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Gans Experiment

The Jewish communities experiment uses the cities or communities of birth or death of the personalities in WRR, as opposed to dates, which is what WRR used. To guarantee that the list of communities and their Hebrew spellings are correct as well as a priori, a linguistic rule based algorithm is used to determine the spellings of the information derived from the Margolioth Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Hebraica. Every entry for the list is obtained by this linguistic protocol (LP) without exception, and can be checked for accuracy. The algorithm, too, can be checked for linguistic accuracy and completeness. Thus, the individual community names are not subject to errors in judgment or the non uniform application of vague rules. Furthermore, the data is completely and mechanically reproducible. The experiment tested the Null hypothesis of No Torah Code Effect against the alternative that the rabbi appellations and their corresponding city names have ELSs that are closer together than expected by chance. The p-level was 4/1,000,000.

Patterns of Equidistant Letter Sequence Pairs In Genesis
The Linguistic Protocol and the Data Used

Critics and Skeptics

In this location we will put the issues that the skeptics and critics have and answer them.

Professor McKay argues that: The data for the Gans cities experiment was provided by Dr. Zvi Inbal and that Dr. Inbal is a friend of Doron Witztum. Therefore, he argues, there is no independence. Furthermore, there is no paper trail of how the linguistic rules were developed. If the data is taken exactly as it appears in the Margolioth encyclopedia, as in Professor Simon's experiment, the experiment totally fails. To make the experiment succeed, one must manipulate it. As always.

The skeptic argument is that the only way any Torah codes experiment could succeed is by manipulating the input data to make it work. Therefore, if there is any experiment that appears to have succeeded, it could only have happened by making data choices on the sly in a back room peeking mode and then going public with the manipulated data as if it were a priori when in fact it is not a priori. Furthermore, people who do that are frauds.

It is hard to carry out a dialog with a person who thinks that all people who know Doron Witztum are frauds and in a conspiracy with him. I know all three people. Doron Witztum, Zvi Inbal, and Harold Gans are all honest people, people who would never engage in any kind of dishonesty. For them the truth is most important.

It is the case that by peeking at various ELSs and their relationships, one can choose a set of key words and/or their Hebrew spellings to make an experiment apparently succeed in a Hebrew translation of a modern novel. But just because that is possible does not prove that the cities experiment is in that category. Just because there is some counterfeit money does not imply that all money is counterfeit. Yet this is the logic the skeptic wants us to accept.

The Simon/McKay cities experiment took the city names exactly as they are spelled in the articles on the rabbis in the Margolioth encyclopedia. The Simon/McKay data contained a substantial fraction of errors. There were about 133 city names in the articles that were not used and there were 4 names used that were not places the rabbis lived, but were the places in which the rabbi's book publisher were located. It would seem that something is wrong in an experiment in which 197 city names are used but 133 city names are missing.

Professor Haralick has performed an experiment using all 330 city names in the Margolioth encyclopedia and this experiment succeeds with a moderately small p-level.