X-Message-Number: 15500
From: 
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 11:03:51 EST
Subject: Wakfer & bias

Just one extract from Wakfer's #15497:

I had written:

>>But as for guessing which approach is best, based on general background 
>>information, that is a potential snare. What counts, in the end, is the 
testing and >>the evaluation of the tests by independent professionals.

And Wakfer replies:

>If the "independent professionals" are not professionals within the field of 
science >which they are being asked to evaluate, and do not know the purpose 
and source of >what they are evaluating then their evaluations are of little 
worth. In addition, it is not >unheard of for an independent professional to 
happily take your money, wink to his
>associates about your purposes, and then proceed to make an analysis and to 
give >you a report biased toward what you want to hear. 

The first sentence is nonsense. A microscopist/pathologist looks for 
deviations from the normal, which is what we are interested in.

As to bias or dishonest evaluations:

Our first  evaluator was Dr. Pichugin et al, when he was in the Ukraine. If 
Wakfer suspects him of being untrustworthy, it seems odd that INC hired him 
to work in California.

Our current evaluation lab is headed by someone on the faculty of a major 
Canadian university. They are perfectly willing to be identified, and have 
said so in response to my direct question, but I am not willing to subject 
them to the possibility of harassment by people like Platt or Wakfer or 
Grimes. That wasn't in their contract; they aren't being paid enough for that.

And there is no possibility that they told us what they thought we wanted to 
hear, because the work was blind. They compared specimens, not knowing how 
they had been prepared. (Yes, we are perfectly aware that not knowing the 
method of preparation of the specimen can have drawbacks in terms of 
preparing it for examination, but that is secondary. Washout before 
microscopy would also introduce new variables.)

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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