Editing Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (section)

=== Natasha Demkina, 2004 ===

In 2004, CSICOP was accused of scientific misconduct over its involvement in the [[Discovery Channel]]'s test of the "girl with X-ray eyes", [[Natasha Demkina]]. In a self-published commentary, Nobel Prize-winning physicist [[Brian David Josephson|Brian Josephson]] criticized the test and evaluation methods and argued that the results should have been deemed "inconclusive" rather than judged in the negative. Josephson, the director of the [[University of Cambridge]]'s [[Mind–Matter Unification Project]], questioned the researchers' motives, saying: "On the face of it, it looks as if there was some kind of plot to discredit the teenage claimed psychic by setting up the conditions to make it likely that they could pass her off as a failure."<ref>{{cite web |last= Josephson |first= Brian |author-link= Brian Josephson |title= Scientists' unethical use of media for propaganda purposes |url= http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/%7Ebdj10/propaganda/ |access-date= 2006-08-31 |website= tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk |archive-date= June 15, 2006 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20060615023610/http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/propaganda/ |url-status= live }}</ref> [[Ray Hyman]], one of the three researchers who designed and conducted the test, published a response to this and other criticisms.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.abelard.org/briefings/bayes.htm#testing_for_rare_conditions |title= Cause, Chance and Bayesian Statistics: A Briefing Document |access-date= 2006-09-11 |website= abelard.org |archive-date= August 31, 2006 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20060831185909/http://www.abelard.org/briefings/bayes.htm#testing_for_rare_conditions |url-status= live }}</ref><ref name="Statistics-Natasha">{{cite web |last= Hyman |first= Ray |author-link= Ray Hyman |title= Statistics and the Test of Natasha |publisher= CSICOP |url= http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/statistics_and_the_test_of_natasha |access-date= 2013-08-31 |website= csicop.org |date= June 7, 2005 |archive-date= April 19, 2013 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130419011638/http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/statistics_and_the_test_of_natasha/ |url-status= live }}</ref> CSI's Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.csmmh.org/ |title=Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100925212414/http://www.csmmh.org/ |archive-date=2010-09-25 }}</ref> also published a detailed response to these and other objections, saying that the choice of critical level was appropriate, because her claims were unlikely to be true:<ref name="Statistics-Natasha" /><ref>{{cite web |publisher= CSMMH |url= http://www.csmmh.org/demkina/answerstocritics.html |title= ''Answer to Critics'' |access-date= 2006-09-11 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20050204152650/http://www.csmmh.org/demkina/answerstocritics.html |archive-date= 2005-02-04}}</ref> <blockquote>I decided against setting the critical level at seven because this would require Natasha to be 100% accurate in our test. We wanted to give her some leeway. More important, setting the critical value at seven would make it difficult to detect a true effect. On the other hand, I did not want to set the critical value at four because this would be treating the hypothesis that she could see into people's bodies as if it were highly plausible. The compromise was to set the value at five.</blockquote>