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Natalia Demkina, (Russian: Наталья Демкина; born 1987), also known by known the diminutive Natasha, is a young woman from Saransk, Russia. She is currently a full time student at Semashko State Stomatological University, Moscow, and a member of the Center of Special Diagnostics; a unit which specializes in researching folk healing, traditional medicine, and claims of unconventional healing abilities.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, she attracted significant international attention after its was claimed that she had the ability see inside the human body to the cellular level, and to be able to make accurate medical diagnosis based on what she saw.

Experiments conducted in Russia, the United Kingdom and Japan appear to validate her claims, while experiments conducted in the United States disagree. The existence of her abilities remains a point of controversy.

History

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

Russia

After stories about Demkina had begun to spread, doctors at a children’s hospital in her home town asked her to performed a number of task to see if her abilities were genuine. In one test, Demkina is reported to have drawn a picture of what she saw inside a doctor’s stomach, successfully 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. Further tests on the woman validated her assertion.

United Kingdom

In January 2004, Demkina was brought to London by a group of British journalists. She was asked to diagnose a number of people, and her diagnosis were then compared to professional medical diagnosis. She scored well in the experiments including one case in which she is reported to have successfully identified all the fractures and metal pins in a woman who had recently been a victim in a car crash, even though the subject was fully clothed and had no visible signs of her injuries. Following this she made several diagnosis on live shows, again reportedly scoring a high level of success. Her level of accuracy was sufficient to convince witnesses of her abilities.

However, the experiments were not carried out under properly controlled conditions, and there were no doctors present for much of the process, so the results could not be declared as scientifically valid. After Demkina had left the United Kingdom it also emerged that she had made serious errors. In one incident she attempted to diagnose television-physician Dr. Christopher Steele. She reported that he was suffering from a number of medical conditions, including kidney stones, an ailment of the gall bladder, and an enlarged liver and pancreas. A later medical evaluation showed that the Dr. Steele was in good health and was not suffering from any of the ailments that she had diagnosed.

New York

In May 2004 Demkina traveled to New York, where she appeared in a documentary; titled The Girl with X-Ray Eyes produced by the Discovery Channel. In New York, her abilities were tested under in a more scientific environment than the London experiments.

Preliminary tests 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 experiment was designed it to look for a strongly demonstrated ability, apparent weak or erratic abilities were decided to be non-viable given the nature of her claims, and were therefore determined to pose no interest.

Hyman, Wiseman, and Skolnick arranged seven volunteers. Six of whom had undergone documented medical procedures, and one of whom was a control subject. Demkina was then given a list detailing the conditions that she was looking for, and was asked to identify which condition matched which volunteer. It was agreed in advance that the experiment would be considered a success if she managed to correctly match five of the seven patients to their conditions. Medical conditions that were not on the list presented to her were deemed to be unimportant.

Over the course of 4 hours, Demkina correctly diagnosed four of the volunteers (including the control subject); falling below the requirements of the experiment. From these results, researchers concluded that she had not demonstrated sufficient evidence of an ability to warrant further study and no further experiments were carried out.

After the experiment, Wiseman publicly attributed Demkina's score to a combination of cold reading and external observation.

Professor Richard Wiseman: "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."

Tokyo

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

After her experiences in London and New York, Demkina set several conditions for the experiments, 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.

According to accounts on her website, Demkina was able to see that one of the patients had a prosthetic knee, and that another had asymmetrically placed internal organs. She also diagnosed the early stages of pregnancy with a female patient, and diagnosed an undulating spinal curvature in another subject; producing a drawing that was almost identical to X-rays of the patient.

Having reviewed accounts of the New York experiments; specifically claims that that Demkina might be using a number of conventional factors to aid her diagnosis, Professor Machi also arranged for an experiment to take place in a veterinary clinic, where Demkina was asked to diagnose an anomaly in a dog. Demkina correctly identified that the dog has an artificial device in its back right leg, but only after being specifically directed to look at the animals paws.

Criticism

As with many other paranormal cases, the case of Natasha Demkina has been the subject of debate within the paranormal and scientific communities, and experiments involving her been the subject of a variety of 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 extra sensory 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.

Josephson

Under the New York experiment, Demkina had to correctly match 5 patients out of 7 with their condition in order to succeed. According to Professor Brian Josephson, such a standard of proof was statistically unjustifiable, and give the impression that the experiment was purposefully designed to portray Demkina as a fraud by setting an untenably high goal for her to reach

Josephson states that, statistically, the odds of Demkina scoring 4 out of 7 were 1 in 50, or less than 2%. A success rate notably above that which could reasonably be attributed to chance alone.

In their defense, those behind the New York Experiment stated that statistical calculation indicating that a result which is higher than could be expected though random chance should not be considered proof in the case of paranormal abilities, such as those claimed by Demkina, because of the need, though Bayesian inference, to compensate for the possibility that Demkina could have harvested clues about a patients condition through keen observation and cold reading, thus allowing her to make informed choices rather than random guesses.

Josephson However contends that by using inference to minimize the probability of a false positive occurring, the experiment also had an also enhanced the probability of a false negative occurring. In this case, a moderate/weak correlation being recorded as no correlation because of the inference level being set too high. Bayesian inference can be contentious because the validity of a result depends on the validity of the prior distribution; which cannot be assessed statistically, sometime leading it and can lead to leads to confirmation bias.

The Bayes factor of the experiment was calculated by professors Persi Diaconis and Susan of the Department of Statistics at Stanford University.

In most clinical trials, a result is considered to be statistically significant if the probability that the difference between groups could have occurred by chance alone is 20 to 1 or below.

Further claims

In addition to reporting being able to preform see inside a patient, which she refers to as "medical vision", Demkina also claims to be able to diagnose medical conditions from photographs without first seeing the subject in person. According to her personal website these abilities were explored while in Tokyo, and were validated by Japanese scientists. They were not explored during experiments in the US.

See also

• Medical intuitive

References

1. ^ "The Girl with X-Ray Eyes (summary of program only)". 9pm, 2004-09-30 (Discovery UK). Discovery Channel. {{cite episode}}: Check |episodelink= value (help); Check date values in: |airdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |city= and |serieslink= (help); External link in |episodelink= (help); Missing or empty |series= (help); Unknown parameter |episodelink= ignored (|episode-link= suggested) (help)
2. ^ Skolnick, Andrew A (May 2005). "Testing Natasha: The Girl with Normal Eyes". Skeptical Inquirer. Retrieved 2006-12-12. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
3. ^ Official Home Page, Template:Ru icon-see also the English translation accessed 21 August 2006)
4. ^ Sample, Ian (2004-09-25). "Visionary or fortune teller? Why scientists find diagnoses of 'x-ray' girl hard to stomach". The Guardian. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
5. ^ Hyman, R (May 2005). "Testing Natasha". Skeptical Inquirer. CSICOP. Retrieved 2006-12-12. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
6. ^ Hyman, R. "Statistics and the Test of Natasha". CSICOP. Retrieved 2006-12-12. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
7. Kuzina, Svetlana (2005). "X-Ray Girl Surprises Japanese". Pregnancy Press. Retrieved 2006-07-17. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
8. ^ Josephson B, University of Cambridge, Scientists' unethical use of media for propaganda purposes
9. Mathworld Bayesian Analysis
10. Medical University of South Carolina Statistical Significance

External Links

• The Demkina File at Skeptical Investigations
• Julio Siqueira's critique of the CSICOP/CSMMH investigation of Natasha Demkina
• How not to do an experiment
• 東京電機大学

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

ru:Д емкина, Наталья Николаевна