Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 295–298, 2010
0892-3310/10
Response to “How To Improve the Study and
Documentation of Cases of the Reincarnation Type?
A Reappraisal of the Case of Kemal Atasoy”
The Essay by Vitor Moura Visoni in JSE, 24(1), Spring 2010, pp. 101–108, makes a number of criticisms of our Research Article “Children Who Claim To Remember Previous Lives: Cases with Written Records Made before the Previous Personality Was Identified,” JSE, 19(1), Spring 2005, pp. 91–101, which we will address by section:
The Participation of the Interpreter. We disagree that “such investigations
have already suffered enough from the accusation of fraud on the part of the
interpreters.” One interpreter 40 years ago was accused of fraud in unrelated
work, but his interviews were subsequently validated by other interpreters.
When the child in the current case was interviewed, the interpreter’s motives
were irrelevant. Since the child was describing an obscure person from 50
years before, whose existence JK [the author] was only able to confirm after
great effort, the interpreter could not reasonably be accused of falsifying the
interview. At the time of the interview, he did not possess any information about
the previous personality that he could have put in the mouth of the child.
The Interview with the Child. The author recommends recording all
interviews. We have recorded interviews on occasion, but we agree with the
concerns Dr. Haraldsson mentioned. Though having interviews recorded and
transcribed might seem ideal, the process of getting them can be impractical, or
worse can impact on the quality of the information being obtained.
The author also objects to the presence of the mother during the interview.
We think anyone who has had experience with children would recognize that
the chances of getting a six-year-old child to share information with strangers
who do not speak the same language without a parent or close attachment figure
present are extremely remote. In this case, the boy’s mother could not have fed
him any information since she knew nothing about the person being described.
Regarding the number of interviews, the boy and his family were
interviewed multiple times, though we acknowledge that our paper could have
been clearer on that point. The most important interview by far, however, was
the first one, which was conducted before anyone tried to verify the child’s
statements. Dr. Haraldsson is right that multiple interviews can help ensure that
there is consistency about what the child was alleged to have said before the
case was solved. In this case, there is no question about what the child said
before the case was solved, because JK solved it after interviewing the child.
We agree that finding as many witnesses to the child’s statements as possible
is helpful and often essential. In this case, the child had not made statements to
anyone but his immediate family, as we stated in the article. More significantly,
multiple witnesses are often needed to confirm that the child had the knowledge
about the previous personality that his parents claim. In this case, that issue is
not in doubt since the case was unsolved at the time of the initial interview.
The Interview with Mr. Toran Togar. The author argues that JK should
not have been the one to conduct the confirmatory interview. When JK was
searching for people who could tell about the history of the home in question, it
would have been impractical to locate an informant and then say the interview
would have to wait until another researcher could be fl own in from another
country, a researcher who would not know what to ask in order to confirm the
boy’s statements. That issue aside, the author is correct that a recording would
serve as stronger confirmation of the interview than notes alone, but again there
are practical issues as to why we do not routinely record interviews.
Tests of Recognition. The author faults the lack of recognition tests in
this case. As we noted in the paper, the boy was beginning to forget details of
the purported life by the time his statements had been verified. That and the
changes that would have occurred in the city during the 50 years following the
previous personality’s death meant that the slim chance that he would be able
to recognize places was outweighed by the factors, such as the expense to the
investigation and the time required of the boy and his parents to travel 850 km
each way, that made such a trip impractical. We do agree that if recognition tests
are to be performed, they need to be tightly controlled to be of significant value.
Psychological Tests. We are unaware of any psychological disorder that
could lead a child to know numerous details about a man who lived 850 km
away and died 50 years before.
Description of the Case . . . . Though we do not have a verbatim transcript
of the interviews that were conducted, we do provide a list in our paper of all the
statements the boy made before any attempt was made to verify them.
Is It Still a Strong Case? On this point, we are in full agreement with the
author’s positive answer. We also think given the practical constraints that are a
necessary part of this kind of fieldwork, the investigation of the case involving
multiple trips to Turkey to interview multiple witnesses was quite sound.
Reply to Tucker and Keil
I would like to thank them very much for the attention that Tucker and
Keil have given to my reappraisal of the case Kemal Atasoy. Their reply is, in
several points, very informative and satisfying. However, I have the impression
that the authors may have considered my suggestions somewhat unnecessary
to guarantee the authenticity of the case, therefore not considering it profitable
to employ them. I believe that some of the measures that I have suggested, if
adopted more often, could help us better understand the modus operandi of
the phenomenon underlying CORTs (cases of the reincarnation type), serving
thus not merely as a safeguard against fraud or other alternative naturalistic
explanations. This way, the use of psychological tests, not only providing us a
better guarantee against possible explanations based on children’s suggestibility,
could also help in explaining, for example, why some of the children who had
a violent death in a previous life have phobias, birthmarks, or birth defects in
their present life while others (also having had a violent death in a previous life)
have not. Could it be that this former group has the same profile of people who
display stigmata or of people who have “relived” traumatic experiences with the
help of hypnosis or drugs and then developed skin conditions similar to the ones
they had during the original experiences? More psychological tests in children
could help to address these types of questions. Therefore, I hope researchers
will employ them more frequently, not only as part of the replication process
that science calls for but also as a tool for unraveling the modus operandi of
CORTs.
Finally, I still consider that the use of micro cameras would overcome, if
not all, at least many of the problems that researchers face today in registering
interviews, when compared with traditional cameras. The investigation of
CORTs have always used a methodology much akin to forensic science, and a
tighter similarity to it could only make the investigation more robust.
Weight of the Soul: 28 Grams?
Carlos Alvarado’s historical writings always make interesting reading,
not least his work on Duncan MacDougall’s experiment on the loss of weight
at death—“On Duncan MacDougall’s Experiment on the Loss of Weight at
Death,” Letter to the Editor, JSE, 23(3), Fall 2009, pp. 343–348. MacDougall’s
piece of research also gave me a surprising series of experiences:
In 1971, I published a book in Swedish, which later appeared in several
foreign editions. The purpose of the book was to give an overview of research
in parapsychology at that time, with emphasis on the survival problem.
Among many other research reports, I mentioned the experiment by Duncan
MacDougall in 1907.
The German edition of my book was published in 1973 or 1974. At the
book release, a journalist looked in the book and saw my notice about the
MacDougall experiment. He did not read very carefully, so he cabled out the
news that I had done this research. During the following years, I received dozens
if not hundreds of letters from around the world asking for reprints or details
of my experiment. I became undeservedly famous for having weighed the soul.
A French magazine made a joke of it and published a fun picture of me with a
big 28-gram weight on my head. As late as 2000, a man in Germany published
somewhere that I had made this experiment in the hospital of Kristianstad in
1972. (Retrocognitive precognition? I did not move to Kristianstad until 1979.)
The English edition of my book was translated by a woman living in a
small town in the United States. In 1974 she read in her local newspaper that I
had weighed the soul. She was obviously the only person in town to know the
facts, so she called the editor. With a sigh he said: “It was the only good piece
of news that day.”
References
Alvarado, C. S. (2009). On Duncan MacDougall’s experiment on the loss of weight at death.
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 23, 343–348.
Jacobson, N. O. (1974). Life without Death? On Parapsychology, Mysticism, and the Question of
Survival. New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence. (Original Swedish edition in
1971, Liv efter döden? Göteborg: Zindermans)
Human Weight Loss upon Death
Regarding “Rebuttal to Claimed Refutations of Duncan MacDougall’s Experiment on Human Weight Change at the Moment of Death”, by Masayoshi Ishida, JSE 24(1):5–39, I agree with MacDougall that the body loses weight on death.
The body is an aqueous system under pressure, and dissolved gases are lost when the heart quits pumping. Just consider that a one-liter bottle of beer will lose 2 grams of CO2 when the pressure is removed by taking off the cap.
May your entropy ever increase,
FRANK G. POLLARD