X-Message-Number: 16582
From: 
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 19:09:29 EDT
Subject: On Fraud and Learning

Steve Bridge and Mike Perry have raised the very legitimate and important 
question of what constitutes fraud, and whether the Vissers' behavior met 
that criterion. I am acutely careful when using words like fraud to describe 
someone's behavior, especially in a public forum. I did not use this word 
with regard to the Vissers lightly. In my opinion it is worthwhile to discuss 
why I chose this word and to deal with a few of the points Steve raises in 
his post about the Visser affair.

Let's start with a dictionary definition. I have only a 1958 Webster's 
unabridged edition at hand, but I think it will do. The full definition of 
fraud is long. The first two are the most relevant:

"1) Quality of being deliberately deceptive; trickery, willful deceit, 
dishonesty. 2) An act of willful deception and dishonesty, carried out with a 
view to securing some advantage, profit &c. to which one is not entitled at 
the expense of another; (law) some statement or suppression of fact in word 
or deed with intent to deceive."

One problem with any definition like the one above is the problem of what 
constitutes willful or what constitutes intent in general. These are internal 
mental states and for this reason we usually solve this problem by referring 
it to a group of 12 people called a jury in association with a highly 
structured procedure for presenting both evidence and argument. I suppose it 
could be argued that until someone is convicted by a jury in court of law 
they must be presumed innocent of fraud. Certainly, in the criminal sense 
this is true and I agree with it. But fraud has broader common use and people 
often clearly meet the dictionary definition without meeting the bar of a 
civil or criminal trial. It is useful to label these people as such to 
protect others and to instruct others as to what the signs of fraud are 
outside of the alien confines of jurisprudence.

My first contact with the Vissers' claims came via highly respected 
Intensivists (critical care medicine physicians) who I interacted with on the 
Internet. Several of the finest and most Internet visible ICU physicians are 
from South Africa. It was probably from Dick Burrows that I first heard about 
the Vissers. The horror of HIV in Africa is a daily grind for Dick and the 
comparatively few other topnotch physicians who have chosen to remain in a 
country racked by violence and lethal infectious disease; not to mention an 
epidemic of irrationality and interracial warfare of vast magnitude. 

The Vissers first surfaced by being a material force in getting the head of 
the South African Medicines Council dismissed; ostensibly because he was a 
physician, a male and was white (and by the way, both compassionate and 
competent). He was replaced by an African woman who had no medical background 
whatsoever. This was followed by bribery and the use of calculated political 
clout (threats in some instances) to move Virodene into clinical testing on 
people who were not informed of what they were receiving or that this 
compound had shown absolutely no laboratory evidence of being an effective 
treatment for HIV. 

Ziggy's financial manipulations were (and still are) legend in South Africa. 
There were no controls and no record keeping in the Virodene trials. There 
was enormous press coverage and hope verging on frenzy that a cheap, 
effective CURE for HIV had been discovered by South Africans.

If we aren't at the "fraud" point already, we get there soon enough when any 
questions about Virodene were ruthlessly suppressed and the people asking 
them threatened or punished. It is axiomatic in good science that if you have 
the public platform and you have a real breakthrough you don't need to use 
these tactics. The Vissers certainly had the government and the local media 
in their pockets. They even had the NEW SCIENTIST and some international 
media in their camp. 

Frankly, I didn't pay much attention to the people from Durban, Capetown, and 
elsewhere who were complaining about this latest outrage on medicine in South 
Africa. It wasn't until I saw the name Olga Visser surface in cryonics that I 
winced. Viola! Here was a lady claiming she could freeze mammalian hearts and 
would soon be freezing pig hearts and doing transplants with cryopreserved 
organs within 5 years! Sound too good to be true? Maybe not unless you knew 
about the same kind of claims and the ugly tactics being used with them about 
a cure for AIDS.

I found out what both Virodene and her miracle cryoprotectant were from 
sources I was referred to in the purchasing department of the her University. 
It wasn't even confidential: she had been ordering DMF in liter quantities 
and the University was picking up the tab. 

Steve Bridge argues with some eloquence that Alcor and CI were duped and that 
the price of all this was worthwhile in that it taught them a valuable 
lesson. I wish I could agree. 

I'm not being "argumentative" here to make any political points. That's 
useless in almost any forum unless you want to sling mud, deceive or engage 
in clever rhetoric. I'm too tired for that.

My point is to inform people about how to detect fraud and not be taken 
advantage of by it. Of course it is always possible to say "Well, I got 
defrauded and learned my lesson so it was worth the price." This is true if 
you've been defrauded in some clever way that is out of the common 
experience. My travels in the Arabic World certainly taught me about 
sociopathological fraud I'd not heretofore experienced first hand, or even 
read about. However, I still don't think it was worth the lousy 50 Egyptian 
Pounds it cost me.

People who get defrauded by ignoring the ingrained social lessons they are 
taught over a lifetime may be paying what seems to be a fair price to them 
(and to them it may be fair). But, when these people occupy a position of 
responsibility to others who place their trust in them, then it is another 
matter altogether as to whether it was "fair price" or a good thing on 
balance.

So, what went wrong in the Visser case? Why did Steve and others get "fooled" 
or "mislead?" And just as important, could it have easily and 
straightforwardly been avoided?

It axiomatic in business and science that you don't buy a pig in the poke. 
You don't plunk down your money before you have reasonable substantiation of 
claims. Yes, you may expend modest amounts of money to facilitate a 
demonstration, but you don't buy the North American Rights as part of the 
validation package. Trust, but verify.

First, the demonstration. Second the disclosure. Third independent 
reduplication. Fourth a contract. Firth the payment. These are commonsense 
things. Prudent people don't even have expensive repairs on their homes done 
without a list of references which they check out. Steve and the others at 
Alcor knew and know the basics of how science works. Good scientists may be 
reticent about full disclosure, but they don't expect people to skip the 
independent reduplication step. Whatever you are buying must work in your 
hands under the same conditions. It can even be the case that you are given 
Solution X with instructions on how to use it but no details as to what's in 
it. That is skating the edge of credibility, but if Solution X is rigorously 
validated and meets the claims made for it, then buying it, along with 
periodic re-testing (this is what is known as quality control) is acceptable 
if not palatable.

Most consumer products are sold along exactly these lines. Some are frauds in 
that they are marketed with the full knowledge that they do not meet their 
claims. This must clearly be so or we would be living in a USA populated 
almost exclusively by fashionably thin people. On the other hand, KFC chicken 
and Coca Cola do just fine because people get what they expect and want. 
Intel sells chips without disclosing every detail of their manufacture. In 
fact, in industry the devil is often in the details and these are jealously 
guarded. That's what nondisclosure agreements are about in large part.
 
But there is a long way between buying a performing product that that the 
manufacturer stands behind, and buying one where only the inventor can make 
it work. The difference is what is called the prudent man standard and it 
usually gets suspended only when people are either:

a) Stupid or grossly inexperienced, such as is the case with a young child or 
a moron (both of which Steve clearly is not).

b) Emotion overwhelming reason, such as in the case of greed, hate, 
resentment or other factors being allowed to override the safeguards every 
reasonable adult knows. And, I would add, knows to be especially important in 
costly or life or death situations.

c) Situations of extreme chaos or desperation where human or environmental 
factors erode commonsense judgment A sleep deprived, traumatized person 
coping with a disaster can't reasonably be expected to function at the same 
level as would be the case in calmer conditions. Here I'm referring to 
situations like those encountered on the battlefield or natural disasters. A 
tough day or year at the office doesn't count.

So, here are some fairly straightforward steps to avoid another Visser:

1) If it seems to good to be true it almost always is. Let that at very least 
make you diligent in following the steps below. 

2) Assume the worst and try to prove otherwise. 

3) Claims must be substantiated and independently verified. It took FRED 
CHAMBERLAIN to do this. Regardless of what Visser's cryoprotective agent was, 
he established a rigid and reproducible set of guidelines which were 
scrupulously adhered to.

4) Related to #3 above, the parameters must be quantified; in others words 
you have to do measurements. 

5) In cases where the phenomenon being evaluated has an inherent degree of 
subjectivity or difficulty in quantification or evaluating the meaning of the 
measured outcome, such as whether people prefer Pepsi to Coca Cola, the 
standards for quantification must be even more rigorous and involve controls 
over sample size, selection criteria, statistical methods, experimental 
design, and so on. This is a difficult area in science and even the experts 
get tripped up frequently. The Vissers were not in any way such a case!

6) Money should be advanced incrementally and in direct relation to what is 
being purchased. In other words, set milestones and look at the results 
frequently.

7) Peer review is usually critical. If full disclosure is not possible, the 
bar must then be set very high. The burden of bearing the costs of 
independent verification should never be on the customer. If the innovator(s) 
wants to keep the technology a secret, then s/he must be prepared to pay the 
price of assuring validation. Intel does beta tests, market studies, collects 
performance data and the like BEFORE they offer their product for sale. They 
do this with investors' money and, FYI, the investors usually have full 
disclosure or they have incredible risk! (Sometimes it is both.) In any 
event, it is the investors' risk, not the customers'. If you decide to be 
both, that's fine. But, if you are spending other peoples' money you better 
let them in on it BEFORE you take that risk.

8) Investigate the background of the people you are dealing with. Doing this 
in the case of the Vissers would have disclosed a trail of coercion and 
deceit. Yes, many innovators are persecuted and maligned. But close scrutiny 
usually shows up a trail of past dishonest behavior.

9) Be aware that any good con artist who engages in fraud must, by 
definition, seem incredibly sincere. Think about it, it just wouldn't work 
any other way. A successful liar is one who can't for a moment be perceived 
to be lying. These people are artists at faking human decency and integrity. 
That's the take home message of point #2 above. Even then you can be mislead 
and defrauded, but usually not for reasons of greed or naked self interest. 
Rather, being defrauded in situations like that is when your best motives are 
being exploited: a child helping a molester find a lost dog, a person trying 
to good being duped by a fake charity...

10) When you are in a high fraud risk undertaking like cryonics (or medicine 
for that matter!) you have a special duty to VERIFY, VERIFY and VERIFY AGAIN. 
You have a duty to have objective and rigorous data to support scientific 
claims. If you don't see data and documented results with NUMBERS then you 
have reason to worry and every reason to be concerned that, whatever the 
intent of the person or organization, you aren't getting what you think you 
are.

As to the central issue of Whether the Vissers were frauds I must rely on 
their behavior vis a vis Virodene and their evasive behavior when I 
questioned them on the facts (not proprietary secrets, but facts about the 
conditions of other demonstrations). Both Olga and Ziggy Visser lied to me 
when they stated they had successfully completed similarly rigorous 
demonstrations. Furthermore, during the course of the Alcor controlled 
demonstrations Fred Chamberlain had to repeatedly and aggressively intervene 
to stop deviations from the previously agreed upon procedure. That is deceit. 
That it was unsuccessful is immaterial to motive. That financial gain was 
primary is not in question; the Vissers took money from everyone who's 
confidence they gained. In return they gave nothing but broken dreams and in 
a few cases financial ruin.

I guess to some people $25,000 or $50,000 is not a lot. Maybe that's so. But 
it is to me and I suspect it is to Mr. Swayze and a lot of other people for 
whom it would buy cryopreservation. Most tellingly, it is a lot of money to 
millionaires and billionaires. If you get even $10,000 from one of them you 
are doing very well indeed. That is why they have so much money. And, having 
met so many of them (as Steve Bridge well knows) I can say with certainty 
that very few I've met would consider $25K an acceptable price to pay for 
being swindled.

Finally, I want to repeat again something I said in passing: It was Fred 
Chamberlain who turned the Visser demonstration into something rigorous. I 
was there and I was a party to discussions with other principals at the time, 
and it is abundantly clear to me that it was Fred and Fred alone who did 
this. This is not meant to be an unconditional endorsement of Fred beyond the 
facts as they apply here; we've had our differences even on matters of 
science and proof. However, in this case the credit should go where the 
credit is due.

Mike Darwin

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16582