User:Dreadstar/ND

Natalia Demkina (Russian: Наталья Демкина; born 1987), usually known by the diminutive Natasha, 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 and on the Discovery Channel.

[edit] History

According to her mother, Tatyana Vladimovna, Natasha was like any other child growing up, although perhaps a bit more mature than other kids her age. A quick learner, she was able to talk at six months and by one year of age she was able to recite Pushkin and Nekrasov from memory, and by the time she was three she had learned the Russian alphabet and how to operate a snowmobile. ^[1]

Natasha’s family says they are unsure about the exact origin or cause of Natasha’s reputed gift, but it began when Natasha was ten years old and was admitted into a hospital to have her appendix removed. There were complications when cotton swabs were accidentally left in her abdomen, and a second surgery was necessary to remove them. About a month after the surgery, she began to claim that she could see inside people. She told her mother she saw “a crimped tube similar to our vacuum cleaner inside of you. I also see two beans and a tomato that resembles a bulls' heart.” Her mother believes that since Natasha didn’t know the proper names for internal organs, she was describing the intestines, kidneys and heart by comparing them to fruits and vegetables. ^[1]

Natasha describes the incident saying, "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 colourful picture inside the person and then I start to analyse it." ^[2]

In Natasha’s hometown of Saransk in Western Russia, doctors at the children’s hospital performed a number of tests to see if Natasha actually did have some type of “x-ray vision.” In one test, Natasha drew a picture of what she said she saw inside a doctor’s stomach, marking the exact spot where he had an ulcer. She also disagreed with the diagnosis of a cancer patient, saying all she could see was a small cyst. Further tests on the woman proved that Natasha was correct. ^[1]

According to her official website, news of Natasha's gift was at first spread by word of mouth. She gained further publicity in the spring of 2003, when a local newspaper wrote about her. She was interviewed for a local television program in November of that year. By the end of 2003, she had gained international attention from journalists and scientists.^[3]

Natasha claims to be able to distinguish even the tiniest pathology on a molecular level in the deepest corners of a human body, which are usually left undetected by regular ultrasound. ^[1] “It's like having double vision. I can switch from one to the other in no time if I need to know a person's health problem,” said Natasha. “I see an entire human organism. It is difficult to explain how I determine specific illnesses. There are certain impulses that I feel from the damaged organs. The secondary vision works only in daytime and is asleep at night.” ^[1][4]

According to the Discovery Channel, Natasha became an icon in Russia, receiving dozens of phone calls every day with people lined up outside her parents small apartment to wait for consultations, paying around 400 rubles (about $15 USD) for each visit. This was a boon to Natasha because it helped her in her stated goal to attend medical school in Moscow so she would be able to “continue helping people.” The income from her talent provided her family with the financial ability to send her to a university. Natasha often had headaches after these sessions and found it emotionally exhausting because of the illnesses she diagnoses. ^[1]

Natasha was invited to London, New York and Tokyo to undergo testing and give demonstrations of her abilities. The British journalists in the London appearance unanimously acknowledged Natasha's remarkable gift, whereas American scientists working with the Discovery Channel came to a different conclusion. The American researchers set a high statistical level of success that Natasha failed to meet, finding only four of seven conditions instead of the five required to pass. Natasha later passed testing performed in Tokyo, where Japanese scientists validated her paranormal vision. ^[5] Demkina has since graduated from school and passed entrance examinations to Semashko State Stomatological University, Moscow, where she is currently a full-time student.

According to Natasha's web site, she works with the Center of Special Diagnostics and a team of experts that possess unusual abilities, folk healers as well as professionals of traditional medicine.

They believe that such an association will help not only to raise methods of diagnostics and treatment to a new level, but also to make breakthroughs in many different scientific directions connected with health. ^[4]

[edit] Appearance in London

In January 2004, British journalists brought Natasha to London England where she successfully identified all the fractures and metal pins in a woman who had recently been a victim in a car crash. The woman was fully clothed and had no visible signs of how or where she had been injured. ^[1]

In London, journalists tested her ability but no doctors were present at the examination. Natasha was told to specify diagnoses of patients, from six to eight people; then her predictions were compared with official medical diagnoses of the patients. She identified each one correctly. As a result of the success, Natasha soon appeared in a live show where she "X-rayed" patients in front of large audience. And again the girl performed successfully. Unfortunately, there was no scientific confirmation of the phenomenon. ^[6]

The Guardian reported that on ITV's This Morning television show, Natasha "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 rushed off to have a battery of clinical tests, which found nothing wrong with him. ^{[2] [7]}

[edit] Discovery Channel appearance

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 ^[1] and to be tested by researchers under partially controlled conditions. The preliminary test was arranged by Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and Andrew Skolnick of the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health (CSMMH). The test required Demkina to correctly match six specified anatomical anomalies to seven volunteer subjects. The cases in question included six specified anatomical anomalies resulting from surgery and one "normal" control subject. ^[8]

Because of limitation in time and resources, the preliminary test was designed to look only for a strongly demonstrated ability. 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. Demkina and the investigators had agreed that she needed to correctly match at least five of the seven conditions to warrant further testing. ^[8]

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.^[7][9]

The design and conclusions of the experiment were the subjects of substantial dispute between Demkina's supporters and those of the investigators. In the opinion of Professor Josephson, many viewers of the Discovery Channel’s CSICOP-CSMMH investigation into Natahsa Demkina came away with the feeling that the primary test in that investigation had been set up to ensure that she would fail. ^[10] The researchers counter that the test was not designed to cause Natasha to fail and the higher threshold for success was set because "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". ^[8]

Despite the problems associated with the difficult and unfamiliar conditions surrounding the test, ^[4][10] Natasha was able to correctly identify four of the seven specified conditions. A simple calculation shows that the odds of getting 4 hits or more out of 7 by chance are more than 50 to 1 against. ^[10] This is a statistically significant result; in most clinical trials a result is statistically significant if the difference between groups could have occurred by chance alone is 20 to 1 or below; ^[11] but the investigators put that fact aside and only spoke of Natasha 'failing the test', attributing the correct matches to Natasha being a good guesser and using cold reading skills. ^[8]

Professor Hyman stated that Bayesian inference requires higher levels of statistical significance when testing paranormal claims.^[9] Prof. Wiseman, while knowing about the significance of a 50 to 1 statistic, did not agree that the cutoff point had been set too high. Wiseman did say that the result is "interesting", but is then quoted as saying: "At best, she's done this a lot and she has a real expertise at being able to look at people and make reasonably accurate diagnoses." He goes on to suggest that perhaps Natasha cheated, even though there is no evidence of this. ^[12]

Bayesian analysis is somewhat controversial because the validity of the result depends on how valid the prior distribution is, and this cannot be assessed statistically. ^[13] In these types of tests, one must also be careful to avoid confirmation bias.

According to Professor Josephson, the cutoff point of 5 of 7 is problematic because in minimizing the probability of a false positive in this way, the experimenters significantly enhanced the probability of an equally undesirable false negative, (i.e. Natasha appearing to have no abilities when in fact she has some). All that getting less than 5 successes really proved, under conditions that were very unfavorable to the exercise of her skills was that she could not get perfect results under arbitrary conditions. ^[10]

In the Discovery Channel program, 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. The investigators also claim that Demkina stated that appendixes can grow back after an appendectomy, which is impossible. ^[1][7]

The investigators posted a detailed rebuttal of typical objections ^[14]

[edit] Appearance in Japan

Natasha traveled to Tokyo Japan at the invitation of Yoshio Machi, a Professor at Tokyo Denki University, to have her abilities tested again. Professor Machi is a scientist who studies unusual human abilities. ^[4] With her experiences in the London and New York tests, Natasha put forth her own conditions to the Japanese scientists. She wanted each of the test patients to bring their latest medical certificates regarding their state of health. She also asked that each diagnosis be restricted to just one body part – the head, the torso, or extremities. ^[15]

During the test in Japan, Natasha was able to see that one of the patients had a prosthetic knee. Another patient was correctly identified as having asymmetrically placed internal organs. Natasha diagnosed the early stages of pregnancy and identified a pathology of the fetus with a female patient. She diagnosed a rare undulating spinal curvature with a male patient. When Japanese doctors compared Natasha's drawing of the curvature with the X-ray photograph, they could see that the photo and the drawing were identical. When Natasha was finished with her seven patients, Japanese doctors actually burst into applause. However, this was only the first stage of the trial. ^[16]

Taking into consideration the remarks of the American researchers that Natasha was not seeing but guessing people's diseases with the help of certain external factors, Professor Machi decided to conduct another testing session for the girl, this time in a veterinarian clinic. ^[4]

Natasha was asked to diagnose an old rottweiler. ^[5] She was afraid to approach the unmuzzled animal,^[16] but the doctor told her that she had to look at the dog's paws. Five minutes later the girl pointed at the animal's right back leg, where she correctly identified a prosthetic device.

Professor Machi said: "We did a whole range of tests, and the strangest thing was that we found she could also use her abilities on photographs, even on tiny passport photos." At first, the Japanese scientists did not believe it when she told them that she could also see diseases on people's photographs, but when she was presented a small, passport-sized photo of a person, she diagnosed liver cancer in the person on the picture. ^[15] According to Professor Machi, "She was able to look at them and apparently see what the problem was. Her ability is not x-ray vision, but she definitely has some kind of talent that we can't explain yet."

Skeptics claim that the Tokyo tests were not performed under strict conditions and are therefore invalid.

[edit] See also

• Medical intuitive

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

Demkina, Natasha Demkina, Natasha Demkina, Natasha Demkina, Natasha Demkina, Natasha

ru:Демкина, Наталья Николаевна