A discussion has developed between Courtney and I as follows.
Me:
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Courtney -- I asked this elsewhere but maybe you missed it. Why do you not make mention of the fact that you've changed the methodology during the time-cross project at least twice already? First you used Jim Marrs to pick the target and then the "automated process" to also pick a SINGLE target. Now it's multiple targets. I'm NOT asking why you changed the method, I'm asking why you don't MAKE IT CLEAR that you have changed the method and the method you're talking about now was NOT the method you used earlier this year. When people watch your videos and read your website they think you've consistently used this one method the whole time and you have not. If you really want to make this scientific it goes without saying that you MUST record your method for each month's sessions, including changes in that method from month to month.
Courtney:
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I am glad you are observing our project so closely. But nothing nefarious is going on. And I (Courtney) have described in numerous videos the changes that occurred in the beginning during the first month when we tried to start the project. When we started this project in April (sessions) and May (the event month), we set things up with a human tasker. But there were logistical problems and other issues that made that approach untenable. So after the first month, we changed the process to the new automated news analysis method for having the news outlets pick the targets using a weighting scheme based on the number of links for each event. The project has not changed since then. But your mention of a second change is not correct. When we changed from the human tasker to the automated approach, there were a few instances on our Time-Cross web page where all the corrections were not made in the text. That was a editing error, not a change in the experimental design. That was discovered in early August, and the affected web pages were corrected. But the process itself has not changed. Also, it is important to note that the first month where a human tasker was used (May) is not included in our official Time-Cross Project since the experimental conditions were changed after that month. We have clearly spelled that out in our videos. See particularly the Overview video. Finally, this is an ongoing project that we offer free to the public. A fixation on a initial attempt to start the project in May misses the point. We encourage everyone to keep watching the project as the months go forward. We hope to continue this project for a long time, so you can make your evaluations after you see more. It is fun also.
Me:
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I have a copy of your website from August 6th thanks to the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine." You have indeed changed the methodology a second time since then (dropping Jim Marrs was the first change), because this cached web page shows that between then and now you have added a 10th point to the method (previously there were only 9) and you have changed the word "event" to "events" (plural) in several places. This sounds trivial but in effect it allows more wiggle room in interpreting the extremely diverse results (to put it nicely) that you received in August. I hope you can understand why this appears so intellectually dishonest from where I am sitting, not to mention the fact that you never brought attention to this publicly. The paper sessions from August are a quick read from the 4 viewers, compared to sitting through the long videos, and they clearly suggest everything from a terrorist attack at the Olympics to a UFO attacking a city, to a meteor impacting a city. I would consider it a sign of sincerity and true willingness to be open with the public if you add a disclaimer to your website that you have changed the wording and added an extra point to your methodology after the August sessions were recorded.
Looks like his argument is going to be that it was an "editing error" but I have been following this project the whole time and it was clearly a focus on a single target at the start. Jim Marrs was not picking multiple targets, regardless of the fact that he was a human tasker. I'm going to make sure he is pressed on it a little more before I give it a rest.