Let me state both some conclusions about the experiment and some responses to Mr. Gans' reply to my proposal.

1. The main conclusion is that there appears to be no correlation between cities of the famous Rabbis and the appellations used by WRR. Despite using the same (mathematically flawed) method as WRR and the same (flawed) appellations, using a reasonable apriori approach chosen to minimize wiggle room produces no effect.
   
2. The best of the results reported by McKay is the roughly 1 in 10 result obtained using clear and unclear cities from the Hebraica Encyclopedia relying only on P4 (dropping all appellations with Rabbi) looking only at birth and death dates and adding the prefix Kehilas. The use of selected optional prefixes (there are others one might use) and the decision to use P4 rather than P2 and P4 as in the original WRR experiment are clear examples of wiggle room.
   
3. The flaw in Mr. Gans' approach is seen in his comment that "Using multiple sources, and having well defined protocols for dealing with conflicts and spelling inconsistencies minimizes errors in the data." Basically, his philosophy forces wiggle room and it is that wiggle room that allows the result and makes the experiment unrepeatable. Because using multiple sources and then allowing choices of which data to use from those source provides many, many degrees of freedom. Moreover, it means that any result found has to be interpreted as a verification of some rule rather than any indication of something intrinsic to the text.
   
4. Mr. Gans likes to talk about consistency of spelling rules but, in fact, the rules lack coherence. For example, in a talk Mr. Gans gave in June, 1998 he discussed a few details of his experiment and said that in one case a modern city spelling was dropped in favor of the spelling that would have been used at the time the Rabbi lived. But WRR spell names using twentieth century spelling rules (for example spelling Rav David Oppenheim with one yud) rather than the spelling that was used at the time (with two yuds). Indeed, this summer I visited Prague and saw clearly synagogue inscriptions for members of the Oppenheim family spelled with two yuds. So Mr. Gans' experiment uses medieval spelling when convenient for him while Mr. Witztum uses modern rules when convenient for him. The skeptic can only conclude that the rules are inconsistent except that they all seem to have the effect of making something appear that doesn't appear without them.
   
5. Mr. Gans suggests the right resolution "would be to accept the challenge issued by Doron Witztum in an article in Galileo some time ago. He suggested that an independent linguistic expert whom everyone concerned agrees is impartial and qualified should be asked to provide a new list of Rabbis and appellations. Such an experiment would test the original Rabbis experiment directly. To date, no one has accepted Mr. Witztum's challenge." But Mr. Gans fails to note a critical aspect of Mr. Witztum's proposal which is "to allow an independent authority to prepare a new list of names and appellations for the 32 personalities on the second list, using Prof. Havlin's guidelines." Namely, after the wiggle room has been favorably frozen by rules (only stated nine years after the original experiment), there is a proposal to ask an outside expert to come in constrained by these rules. This is hardly a test of the Rabbis experiment - it is a charade. If Mr. Witztum should offer to allow an independent authority (whom everyone agrees is impartial and qualified) to prepare a new list of appellations and dates, including date forms WITH NO APRIORI RESTRICTIONS OR RULES, I have no doubt his proposal would meet with a favorable reaction. 
   
   Thus, I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Gans' description of "Mr. Witztum's challenge to develop a well designed, honest, apriori and meaningful experiment." I don't think anyone can possibly apply the terms apriori or meaningful to an experiment required to follow Prof. Havlin's guidelines and I'd not regard such an experiment as well defined since it has so many, many complex rules.
   
6. Mr. Witztum and some other proponents have said that there are spelling errors in the Margaliot Encyclopedia and that the Encyclopedia Hebraica is much better in this regard.   Prof. McKay's experiments with this alternate source show the difference between the two is not significant.
   
7. Mr. Gans seems to have confused two different proposals by Prof. Haralick. The proposal to which I'm responding involves a totally new experiment, I presume on some item other than famous Rabbis. Independently of this proposal, Prof. Haralick has been working on his own variant of the famous Rabbis experiment. In this regard, he has asked for help from BOTH the codes proponents and the codes critics. I know Prof. McKay has provided help but I know of no help that he has gotten from the codes proponents. There has even been a proposal by Prof. McKay and Mr. Gindis to fund a research assistant for Prof. Haralick paid half by codes critics and half by codes proponents but so far the proponents have been silent on this suggestion.

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