Trapped in Nature

[Sriram]

An interesting video by University of Virginia...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AtTM9hgCDw&t=303s

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

An interesting video by University of Virginia...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AtTM9hgCDw&t=303s

You do know I hope that Ian Stevenson’s work in this area has been widely debunked – there’s enough confirmation bias in it to sink a battleship.

Try Wiki to get you started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson

[Sriram]

Sriram,

You do know I hope that Ian Stevenson’s work in this area has been widely debunked – there’s enough confirmation bias in it to sink a battleship.

Try Wiki to get you started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson

Standard straw clutching....!   'He has been discredited....that is not a well known journal....even well known journals nowadays have started printing rubbish...that is not science....merely anecdote....he is not a well known scientist....he is talking rubbish'....etc.etc.

[Enki]

Standard straw clutching....!   'He has been discredited....that is not a well known journal....even well known journals nowadays have started printing rubbish...that is not science....merely anecdote....he is not a well known scientist....he is talking rubbish'....etc.etc.

It's those pesky interfering scientists, would be philosophers and assistants with an axe to grind, isn't it? Why even the fact that no one has cracked Stevenson's combination lock only shows that he actually forgot the combination after he died. After all, with the trauma of passing on to a new life, it isn't surprising that his soul wouldn't be able to remember something so trivial, isn't it?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

Standard straw clutching....!   'He has been discredited....that is not a well known journal....even well known journals nowadays have started printing rubbish...that is not science....merely anecdote....he is not a well known scientist....he is talking rubbish'....etc.etc.

You accusing someone else of “clutching as straws” about this is beyond ironic. In any case though, if you can try to see through the fog of confirmation bias that bedevils you here’s why you shouldn’t rake this drivel seriously:

"In sum, Stevenson does not skillfully record, present, or analyze his own data. If a case regarded by Stevenson to be among the strongest of his cases — the only case of 20 that had its purported verifications conducted by Stevenson himself — falls apart under scrutiny as badly as the Imad Elawar case does, it is reasonable to conclude that the other cases, in which data were first gathered by untrained observers, are even less reliable than this one."

"The major problem with Stevenson’s work is that the methods he used to investigate alleged cases of reincarnation are inadequate to rule out simple, imaginative storytelling on the part of the children claiming to be reincarnations of dead individuals. In the seemingly most impressive cases Stevenson (1975, 1977) has reported, the children claiming to be reincarnated knew friends and relatives of the dead individual. The children’s knowledge of facts about these individuals is, then, somewhat less than conclusive evidence for reincarnation."]

“The philosopher Paul Edwards, editor-in-chief of Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Philosophy, became Stevenson's chief critic.[37] From 1986 onwards, he devoted several articles to Stevenson's work, and discussed Stevenson in his Reincarnation: A Critical Examination (1996).[38] He argued that Stevenson's views were "absurd nonsense" and that when examined in detail his case studies had "big holes" and "do not even begin to add up to a significant counterweight to the initial presumption against reincarnation."[39] Stevenson, Edwards wrote, "evidently lives in a cloud-cuckoo-land."

“According to Ransom, Edwards wrote, Stevenson asked the children leading questions, filled in gaps in the narrative, did not spend enough time interviewing them, and left too long a period between the claimed recall and the interview; it was often years after the first mention of a recall that Stevenson learned about it. In only eleven of the 1,111 cases Ransom looked at had there been no contact between the families of the deceased and of the child before the interview; in addition, according to Ransom, seven of those eleven cases were seriously flawed. He also wrote that there were problems with the way Stevenson presented the cases, in that he would report his witnesses' conclusions, rather than the data upon which the conclusions rested. Weaknesses in cases would be reported in a separate part of his books, rather than during the discussion of the cases themselves. Ransom concluded that it all amounted to anecdotal evidence of the weakest kind.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson#Criticism

You are of course entitled to your own opinions about this stuff, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.

Sorry.

[Sriram]

In support of Stevenson, Almeder argued in Death and Personal Survival that Edwards had begged the question by stating in advance that the idea of consciousness existing without the brain in the interval between lives was incredible, and that Edwards's "dogmatic materialism" had forced him to the view that Stevenson's case studies must be examples of fraud or delusional thinking. According to Almeder, the possibility of fraud was indeed investigated in the cases Edwards mentioned.[42]

In an article published on the website of Scientific American in 2013, in which Stevenson's work was reviewed favorably, Jesse Bering, a professor of science communication, wrote: "Towards the end of her own storied life, the physicist Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf—whose groundbreaking theories on surface physics earned her the prestigious Heyn Medal from the German Society for Material Sciences, surmised that Stevenson’s work had established that 'the statistical probability that reincarnation does in fact occur is so overwhelming … that cumulatively the evidence is not inferior to that for most if not all branches of science.' "

Ian Wilson, one of Stevenson’s critics, acknowledged that Stevenson had brought “a new professionalism to a hitherto crank-prone field.”[50] Paul Edwards wrote that Stevenson “has written more fully and more intelligibly in defense of reincarnation than anybody else.”[51] Though faulting Stevenson’s judgment,[52] Edwards wrote: “I have the highest regard for his honesty. All of his case reports contain items that can be made the basis of criticism. Stevenson could easily have suppressed this information. The fact that he did not speaks well for his integrity.”[53]

Carl Sagan referred to what were apparently Stevenson's investigations in his book The Demon-Haunted World as an example of carefully collected empirical data, and though he rejected reincarnation as a parsimonious explanation for the stories, he wrote that the phenomenon of alleged past-life memories should be further researched.[54][55] Sam Harris cited Stevenson's works in his book The End of Faith as part of a body of data that seems to attest to the reality of psychic phenomena, but that only relies on subjective personal experience.

Even one of your 'patron saints' Sam Harris, has acknowledged that Ian's work attests to the reality of psychic phenomena....

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

In support of Stevenson, Almeder argued in Death and Personal Survival that Edwards had begged the question by stating in advance that the idea of consciousness existing without the brain in the interval between lives was incredible, and that Edwards's "dogmatic materialism" had forced him to the view that Stevenson's case studies must be examples of fraud or delusional thinking. According to Almeder, the possibility of fraud was indeed investigated in the cases Edwards mentioned.[42]

In an article published on the website of Scientific American in 2013, in which Stevenson's work was reviewed favorably, Jesse Bering, a professor of science communication, wrote: "Towards the end of her own storied life, the physicist Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf—whose groundbreaking theories on surface physics earned her the prestigious Heyn Medal from the German Society for Material Sciences, surmised that Stevenson’s work had established that 'the statistical probability that reincarnation does in fact occur is so overwhelming … that cumulatively the evidence is not inferior to that for most if not all branches of science.' "

Ian Wilson, one of Stevenson’s critics, acknowledged that Stevenson had brought “a new professionalism to a hitherto crank-prone field.”[50] Paul Edwards wrote that Stevenson “has written more fully and more intelligibly in defense of reincarnation than anybody else.”[51] Though faulting Stevenson’s judgment,[52] Edwards wrote: “I have the highest regard for his honesty. All of his case reports contain items that can be made the basis of criticism. Stevenson could easily have suppressed this information. The fact that he did not speaks well for his integrity.”[53]

Carl Sagan referred to what were apparently Stevenson's investigations in his book The Demon-Haunted World as an example of carefully collected empirical data, and though he rejected reincarnation as a parsimonious explanation for the stories, he wrote that the phenomenon of alleged past-life memories should be further researched.[54][55] Sam Harris cited Stevenson's works in his book The End of Faith as part of a body of data that seems to attest to the reality of psychic phenomena, but that only relies on subjective personal experience.

Even one of your 'patron saints' Sam Harris, has acknowledged that Ian's work attests to the reality of psychic phenomena....

Doesn't work. Either he applied proper scientific rigour to his research or he didn't. He didn't. Anything else is woo.

It gets worse: there's an old maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If someone want to make claims that would fundamentally re-write all we know about how the universe actually worse then he needs an awful lot more than childrens' anecdotes to do the job (regardless of whether he led the witnesses etc).

I once met an Irishman who swore he'd met a leprechaun when he was a child. Pretty convincing stuff eh?       

[ProfessorDavey]

I once met an Irishman who swore he'd met a leprechaun when he was a child. Pretty convincing stuff eh?     

I think it is worse that that - from the article it appears he disproportionately talked to children from cultures with a embedded cultural belief in reincarnation, and asked leading questions.

So it is the equivalently of asking an Irishman 'You know that small person you saw once, do you think that might have been a leprechaun?'

[Enki]

In support of Stevenson, Almeder argued in Death and Personal Survival that Edwards had begged the question by stating in advance that the idea of consciousness existing without the brain in the interval between lives was incredible, and that Edwards's "dogmatic materialism" had forced him to the view that Stevenson's case studies must be examples of fraud or delusional thinking. According to Almeder, the possibility of fraud was indeed investigated in the cases Edwards mentioned.[42]

In an article published on the website of Scientific American in 2013, in which Stevenson's work was reviewed favorably, Jesse Bering, a professor of science communication, wrote: "Towards the end of her own storied life, the physicist Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf—whose groundbreaking theories on surface physics earned her the prestigious Heyn Medal from the German Society for Material Sciences, surmised that Stevenson’s work had established that 'the statistical probability that reincarnation does in fact occur is so overwhelming … that cumulatively the evidence is not inferior to that for most if not all branches of science.' "

Ian Wilson, one of Stevenson’s critics, acknowledged that Stevenson had brought “a new professionalism to a hitherto crank-prone field.”[50] Paul Edwards wrote that Stevenson “has written more fully and more intelligibly in defense of reincarnation than anybody else.”[51] Though faulting Stevenson’s judgment,[52] Edwards wrote: “I have the highest regard for his honesty. All of his case reports contain items that can be made the basis of criticism. Stevenson could easily have suppressed this information. The fact that he did not speaks well for his integrity.”[53]

Carl Sagan referred to what were apparently Stevenson's investigations in his book The Demon-Haunted World as an example of carefully collected empirical data, and though he rejected reincarnation as a parsimonious explanation for the stories, he wrote that the phenomenon of alleged past-life memories should be further researched.[54][55] Sam Harris cited Stevenson's works in his book The End of Faith as part of a body of data that seems to attest to the reality of psychic phenomena, but that only relies on subjective personal experience.

Even one of your 'patron saints' Sam Harris, has acknowledged that Ian's work attests to the reality of psychic phenomena....

Not one of my 'patron saints'(I don't have any) but even Harris, in 2019, in response to controversy about his views which included his views on the paranormal: ESP, reincarnation, etc. produced a clarification Here:

https://samharris.org/response-to-controversy/

which included:

If some experimental psychologists want to spend their days studying telepathy, or the effects of prayer, I will be interested to know what they find out. And if it is true that toddlers occasionally start speaking in ancient languages (as Ian Stevenson alleged), I would like to know about it. However, I have not attempted to authenticate the data put forward in books such as Dean Radin’s The Conscious Universe and Ian Stevenson’s 20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. The fact that I have not spent any time on this should suggest how worthy of my time I think such a project would be. Still, I found these books interesting, and I cannot categorically dismiss their contents in the way that I can dismiss the claims of religious dogmatists.

and this:

While I remain open to evidence of psi phenomena—clairvoyance, telepathy, and so forth—the fact that they haven’t been conclusively demonstrated in the lab is a very strong indication that they do not exist.

Both attitudes of which I find no problem with at all.

[Sriram]

As I said earlier...you guys are clutching at straws.

Its not true that Ian Stevenson has done research only in cultures that believe in reincarnation. He has done significant research in Lebanon and Turkey which are Islamic countries.

Jim Tucker has investigated some American cases in more recent years...

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/children-who-report-memories-of-previous-lives/

https://uvamagazine.org/articles/the_science_of_reincarnation

[ProfessorDavey]

Its not true that Ian Stevenson has done research only in cultures that believe in reincarnation.

I didn't say he had conducted only in cultures that believe in reincarnation I said he disproportionately talked to children from cultures with a embedded cultural belief in reincarnation.

There is an important difference and I suggest you should refrain from misinterpreting what I actually said.

[Sriram]

I didn't say he had conducted only in cultures that believe in reincarnation I said he disproportionately talked to children from cultures with a embedded cultural belief in reincarnation.

There is an important difference and I suggest you should refrain from misinterpreting what I actually said.

Alright! I agree. So...what about those cases that are in cultures that do not believe in reincarnation? How about the American case?

Now you see...you really are clutching at straws.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

As I said earlier...you guys are clutching at straws.

Repeating a mistake you’ve already had corrected doesn’t change the fact that it is a mistake.

Its not true that Ian Stevenson has done research only in cultures that believe in reincarnation. He has done significant research in Lebanon and Turkey which are Islamic countries.

Jim Tucker has investigated some American cases in more recent years...

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/children-who-report-memories-of-previous-lives/

https://uvamagazine.org/articles/the_science_of_reincarnation

No-one has said "only" (that's just your straw man) – what has been said is that carrying out his work predominantly in cultures that do believe in reincarnation immediately raises serious concerns about confirmation bias.   

Look, in science (and supposed reincarnation is a scientific claim) there are various methods to establish whether claims of fact should be treated as nonsense, provisionally true, likely true etc. The most famous of these is called 5 Sigma. Here’s a link to an article in Scientific American that will explain it to you:   

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/five-sigmawhats-that/

Guess where Stevenson’s work in this area falls when you to it apply methods of this kind?

Yes, that’s right: he’s what’s known in science as “not even wrong”.

Rather than just vanish when you run out of road as you so often do, could you at least do me the courtesy of reading the article and understanding the issues it addresses please (it’s well- and clearly-written)?

Thanks.   

[Sriram]

I am not interested in more information of scientific rigor. I am interested in reality and reality cannot be confined to your ideas of scientific investigation.

[jeremyp]

How did you get from

Sam Harris cited Stevenson's works in his book The End of Faith as part of a body of data that seems to attest to the reality of psychic phenomena, but that only relies on subjective personal experience.

to

Even one of your 'patron saints' Sam Harris, has acknowledged that Ian's work attests to the reality of psychic phenomena....

Your quote says the opposite of what you say it does.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

Alright! I agree. So...what about those cases that are in cultures that do not believe in reincarnation? How about the American case?

Now you see...you really are clutching at straws.

Stop digging!

First, you’ll notice that the US cases for example typically begin “A Christian family in Texas”. You do know I hope that Christians believe in arguably the biggest reincarnation story of all?

Second, all that was said here was doing case studies in cultures that believe in reincarnation introduces a strong risk of confirmation bias. Even if he’d confined himself to other cultures, and even if he’d found some way to eliminate subjects who believe in it for other reasons, still you’d face epic problems with the basic rules of evaluation and verification (see previous post re 5 Sigma for example).         

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

I am not interested in more information of scientific rigor. I am interested in reality and reality cannot be confined to your ideas of scientific investigation.

Then you should be. You really should if you have any interest at all in knowing what "reality" actually is. If you don't like the scientific method, then find another one - until you do find a method of some sort though you're basing your whole view of reality on anecdote, hearsay, folk myths etc.

Now if you want to set your evidence bar so low that a snake would struggle to wriggle under it that's up to you - but be careful: when you do that, you have no basis to deny any other crackpot claim no matter how bonkers it is when it's also justified with the same arguments (see the Irishman who though he met a Leprechaun as a child for example).

Short version: by throwing away your critical faculties you're doing yourself a huge disservice here.

On the other hand, can I interest you in a bridge I have for sale?     

[ProfessorDavey]

Alright! I agree. So...what about those cases that are in cultures that do not believe in reincarnation? How about the American case?

Now you see...you really are clutching at straws.

Sorry it isn't me clutching at straws.

Actually Tucker accepts that there are far fewer examples in places without a reincarnation cultural expectation.

And I read the article about the American case - classic confirmation bias, right from the very notion that in most cases families come to him and therefore there is already an expectation that the phenomenon is something to do with a past life, rather than just a young child's imagination doing, well, what young children's imaginations do. It seems closely related to the 'imaginary friend' phenomenon with is very well known with young children.

And some of it is right out of the confirmation bias playbook used by psychics. So there are so many elements that are picked up as being remarkable and others that are conveniently forgotten. A good example is a big deal being made of the 'three sons' (well how many people have three sons - loads) yet the article conveniently fails to focus on the fact that the person they later spoke to was ... err ... the man's daughter - if he was remembering this guy's life, seems a bit strange to fail to remember you had a daughter. Also a brief google confirms that Martin Martyn (Marty) actually had five sons, well actually step sons. And here hangs an inconvenient truth - it is pretty easy to find some basic information about a relatively obscure person - enough  to prime yourself for questions.

Also the bit about the photos - how many people have worked in Hollywood - how many books would you have to find to have even a fleeting chance of finding a picture of a single obscure actor. The chances are vanishingly small. Yet, hey presto, that's what happens. And the response isn't the more plausible explanation of a child with the equivalent of their invisible friend just plucking someone out of the book and going - look it's him. Weird too that he seemed to know his friend's name but not his own! Or might that have something to do with 'George' being named in the photo, but the person he claimed to have been was not identified.

And of course we are only ever told the things that (with confirmation bias) seem to be true, however vaguely articulated. Never the, presumably, loads of things that the child would likely have said about his claimed past life that weren't true - e.g. the implication that he died of a heart attack, which isn't true.

 

[Sriram]

Sorry it isn't me clutching at straws.

Actually Tucker accepts that there are far fewer examples in places without a reincarnation cultural expectation.

And I read the article about the American case - classic confirmation bias, right from the very notion that in most cases families come to him and therefore there is already an expectation that the phenomenon is something to do with a past life, rather than just a young child's imagination doing, well, what young children's imaginations do. It seems closely related to the 'imaginary friend' phenomenon with is very well known with young children.

And some of it is right out of the confirmation bias playbook used by psychics. So there are so many elements that are picked up as being remarkable and others that are conveniently forgotten. A good example is a big deal being made of the 'three sons' (well how many people have three sons - loads) yet the article conveniently fails to focus on the fact that the person they later spoke to was ... err ... the man's daughter - if he was remembering this guy's life, seems a bit strange to fail to remember you had a daughter. Also a brief google confirms that Martin Martyn (Marty) actually had five sons, well actually step sons. And here hangs an inconvenient truth - it is pretty easy to find some basic information about a relatively obscure person - enough  to prime yourself for questions.

Also the bit about the photos - how many people have worked in Hollywood - how many books would you have to find to have even a fleeting chance of finding a picture of a single obscure actor. The chances are vanishingly small. Yet, hey presto, that's what happens. And the response isn't the more plausible explanation of a child with the equivalent of their invisible friend just plucking someone out of the book and going - look it's him. Weird too that he seemed to know his friend's name but not his own! Or might that have something to do with 'George' being named in the photo, but the person he claimed to have been was not identified.

And of course we are only ever told the things that (with confirmation bias) seem to be true, however vaguely articulated. Never the, presumably, loads of things that the child would likely have said about his claimed past life that weren't true - e.g. the implication that he died of a heart attack, which isn't true.

Yeah...yeah....we can keep nitpicking this and that but there is significant evidence and there are professionals handling these cases. The 'experts' on here can take a rest....IMO.

[ProfessorDavey]

Yeah...yeah....we can keep nitpicking this and that but there is significant evidence and there are professionals handling these cases. The 'experts' on here can take a rest....IMO.

Considering claims in an objective and dispassionate manner is not 'nitpicking' - it is what researchers do, both in the performance of their studies and as part of that critical element of research, namely peer review.

And ye I am a professional researcher, so I do understand the process.

What is provided in the article does not amount to 'significant evidence' (if you mean evidence of reincarnation) - indeed it provides no credible evidence for reincarnation as the claims of knowledge of this particular person (many of those claims being false) is far more easily explained through other, less prosaic, routes. The most obvious being fraud - you will note in both this, and one of the very few other US cases, a TV crew were involved at an earlier stage than Tucker. So this was already a newsworthy case and of course, many people crave the attention of the media and also pander to their desire for a sensational story.

The key question you should ask yourself if you are being objective and dispassionate is 'could this family have found details of the claimed dead person through another route?' and the clear answer is 'yes' of course they could. Details of the biography including pretty well all the details claimed to have been transmitted via reincarnation are publicly available as a quick google search will attest, including his obituary from 1962.

[Sriram]

Considering claims in an objective and dispassionate manner is not 'nitpicking' - it is what researchers do, both in the performance of their studies and as part of that critical element of research, namely peer review.

And ye I am a professional researcher, so I do understand the process.

What is provided in the article does not amount to 'significant evidence' (if you mean evidence of reincarnation) - indeed it provides no credible evidence for reincarnation as the claims of knowledge of this particular person (many of those claims being false) is far more easily explained through other, less prosaic, routes. The most obvious being fraud - you will note in both this, and one of the very few other US cases, a TV crew were involved at an earlier stage than Tucker. So this was already a newsworthy case and of course, many people crave the attention of the media and also pander to their desire for a sensational story.

The key question you should ask yourself if you are being objective and dispassionate is 'could this family have found details of the claimed dead person through another route?' and the clear answer is 'yes' of course they could. Details of the biography including pretty well all the details claimed to have been transmitted via reincarnation are publicly available as a quick google search will attest, including his obituary from 1962.

Research methodologies cannot be the same for all types of phenomena. Everything is not physics or chemistry or biology. Professionals in certain areas know what is a significant piece of evidence in that area.

[ProfessorDavey]

Research methodologies cannot be the same for all types of phenomena. Everything is not physics or chemistry or biology. Professionals in certain areas know what is a significant piece of evidence in that area.

Indeed it is - and this kind of research uses the tools and techniques of psychology research. Now I'm not a psychologist, but I do understand the methods pretty well as I used to be in overall change of research for a faculty that included our psychology department. In addition I've been on research ethics assessment panels for years and seen countless psychology research proposals. What I can say is that the research here is very poor methodologically - and indeed Tucker even admits this in his book on the topic - for example the approach to showing pictures to the child. You just don't do it the way he did. You need someone completely independent and 'blinded' (i.e. has no knowledge themselves of which person, or any people are relevant). If you do it as he did - researcher who knows who the key person is showing sets of four pictures each of which include a key person, you will get subliminal cues that are picked up by the research subject which biases the outcome. Also you will always have a one in four hit. You also need some 'control' groups of photos, in which there is no relevant person - this unpicks whether the child (in this case) is simply always picking a person as they think this is the 'game' - if they continually say they know a person from a group of four completely random people it shows that they aren't actually basing their choices on real knowledge.

And there are all sorts of elements of this kind.

Now if you read the book one thing is striking - virtually all the questions are answered by the mother, not the child - the information is being filtered through the prism of the mother. There is also a Netflix piece on this case in which Ryan is deeply embarrassed about the whole thing and all the information comes from the mother. I'd defy anyone to watch this and conclude anything other than the mother has a huge amount of involvement in the claimed reincarnation.

There is an excoriating bit in the Neflix piece where Martyn's neice (pretty well the only person to have known Martyn as an adult as he died when his daughter was just eight). She asks him a couple of quite specific questions which clearly relates to important things in Martyn's life - e.g. Lindburgh landing in Paris when he was there. Ryan is completely flummoxed - he simply has nothing to say.

Finally it is claimed that of 200 statements Ryan gets about 50 correct on Martyn's life. Well firstly this isn't particularly impressive. But also many of those claims he is right about were available as public knowledge at the time (e.g. he was a dancer, he lived in a house with Rox in the name, his children etc, etc), but many of the others are so anodyne to almost certainly be the case, for example:

He was very rich - no shit Sherlock - it was common knowledge that his wife was the daughter of a movie company executive.

He smoked - no shit Sherlock - pretty well everyone smoked in those days

He wore a hat - no shit Sherlock - pretty well everyone did in those days

His house was big and had a pool - well a quick internet search brings up the house (common knowledge) and its details

His house had a brick wall - really, I mean really!!

He drove a green car - well if you asked me (or probably you) whether you drove a green car the answer is yes, but then it is also yes if you asked about a blue, red, silver etc car. And of course in those days the colours of cars were more limited so it is hardly earth shattering that between him and his wife they drove green and black cars (the most common colours).

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

Research methodologies cannot be the same for all types of phenomena. Everything is not physics or chemistry or biology. Professionals in certain areas know what is a significant piece of evidence in that area.

So what research method do you propose instead for the supposed phenomenon of reincarnation so you can distinguish the claim from nonsense?

[Sriram]

Indeed it is - and this kind of research uses the tools and techniques of psychology research. Now I'm not a psychologist, but I do understand the methods pretty well as I used to be in overall change of research for a faculty that included our psychology department. In addition I've been on research ethics assessment panels for years and seen countless psychology research proposals. What I can say is that the research here is very poor methodologically - and indeed Tucker even admits this in his book on the topic - for example the approach to showing pictures to the child. You just don't do it the way he did. You need someone completely independent and 'blinded' (i.e. has no knowledge themselves of which person, or any people are relevant). If you do it as he did - researcher who knows who the key person is showing sets of four pictures each of which include a key person, you will get subliminal cues that are picked up by the research subject which biases the outcome. Also you will always have a one in four hit. You also need some 'control' groups of photos, in which there is no relevant person - this unpicks whether the child (in this case) is simply always picking a person as they think this is the 'game' - if they continually say they know a person from a group of four completely random people it shows that they aren't actually basing their choices on real knowledge.

And there are all sorts of elements of this kind.

Now if you read the book one thing is striking - virtually all the questions are answered by the mother, not the child - the information is being filtered through the prism of the mother. There is also a Netflix piece on this case in which Ryan is deeply embarrassed about the whole thing and all the information comes from the mother. I'd defy anyone to watch this and conclude anything other than the mother has a huge amount of involvement in the claimed reincarnation.

There is an excoriating bit in the Neflix piece where Martyn's neice (pretty well the only person to have known Martyn as an adult as he died when his daughter was just eight). She asks him a couple of quite specific questions which clearly relates to important things in Martyn's life - e.g. Lindburgh landing in Paris when he was there. Ryan is completely flummoxed - he simply has nothing to say.

Finally it is claimed that of 200 statements Ryan gets about 50 correct on Martyn's life. Well firstly this isn't particularly impressive. But also many of those claims he is right about were available as public knowledge at the time (e.g. he was a dancer, he lived in a house with Rox in the name, his children etc, etc), but many of the others are so anodyne to almost certainly be the case, for example:

He was very rich - no shit Sherlock - it was common knowledge that his wife was the daughter of a movie company executive.

He smoked - no shit Sherlock - pretty well everyone smoked in those days

He wore a hat - no shit Sherlock - pretty well everyone did in those days

His house was big and had a pool - well a quick internet search brings up the house (common knowledge) and its details

His house had a brick wall - really, I mean really!!

He drove a green car - well if you asked me (or probably you) whether you drove a green car the answer is yes, but then it is also yes if you asked about a blue, red, silver etc car. And of course in those days the colours of cars were more limited so it is hardly earth shattering that between him and his wife they drove green and black cars (the most common colours).

Why don't you write to Jim Tucker and offer your views? I am sure many people already have...but I am sure he nevertheless knows what he is doing.

[Stranger]

...but I am sure he nevertheless knows what he is doing.

Yes, isn't it strange that everybody who agrees with Sriram must know what they're doing, even when people point out obvious problems with it, whereas people who are saying things Sriram doesn't like, must be missing something, have "two box syndrome", "microscopic thinking", or being "old school", no matter how much actual evidence and reasoning they supply.....