IIG $50k Challenge

We'll start with Anita's most dramatic and public failure. After two years of negotiating with the IIG West, Anita finally agreed to a test where she, the woman has never known her perceptions to be wrong, would identify the location of a missing kidney in a group of six people. There were three trials. Since a normal person has two kidneys, there were 12 potential locations for a kidney 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).

The terms of this test required her to get all three trials correct. 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 further! 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. Is that anything special? No. Remember, she had three guesses. So, given three guesses at 1 in 12 odds each, the odds of getting at least one right were about 1 in 4.

Oh, but that didn't stop her from rationalizing. You see, in the third trial she picked the right person but got the wrong kidney. Does that mean anything? Of course not. If she got the right person because she could see inside the body where a kidney was missing, she would have gotten the side correct as well. The problem is she could only detect kidneys in living humans, and that means two possible locations for a kidney. If the kidneys had been in individual boxes, would you think anything of this accomplishment?

But wait, there's more. Anita tried to use the notes she took during the test to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. You see, in all three trials, Anita actually marked in her notes that two people were missing a kidney. She only submitted one as an official guess. As expected, she tried to say that the other person she selected in trial #1 was the target and wasn't that amazing? Too bad for her she was mistaken and her second choice wasn't the target either.

So, really, Anita made six choices, not just three. That means her one correct answer was 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 was typical of Anita Ikonen - hedging her bets and trying to spin the results.

Even though she claimed that failing the test would result in retracting her claims, she hasn't done so. 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. Does this really need to be debunked? She didn't "know" anything - she thought six people were missing kidneys. She detected kidneys that were not there and failed to detect kidneys that were there. She just can't let go of the fantasy.

Other Tests

Anita has tried other tests before this one and has failed repeatedly. For example, when she first came on the scene she claimed she could detect lactobacillus, a bacteria some people ingest, in paper cups. When she subjected herself to the proper controls that skeptics suggested, the ability disappeared. She then refused to do anymore tests because they were too strenuous on her physically. Yeh, right.

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 was so poorly designed. Anyway, the test was adequate to reveal that no special abilities existed. It's weakness was that success proved nothing. The results? She failed. Three volunteers did readings the same time as Anita. Two of them outscored her. This didn't stop Anita.

She also conducted what she called a "survey" where she "read" people in a local mall and wrote 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. It was a bunch of nonsense.

She agreed to identify the chemicals in four medicines sent to her by a skeptic at the JREF. He crushed pills of four common types of medicine and added food coloring to make them all look the same. Anita said she could use her Vibrational Algebra to sense their effects on the body and identify them. She never completed the test. Instead she 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. She also claimed she needed "reference samples" but couldn't afford them (we're talking aspirin, Advil, and a couple of cold meds). Typical excuse making.

She 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 ailments that were there and hedged her bets on minor conditions. In other words, she said something was a minor problem. When it turned out to be nothing at all, she then claimed she must have been perceiving healthy tissue. Huh? What do you think she would have said if they turned out to be serious problems and not minor?

Anita has failed time and again to demonstrate any ability even worth investigating. It's all in her head. Too bad she can't see that.