UPDATE: I have just heard the wonderful news that the British Chiropractic Association have dropped their case against Simon Singh. The details about the case are all over the web, so I won’t repeat them here, but basically the BCA tried to use the British libel laws to stop Simon saying that there is no scientific evidence for some of their ‘treatments’. So, it’s official – The British Chiropractic Association happily promote bogus treatments for which there is not a jot of evidence – do feel free to spread the word!
Some details here, and you can still support the campaign for libel reform here.
OK, now back to the blog….
Thanks for all the responses yesterday – the results seem to suggest that women are a tad more giving than guys. I came across this lovely illusion the other day….
Anyone know if it genuine or has been digitally manipulated? Either way, like it?
I think it looks edited. I can see the pixels.
I can’t swear to it, but it sure looks like it belongs in this set of manipulated photos:
http://fx.worth1000.com/search/canvas%20earth
Can’t find that particular one though.
There´s a very thin line running from above the tip of the nose and to the upper lip. It may be nothing, but it does not look quite natural to me. The eye and mouth looks genuine, though. If it is a fake it is very well done.
I really couldn’t say either way. It looks like it should be fake, but I’m sure if we scoured every single snow covered peak in the world we would eventually find landscapes that look like this.
In this age of digital manipulation it is too easy to create flawless fakes, but it is also way to common to call “fake” just because something looks a little off.
I don’t know.
As someone who tampers with photos for a living, this doesn’t look tampered with. And sure enough, a little detective work turns up this shot, higher viewpoint, no snow: http://montagne.a.vaches.free.fr/Rando/Chartreuse/aulpseuil/IMG_3250.jpg
Beat me to it.
Isn’t the nose slightly off?
Igor…. the nose might look different from the two photos because one has snow {which can help fill in the gaps and make it look more face like} and one doesn’t. Or may be slightly different angles…… I like it either way. We had a mountain not far from me that was called “Old Man of the Mountain” had a cliff out cropping that looked like an old man’s face…..not long ago part of it broke off! What a shame too….. :}
I cant see tht illusion.
What is it?
Apparently it is indeed genuine, either that or there is a big conspiracy to convince us otherwise:
http://montagne.a.vaches.free.fr/Rando/Chartreuse/aulpseuil/IMG_3250.jpg
Didn’t you hear? Brian can see the pixels.
It may have been cropped to improve the pareidolia. If it was a panoramic vista then with the added context your wetware may be slower to perceive a face in one corner of it. It looks oddly composed for a photo of the “face”, and even more oddly composed if it was a photo of the view. So not fake, but maybe not the original.
I wouldn’t expect trees on a hillside sloping like that arranged like that. Landshifting or whatever.
Would the trees not have been planted like that to help curb avalanches?
Given the huge number of possibilities that exist in nature, one will expect to find some really good examples like this one, so not surprised if there has been no manipulation.
Close to my home town in Italy there is a gorge where during the ’30s, the profile of Mussolini was reproduced by the building of a few carefully positioned walls and dikes.
You can see what is left here: http://www.gianninifilippo.com/htm/sitoSA34.htm
Artificial yes slightly, but digital no!
Check this out!
Similar and real. It is called Ajdovska deklica. If you dont belive me, googlesearch it!
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6739176
aljaz that is cool….I can see several different faces even one being female and two male….do you see more than one face or is it just me…lol…?
Now that you mention… very cool! Do you see a fist too?
you mean like the chin and part of the cheek are resting on a fist? And on the other side {to the left} looks like a man’s razor laying east to west {handle west and blade east}…..OMG I’m starting to see all kinds of stuff!
There are lot’s of such natural formations throughout the world. I’m pretty sure this isn’t fake
It’s probably just photoshopped but, to be safe, they should try not to wake that giant just in case.
fake!,
lol
buondì prof,sono italiano,ed ho appena terminato di..leggere,vivendo gli argomenti,il suo libro. non m’intendo di psicologia,nè di altre forme così importanti,ma valorizzando la mia semplicità nel tempo,mi rendo conto di come e quante volte,Lei,abbia illuminato fattori difficilmente trattati in Italia…a me sembrano piuttosto strambi i vari test effetutati sulla velocità delle metropoli,li trovo anche ridicoli in quanto non si immagina a cosa l’individuo stia pensando,nel momento in cui vengono percorsi 18 metri.Questi,come altri test,mi hanno decisamente impressionato,positivamente come negativamente…altri,banali.
ripeto,non m’intendo assolutamente dell’arte denominata psicologia….ma è un arte,ed in quanto tale,l’ammiro; come ammiro il suo pensiero,illustrato in quirckology.
sicuramente passerò parola riguardo il suo testo e……guardi l’Italia,come culla di civiltà mondiale…almeno credo…
saluto con calore!
Eerie! Looks like me!
Re: “the results seem to suggest that women are a tad more giving than guys” – there is actually a lot of research showing that.
The summer photos of the mountain are convincing enough. Call me weird but I’m more interested to know how @Michael Crowe or @edinburghskeptics discovered the second photo… good detective work!
About the update, and without arguing about the substance of the litigation between Simon Singh and the other part, I feel however that the phrase “it’s official – The British Chiropractic Association happily promote bogus treatments for which there is not a jot of evidence” is perhaps not very… fortunate? What happened to the “I’ll defend to the death your right to believe what I do not believe”? Just because the British Chiropractic Association gained some sense into not pursuing someone for his opinions, does that means they had quitted from their own opinions? The phrase above appears to imply that if someone share negative opinions about me, then their views will be official unless I’m able to persecute them with success… in the end, the very idea the libel reformer proponents want to fight. I thought the idea was to defend freedom of opinion and conviction, and the right to share it
Just try this link:
http://errorlevelanalysis.com/
and copy this URL into the field
http://richardwiseman.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/lesalpes.jpg
I guess its not manipulated, becasue the error levels expressed by significant different colours, are not different around the questionable areas. My two cents here
Best,
D_ieter
Nice link. My only problem with their idea, which I think interesting, is that, when you apply it to this link “http://richardwiseman.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/faceappersinbigmountainillusion1.jpg”, an image I don’t have any doubts it was manipulated because you can see artefacts of that manipulation, the ELA shows hints of manipulation but NOT where I expected. This is not really a proof, and maybe it shows that what I thought was a fake, really isn’t but… see the image for yourself and think on it (is was an “illusion” posted by Richard not so long ago).
PS.: But, as I said before, I think this mountain image to be genuine… is just, I don’t trust ELA yet to enforce that belief.
PS.PS.: uh…. how do you introduce web links in these comments?
Interesting point with the other picture… You are right, e.g. at the upper left, close to the frame, there is a small strip which has a slighlty different colour. The blue is a bit more grey there. It seems somebody has overwritten a text there. This is clearly shown in the ELA…
P.S.: I was just copying and pasting the link into the reply field…
You are right, ELA shows something there I didn’t noted before. However, the region which I think was clearly manipulated is the “forehead” of the “woman”, where you can see a suspicious line following what you would expect to be a more natural continuation of the rock profile. Now, a good way of doing the falsification would be to transplant pieces of color from the background into those parts… but wouldn’t that mean we would be planting in the photo, pieces with the same resaving behavior as the original photo? Would ELA able to detect the fake in that case?
I’d go to a chiropractor again if I needed to, but since undergoing chiropractic treatment 20 years ago I have maintained full mobility with no back pain whatsoever. I was 30 and walked like an old man all the time with a painful, stiff back. The doctors were clueless, prescribing painkillers and wishing it would go away.
There are two fallacies there.
(i) Singh wasn’t criticising chiropractors’ claim to treat spinal conditions. After all, that is what they do, manipulate the spine, in a manner similar to osteopaths. Singh was criticising their claim to treat things of tenuous connection to spinal conditions, such as colic in babies.
(ii) Just because you took a course of treatment and you got better, it doesn’t mean it was the treatment that cured you.
Since chiropractors base their treatments on some dotty theory of subluxations, you might next time do even better to visit an osteopath whose treatments are less curiously devised. And, sadly, doctors often don’t refer patients to osteopaths.
[...] Is this genuine? UPDATE: I have just heard the wonderful news that the British Chiropractic Association have dropped their case against [...] [...]
It *could* be “faked”, but not digitally manipulated though.
It may be a piece of creative ‘landscaping’ using explosives, ala Mount Rushmore.
So pleased about this victory for Simon! Here’s hoping the libel laws will get sorted when the next government comes into power.
You say “So, it’s official – The British Chiropractic Association happily promote bogus treatments for which there is not a jot of evidence – do feel free to spread the word!”
I thought the judgement had only said something like Simon was OK to write this as honest opinion. If so, then, rather than making official that “The British Chiropractic Association happily promote bogus treatments for which there is not a jot of evidence” it made official that Simon’s writing could be defended as honest opinion.
If BCA shifted to only endorsing spinal treatments smilar to osteopathy (as discussed by ‘ian in hamburg’ and ‘ivan’ discuss above), would the claim “it’s official – The British Chiropractic Association happily promote bogus treatments for which there is not a jot of evidence – do feel free to spread the word” become libellous?
That looks quite real to me.
It’s an illusion. Check the smaller shadows, not all of them match the direction of the shadows of the posts!