Procedure for Paranormal Study

with the FACT Skeptics Group of Winston Salem

on Sunday February 8 2009

written by paranormal claimant Anita Ikonen

on February 5 2009

Study objective
Paranormal claimant Anita Ikonen experiences perceiving visual and felt health
information when she looks at a person. She has experienced compelling correlation
between her medical perceptions and the actual health of persons and has failed to falsify
the paranormal claim of extrasensory perception on her own. This study is intended for
the claimant to gain more experience with the perceptions and learn more about them in
order to form a more specific paranormal claim from which a test can better be designed.

 What type of ailments are perceived?

 What fraction of times when an ailment is considered to occur in persons will the
claimant perceive the ailment?
 Are only currently occurring ailments perceived or are ailments that occurred some
time ago also perceived?
 Based on the extent of the ailments as described by the person who has the ailment, to
what perceived extent must the ailment be in order to be perceived by the claimant?
 What is the correlation between a person’s perception of their health and the
claimant’s perception of the health of that person?
 To apply some test conditions to see if the perceptions persist. The everyday
experience of the perceptions has occurred under different conditions than what would
be the test conditions that would be required during a test. Test conditions applied in
this particular study are: for claimant not to speak her perceptions but to rather express
them in writing, presenting the perceptions in full at the end of a viewing rather than
as they occur, the use of a questionnaire with mostly unambiguous answers of health,
claimant will face the side or back of a volunteer in order to disable eye contact, and
others (skeptics) will be in charge of the determination of correlation and
interpretation of results. This study does not implement all required test conditions that
would have made this study be a test, therefore some cold reading will be available
and no results can provide evidence in favor of the paranormal claim.
 This study is able to falsify the paranormal claim if significant inaccuracy between
perception of health by a person and by the claimant is revealed. There is no format
for what would account for a falsification of the claim.

Location and arrangements

The study will presumably take place at the usual FACT Skeptics Group meeting place at
the Upper Crust Pizza restaurant in Winston Salem, North Carolina. The date is Sunday
February 8 2009 and as this procedure is being written the time of day for this study has
not yet been set.

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 The claimant requires a small table by which one volunteer at a time will be
seated, and the claimant as well as two skeptics will have a chair behind the volunteer.
The claimant does not require a table.
The health forms for the study will be provided by the claimant and brought to the
study by the claimant. These consist of series of health forms (the check-box
questionnaires); volunteer’s health form, claimant’s health form, and two skeptic’s health
forms for a total of four health forms and a total of eight sheets of paper each. Each series
of four health forms will be printed with the same identification number in their top right
margin and this consists of four randomly generated numbers. A series of four health
forms with the same identification number are stapled together in such matching fours.
Several of these fours of forms are brought to the study by the claimant. The claimant as
of now does not know how many people will show up to volunteer at this particular study
so she will try to bring more than enough of forms.

Study procedure
At the beginning of the meeting claimant, skeptics, and any other attendees, should have
some time to talk through the upcoming study. The claimant wishes to describe how she
has intended for this study to take place and to give the instructions to those who wish to
volunteer. It will then be decided: who among the attendees wish to volunteer to be seen
by the claimant (not all who attend the meeting are required to volunteer). Those who
wish to volunteer are handed one stapled series of four health forms each and are asked to
fill in the forms that say volunteer’s health form and to leave the other forms in the stack
blank. Two or three skeptics will be chosen who will be assigned to be in charge of
forms. One is in charge of holding on to the volunteers’ forms, one is in charge of holding
on to the claimant’s forms and skeptics’ forms, or if a third one is assigned, he or she is
assigned the skeptics’ forms. The claimant also asks for two attendees to serve as skeptics
who look at the volunteers alongside with the claimant and at the same time; the skeptics’
health forms are intended for these two skeptics. It does not have to be the same two
skeptics who fill in skeptics’ forms throughout the entire study; if several skeptics are
interested in this assignment then those positions can be changed between skeptics. If
skeptics who serve as ones who fills in skeptics’ forms wishes to volunteer to be seen,
then another skeptic will serve as the one filling in a skeptics’ form at that time.
Once it is time for a volunteer to be seen, the skeptic who is in charge of the
volunteer’s forms double-checks that all forms stapled together in the volunteer’s series
of forms have the same identification number. That skeptic then detaches the filled in
volunteer’s form from the others and collects it. That skeptic then detaches the claimant’s
form and the two skeptic’s forms and hands these to the claimant and the two skeptics
who will be seeing the volunteer.
The volunteer has a seat at the designated area and the claimant and the two
skeptics will be seated behind the volunteer. Since this is a study, the claimant reserves
the right to change her position to sit closer or farther from the volunteer, or to change the
angle at which she sees the volunteer. The claimant and two skeptics will look at the
volunteer and fill in their health forms regarding the perceptions they have of that
volunteer’s health. The claimant will answer based on her perceptions whereas the two
skeptics are encouraged to attempt any skill that they can think of to raise the extent of
accuracy on their forms: to try various forms of cold reading, guessing, statistics, or other

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tricks that they can think of. If the skeptics want, they can write in their health forms a
note of what type of technique they attempted. These two skeptics are also encouraged to
write notes on what cold reading they think might have been available, what ailments
might have had external symptoms, or other information relating to how one might
perceive information about health in the volunteers. Claimant and skeptics should all
bring notebooks to take notes on what they observe that could be informative about the
paranormal claim or about this study, or about future studies and tests.
The claimant will also serve as a volunteer in order to experience that aspect of
this study. In that round two skeptics fill in answers about her and the claimant’s form
pertaining to the claimant will be filled in by a third skeptic who MUST write down on
that claimant’s form that it is not the claimant but is a third skeptic answering it! (This
might already be printed on the series of forms that the claimant brings for herself.)

Results
The study is not designed based on a quantitative point scale system. It is not intended to
reveal a score that would be a “passing” or a “failing” score. But the claimant has one
suggestion for how to quantify the correlation between the answers made by the claimant
and the answers made by the volunteer. If no is 0, then an ailment can be described as
having an extent of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. If every discrepancy of one units between the
answer made by the volunteer and the answer made by the claimant or by a skeptic
corresponds to a 20% deduction from the point that can be acchieved in correlation, every
discrepancy of one units between the answers corresponds to a deduction of 0.2 points
from the possible 1 point for each such ailment that was checked for as occurring. The
total number of points acchieved is then calculated as the total points correlation
acchieved divided by the total number of points possible and multiplied by a hundred for
a total percent correlation.
This number says nothing on its own but is compared to that acchieved by the
skeptics to see whether the claimant acchieved a higher, equal, or lower correlation as the
skeptics who also filled in questionnaires.
Since one could acchieve more points from randomly guessing, I suggest that the
total number of points acchieved is divided by the number of ailments that were checked
for as occurring to get an average correlation per question.
It is clearly a flawed system since this study is not designed as a test. This study is
designed to learn more about the perceptions.
The skeptic with the volunteer’s forms and the one or two skeptics with the
claimant’s forms and skeptics’ forms and the claimant will agree on a time to meet to go
through the forms and observe the correlation between forms. If it is most appropriate for
the skeptics to hold on to the original copies of the forms then the claimant is entitled to
produce photocopies at her own expense.

What would falsify the claim?

The purpose of this study is to learn more about the perceptions, but the claimant hopes
that a non-ability could be revealed if she acchieves very poor correlation. There is no
point scale system for determining at what point the claim has been falsified.

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 Presentation of results
The claimant will make the answers in the forms available on her webpage
www.visionfromfeeling.com and post what she learned from the study. The participating
skeptics are encouraged to take part in forming conclusions as well as verifying that the
study and the results took place as described.

Volunteer answered Claimant or Skeptic answered Percent correlation

0 0 disregarded
0 1 80%
0 2 60%
0 3 40%
0 4 20%
0 5 0%
1 0 disregarded
1 1 100%
1 2 80%
1 3 60%
1 4 40%
1 5 20%
2 0 disregarded
2 1 80%
2 2 100%
2 3 80%
2 4 60%
2 5 40%
3 0 disregarded
3 1 60%
3 2 80%
3 3 100%
3 4 80%
3 5 60%
4 0 disregarded
4 1 40%
4 2 60%
4 3 80%
4 4 100%
4 5 80%
5 0 disregarded
5 1 20%
5 2 40%
5 3 60%
5 4 80%
5 5 100%

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