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.
