For the record I think paranormal claimants should have more than just their word that they have an ability worthy testing by a skeptical group. But, hey, it's not my time and money that's being wasted.

IIG $50k Challenge

We'll start with Anita Ikonen's most dramatic and public failure. It stems from her claim (among many outrageous claims) that she can detect if a person is missing a kidney and which kidney is missing. The history of this ridiculous claim is fascinating, so I advise to read my article about Anita Ikonen and Missing Kidney Detection.

So, two years after first contacting the IIG, Miss Ikonen finally agreed to a protocol to test her claim of being a human MRI. Essentially she said she would identify the location of a missing kidney in a group of six people and be able to repeat the performance in three trials. Since a normal person has two "slots" for kidneys, there were 12 potential locations per trial. The odds of Anita simply guessing all three locations correctly were 1 in 1,728 (1/12 x 1/12 x 1/12). You should read the fascinating full report by the IIG.

The terms of this preliminary test required her to get all three trials correct to pass and move on towards the official test. Surely this should be no problem for her, right? After all, she can see in the human body down to the molecular level and even see DNA! She said she's never been wrong before, and detecting a missing kidney was her "strongest perception" ever. She was so confident she spent nearly a thousand dollars funding the test and traveling from North Carolina to Hollywood.

The results? She failed. Anita got one answer correct in three trials, and the odds of that doing that by guessing were about 1 in 4. Stated another way, one out of every four people you meet on the street could do just as well. That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't.

You see, in the third trial Miss Ikonen picked the right person but got the wrong kidney, which we know because she had to tell us the person and left or right, sort of like referencing a cell in a spreadsheet by row and column. Getting the right person was a lucky guess. After all, if she really did detect a kidney was missing, like a technician with a sonogram, she would have known which side. It's meaningless, but Miss Ikonen likes to pretend this 1 in 13 chance guess is significant.

She also hedged her bets. Miss Ikonen took notes during the test. When the results of the first trial were revealed, and she was shown to be wrong, she quickly reached for her notes and began explaining that her back-up guess was, in fact, the target. Fortunately, an audience member quickly pointed out that her back-up guess was wrong as well. So much for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

Turns out she made two guesses in each trial. That means her one correct answer was actually the result of a 40% chance, which is not far off from guessing the flip of a coin. It also means that getting the right person twice, even if for the wrong reasons, was a 25% chance or 1 in 4. This is typical of Anita Ikonen - hedging her bets and trying to spin the results.

Even though she claimed failure would "falsify" her claims, she is now claiming that she "knew" she was wrong in the first trial, "knew" she was right in the second, and "knew" she was wrong in the third because her powers were fading. In her mind, this failure is a victory! Does this really need to be debunked? She didn't "know" anything - she thought six people were missing kidneys when only one was. She detected kidneys that were not there and failed to detect kidneys that were there. There's no ability whatsoever except for one of self-delusion.

There have been other "tests" of her abilities, and she's failed every single one.

Lactobacillus Detection

When Miss Ikonen first came on the scene she claimed she could detect lactobacillus, a bacteria some people ingest for health reasons. She discovered this after "seeing" something special inside a box of cereal in the grocery store. Upon reading the label, she learned it contained lactobacillus, so that's what she must have detected. Oh, my.

She started testing herself in the Ikonen Kitchen of Science using paper cups with cereal in them. She could see inside the cups, and she checked her results after each guess. Of course she did well and boasted about it.  We told her she needed cover the cups and not check the results after each test (that's called learning and is not how scientists test things) . She set up a test with reasonable controls (lids and several decoy cups instead of just one).

As she would do repeatedly in the future, Miss Ikonen ignored our advice. She checked her results after each guess and found she was wrong. So she removed first one then two then three of the decoy cups as she continued to be wrong. She then removed the lids. Suddenly she got a few right, then quit, ignoring our advice to set the number of trials in advance (a hallmark of scientific study).

After this failure, she refused test herself again with lactobacillus, claiming that even just a few minutes of doing these test made her physically ill. Funny, she didn't get ill when she was getting them right the first time she tried. We suggested she do one trial per day for two weeks, but she refused to do even that. This was our first clue at how Anita Ikonen would evade negative results.

What Miss Ikonen failed to realize is that when she was wrong, it wasn't because she wasn't "sensing" anything. She believed she was sensing something - she was just wrong. It's a clear indication that her Vision From Feeling is all in her head and imaginary.

Reading Photos and Videos

Miss Ikonen claimed that she detected health problems in photos and videos. She claimed to sense ailments in people on TV long before she learned about them from other sources, so I and others put her to the test. I gave her a few photos of me and asked her to describe my ailments, several of which were the kinds of things she claimed to be able to detect in the past.

How did she do? Well, what do you think? 

She failed miserably missing things like cervical stenosis, a varicocele, and other scars and injuries. When I listed my ailments to her, she came back saying in effect, "Oh, I didn't write it down, but I did detect something in your left wrist, just like you said." Funny thing, though. It turns out I was mistaken, and the old injury was in my right wrist. However, it was our first example of her making a post-diction - claiming she detected something after being told about it. 

She also failed photo and video tests with a couple of other people. She then started with her mantra that reading photos is not her "strongest" claim and that she would not be tested on it again (sound familiar?). And once again she was 'sensing" things that weren't true rather than just not sensing anything at all. If her ability were real (it's not), then she should at least be able to tell "reality" from imagination, right?

The Infamous Survey

She also conducted what she called a "survey" where she "read" people by looking at them in a local mall and writing down her perceptions. They were ridiculous. The most outrageous one was that "black people" are different (from what?). She said they had different body chemistries and tissues and even healed from wounds differently. Some people commented here that her notes were racist, which infuriated her so much she began harassing me by phone threatening police action and lawsuits if I didn't make them stop.

Anyway, her survey was a bunch of nonsense and was thoroughly debunked. It had no basis in reality. Her argument is that her perceptions are her perceptions, even if they don't jive with known medical science. If you don't know what that's supposed to mean, join the club.

The Study Failure

She put together something she called a "study" with some volunteers from a local skeptics group. The group did not officially work with her because the test lacked a decent protocol. However, the test was designed to fully permit her abilities, were they real, to work. The main problem is that it could have resulted in a false positive, but it was certainly adequate to provide negative results.

Can you guess what happened? There were three skeptic volunteers acting as controls, guessing just like Miss Ikonen was guessing. Two of those controls scored higher than her. The local skeptics group reviewed the study results and concluded there was nothing worth investigating. This didn't stop Miss Ikonen from claiming success.

On a side note, Miss Ikonen promised repeatedly to produce the study worksheets so skeptics could examine them. She has never done so despite being reminded numerous times of her promise.

Pup's Crushed Pill Test

Pup, a member of the JREF's Forums and skeptic, offered to send her four crushed pills so that she could identify their chemical make-up. This chemical detection ability is one of her claims. In fact, she claims she can look at ordinary fruits and vegetables and use her Vibrational Algebra to calculate their medicinal effects. She even believes she has a cure for cancer.

Anyway, she agreed to identify the chemicals in four medicines. Pup crushed pills of four common types of medicine and added food coloring to make them all look the same. Anita Ikonen said she could use her Vibrational Algebra to sense their effects on the body and identify them. She never completed the test even though she spent over two hours looking at them. Remember, this is the same woman who claimed she got "high" simply by looking at a picture of marijuana.

Miss Ikonen made excuses like "two are similar in effect so I can't distinguish them" even though she was told in advance the names of the chemicals and thus knew their effects. She also claimed she needed "reference samples" but couldn't afford them (we're talking aspirin, Advil, and a couple of cold meds). This same woman later spent thousands of dollars on the IIG test and going to The Amazing Meeting hosted by the JREF. I guess that $10 was just too much for her.

It was yet another example of evasion to avoid failure.

Failed Readings at the Local Skeptics Group

Miss Ikonen also did "readings" at the local skeptics group meeting. Her versions of the readings differed from theirs in some regards, but suffice it to say the skeptics were unimpressed. She failed to detect a number of ailments that she should have were her abilities to be real. The most obvious example is where she failed to detect that Dr. Eric Carlson was missing a kidney. She explicitly failed to check that box on the health questionnaire form. When Dr. Carlson told her he was missing a kidney, she said nothing at the time. Three days later, though, she sent him an e-mail claiming that she really, really did detect it but was afraid to say anything. Sure.

Miss Ikonen hedged her bets on minor conditions as well. In other words, she typically said something was a minor problem, probably figuring if she was right, she could claim victory. When it turned out there was nothing wrong at all, she then claimed she was detecting healthy tissue. If you're scratching your head, you're not alone. Her "readings" were amateurish at best with her most exciting "detection" being that she guessed a woman was menstruating - a woman she was able to observe for a few hours.

Study on Induced Information

This was another self-test. Once again, she ignored all the sound advice she was given and conducted a poorly designed test. First off, she didn't set the number of trials in advance. Second, and more importantly, she didn't conduct an "open test" to verify her abilities were "working." She had a subject sit in a chair with his back to her and do things like clench fists or put hands in a bowl of ice.

The results? No better than chance, of course. Her spin? This taught her in what ways her abilities do not work. I'm not kidding. Read it for yourself. Once again, she was "sensing" things that were totally wrong, but she still doesn't realize what this means for all of the readings where she thinks she's right. It's classic confirmation bias.

Embarrassing Herself with Mark Edward

Mark Edward is a mentalist and skeptic (see his blog). He had dinner with her and a few other people in the spring of 2010. On this series of videos, Miss Ikonen tries to do a reading on him after dinner. It's painful to watch, but suffice it to say she missed his very serious ailment. Mr. Edward then put his hand under a napkin and challenged Miss Ikonen to detect which finger he was holding up. Again, it was painful to watch, but she went through all her typical gyrations pretending to be making a reading. The results? Wrong again.

Mr. Edward claimed that she wasn't even a good fraud. Of course, Miss Ikonen played it off explaining that her ability doesn't always work, but that doesn't explain how she was wrong about which finger he was holding up. Either she could sense it or she couldn't. That she was wrong again demonstrates her disconnect from reality.

Failed Demonstration at the JREF

In July 2010 Miss Ikonen did a demonstration at the JREF's TAM convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. She had five subjects, one of whom was missing a kidney. There were inadequate controls, so any positive result would have been meaningless. However, conditions were perfect for her alleged ability. Once again, she was wrong, and once again she hedged her bets (made multiple guesses). You can read more about it in my blog about Anita Ikonen at TAM.

What's Next?

So, what's next? How about silence? There's no reason to be testing this woman - there never was. At least Uri Geller could convince people he could bend spoons with his mind, and we have countless video examples of him seemingly doing so. Miss Ikonen just talks a lot and fails test after test.

Anyone interested in testing her should think twice before getting involved with her. Not only will you be wasting your time, you may end up regretting ever dealing with her.