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Natasha Demkina

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Natalia Nikolayevna Demkina (Russian: Наталья Николаевна Демкина; born 1987), usually known under the hypocoristic naming Natasha Demkina, is a young woman from Saransk, Russia, who claims to possess a special vision that allows her to look inside human bodies and see organs and tissues, and thereby make medical diagnoses. Since the age of ten, she has performed readings in Russia. In 2004 she appeared on television shows in the United Kingdom, on the Discovery Channel and in Japan. Since 2004 Demkina has been a full-time student of the Semashko State Stomatological University, Moscow. Since January, 2006, Demkina has worked for the Center of Special Diagnostics of the Person (TSSD), whose stated purpose is to diagnose and treat illness in cooperation with "experts possessing unusual abilities, folk healers and professionals of traditional medicine."[1]

History

According to her mother, Tatyana Vladimovna, Demkina was a fast learner, but was otherwise a normal child until she was ten years old, at which time her ability began to manifest itself. [2]

"I was at home with my mother and suddenly I had a vision. I could see inside my mother's body and I started telling her about the organs I could see. Now, I have to switch from my regular vision to what I call medical vision. For a fraction of a second, I see a colorful picture inside the person and then I start to analyze it." says Demkina [3]

After describing her mother's internal organs to her, Demkina's story began to spread by word of mouth among the local population and people began gathering outside her door seeking medical consultations. Her story was picked up by a local newspaper in spring 2003 and a local television station followed suit in November that year. In turn, leading to interest from the international media, and to invitations to give demonstrations, and undergo testing, in London, New York and Tokyo. [2][1]

Russia

After stories about Demkina had begun to spread, doctors at a children’s hospital in her home town asked her to perform a number of tasks to see if her abilities were genuine. Demkina is reported to have drawn a picture of what she saw inside a doctor’s stomach, marking where he had an ulcer. She also disagreed with the diagnosis of a cancer patient, saying all she could see was a small cyst.[2][1]

United Kingdom

In January of 2004, British tabloid newspaper The Sun brought Demkina to Britain. The Guardian reports that on ITV's This Morning, Demkina "impressed [host] Fern Britton by spotting her sore ankle." She also gave Dr. Christopher Steele, the show's on-air physician, a reading. She claimed she saw something wrong with his gall bladder, that he had kidney stones, and an enlarged liver and pancreas. The physician later had a battery of clinical tests performed, and these found no evidence of the conditions Demkina reported.[3] [4]

New York

In May 2004 she was brought to New York City by the Discovery Channel to appear on a documentary titled The Girl with X-Ray Eyes,[2] and to be tested by skeptical researchers from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry under partially controlled conditions.

As a demonstration for the documentary, Demkina was shown giving diagnoses to people who had previously given descriptions of specific medical conditions that they had. Most of the people given these readings felt that Demkina had accurately identified their conditions. The researchers, however, were not similarly impressed. Professor Wiseman said that "[W]hen I saw her do her usual readings, I couldn't believe the discrepancy between what I was hearing and how impressed the individuals were... I thought they were going to walk away saying it was embarrassing, but time and again, they said it was amazing. Before each reading, I asked the people what was the main medical problem and Natasha never got one of those right." Wiseman compared the belief of people in Demkina's diagnoses to the belief of people in fortune tellers, and said that people focus only on those portions of Demkina's comments that they believe.[3]

Then researchers Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) - formerly CSICOP, and Andrew Skolnick of the now defunct Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health (CSMMH) conducted their test of Demkina. CSI is an organization dedicated to debunking paranormalist claims, and CSMMH was an affilated organization. In the test, Demkina was required to correctly match six specified anatomical anomalies to seven volunteer subjects.[4] [5] The cases in question included six specified anatomical anomalies resulting from surgery and one "normal" control subject. The researchers said that, because of limitation in time and resources, the preliminary test was designed to look only for a strongly demonstrated ability.[5] The researchers explained that while evidence of a weak or erratic ability may be of theoretical interest, it would be useless for providing medical diagnoses. In addition, the researchers said that the influence of the "Clever Hans effect" could not be ruled out under the lax conditions of the test.[5] Demkina and the investigators had agreed that she needed to correctly match at least five of the seven conditions to warrant further testing.[5] In the 4-hour-long test, Demkina correctly matched conditions to four volunteers, including the control subject. The researchers concluded that she had not demonstrated evidence of an ability that would warrant their further study.[4][6]

The design and conclusions of the experiment were subsequently the subjects of considerable dispute between Demkina's supporters and those of the investigators. In a self-published commentary, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson criticized the test and evaluation methods and argued that the results should have been deemed "inconclusive." Josephson, the director of University of Cambridge's Mind-Matter Unification project, who has been criticized by colleagues for his enthusiasm for the paranormal,[7] questioned the researchers' motives and alleged that the experiment was "some kind of plot to discredit the teenage claimed psychic."[8]Josephson also charged that Demkina's four matches represented a statistically significant result in favor of her abilities, since the odds against her matching that many at random were 50 to one.[7] Professor Hyman responded that Bayesian inference requires higher levels of statistical significance when testing paranormal or other unlikely claims, because the initial assumptions must be biased strongly against such a claim.[6][9]The investigators posted a detailed rebuttal of typical objections, such as pointing out that the 50-to-1 odds would only be for random blind guessing: "Demkina was not blindly guessing. She had a great number of normal sensory clues that could have helped increase her number of correct matches."[10]

In the Discovery Channel program,[2] Demkina offered a number of explanations for why she failed to see the specified conditions in three of the subjects and reported seeing those conditions in three wrong subjects. She said that she should have looked longer and deeper to find the subject who has a metal plate covering a missing section of his skull, even though the outline of the large metal plate could be seen beneath the scalp from up close. She said surgical scars interfered with her ability to see the resected esophagus and removed appendix, though the researchers countered that those surgical scars should have helped her identify the correct subjects. Demkina also claimed that appendixes can grow back after an appendectomy, which the researchers dismissed as incorrect.[2][4]

Tokyo

After visiting New York, Natasha traveled to 東京電機大学 (Tokyo Electrical University) in Japan, at the invitation of Professor Yoshio Machi, who studies claims of unusual human abilities. [1]

According to accounts on her personal website, after her experiences in London and New York, Demkina set several conditions for the tests, including that the patients bring with them a medical certificate stating their health status, and that the diagnosis be restricted to a single specific part of the body – the head, the torso, or extremities - which she was to be informed of in advance. [1]

Demkina's website claims that she was able to see that one of the patients had a prosthetic knee, and that another had asymmetrically placed internal organs. She also claims to have detected the early stages of pregnancy in a female patient, and an undulating spinal curvature in another subject. [1]

Machi also arranged for a test to take place in a veterinary clinic, where Demkina was asked to diagnose an anomaly in a dog. Natasha claims to have correctly identified that the dog had an artificial device in its back right leg after being specifically directed to look at the animals paws. [1]

As with the test conducted in the UK, the Tokyo tests were not subject to independent review.

Criticism

Demkina

After completing experiments in New York, Demkina made several complaints in regards to the conditions under which they were conducted, and about the way in which she and her diagnosis were treated. She argued that she had required more time to see a metal plate in one subjects skull, that surgical scars interfered with her ability to see the resected esophagus in another, and that that she had been presented with two patients who had undergone abdominal procedure, but that she had only one abdominal condition on her list of potential diagnosis, leaving her confused as to which one matched the listed condition. She also complained that she was unable to see that one volunteer had had their appendix removed because appendixes sometimes grow back, and that she was not able to compare her own diagnosis to an independent medical diagnosis after key experiments had been conducted. Preventing her from being able to see if she was diagnosing genuine conditions that were unknown to those conducting the experiments, and which were thus being listed against her in the overall results despite them being valid (as a result of this complaint, all volunteers in the Tokyo experiments were required to bring medical certificates with them prior to diagnosis).

In response to these complaints, the research team stated that Demkina should have been able to find the plate without extrasensory abilities, because its outline could be seen beneath the subject's scalp, and questioned why the presence of scar tissue in a patients throat had not alerted her to them having an esophagus condition. Additionally, they noted that it remains clinically impossible for an appendix to spontaneously regrow.

[2][11][1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h "Special Diagnostic Center of Natalya Demkina".
  2. ^ a b c d e f g The Discovery Channel, 2004, The Girl with X-Ray Eyes
  3. ^ a b c The Guardian, 25 Sept 2004, "Visionary or fortune teller? Why scientists find diagnoses of 'x-ray' girl hard to stomach"
  4. ^ a b c d Skolnick AA, Skeptical Inquirer, May 2005, "Testing Natasha: The Girl with Normal Eyes"
  5. ^ a b c d Hyman R, Skeptical Inquirer, May 2005, "Testing Natasha"
  6. ^ a b Hyman R, CSICOP, "Statistics and the Test of Natasha"
  7. ^ a b "Scientists fail to see eye to eye over girl's 'X-ray vision'". Times Higher Education Supplement. Dec. 10, 2004. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ Josephson, Brian. "Scientists' unethical use of media for propaganda purposes". Retrieved 2006-08-31.
  9. ^ "Cause, Chance and Bayesian Statistics: A Briefing Document". Retrieved 2006-09-11. {{cite web}}: line feed character in |title= at position 39 (help); Hyman, Ray. "Statistics and the Test of Natasha". CSICOP. Retrieved 2006-08-31.
  10. ^ Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health (CSMMH), "Answer to Critics"
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference skolnick1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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