true in the complete absence of evidence

An old, old tactic of Anita's - keep repeating something and hope it magically gets accepted.

How many times will Anita feel the need to claim she definitely detected Doctor Carlson's missing kidney, but didn't mention it. Oh until after she was told he had a missing kidney.

There are many more instances of claims that happened with no reliable witnesses - the new cocaine user identification instance being the most recent.

but of course as these are all entirely indistinguishable from something completely made up, they are of no use whatsoever.

Particularly as when asked to replicate said amazing non-witnessed abilities... Anita never can, or has excuses why she cannot even try.

4 That is an entirely unverifiable claim thus completeley irrelevant

There is little point in raising any claims/abilities that it is obvious we cannot check, either because it happened/happens in unobservable circumstances or because it is untestable.

For example the cocaine claim - obviously an illegal drug cannot be part of any test. (And we have no way of knowing whether this unverfied account ever happened)

Now if Anita followed up with "But I believe I can detect any drugs/chemicals in the body including any which show no outward effects" then that might be of use. A simple test could be set up around that.

Sadly Anita never agrees to anything approaching a simple, clear test.

5 Your claim has not ever been demonstrated. It is simply your claim without any evidence, no different from any one of a million other paranormal claims with no evidence

This is essentially a variant of number 3, but a more specific version.

Anita repeatedly states she has reason to believe she has certain special 'abilities' - yet over months and years of meetings and tests with skeptics (ranging from organised to poorly set up to completely ad-libbed) Anita has never been able to display any such abilities.

Any skeptic who has been involved in such experiences has been forced to conclude there is no ability present and nothing has been displayed.

Yet Anita still repeats that there is something interesting worthy of further investigation.

Clearly there is not.

6 Simply repeating the same claim in the absence of evidence is pointless - see 1

Faily self-explanatory.

Anita doesn't seem to understand that amazing abilities performed in the complete absence of any verification are entirely indistinguishable from completely made up fantasy. Thus irrelevant.

7 That is a claim you have so far not tested and would be easy to test - see 1

Anita generates new claims at a great rate - even on this ebsite they are not all detailed. Most of them are very easy to test and would yield a clear Pass/Fail result.

Obviously these tests are the ones Anita expresses least interest in testing, often completely ignoring further reference to them by others in the hope they will be forgotten.

For example a new one has arisen (or a new version of an old claim) in this post. In response to a question of mine Anita has stated the following:

Eeew, you are asking me to look into the contents of the digestive system and to perceive what they have eaten. Ok. I can do that.
 

This would seem clear enough and to anyone unfamiliar with Anita's history this might appear that she was agreeing to a simple and easy to set up test.

However that is unlikely to be the case.

Based on past history Anita might agree to a test reagrding identification of what subjects had eaten, however if she failed the test she would claim some parameter was not quite right, that she had learned things about this ability and would likely do better next time. So the test would be entirely a waste of time.

So from now on Anita is to do such parameter discovery testing herself, and only come to skeptics with an ability that she has tested and is confident she can display under a set, agreed set of parameters. This is so that when skeptics finally test her, failure will be a failure and the test will be considered to have concluded that she has no such ability.

8 You have already made inaccurate medical perceptions - in the kidney test, and Wayne's throat

One of Anita's most baffling repetitions is that she will consider her medical perceptions claim falsified if she claims to have detected something and this turns out to be incorrect.

(It hardly needs to be reiterated that when she misses medical complaints, no matter how major, she does not consider this a failure as she 'wasn't scanning for that particular ailment')

She repeatedly claims that  when she does make a medical claim it has always been correct.

Yet this is blatantly and demonstrably untrue!

In a reading at a skeptics meeting Anita used her 'ability' to scan a subject - Wayne. She declared she detected "throat discomfort".

However Wayne had absolutely nothing wrong with his throat.

Anita then attempted to say she was detecting his Adam's apple. Of course why she would feel the need to declare that she was sensing something that was clearly visible and obviously present is the real question. She has never noted sensing something clearly visible either before or since.

(Edited to add from DG reminding me - She then changed her claim to that she was just sensing the bony presence of his Adam's Apple. Uh oh, another problem for Anita... the Adam's apple is not bone, it is cartilege. Anita has not adressed this issue. She's wrong twice on this one alone.)

Obviously this was a declaration of something abnormal which turned out to be incorrect and required Anita to try and spin it so it wasn't an incorrect diagnosis. Sadly for Anita absolutely no-one is taken in by this spin.

(Edited to add: I forgot Anita also mentioned Wayne has a "tired left shoulder". It turned out there was nothing wrong with his shoulder. Anita then claimed what she was 'detecting' was... just his shoulder. Anita's ability is truly amazing - it allows her to sense the presence of random visible body parts)

Also in the kidney detection claim Anita declared missing kidneys and specified sides in individuals where this was clearly and unequivacally incorrect.

So without any shadow of doubt Anita HAS made inaccurate and incorrect medical diagnoses.

9 That is not true and an attempt to put a positive spin on a clear error/failure

While 8 is a specific response, this response is designed to cover a broader range of instances where reality has demonstrated one thing, but Anita doesn't like it and attempts to alter everyone's perception of the instance by simply describing it differently using many, many words.

It is an enduring mystery why Anita is so convinced she can alter people's perceptions of her failed tests simply by stating otherwise.

10 That is yet another change to how you have described your 'ability' to operate

If Anita's 'ability' really did work as she described it when she first arrived at the JREF, not only would she by now have demonstrated the ability beyond any reasonable doubt, she would have already have won the JREF million dollars, been a world-famous celebrity on TV and would be at the subject of a huge international scientific research initiative.

Unfortunately her ability doesn't work like that. in fact it doesn't even work as she herself has previsouly claimed.

Constantly the effect has changed, the ability has become weaker, more capricious, more affected by a an ever-increasing range of parameters and generally diappeared to the point of being indistinguishable from chance.

The ability as first described could see individual molecules, and generate in an instant, complex 3-d images that could be zoomed and rotated at will.

When tested however the ability couldn't even spot entire kidneys above chance levels.

The description of the ability (and all the other related claims) keep changing in direct response to Anita's latest failure to exhibit the ability/ or as an excuse as to why she can't carry out the latest proposed clear, simple test.

11 That is yet another example of you attempting to turn a fail into 'learning yet another new restriction on the ability'

Anita has wasted the time of so many skeptics only to then declare that the failed test was not a failed test because she has learned new and exciting things about the ability.

From now on Anita is to do such learning in her own time.

It is incomprehensible why she cannot learn things like "Larger people take me more time to scan" in her own experience of her claim, as opposed to only suddenly discovering this during the IIG test. Several years into her claim.

12 We know how scientific testing should work. Your posts demonstrate you do not

One of the most anmusing aspects of Anita's claims are when she attempts to play the 'knowledgeable researcher' role - which is usually followed by a deeply flawed analogy.

In her head she is a focused, sensible, methodical science researcher.

The tiny problem with this is that in every single instance where she tries to generate a test herself she makes staggeringly poor decisions.

Aside from a complete lack of understanding of controls or scientific rigour (lets run a test betwen dinner and the movie) she is incapable of developing any scoring system which would make sense scientifically. Her scoring systems only ever have two settings - 1) Anita is correct 2) Ignore this result

And lets not forget her proposed test in which she suggested the introduction of that most useful and rigorous scientific tool.. an audience!

Anita might wish she came across as a serious scientific researcher - unfortunately she comes across more like that muppet with the glasses and test tubes (actually Beaker could probably come up with more stringent methods of testing).

13 Your results are no different to someone guessing/random results

Not only do her results not deviate from chance, her results have actually been replicated (in advance!) by other posters simply guessing.

Yet still Anita claims there is something interesting worth investigating.

There isn't.

Posted By Ashles on 21 Apr 2010 07:18 AM

Anita then attempted to say she was detecting his Adam's apple.

Great posts, Ashles.

Not to detract, but when it came to the Adam's apple, she even got that wrong. In the intiial description, she said she detected something "bony" at the front of his throat, yadda yadda.

Adam's apples aren't made of bone. When that was pointed out to her, she simply ignored it.

Not only has she displayed an ignorance of the scientific method, she's also displayed an ignorance of basic anatomy and misconceptions about ailments-you know, for someone who has spent considerable time viewing the inside of the human body at a molecular level. As I recall, she shifted one man's lower intestine to just under his thorax, saturated the "walls around the heart" (whatever that means) with peanut oil, and turned the Adam's apple into bone.

Boring AND silly.

Posted By desertgal on 21 Apr 2010 08:19 AM

Posted By Ashles on 21 Apr 2010 07:18 AM

Anita then attempted to say she was detecting his Adam's apple.

Great posts, Ashles.

Not to detract, but when it came to the Adam's apple, she even got that wrong. In the intiial description, she said she detected something "bony" at the front of his throat, yadda yadda.

Adam's apples aren't made of bone. When that was pointed out to her, she simply ignored it.

Not only has she displayed an ignorance of the scientific method, she's also displayed an ignorance of basic anatomy and misconceptions about ailments-you know, for someone who has spent considerable time viewing the inside of the human body at a molecular level. As I recall, she shifted one man's lower intestine to just under his thorax, saturated the "walls around the heart" (whatever that means) with peanut oil, and turned the Adam's apple into bone.

Boring AND silly.

Oh yeah, forgot about that. Do you know where her original description is? I couldn't find it.

 

Posted By Ashles on 21 Apr 2010 10:49 AM

Oh yeah, forgot about that. Do you know where her original description is? I couldn't find it.

It's here, under the Jan 22 09 entry:

...I detected a very slight discomfort at the throat, but I clearly wrote down that it is very minor and it is not something I would describe as an "ailment". Besides I was fully convinced that what I was feeling was his adam's apple. I drew a picture of the exact size and location of this sensation, which correlates with the adam's apple so that's probably what it was. It was some bony structure in the front part of the throat...