The spirits speak

A friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link to a post that appeared a couple of weeks ago over at the blog Future and Cosmos with the message, "I'm honestly curious to hear what you think of this."

The post had to do with a series of experiments done by a French researcher, Paul Joire, back in the first two decades of the twentieth century.  Joire is an interesting fellow; he was fascinated with claims of the paranormal, but much like the British-based Society for Psychical Research, did his level best to approach things from a scientific standpoint.  That's not to say he didn't have some significant missteps, though.  He invented a device he called a "sthenometer" which he said could detect the presence and configuration of the "nervous force" emitted by the human body, and suggested that it could potentially be used for diagnosis of illness -- but later experiments found that all it was picking up on was body heat.

Paul Joire, ca. 1910 [Image is in the Public Domain]

That said, Joire was at least trying to do things the right way.  He was obsessed with evidence of an afterlife, and investigated numerous claims of séances, table-rapping and table-turning, mediumship, automatic writing, and spirit photography, and (again like the SPR) found that the vast majority of them were outright hoaxes.

It's the remaining ones that are interesting.

The article at Future and Cosmos focuses on a series of experiments Joire did with a self-proclaimed medium and four other people as participants/witnesses, where "unseen agents" were questioned and asked for details of their lives and deaths.  The "agents" responded by rapping on the table to spell out in painstaking fashion words and sentences, which were then recorded by Joire.  The gist of the claim is that the information the ghosts were providing was unavailable to anyone at the table, and was only verified as correct after the fact (some were never verified, but never disproven; none, Joire said, was researched and proven false).  You should read the blog post in its entirety, and I don't want to steal the author's thunder, but here is just one of many examples:

Question. Bertolf must be a Christian name. Have you any other name ?
Answer. Bertolf de Ghistelles.
Q. Were you French ?
A. Flemish.
Q, Will you tell us the name of the locality where you lived ?
A, Dunkerque.
Q. Have you been a long time in the Beyond ?
A. Yes.
Q. In what year did you die ?
A. In 1081.
Q. What were you ?
A, Husband of a Saint.
Q. Do you mean that your wife is honoured as a saint, that she has been canonised ?
A, Yes.
Q. What was her name ?
A, Godeleine de Wierfroy.  Can she forgive me ?
Q, You did her harm ?
A. Yes.
Q. You killed her perhaps ?
A, I had her strangled...
Q, Have you found any members of her family ?
A, Heinfried and his wife Ogine, her father and mother.  They have forgiven me.
Q. Is the festival of your wife celebrated anywhere ?
A. Yes.
Q. On what date ?
A, July 6th....
Q, Did you die in a tragic manner ?
A, No, in a monastery.  I remained there nine years.

Joire was able to verify that there was a woman, later canonized, named Godeleine (or Godelive or Godelieve) of Ghistelles, who was murdered by her husband Berthold [sic] and her body thrown down a well; the remorseful Berthold later became a monk.

The author of Future and Cosmos has the following to say about Joire's experiments and conclusions:

[This would require] some extremely elaborate and very hard-to-prepare fraud in which a medium learned and meticulously memorized very many details about deceased figures (some not famous), and then orally recited those details, only pretending to be entranced...  The total number of raps needed to spell out the details above (with one rap per letter) would have been many hundreds, occurring spread out over a long time.  We can imagine no medium manually producing so many hundreds of raps at a table where five people were seated, without being detected by the investigators.

The only other "narrow possibility" we have of Joire's experiments not being actual evidence of spirit survival, we're told, is if the entire thing was fraudulent; i.e., that Joire himself fabricated it all.

Okay, so what do we make of this?

First, I'll agree with the author that if it's a fraud, it's a sophisticated one.  But the problem is in the last sentence; "We can imagine no medium [accomplishing this] without being detected."  Humans are notoriously easy to fool -- consider how readily we fall for the conjuring illusions of a professional stage magician -- especially when we have a vested interest in believing that the thing we're being fooled about is true.  After all, most of us, myself included, would love it if there were an afterlife.  For me, though, I'd prefer that it not be the harps, haloes, and fields of flowers variety.  I'd be thrilled with something like Valhalla, where you get to spend eternity whooping it up with your friends, participating in daily debauchery involving riotous parties, quaffing tankards of mead, and lots of sex.  So despite my general dubious attitude toward claims of spirit survival, I'm not honestly hostile to the idea, and no one would be happier than me if I turned out to  be wrong.

The thing that bothers me with Joire's experiments is the quality of the evidence.  Joire was able to verify the details in a great many of the cases (and there were a lot of cases; his book is apparently 635 pages long), which means that the details on these people's lives were out there somewhere prior to the experiments being run.  The author of Future and Cosmos says that after reading his accounts we'd be "unlikely to suspect so serious a scholar of that type of chicanery," but unfortunately, there is no human who is above suspicion.  A quick google search for "scientific fraud" will turn up hundreds of examples, some of which had people fooled for years and were debunked more or less by accident.  Scientists, sad to say, are no less prone to the temptations to cheat than the rest of us are.  Most people are honest, and do their best to play fair; but you can't start from the assumption that because a person is a scientist, (s)he is incapable of fraud.

What we can rely on, though, are the methods of science.  The rigor of the scientific approach is set up to exclude the drawing of false conclusions, whether because of innocent error or deliberate falsification, and I don't see how the evidence provided by Joire meets the minimum standard we'd require in order to agree with his conclusions (and those of the author of Future and Cosmos).  I recognize that this means his spirit-rapping question-and-answer sessions fall into a catch-22 -- if the actual accounts of the deceased subjects' lives were already out there, it opens up the possibility of foreknowledge and cheating; but if no such accounts existed, there'd be no way to verify that what the "spirits" said was true.  This, however, is an inherent flaw of the experimental design -- one that makes its results fail to achieve any kind of scientific rigor.

Note, though, that I'm not saying that Joire was a dupe or a fraud, or that he didn't communicate with the disembodied spirit of Bertolf de Ghistelles and other folks.  There is the possibility that Joire's accounts are nothing less than the unvarnished truth, and if you're going to keep an open mind, you have to admit that there's no positive evidence of fraud on the part of Joire or the medium.

But as Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  Unless you're starting by assuming your conclusion, you'd need more than this to buy what Joire is saying.  So as far as the possibility of a fun-filled Valhalla waiting for me, I'm going to have to temper my enthusiasm and wait for better data.

*************************************

It's kind of sad that there are so many math-phobes in the world, because at its basis, there is something compelling and fascinating about the world of numbers.  Humans have been driven to quantify things for millennia -- probably beginning with the understandable desire to count goods and belongings -- but it very quickly became a source of curiosity to find out why numbers work as they do.

The history of mathematics and its impact on humanity is the subject of the brilliant book The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization by Michael Brooks.  In it he looks at how our ancestors' discovery of how to measure and enumerate the world grew into a field of study that unlocked hidden realms of science -- leading Galileo to comment, with some awe, that "Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe."  Brooks's deft handling of this difficult and intimidating subject makes it uniquely accessible to the layperson -- so don't let your past experiences in math class dissuade you from reading this wonderful and eye-opening book.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Ghost wardrobe

Debating endlessly over silly conjectures is nothing new.  The claim has been endlessly circulated that the medieval scholastics, for example, conducted learned arguments over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.   Whether they actually argued over the issue is itself the subject of debate; it seems like the earliest iteration of the idea for which we have written evidence is in The Reasons of the Christian Religion by seventeenth century Puritan theologian Richard Baxter, wherein he writes:

And Schibler with others, maketh the difference of extension to be this, that Angels can contract their whole substance into one part of space, and therefore have not Extra Partes.  Whereupon it is that the Schoolmen have questioned how many Angels may fit upon the point of a Needle?

Which I think we can agree is equally silly.  Given that no one has actually conducted a scientific examination of an angel, determining whether they have Extra Partes is kind of a waste of time.

Although you may recall that Alan Rickman as the Angel Metatron in Dogma made a significant point about angels not having genitalia.  Whether that's admissible as evidence, however, is dubious at best.

So there's a good bit of precedent for people wasting inordinate amounts of time arguing over questions that there's no way to settle.  Which is why I have to admit to rolling my eyes more than once over the article by Stephen Wagner, "Paranormal Phenomena Expert," called, "Why Are Ghosts Seen Wearing Clothes?"

I have to admit, however, that it was a question I'd never considered. If the soul survives, and some souls decide not to go on to their Eternal Reward but to hang around here on Earth to bother the living, you have to wonder why their clothes came along with them.   Clothes, I would imagine, have no souls themselves, so the idea that you're seeing the Undying Spirit of grandpa's seersucker jacket is kind of ridiculous.

Be that as it may, most ghosts are seen fully clothed.  There are exceptions; in 2011 a woman in Cleveland claims to have captured video of two naked ghosts having sex.  But I think we have to admit that such afterlife in flagrante delicto is pretty uncommon.

Wagner spoke with some ghost hunters, and turns out that there's a variety of explanations that have been offered for this.  Troy Taylor, of the American Ghost Society (did you know there was an American Ghost Society?  I didn't) said that ghosts are seen clothed because a haunting is the replaying of a deceased spirit's visualization of itself, and we usually don't picture ourselves in the nude.

On the other hand, Stacey Jones, who calls herself the "Ghost Cop," says that ghosts can project themselves any way they want to.  So what they're doing is creating an image of themselves that has the effect they're after, whether it is eliciting fear, pity, sympathy, or a desire for revenge.  Does that mean that Anne Boleyn, for example, could wander around the Tower of London wearing a bunny suit if she wanted to?  You'd think that she'd be mighty bored after nearly five centuries of stalking around with her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm, and would be ready for a change.

Ghost hunters Richard and Debbie Senate were even more terse about the whole thing.  It's a "gotcha question," they say.  But if pressed, they'd have to say that "Ghosts appear as wearing clothes because that's how they appear to us."  Which I think we can all agree is unimpeachable logic.

I find it pretty amusing that this is even a topic for debate.  Shouldn't we be more concerned about finding scientifically-sound evidence that ghosts exist, rather than fretting over whether we get to take our wardrobe with us into the next world?  As I've said more than once, I am completely agnostic about the afterlife; I simply don't know.  I find some stories of near-death experiences and hauntings intriguing, but I've never found anything that has made me come down on one or the other side of the debate with any kind of certainty.  I'll find out one way or the other at some point no matter what, and if I haven't figured it out before then, I'm content to wait.

So I suppose this falls into the "No Harm If It Amuses You" department.  But it does raise the question of what kind of clothes I want to bring with me if it turns out you do get to choose.  If I end up haunting somewhere nice and tropical -- certainly my preference -- all I'll need is a pair of swim trunks.  On the other hand, if I'm stuck here in upstate New York, which seems more likely, I want my winter jacket, wool scarf, hat, and gloves.

Unless my spirit getting stuck here in perpetuity, with no cold-weather gear, is because I've been sent to hell by the powers-that-be.  Which unfortunately also seems fairly likely.

***********************************

I'm always amazed by the resilience we humans can sometimes show.  Knocked down again and again, in circumstances that "adverse" doesn't even begin to describe, we rise above and move beyond, sometimes accomplishing great things despite catastrophic setbacks.

In Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Hidden Order of Life, journalist Lulu Miller looks at the life of David Starr Jordan, a taxonomist whose fascination with aquatic life led him to the discovery of a fifth of the species of fish known in his day.  But to say the man had bad luck is a ridiculous understatement.  He lost his collections, drawings, and notes repeatedly, first to lightning, then to fire, and finally and catastrophically to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, which shattered just about every specimen bottle he had.

But Jordan refused to give up.  After the earthquake he set about rebuilding one more time, becoming the founding president of Stanford University and living and working until his death in 1931 at the age of eighty.  Miller's biography of Jordan looks at his scientific achievements and incredible tenacity -- but doesn't shy away from his darker side as an early proponent of eugenics, and the allegations that he might have been complicit in the coverup of a murder.

She paints a picture of a complex, fascinating man, and her vivid writing style brings him and the world he lived in to life.  If you are looking for a wonderful biography, give Why Fish Don't Exist a read.  You won't be able to put it down.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Brain waves in the afterlife

It's understandable how much we cling to the hope that there's life after death.  Ceasing to exist is certainly not a comforting prospect.  Heaven knows (pun intended) I'm not looking forward to death myself, although I have to say that I'm more worried about the potential for debility and pain leading up to it than I am to death itself.  Being an atheist, I'm figuring that afterwards, I won't experience much of anything at all, which isn't scary so much as it is inconceivable.

Of course, if the orthodox view of Christianity is correct, I'll have other things to worry about than simple oblivion.

It's this tendency toward wishful thinking that pushes us in the direction of confirmation bias on the subject of survival of the soul.  Take, for example, a paper that came out just this week in PubMed called "Electroencephalographic Recordings During Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy Until 30 Minutes After Declaration of Death."  The paper was based upon studies of four patients who had died after being removed from life support, in which electroencephalogram (EEG) readings were taken as their life signs faded away.  In one case, a particular type of brain waveform -- delta waves, which are associated with deep sleep -- continued for five minutes after cardiac arrest and drop in arterial blood pressure to zero.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The authors were cautious not to over-conclude; they simply reported their findings without making any kind of inference about what the person was experiencing, much less saying that this had any implications about his/her immortal soul.  In fact, it is significant that only one of the four patients showed any sort of brain wave activity following cardiac arrest; if there really was some sort of spirit-related phenomenon going on here, you'd think all four would have shown it.

That hasn't stopped the life-after-death crowd from jumping on this as if it were unequivocal proof of soul survival.  "One more piece of scientific evidence for an afterlife," one person appended to a link to the article.  "This can't be explained by ordinary brain science," said another.

The whole thing reminds me of the furor that erupted when the paper "Electrocortical Activity Associated With Subjective Communication With the Deceased," by Arnaud Delorme et al., showed up in Frontiers in Psychology four years ago.  The paper had some serious issues -- confirmation bias among the researchers, all of whom were connected in one way or another to groups more or less desperate to prove an afterlife, being only one.  The gist is that the researchers did brain scans of alleged mediums while they were attempting to access information about the dead.

To call the results equivocal is a compliment.  There were brain scans done of six mediums; of them, three scored above what you'd expect by chance.  In other words, half scored above what chance would predict, and half below -- pretty much the spread you'd expect if chance was all that was involved.  The sample size is tiny, and if you look at the questions the mediums were asked about the deceased people, you find that they include questions such as:

• Was the discarnate more shy or more outgoing?
• Was the discarnate more serious or more playful?
• Was the discarnate more rational or more emotional?
• Did death occur quickly or slowly?

Not only are these either/or questions -- meaning that even someone who was guessing would have fifty-fifty odds at getting an answer correct -- they're pretty subjective.  I wonder, for example, whether people would say I was "more rational" or "more emotional."  Being a science teacher and skeptic blogger, people who didn't know me well would probably say "rational;" my closest friends know that I'm a highly emotional, anxious bundle of nerves who is simply adept at covering it up most of the time.

Then there's this sort of thing:

• Provide dates and times of year that were important to the discarnate.

Not to mention:

• Does the discarnate have any messages specifically for the sitter?

Which is impossible to verify one way or the other.

Add that to the small sample size, and you have a study that is (to put it mildly) somewhat suspect.  But that didn't stop the wishful thinkers from leaping on this as if it was airtight proof of an afterlife.

Like I said, it's not that I don't understand the desire to establish the survival of the spirit.  No one would be happier than me if it turned out to be true (as long as the aforementioned hellfire and damnation isn't what is awaiting me).  But as far as the 2013 paper that was setting out to demonstrate the existence of an afterlife, and this week's paper that some folks are (unfairly) using for the same purpose -- it's just not doing it for me.

Be that as it may, I still have an open mind about the whole thing.  When there's good hard evidence available -- I'm listening.  Unless it happens after I have personally kicked the bucket, at which point I'll know one way or the other regardless.

Medium test

Think you can communicate with the spirits of the dead?

Well, you now have a chance to prove it.

Norwegian Rolf Erik Eikerno was diagnosed a couple of years ago with a terminal disease.  But instead of simply bemoaning his fate, Eikerno saw his illness as an opportunity.  He teamed up with the producers of the television program Folkeopplysningen ("The Public Enlightenment") to set up a puzzle for any would-be mediums.

Eikerno wrote a message on a sheet of paper, sealed the paper in an envelope, and locked the envelope in a vault.  Only the show's producers have the combination to the lock.  No one but Eikerno knows what is written on the paper, nor even whether it was written in Norwegian or English, a language in which he was fluent.

Shortly before his death, Eikerno made a public statement that if he was approached by anyone in the afterlife, he'd be happy to give them detailed information about what was in the note.  The program's staff have put out the following all-call:

Can you make contact with him?  Do you know someone who may be able to do so? 

Fill out the form further down in the article if you think you know what Rolf Erik wrote before he died. 

IMPORTANT: It is possible to answer only once.  The deadline is September 25th.
This is an experiment conducted by the TV-program "Folkeopplysningen".  Will anyone make contact?  The answer will be revealed in the ultimate episode of this years season, broadcast on Wednesday October 5th.

If you think you might know what Eikerno wrote, you can provide your answer at the link I posted above.

What's interesting about all of this is that it's been tried before.  Harry Houdini left a message with his wife, who offered ten thousand dollars to anyone who could contact Houdini's spirit and tell her what the message was.  She even held a séance every Halloween -- fittingly, the anniversary of Houdini's death -- for ten years, hoping for some contact from her husband's spirit.  Nothing happened, and no one came forward with the correct message, although several tried unsuccessfully.  After ten years, his widow withdrew the offer and stopped having séances, reasoning that ten years was an adequate time for a ghost to make arrangements to contact her.  If she hadn't heard from him by then, she figured, she wasn't going to.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Be that as it may, Folkeopplysningen is going about things the right way.  Here's their description of the program's goals:

Every day we are bombarded with information and claims about what is good for us, what we should be careful about, and what choices we should make to live healthy, good and safe lives. 

"Folkeopplysningen" is a TV-program that investigates such claims.  We pick up subjects where there is a discrepancy between what people think they know, what commercial providers claim, and what science is telling us.  While we in the two first seasons scrutinized different kinds of alternative treatments and health related issues, we have been given free hands this year to look at any possible subject. 

We investigate everything, from finance to dieting, motivation business, cannabis, genetically modified food, ecological food and death.

So sort of a Norwegian version of Mythbusters, without the explosions.

In any case, it'll be interesting to see what turns up, although I'm perhaps to be excused if I'm doubtful anyone will come up with the right answer.  I've always said that my mind is open about an afterlife -- I have no real evidence one way or the other, although I expect that like everyone I'll get some eventually.  On the other hand, the idea that if there's an afterlife, it leaves behind remnant spirits who then can interact with humans -- I'm afraid the evidence is very much against.  If there are any well documented cases of spirit survival that can't be explained either as hoaxes or human gullibility and wishful thinking, I haven't heard about them.

I also doubt if any of the well-known (and well-paid) mediums -- people like Theresa Caputo, John Edward, Sally Morgan, and Sylvia Browne -- will volunteer to try the test out.  They tend not to like those nasty things called "scientifically controlled conditions."  I wonder why that is?

But if you disagree with me, here's your chance to prove me wrong.  As always, evidence and logic are the watchwords around here.

Ghost wardrobe

Debating endlessly over silly conjectures is nothing new.  The claim has been endlessly circulated that the medieval scholastics, for example, conducted learned arguments over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.  Whether they actually argued over the issue is itself the subject of debate; it seems like the earliest iteration of the idea for which we have written evidence is in The Reasons of the Christian Religion by 17th century Puritan theologian Richard Baxter, wherein he writes:

And Schibler with others, maketh the difference of extension to be this, that Angels can contract their whole substance into one part of space, and therefore have not Extra Partes.  Whereupon it is that the Schoolmen have questioned how many Angels may fit upon the point of a Needle?

Which I think we can agree is equally silly.  Given that no one has actually conducted a scientific examination of an angel, determining whether they have Extra Partes is kind of a waste of time.

Although you may recall that Alan Rickman as the Angel Metatron in Dogma made a significant point about angels not having genitalia.  Whether that's admissible as evidence, however, is dubious at best.

So there's a good bit of precedent for people wasting inordinate amounts of time arguing over questions that there's no way to settle.  Which is why I have to admit to rolling my eyes more than once over the article by Stephen Wagner, "Paranormal Phenomena Expert," called, "Why Are Ghosts Seen Wearing Clothes?"

I have to admit, however, that it was a question I'd never considered.  If the soul survives, and some souls decide not to go on to their Eternal Reward but to hang around here on Earth to bother the living, you have to wonder why their clothes came along with them.  Clothes, I would imagine, have no souls themselves, so the idea that you're seeing the Undying Spirit of grandpa's seersucker jacket is kind of ridiculous.

Be that as it may, most ghosts are seen fully clothed.  There are exceptions; in 2011 a woman in Cleveland claims to have captured video of two naked ghosts having sex.  But I think we have to admit that such afterlife in flagrante delicto is pretty uncommon.

Wagner spoke with some ghost hunters, and turns out that there's a variety of explanations that have been offered for this.  Troy Taylor, of the American Ghost Society (did you know there was an American Ghost Society?  I didn't) said that ghosts are seen clothed because a haunting is the replaying of a deceased spirit's visualization of itself, and we usually don't picture ourselves in the nude.

On the other hand, Stacey Jones, who calls herself the "Ghost Cop," says that ghosts can project themselves any way they want to.  So what they're doing is creating an image of themselves that has the effect they're after, whether it is eliciting fear, pity, sympathy, or a desire for revenge.  Does that mean that Anne Boleyn, for example, could wander around the Tower of London wearing a bunny costume?  You'd think that she'd be mighty bored after nearly five centuries of stalking around with her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm.

Ghost hunters Richard and Debbie Senate were even more terse about the whole thing.  It's a "gotcha question," they say.  But if pressed, they'd have to say that "Ghosts appear as wearing clothes because that's how they appear to us."  Which I think we can all agree is unimpeachable logic.

I find it pretty amusing that this is even a topic for debate.  Shouldn't we be more concerned about finding scientifically sound evidence that ghosts exist, rather than fretting over whether we get to take our wardrobe with us into the next world?  As I've said more than once, I am completely agnostic about the afterlife; I simply don't know.  I find some stories of near-death experiences and hauntings intriguing, but I've never found anything that has made me come down on one or the other side of the debate with any kind of certainty.  I'll find out one way or the other at some point no matter what, and if I haven't figured it out before then, I'm content to wait.

So I suppose this falls into the "No Harm If It Amuses You" department.  But it does raise the question of what kind of clothes I want to bring with me if it turns out you do get to choose.  If I end up haunting somewhere nice and tropical -- certainly my preference -- all I'll need is a pair of swim trunks.  On the other hand, if I'm stuck here in upstate New York, which seems more likely, I want my winter jacket, wool scarf, hat, and gloves.

Unless my spirit getting stuck here in perpetuity, with no cold-weather gear, is because I've been sent to hell by the powers-that-be.  Which unfortunately also seems fairly likely.

A study of life after death

Today we have news that the Templeton Foundation is giving a three-year, five million dollar grant to John Martin Fischer of the University of California-Riverside to conduct an in-depth study of the afterlife.  [Source]

"People have been thinking about immortality throughout history.  We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death," said Fischer, the principal investigator of what is being called the Immortality Project.  "Much of the discussion has been in literature, especially in fantasy and science fiction, and in theology in the context of an afterlife, heaven, hell, purgatory and karma.  No one has taken a comprehensive and sustained look at immortality that brings together the science, theology and philosophy."

The project will involve an in-depth analysis of reports of near-death experiences, spirit survival, and out-of-body experiences.  Fischer is careful to emphasize the rigorous nature of the study his team intends to undertake.

"We will be very careful in documenting near-death experiences and other phenomena, trying to figure out if these offer plausible glimpses of an afterlife or are biologically induced illusions," Fischer said.  "Our approach will be uncompromisingly scientifically rigorous.  We’re not going to spend money to study alien-abduction reports.  We will look at near-death experiences and try to find out what’s going on there — what is promising, what is nonsense, and what is scientifically debunked.  We may find something important about our lives and our values, even if not glimpses into an afterlife."

And that's the problem, isn't it?  How can you tell the difference between the two -- a true, scientifically verifiable "glimpse into an afterlife," and a mere collection of stories that tell us "something important about... our values?"  With near-death experiences, and anything else that relies solely on anecdotal reports, it is often impossible to eliminate the effects of the inevitable skewing of memory that occurs because of inherent flaws of our perceptual and integrative neural mechanisms.  If there is a commonality between stories of NDEs, what does that mean?  Are reports of NDEs similar because people are experiencing contact with a consistent, real afterlife, or because we all have basically the same brain wiring and that wiring fails in a consistent way when we are nearing death?

I just don't know how you'd sort the two out, frankly.  Myself, I have no idea if there is an afterlife -- but even if there is, it may well be out of the reach of an acceptable empirical protocol that would convince someone who wasn't already convinced.

And that brings up the second problem.  The Templeton Foundation is a granting agency whose stated purpose is

[to serve] as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality.  We support research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will.  We encourage civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights.  Our vision is derived from the late Sir John Templeton's optimism about the possibility of acquiring "new spiritual information" and from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship.  The Foundation's motto, "How little we know, how eager to learn," exemplifies our support for open-minded inquiry and our hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries.

All of which sounds nice, but it does put a rather heavy burden on the researcher receiving their grant money to find a connection between science in spirituality, given that taking five million dollars and turning up empty-handed would be a bit of an anticlimax.

I'm not alone in having some questions about the Templeton Foundation's motives.  Rationalists such as Richard Dawkins, John Horgan, and Peter Woit have all made pointed comments about the Foundation's money biasing any projects that they might support.  Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology, said, "the entire purpose of the Templeton Foundation is to blur the line between straightforward science and explicitly religious activity, making it seem like the two enterprises are part of one big undertaking. It's all about appearances."  Carroll did add, however, "I appreciate that the Templeton Foundation is actually, in its own way, quite pro-science, and is not nearly as objectionable as the anti-scientific crackpots at the Discovery Institute."

It's telling if in order to place a funding agency on the side of rigorous research, you have to compare it to the Discovery Institute.

On the other hand, I'm cautiously in favor of such research.  As I've said many times before in this blog, I'm perfectly willing to entertain the possibility of there being many phenomena that fall outside the ken of current understanding -- but if you think such things are real, you damn well better have some hard evidence to support your position.  The "Big Questions" -- and the existence of an afterlife is certainly one of the biggest -- are deserving of research, and if it is done with acceptable scientific rigor, the Immortality Project is a fascinating thing to undertake.  I can only hope that the researchers involved with the project aren't going to end up being corrupted by the inherent bias of their grant foundation.