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Proof Positive

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  • 10-01-2005 11:18pm
    #1
    davros
    Closed Accounts Posts: 857 ✭✭✭


    Just watched the start of a new series on Sky One - Proof Positive. Over the course of an hour, Amanda Tapping (she plays a scientist on Stargate SG-1) introduced three claims of the paranormal. Then they asked an expert to look at each case and give an opinion.

    The first case was the appearance of "rods" in amateur video footage. Supposedly these are an undiscovered life form that nobody has ever seen except in photographs. This was comprehensively demolished by a forensic video expert who showed how flying insects and motion blur combine to produce the effect.

    The second case was a lighthouse that continued to shine after its caretaker died and the power was disconnected. A professor of optics was easily able to discover that the light was a reflection off a pane of glass in the tower.

    The last case was a detective who claimed to be an artist in a past life. It started when in regression hypnosis he came up with 28 facts about the artist. The only strong fact among them was a painting of a hunchbacked lady. He later figured out the identity of the artist and confirmed the rest of the facts.

    The problem here was the expert the show chose: a polygraph specialist. So they were only testing whether the guy was lying (assuming you believe in polygraphs and are not suspicious that a police detective would know how to beat one). They did not even attempt to test whether the reincarnation theory was a good one.

    It was pretty obvious where the explanation most likely lay. After his regression session, the guy spent a year leafing through art books in libraries to find a picture of a hunchbacked woman. He eventually found one in a gallery in another city. He then researched the artist and was lucky to find 17,000 pages of the artist's diaries that had been preserved. Among these 17,000 pages, he was able to confirm the other 27 facts (like a walking stick, a studio with a lot of windows, etc.). Not so remarkable.

    Still, the programme was well-constructed and at least asked some good questions. Worth a look next week, I'd say.


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