Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Trig's vs Ruffles' Ear: What are the Odds of Similarities Due to Chance?

Here is the overlay I posted a few days ago:

"Ruffle's" ear is to the far left, Trig's ear around age 1 is next to it, and the third and fourth pictures show Trig's ear halfway and then all the way on top Ruffle's ear. I wrote that there was a remarkable correspondence of elements that aligned in the two pictures. Some folks wrote they did not see the similarities.

So what I would like to do now is try to make clearer what the elements are that I see in common in the two ears, and then ask if chance can account for the similarities. First, here are the two ears side by side:


Next, here are the same two ears with sections highlighted or darkened to show the shapes that I see in the ears:



What I called Y-shapes the other day I have covered over with triangles. Directly under the triangles are trapezoids. And under those, batwing (or boomerang) shapes.

Note that the position of the top two elements in relation to each other stays relatively constant in each picture (although that pair of elements on the right side seem to have been rotated counterclockwise, as compared to the pair on the left). The batwing shapes in the two pictures are of different sizes and are not positioned in the same way relative to the top pair of elements. 

My hypothesis again is that the top of the helix in the left-hand picture is pulled down and buried under the scalp (a condition known as cryptotia) just above the batwing shape, causing the distortion in the size, shape and location of the batwing shape. My guess is that releasing the buried portion of the ear caused the entire ear to rotate counterclockwise, which would allow the elements in two pictures to align even better and allow the batwing shape to enlarge and be repositioned. However, the resolution of the photo on the left is such that pinpointing the cause of the malformation is dicey; I'll gladly concede that something other than cryptotia may have caused the malformation.

Still, if we can assume that the three elements highlighted on the left-hand picture belong to an ear (rather than say, the lower shape being a hole in the scalp), then a fair question is: How likely is it that you would find (from top to bottom) a triangle, a rectangle and a batwing shape in any ear selected at random? One commenter said that he (or she) had been looking a people's ears after reading my earlier post, and his view was that we are dealing with fairly common-looking ears; in other words, even if those similar shapes exist in the two ears above, perhaps we are still dealing with two different babies since chance can account for the similarities.

To "test" that idea, I found the following illustration of 30 male ears, essentially chosen at random, from people arrested in New York City (flipped to put ears in same orientation as those above):

To my eye, not a single ear in this collection has the same three elements. No doubt if we looked at enough ears selected at random, we would find an ear similar to the two above. But I think it is safe to say the odds of getting, by chance, two ears that match up the way the two above do is less than 1 in 30. Which means we can have a high degree of confidence we are dealing with the same baby.

Let me know if you see flaws in my analysis.




45 comments:

  1. Wow, ears look to be about as unique as fingerprints. Amazing assortment, Brad!

    As always, though, I don't know what to think. There had to have been two babies if the ruffled ear child picture is correctly dated in early May 2008, and the baby pictured with senior Heaths is correctly dated in mid-April.

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  2. I have no idea what to think anymore. Ruffles looks so darn small in that kitchen picture. I have such a hard time seeing how that tiny little baby became the Trig we saw in late August. He is absolutely huge then. It just defies logic.

    Now if the kitchen picture was way earlier than we have dated it then it is possible it could be him.

    I can't see any other possibility than he was born much earlier than April. That is the only way this makes sense & I do agree that the inner ear does match like you say it does.

    Thanks for pursuing this crazy story!

    DebinOH

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  3. If the baby was born in, say, December, then for four months, perhaps, he might have been in an NICU or similar place getting fed via IV. When released from the hospital, the baby could have lost weight because DS babies have trouble sucking, and maybe the Palins were not as attentive to his needs as they might have been.

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  4. @Ennealogic.

    I agree that the kitchen & shower (KS) Ruffles are not the 4/18-21 hospital & office (HO) Trig. I believe HO is the odd baby out, a rent-a-baby or a re-born doll. I don't recall HO moving or making noise in the video. I don't think HO is connected to any of the RNC babies either.

    I also agree that I don't know what to think. And that when Brad says, "I'm all ears," it doesn't just mean he's listening.

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  5. B: Do you mean literally a doll? Because someone from NC contacted me saying she thinks a renowned doll-maker down there perhaps made one for SP.

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  6. Yes, a "reborn" doll -- not a brand but a doll intended to look like a baby; just google it. Did you miss the discussion of a video where SP has something like a baby in a sling and at one point squeezes its head like you'd squeeze a tennis ball, and at another point lets the baby stand almost vertically in the sling with no support, not even for the head. While SP is lecturing to a church audience, paying no attn to the baby. I think our speculation about it started because the position of the face of the baby in the sling looked like it would not be able to breathe. I can't find that discussion now -- it was over at Laura's and on PG before that.

    Brad, if your lead to the dollmaker pans out, showing the dollmaker that video would mean an expert on dolls would comment on our questions.

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  7. Yes, I mean a doll. Please follow that NC lead, Professor! And thank you for not laughing.

    Google around in reborn dolls and you will see how life-like and specialized (perhaps DS and Yupik-blood?) some can be.

    I've long believed Trig's "birth" was timed to be end of legislative session, early end of trip to TX when media thought she was still there, middle of the night for the darkness and shift changes, and other reasons related to being the best time to be under the radar--rather than because Trig or a rent-a baby had been born and was available. There's no evidence she and Todd had to change plane tickets to leave "early," is there? All went according to plan, at least until Chuckie mention her waters breaking.

    The Heaths would have to have known they had a lifelike doll rather than a baby, but Sarah might have told them the baby was flown to an Anchorage NICU and she didn't want the media to know how sick he was, so they might have chosen to believe she really gave birth.

    We had the reborn doll discussion at Bree's and then Floyd's and then Blade's blog, at least, but I don't think Audrey, Patrick, or Gryphen ever posted about the possibility.

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  8. I found the earlier comment:


    Ottoline Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:52:52

    OMG Molly, the video you listed

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQIa3KGmlm0

    is the one that was discussed extensively re the possibility that the Trig shown here is one of those v lifelike dolls. Here were the reasons, as I recall them:

    1. baby seems so lifeless
    2. both the minister's and Piper's odd expressions, as if they know/suspect it's not a real baby
    3. at 1:47, Palin squishes his head! You can see her fingers depress into the head, as if it was a rubber doll head. The squishing would not be possible on a real baby, but on a doll it might serve to animate the face as she shows it off for that short moment. It could be her fingers moving the thick hat, but it looks like she's squishing a tennis ball.
    4. the position of the baby's sleeping face seems like he could not breathe!
    5. at 2:45 she takes her hand away from supporting his head, and he remains upright. Not my experience with tiny babies.

    FWIW.

    Whether she used a doll for public appearance might be irrelevant to our goals, but I mention it because it was quite the discussion some time ago, I forget on which blog.

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  9. Amy1 and B, I've never quite seen in that video what you and many other see. While the baby does look "lifeless" (sleeping?), I see at one point that the baby's arm has changed position: at first, his arm is hanging out. Then at 0:32 (even better at 0:58) you can see that he has pulled his arm in. I have watched many times, and I never see where Sarah had moved his arm for him.
    When she moves his face out to show it, I don't see a pinching of his head: I see her pulling his cap up and away from his face and turning his head out at the same time. The pinching seems to be of the cap, not the head.
    I've also seen alot of people using those slings for carrying infants, and more often than not, the baby is barely visible, with their head/face up against the chest of the parent, even more so than the baby is in this video.
    I also don't see that the minister or Piper's expressions look very strange, but that's pretty subjective.
    And while she does take her hand away from his head for a few seconds, she moves her arm back against his head pretty quickly, after about 4 seconds by my count.
    I just don't think this was a "born again" doll. I can't even think of a good reason she would have to use a doll at this date (June 2008) and in this situation.
    Not to say it's impossible. BTW, I watch the video with the sound off, and sometimes the lack of distraction helps to see things you wouldn't normally notice or perceive the same way.

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  10. @ginny11. I was talking about the Trig presented at the hospital and office a few days later. I haven't formed an opinion about the baby in the sling.

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  11. I'm not sure either. The arm bothers me too. I guess if the dollmaker pans out we could pursue it, but if not I'm not sure that this is a fruitful avenue. Esp now when it seems close to being over.

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  12. @Amy1. If the NCarolinian admitted to creating the hospital Trig doll, that would blow Sarah's Wild Ride and Trig's 4/18 birth date. Worth it, Brad.

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  13. I'm sorry Brad, I think your comparison is based on crude and inaccurate equivalences, and your conclusions are thus invalid.

    Your crude geometric figures don't -- and can't -- accurately map even the two-dimensional features that the pictures show, let alone the complexity of the three dimensional aspects. In something like an ear, the negative spaces are just as important as the highlights of the outermost levels.

    Your use of solid blocks that are close to opaque might persuade at a casual glance, but mask the way that the edges are not tidy, linear ones. The actual ear features are sometimes outside your shapes, sometimes inside.
    It's sloppy and does not show real congruence between your shapes and the structure of each ear, let alone the two ears.

    Take your "batwing or boomerang" shapes, which don't even resemble their namesakes that well. On the left one, you have its left top point almost completely starting at the right edge of the trapezoid. Yet the right one has its right top point at about the same place on the right border of the trapezoid, placing it entirely under the trapezoid. The lack of a match there is enough to torpedo your hypothesis entirely, let alone the other problems in your handling of this.

    This is a really bad piece of work. I have great respect for your work on the Palin issue so far, but as someone in the visual arts I have to get harsh and say you are totally out of your depth here.

    Ferry Fey

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  14. FF: I appreciate your comments. It seems to me that what you are objecting to is my methodology of using shapes. Fine. This is my third post on the topic. If the shapes approach does not work for you, then either refer to the overlay at the top and look for the correspondences between the two ears, or just look at the two ears side by side and make your comparisons that way.



    And here is the key question that you should ask: Are the ears dissimilar enough that you can conclude beyond are reasonable doubt that they MUST belong to different babies? After all, the accusation is that Palin switched babies. The onus is on the accuser to maker the case. And I don’t think there is any way now to say, yes, they MUST belong to different babies.



    The place where I think others have been fooled in the past was by simply looking at the ear in a horizontal orientation, as it appears in the original photo. It created, as I said earlier, a trompe-l’oeil, a trick of the eye, that made what I’ve called the batwing shape look like a hole unrelated to the ear. But by rotating the ear to a vertical position and placing it next to the other ear, suddenly it becomes clear that the batwing shape MIGHT in fact be part of the ear. And once you concede that that is a definite possibility, then the argument that the two ears CANNOT belong to the same baby falls apart. 



    So I don’t have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the ears are the same, in order to meet my main objective. I simply have to show that proponents of the Two Trigs Theory can no longer claim they have made their case beyond a reasonable doubt. And if they have failed to do that, then the folks in the Trig Truther community need to stop accepting as an article of faith that a baby swap happened. That’s my main objective.



    I think I’ve actually gone beyond that and have shown the ears are likely from the same baby. You may disagree. That’s fine.

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  15. I spent many hours last night looking for scientific articles to support the possibility that Ruffles' ears could have been corrected in infancy. The closest thing that I found was an article by Schonauer, La Rusca, and Molea (2007) that included many pictures of ears that were corrected by splinting. By my observation, which is not that of an ENT or any other kind of physician, the most deformed ear in this study appears to be depicted in Figure 4. However, I don't think that the deformities depicted in this article, which were apparently corrected by splinting during infancy, come anywhere near the level of deformity of Ruffles' ears.

    Link to article: http://tinyurl.com/3tq2t4z

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  16. colacarat:

    There are physicians who advertise on the internet that they can work such ears in infants.

    Read these

    http://www.earreconstruction.co.uk/aesthetic-surgery.php

    http://www.thebeautyofknowledge.com/non-invasive/earwell-infant-ear-correction-system/

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  17. also colacarat:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20453717

    If you have the money, you can get medical specialists to treat any common ear deformity now, even cryptotia. The Ear-Well System seems widely used.

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  18. Brad,

    I had read the first online article that you posted, and I don't think it reflects the severity seen in Ruffles' ears. I don't have access to the journal database for the second abstract that you posted. Do you? I need to see the entire article, not just an abstract. It's in PubMed. The first author's email is byrd.plasticsurgery@gmail.com. Do you want to email him/her about the severity of deformity in this situation?

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  19. I think the baby had cryptotia, which is treatable. But neither you nor I have the expertise to assess level severity, especially from that picture. This is getting too speculative for me to see any use in pursuing. I may have access to that database through school, but I'm not going down that route. Enough.

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  20. The major stumbling block to your position, Brad, IMO, is not the interior of the ear but the ruffled margin, which you maintain is fixable in the timeframe we have, but actual MDs have ALL said it could not be, AFTER looking at the photos of the ears IIRC. I too pointed to the online claims suggesting that the MDs we asked are wrong, but unless you can find actual MDs who look at the photo and make the opposite claim (i.e., that fixing the ruffle is possible on an infant, and a fragile infant at that) (even if the MDs do so anonymously, as the previous MDs did), then I think we continue to have an unresolved, unclear verdict.

    And even a 50%-say-fixable, 50%-say-not-fixable MD verdict is not really helpful. And at present the MDs are unanimous: not fixable.

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  21. Brad, here's an example of the reborn baby doll discussion:

    shesnohockeymom.blogspot.com/2010/07/
    oh-you-beautiful-doll.html#disqus_thread

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  22. B -- thx for linking to that discussion. In the comments, Blade asks if there is a video right after the "birth," and I recall seeing the video of the same event where the SP/Todd/Trig headshot was taken (the office presentation): it showed SP BOUNCING out of a door in her pencil skirt with zero signs of postpartum issues. I remember this because of all the red flags that went up for me for the obvious reasons.

    I looked for that video a few mo ago and could not find it. No surprise if it's been deleted. That video might have given some clue to mobile vs immobile face, but the still shots from a video do have poor resolution, usually.

    I'd say if a dollmaker would say she sold SP a doll and had a photo of it (a quick look through these dollmaker sites shows they keep photos of "adopted" dolls), and it matched, then BINGO -- and it sure would make the dollmaker famous!

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  23. Amy: As I keep saying, until I rotated the picture of the ruffled ear and placed it next to older Trig's ear, it was very hard to visualize that the "hole" was part of the ear. Now it's not hard at all. I've asked Gryphen a couple of times to show my analysis to the same folks he talked to before, because I'll bet they would change their view. He won't, because he is afraid of the answer he might get, IMO.

    But the only people who could knowledgeably comment on the question you raise are the very few specialists who have used, for example, the Earwell Infant Care System:

    http://www.thebeautyofknowledge.com/non-invasive/earwell-infant-ear-correction-system/

    The onus is on Gryphen to convincingly show the ear is NOT fixable since he is the one charging deception. Truly the only way he could do that is to interview the sorts of specialists who have used these new technologies. HIS methodology was badly lacking, plus he badly misrepresented what was possible, perhaps by not researching the topic thoroughly enough.

    As I wrote above:

    I don’t have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the ears are the same, in order to meet my main objective. I simply have to show that proponents of the Two Trigs Theory can no longer claim they have made their case beyond a reasonable doubt. And if they have failed to do that, then the folks in the Trig Truther community need to stop accepting as an article of faith that a baby swap happened.

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  24. Brad,

    Can I suggest that you include the picture from Frank Bailey's book into your discussion about the ears?

    It seems to me that this picture supports your theory. The top of the babies ear is a bit messed up in the picture, but the ear lobe is formed properly. This supports your idea that the lobe in the baby shower pictures was just squashed by the way the baby was being held. Can I suggest that you add that picture to your series of pictures of ears side by side.

    :-)

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  25. In fact the Bailey picture is sort of like the missing link. I think there are interesting things you could do with it if you want to spend a lot of time looking at ears.

    -Does the bottom part of the babies ear in Bailey's picture match the pictures of Trig's ear from the RNC?

    -Could the top part of the ear in Bailey's picture have formed into RNC Trig's ear?

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  26. Let's say you prove conclusively one way or the other: one baby? two babies? Who will care if they already do not care to look at the pre-"birth" photos and see the obvious OBVIOUS O-B-V-I-O-U-S conclusion there.

    Either the high-level MSM blackout is working well, or people have lost interest, or both. Either one is enough to let SP get away with it and save McCain. Koch, GOP, et al. a lot of embarrassment.

    Search4m0re: I keep thinking Tripp (if born in late 2007 or early 2008) when I look at that Baily/office/shoulder photo.

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  27. You might consider posting some before+after photos like these here:

    http://www.beconmedical.com/images/B-A.jpg

    http://www.facialsurgerycenter.com/images/earwell-before-afters.jpg

    Such examples certainly bolster the TriggyBear = Trig argument.

    I think you've established that deformed ears of infants can be corrected.

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  28. Super work yet again, Brad! I'm loving it. You are so right when you remind people we only have pictures (and low quality ones, at that) on which to base any of our ideas. Your 30 ear sampling is a great way to make the point.

    Dolls, borrowed babies, hidden children, two Trigs -- all are much harder to imagine than surgery, IMHO.

    ( Been trying to post this all day, and it keeps disappearing into cyberspace. Hope this shows up after I hit "Post Comment." )

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  29. @Allison. My suggestion that hospital Trig, whose ears are covered, could be a reborn doll coexists with Brad's opinion that Ruffles and RNC Trig don't have to be different babies.

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  30. @Brad

    You might've addressed this already and I missed it skimming over the comments, but...

    Is your conclusion that the surgery and/or therapy for Trig's ear was done prior to the RNC (Sept 1-3) but after the shower pics from May, 2008?

    A couple of questions: What was the latest date of "ruffled ear" photos that you have? From that particular date, would enough time have elapsed to allow for the healing of the "perfect" (rounded) ear at the RNC? Do those therapies/surgical methods that you researched typically produce these types of results in a similar time frame with 3-4 month old infants?

    I posted the same questions at Pogates, so I'll check there as well for your response. Thanks.

    jeff

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  31. Hey Brad. :-)

    I just noticed your post over at Politicalgates. It was interesting.

    Since you took my suggestion on board about the Bailey photo I was wondering if I could make

    another one to you on this topic?

    I am a very lazy person. I have ideas for things that could be done, but unfortunately never

    quite get to them. ....Story of my life I'm afraid. :-)

    ...Anyway I'll tell you what the idea is and if you feel like it maybe you could pursue it.

    A lot of the reason people believe there were 2 babies (apart from the ears) is because they

    believe the different pictures show that the babies are wildly different sizes. I mostly

    think this too to be honest. A bit of time ago though I saw a post on Laura's blog and took

    the picture at the top of the post and made this picture in Photoshop:

    http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/24/lauranovakblogpostlevip.jpg/

    When I started to make it I thought that it would show that the 2 babies featured were

    different sizes, but it actually didn't really show that. That lead me to realize (although

    I knew it already) that photos can be quite deceptive. I know we all know this really. The

    terrible problem we have in trying to judge the babies size in the photos is that the baby is

    being held by different people in each picture. The cameras being used are using different

    lenses, and the subjects in the photos are at different distances and angles from the camera.

    This all makes it really hard to judge much from the photos. I worry that we could be

    deceiving ourselves. I want, though, to make sure I state that I have no actual firm opinion

    on how many babies there were. I'm interested to find the answer though.

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  32. Here's my idea:

    We need a better way to compare the size of the baby in each photo. To do this we have to compare the size of the baby against the size of the objects he is next to. These objects are various people and their body parts. To measure the size of the baby we need to know the relative sizes of the people to each other. This is very difficult, but I think a way to do it is to find a series of posed photographs where the people are standing next to each other in a line and the camera is at a distance (so distortions caused by the lens are minimised). This type of picture is often taken. Think Family pictures, posed pictures when people meet celebs, school pictures etc. So obviously everyone that has held trig is not going to be together in one posed picture, but surely many of them are. Imagine for instance there is a family pic of Levi and Mercede, and family pic of Levi and Bristol and a pic of the Palin Family including Palin's mom. You would take all these pictures composite them and resize them so that Levi from picture 1 is the same size as the Levi in picture 2 etc. You would then have one picture of all the people in a line. I'm not claiming this would be massively accurate, but it would give a good guide to the relative size of the people and the lengths of things like their arms. If we want to use actual units of measurement then we can estimate that by using the heights of the people. Several of them must have publicly stated their height.

    After doing this I would study each picture of Trig and mark dots on the composite picture created to show where Trig was relative to the person. I would then try and assess his size in each picture. this method may or may not show anything, but at least it adds a bit more science (....maybe pseudo science ;-) ) to the analysis and hopefully stops us all seeing what we want to see.

    Sorry for being long winded. I hope you understand what I mean. It's obviously just a suggestion of a method of investigation. your free to do what you want.


    Nick. :-)

    .....I mean search4m0re. ....ah screw it.

    Nick. :-)

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  33. Sorry about the formatting of the first message. My first message got eaten so I pasted it in again, but that zapped the formatting and I didn't notice.

    Here it is again:

    ---------------

    Hey Brad. :-)

    I just noticed your post over at Politicalgates. It was interesting.

    Since you took my suggestion on board about the Bailey photo I was wondering if I could make another one to you on this topic?

    I am a very lazy person. I have ideas for things that could be done, but unfortunately never quite get to them. ....Story of my life I'm afraid. :-)

    ...Anyway I'll tell you what the idea is and if you feel like it maybe you could pursue it.

    A lot of the reason people believe there were 2 babies (apart from the ears) is because they believe the different pictures show that the babies are wildly different sizes. I mostly think this too to be honest. A bit of time ago though I saw a post on Laura's blog and took the picture at the top of the post and made this picture in Photoshop:

    http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/24/lauranovakblogpostlevip.jpg/

    When I started to make it I thought that it would show that the 2 babies featured were different sizes, but it actually didn't really show that. That lead me to realize (although I knew it already) that photos can be quite deceptive. I know we all know this really. The terrible problem we have in trying to judge the babies size in the photos is that the baby is being held by different people in each picture. The cameras being used are using different lenses, and the subjects in the photos are at different distances and angles from the camera. This all makes it really hard to judge much from the photos. I worry that we could be deceiving ourselves. I want, though, to make sure I state that I have no actual firm opinion on how many babies there were. I'm interested to find the answer though.

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  34. What I would like to understand is how this thesis advances the goal of exposing the hoax known as BABYGATE?

    What I see is a questionable formulation presented with the intent to create conflict amongst bloggers and move the discussion in a non-fruitful direction.

    The child that has been presented to the public as Trig is more than one person. Although I don't like these nicknames, for lack of a decent link at hand, "Batwing" Trig is simply NOT "Roundear" Trig. They are two different children.

    In addition, now you, Brad, have happily presented us with some information supporting the idea that there was a life-like doll used as well. Many of us have thought that for a while.

    So, whether or not Ruffles had surgery does not seem to be a critical issue. This is all separate and apart from the many questions that must be posed about this new thesis.
    One of the Med-Surg sites that you link to states that if the surgery is not done when the baby is one week old, the success rate drops to below 50%. I don't think Ruffles was operated on when he was a week old - do you Brad?

    I think you have taken a wrong turn somewhere Brad. I hope you dropped some breadcrumbs for yourself to get back on track.

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  35. conscious at last said...
    What I would like to understand is how this thesis advances the goal of exposing the hoax known as BABYGATE?

    c.a.l., Brad's thesis advances finding the truth.

    Any mistake in our efforts to expose Babygate allows the MSM to write off the whole idea. Remember the picture of Bristol in the green sweater that was used in the original Daily Kos Babygate post? Once it was shown to be 2006, before Trig's time, it undermined the author's otherwise valid position.

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  36. Thanks, B. I'm right concerning the ears. That's why I am doing this.

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  37. Brad, a couple of points:

    First, you might want to clarify that the interventions done to correct ear shape in newborns are NON-surgical.

    The earwells.com website has a ton of pictures, before and after, also in the testimonials part of the site, that support your thesis that the ruffled ears could have been corrected to the shape we see on the older Trig. Other splinting methods would be used on similar issues, so I don't think you have to make the case that a particular product or method was used. The important thing is that the method does not require any extraordinary means or risks, and the outcomes are consistent with Ruffles being Trig.

    Second, I think your logic is a bit off in claiming that you have "proof" that Ruffles is Trig. You've thrown cold water over the "different ears necessitates different babies" theory, but that's not the same thing as proving that they necessarily ARE the SAME baby. Nevertheless, Occam's Razor certainly says that should be our working theory.

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  38. @ Ghostbuster and Brad-- I goofed, the Earwell site says that if the Earmolds(not surgery) are not started when the child is 1 week old, the success rate goes down to 50% or less.

    So I will ask my question again-- Brad, do you think that little Ruffles had the ear molds starting when he was a week old??? Because I simply don't think that would have been possible based on the photos we've seen.

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  39. Brad, since you bring up the idea of the null hypothesis in your new post, I'd like to take the opportunity to point out that in this post you are proposing a whole new science of, well, I'll call it "ear-printing".

    Your hypothesis is that your method of assigning geometric shapes to certain features of ears is a valid way of positively identifying individuals.

    The null hypothesis is that this method cannot identify individuals.

    I don't see any support for your idea that this method has any validity either in theory or in practice. You certainly haven't made the case that it works in individuals who may be related or in the same ethnic group.

    Even more damning is that you used this same argument (and later recanted it, if I recall correctly) in trying to make the case that Trig was related to Mike Wooten.
    http://www.lauranovakauthor.com/1/post/2011/09/the-wootentrig-connection-by-prof-brad-scharlott.html

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  40. Ghost: With Wooten I was raising a question about whether similarity in ears can point to familial relationship. But I *explicitly* said the similarity alone did not mean much of anything. I did not express a probability value. I did not "recant," because I never explicitly made the argument he was likely the father. (The title of the piece was supposed to have a question mark.)

    Ear printing has in fact been used in court and is a growing area of science:

    Book title:
    Human Ear Recognition by Computer (Advances in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition)


    Review
    From the reviews: "‘Human ear [recognition] is a new class of relatively stable biometrics,’ that has drawn the attention of not only researchers, but also forensics experts, criminologists, and security experts … . the book will be of great interest to researchers … . I recommend reading the book as a stepping stone to further research work on human ear recognition, from the viewpoints of both researchers and forensics experts." (J. Myerson, ACM Computing Reviews, December, 2008)
    Product Description
    At the frontier of research, this book offers complete coverage of human ear recognition. It explores all aspects of 3D ear recognition: representation, detection, recognition, indexing and performance prediction. It uses large datasets to quantify and compare the performance of various techniques. Features and topics include: Ear detection and recognition in 2D image; 3D object recognition and 3D biometrics; 3D ear recognition; Performance comparison and prediction.

    see: http://www.amazon.com/Recognition-Computer-Advances-Vision-Pattern/dp/1848001282

    I really don't understand where you are coming from. What part of the specific argument I have made are you taking issue with?

    ReplyDelete
  41. My problems with your argument, Brad:

    --You do not have the opinion of even one MD in this field to support your views re fixing the ear. For a layman to do an internet search and draw a conclusion is far weaker than the opinion of an MD who has been around this particular block multiple times. If it was that easy, an MD degree would not take so long. Even MDs can differ, but an MD confirmation following a look at the actual ears would be a start.

    --There exist other MDs who HAVE looked at the ears and have said "no way." Of course they could be wrong. But so far they are more credible to me than your "first time out" conclusions that lack the background of training and experience in ear issues. Experience re practicality, outcome, etc., counts for more than reading about internet claims.

    --The size of the baby in the photos is also a factor in thinking there were two.

    --If the small baby was as small and fragile as the photos suggest, being fed via tube, any surgery on a cosmetic item like ear shape seems unlikely.

    --There is no evidence to suggest that any baby ever wore earforms or splints, which would be very visible. Only SP's use of the word "earforms" when she meant "earmarks." That could tell us nothing, or that she was thinking about earform treatment, or something else. But it is not support for the idea that any baby actually wore them.

    --The idea that you "believe" there is 95% probability of something does not mean there is 95% probability. It just means that is your opinion. Probability has to be based on more than a wholeheartedly held opinion.

    You could be right on all counts. But there is just too little expert opinion, too much heartfelt nonexpert opinion, and zero rock-solid data for me at this point. This is another case of SP facts that we cannot trust because they are not rock solid. And there are so many such factoids that one can build way too many scenarios upon them, without landing upon the actual one, which we still have no assurance of knowing.

    You brought up the idea of identifying a doll maker who claims to have supplied a reborm doll to SP. Did that pan out?

    ReplyDelete
  42. There is so much misinformation regarding ADHD that is scattered all over the internet. It can become frustrating to get even a simple diagnosis or be pointed in the right direction as to whether to notice ADHD in Adults or the Signs of ADHD in a child.

    Symptoms of ADHD in Adults

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