Paul,
The testing of the Russian girl was extremely unfair. First the bar was set extremely high, but then one of the 'illnesses' that she was asked to diagnose was that a man had a metal plate in his head - he was not, in fact ill.
Brian Josephson's site contains more details about this.
Unfortunately, TV/radio programs are not always designed to get at the truth. Rupert Sheldrake reports how he pulled out of a program with Richard Dawkins when it became clear that there was not going to be any debate, the program was designed simply to present Dawkins' views!
I would also agree with Holoverse in that people like this are put under fantastic stress, and if they decline to be tested, that is always taken as proof positive that they are fakes. Imagine when you were 14 - would you have performed well (say in a science test) on TV with several extremely skeptical adults testing you?
If this test was worth doing, why could they not have used enough (genuine) patients to avoid statistical noise, and tried to minimise the stress of the occasion?
David  |