Subject: Re: Equidistant letters

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 15:39:12 -0500 (EST)

Nichael wrote:

<< Whatever the validity of the original claims, the BR article presented
only
 the must cursory and "hand-waving" description of what the original authors
 claimed and virtually no discussion whatsoever of the statistical issues
 involved.  It was very hard to come away from the article with any real
 understanding of what was going on.
 
 Rather the author, Jeffrey R. Satinover (a family therapist and mystery
 novelist) did not even even attempt to appear to present a critical
 examination --or indeed even a serious discussion-- of the authors' claims.
 Rather he accepted the claims at full face value and presented them as
 simple, given fact. >>

I have read and studied the original article in the journal STATISTICAL
SCIENCE, the most prestigious journal serving the top academic statisticians.
The article underwent the most strenuous peer review before publication, and
no one found any flaws in it. Since its publication some critiques have been
circulated, but no refutation of the article has appeared in a professional
journal. The conclusion of the authors was "We conclude that the proximity of
ELS's with related meanings in the Book of Genesis in not due to chance."
This is supported by impressive data that rank the phenomenon in Genesis 5th
among 1,000,000 samples in the control group.

The SS experiment has been taken seriously by many well informed people, and
unfortunately many uninformed people have jumped on this band waggon to
promote all kinds of wild agendas.

I am very skeptical of the experiment, and am working with several
professionals to test its validity. We should warn people to procede
verycausiously with this, but it should be taken seriously. It is not
something that can be passed off lightly. I subscribe to a list that
discusses this topic daily. Some subscribers are wholly convinced that the
ELS codes are of God, and are attempting to use them for apologetic purposes.
In my opinion that is totally unjustified. Others, like myself, are examining
it technically with a fine-toothed comb. 

James D. Price

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 15:50:08 -0700

>among 1,000,000 samples in the control group.

Before incivility breaks out, we should perhaps note that two different
journals are being referred to here.

But this still doesn't address the point that some of us are still wondering
about. That point being, "What did the articles claim?"

If it is claimed that the MT is very uniform, and seems to have been copied
with extreme fidelity from generation to generation -- well, that is no
surprise. I haven't heard anyone deny it. The effort made by the scribes
was immense.

But so what?

I hope someone can offer some elucidation.

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]