Why "You Can Get Anything by Magnifying" Fails as a Skeptical Rebuttal

I have recently heard the following objection to photos such as mine: the claim that "you can get anything you want in a photo by magnifying parts of it."  Below are several reasons why this fails as a skeptical rebuttal.

The first reason is that the statement simply isn't true. You might get many different things by magnifying little parts of a photo, but you can't get "anything you want." You could magnify parts of your random photos to your heart's content, and you would almost certainly never get, say, a part that would look like an image of Barack Obama or an image of a pink unicorn.

The second reason this rebuttal fails is that it only mentions a single occurrence of something, not massive repetitions of something. It might be true that if you magnify little parts of random photos, you might once in a blue moon get, say, something that looks like a purple car. But you would absolutely not get very many repetitions of such a thing. So a rebuttal that only explains one occurrence fails to rebut the many cases like I have in this blog of very many repetitions and pattern repetitions, as shown here and here.

The third reason this rebuttal fails is that I did not discover any of the 700+ mysterious striped orbs shown on this blog through any process of zooming in on photos and looking for something. In each case the striped orb was plainly visible in the photo before any zooming or cropping occurred. And I did not use any zoom lense when any of the photos was taken. I never "zoom in" looking for something in photos where I did not clearly see an anomaly in the photo without zooming in. Except when photographing falling water drops, my photographic magnification was always 1.0. In very many photos I have published such as the one below (from this post), it is evident that the orbs were a signficant fraction of the original photo, not just some tiny fraction got by zooming in.

The fourth reason this rebuttal fails is that 90% of my photos of mysterious striped orbs occurred when the orb was in front of a featureless plaster wall or a black cloudless sky.  You do not get appreciable details by zooming in on such things,  For example, here is a part of a photo showing a blank plaster wall, which is the most common background when I get a photo of a striped orb.

And here is part of a photo that showed a cloudless sky when I photographed a night orb.

It is not at all true that you can "get anything you want" by zooming in on such featureless areas of a photo. You won't get anything by zooming in on such areas.

The weakness of "you can get anything you want by magnifying" as a rebuttal is indicated by the following hypothetical exchange.

Astronomer: I think we're in for some trouble. On 30 days I have checked a particular spot in the sky with my telescope, and I keep seeing a big asteroid coming closer and closer toward our planet.
Skeptic: Just ignore it, because you can get anything you want by magnifying a view.

It Was Like That Swamp Gas Explanation for UFOs

On Facebook yesterday someone posted something saying that orbs in photos were merely natural things like dust, an idea debunked in this post. I responded with a link to my post showing examples of 24 repeating patterns in mysterious striped orbs I have photographed.  Someone named Steve responded, saying he agreed the patterns I have photographed could not be explained by things like dust. He suggested that they may be caused by "microscopic wiring" effects.

There are several reasons why this explanation is absolutely unworkable, rather like a "the alligator came out of my toilet and ate my homework" explanation.

First, as far as I can see no one has ever reported unexplained lines appearing in photos because of "microscopic wiring" effects. I did a Google search trying to find any such report, and could not find anything.

Second, my photos of recurring patterns in mysterious striped orbs have come from two types of cameras, Sony and Nikon. I have also got many mysterious striped orbs when using an Olympus camera. It's hard to believe that different cameras from different manufacturers would have the same problem.

Third, I only get unexplained lines inside of mysterious orbs I photograph. I never get such lines appearing outside of an orb. So if you were to believe the lines were caused by "microscopic wiring" effects, you would have to believe that it was just a coincidence that this effect only occurs inside orbs being photographed. This would be about a 1 in 10,000 coincidence for each of my striped orb photos, and since there are 400+ such photos the overall coincidence would have a likelihood of about 1 in 10¹⁶⁰⁰.  That would be more unlikely than correctly guessing the full telephone numbers of 100 strangers.

Fourth, the repeating orb patterns I have photographed often show curved lines looking like arcs, and there are no curved arc-like wires used when cameras are manufactured.

Fifth, I only get unexplained lines or stripes in fewer than 1 in 100 of the photos I take, all photos showing orbs. If there were a "microscopic wiring" defect in a camera, it would show up in every photo. 

I can imagine someone evoking a "microscopic wiring" effect to explain away something:

Daughter: Mom, I took your photo, but sadly it shows lots of wrinkles in your face.

Mother: I do NOT have wrinkles! Those lines in my facial image must have been caused by ...microscopic wiring effects in the camera.

Of course, explanations like these are ridiculous. 

Postscript:  Imagine if someone were to attempt to blame errors in his tax returns on "malfunctions of the math chip in my computer." Nowadays this would be completely unbelievable. Math chips are a very mature and stable technology. They figured out how to make reliable math chips 35 years ago.  Similarly, modern digital cameras are a very mature and stable technology.  They figured out 25 years ago how to reliably manufacture image sensors that never show intermittent unwanted lines caused by "microscopic wiring effects."  The cameras I have used for my photos  were all made decades after this technology was mastered.