From: "Steven J. Powell" <sjpowell@access.digex.net>
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 09:37:27 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 09:54:28 -0500
Subject: Re: MJ-12 and Area 51
> From: Peregrine Mendoza <101653.2205@CompuServe.COM>
> Subject: Re: MJ-12 and Area 51
> The Duke of Mendoza presents his compliments and his best wishes for
> the holiday season and for the New Year to all on the List.
Ditto.
> > If the handwriting, or just writing or characters or icons or
> > whatever, was _firsthand_ I'd be a lot more inclined to want to
> > study it.
> Yes indeed. Why don't they just hand us over a few parchments? After
> all, they must know Budd & Betty & everyone's blown their cover by
> now, don't they? However...
They are covering up how atrocious their penmanship realy is.
> Lacking the priceless MSS, John Powell suggests comparing 'original'
> and 'fresh' samples of alleged alien writing from each claimant (a
> vertical test) and then comparing these writings claimant v. claimant
> (an horizontal test).
Exactly.
> > We compare the two samples (the fresh one from the claimant and the
> > original one from the claimant) and statistically on a character by
> > character basis we'd expect equal or better than 80% similarity to
> > advance that example further in our dataset.
> > The work done above should be as 'blind' as possible. The people
> > acquiring the 'fresh' handwriting example should not have seen
> > anybody's previous examples, the person holding the references
> > samples should not yet see the 'fresh' samples, etc.
> > Ok, _NOW_, we have a dataset that is workable.
> So far so good, but you haven't any controls in this experiment. I'd
> suggest that an even more workable dataset would have a third axis,
> using the same abduction claimants and a control group of
> non-claimants (selection criteria to be agreed). AFTER the claimants
> have produced their "fresh" allegedly-alien scripts, you ask the
> claimants and the control group to write down their
> *impressions* of a couple of lines of writing in (a) the Greek
> alphabet (b) Arabic script (c) Hebrew alphabet (d) Chinese pictograms.
> It will be obvious to anyone who knows these scripts whether or not
> the writer is giving an impression or really knows them. You either
> wipe the latter from your dataset, or choose control group members who
> don't know these scripts. (As with Roman letters, handwritten Greek
> and Hebrew are significantly different in places from their printed
> forms; for all I know that's true of Arabic and Chinese too.) The
> point would be to try to get some measure of how far people's
> impressions differ from a known real thing. What they write doesn't
> have to make sense - we just want to know how accurately they recall
> details of unknown scripts that they have seen only casually.
> When they have completed their impressions, you show them a couple of
> lines of the real thing, for a couple of minutes or so, then ask them
> to reproduce them from memory. That gives you a measure of how
> accurate (compared to the generality, too) the claimants' memories for
> such things may be.
If I understand correctly you're trying to make two specific
distinctions:
1) How good are they at remembering 'foreign' symbology.
2) To what degree (if any) has their alien symbology been
affected by known foreign symbology.
So, procedurally, we have this:
1) Sketch the alleged alien symbology.
2) Sketch what you think is foreign symbology.
a) If this foreign symbology closely resembles their
alien symbology then we do likley have a problem.
b) If it doesn't then fine.
3) Observe known foreign symbology.
4) Re-sketch that foreign symbology.
a) If the re-sketch closely matches the observed foreign
symbology then perhaps we have a good observer.
b) If it doesn't then perhaps we have a poor observer.
> The way to lay out the analyses is pretty obvious, I should think.
> What say? Good wheeze?
I like it but it does create some interesting analysis problems.
What do we say about a claimant whose tested observation powers are poor
yet who's 1st and 2nd alien samples closely match each other and the
_original_ reference samples? (I think realistically we have to ignore
that oddity unless we can prove they cheated.)
Additionally, what do we say about a claimant who knows foreign
alphabet, both foreign alphabet tests are fine, the alien-foreign
conmparison doesn't match well, and whose alien sample closely matches
the _original_ reference sample? I think this is the 'best' path
through the tests.
I _do_ think that separating out the claimants who's alien sample
closely matches known foreign samples and then making separate
comparisons with _original_ reference samples would be interesting.
--
Thanks, take care.
John.
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[ sjpowell@access.digex.net ]
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