Journal of Scientific Exploration

Whither UAP Data?

Chris Rutkowski — 2024-10-14

The Composition of Ian Stevenson’s Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation

James G. Matlock — 2024-10-14

Ian Stevenson was trained as a physician and, later, as a psychiatrist. He made significant contributions to biochemistry, psychosomatic medicine, and other areas before turning to parapsychology in mid-career. From the start of his involvement in parapsychology, Stevenson was interested in claims to remember previous lives. As his research with such claims progressed, he became convinced of reincarnation’s potential to shed light on unresolved problems in medicine. This paper describes the background and traces the development of Stevenson’s classic collection of case reports, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, whose first edition appeared in 1966. Stevenson expected his monograph to be recognized as making the important contribution he believed it did and thought that it would lead to public funding for further research on reincarnation. Sixty years on that has yet to happen, perhaps due to Stevenson’s emphasis on the proof-oriented aspects of the cases he reported, to the neglect of other issues that might have connected more easily with mainstream interests, and more directly countered criticisms of his research methodology.

Vapor Phase Electrochemistry 2: Spherical and Spheroidal Air Plasmas

David Turner — 2024-10-14

Among the rare meteorological phenomena that exist are long-lived spheroidal air plasmas. Of these, lightning balls are best characterized. Closely related are earth-lights, tornadic lights and Unpredictable Flying Objects (UFOs). Early physicists took all such phenomena to be plasmas and would refer to them as electric fire or fireballs. Many physicists today do not accept that these light emitting objects are plasmas because they neglect a variety of influences that result from chemical change. Stability results mainly from entropy production as an ionized, metastable form of nitrous acid, produced at an air plasma surface, refrigerates the surface through its conversion to the stable acid. It is then oxidized to nitric acid in an aerosol form, which restricts the inflow of air to the plasma surface. This can explain the “ surface tension” of lightning balls early, as hypothesized by Stakhanov (1979). Studies of earth-lights (Teodorani, 2004) imply that these are plasma balls held together by the same forces as those providing mechanical stability to lightning balls. Studies of flame balls in space support this view. UFOs and earth-lights are structured similarly but the plasma components of UFOs can be held together by far stronger forces. Potentially, air plasmas have important technological implications since they are all powered by extracting and using chemical energy from the air. Crucially, this energy can only be extracted from air whose temperature is below 150 C. If air plasmas could be prepared artificially, they would prove invaluable in supplying ample carbon-free electrical energy.

A Detailed Phenomenology of Poltergeist Events

Eric Dullin — 2024-10-14

The objective of this paper is to propose a reference point in the phenomenology of poltergeists either for people who want to know more about these phenomena or for researchers looking for cases and sources associated with some particular phenomenon. In parallel, an ongoing work is conducted aimed at building a global case repository of poltergeist cases with their phenomenological characteristics and their sources, which will be available soon at www.macropk.org. A historical view of the 50+ qualitative and quantitative studies of the poltergeist phenomenon is presented along with the different authors/researchers and the publications associated. The different types of phenomena observed are studied from four angles: the physical impacts on the environment, the interactions with people, other features such as duration, focus effect, and contagion, and how the phenomena ended. Each type of event is illustrated through different cases extracted from our case repository (about 1250), often with a short extract from (one of) the sources describing some key characteristics. A discussion about the validity of these data is then developed, looking in particular at testimonials, fraud detection, legal impacts, and the similarity of description of unconnected people. These elements tend to give a strong plausibility to the diverse phenomena observed, even the more “bizarre” ones. Considering all these cases and the details associated with them could help to build a more global picture of the phenomenon. This could provide more ideas based on facts to develop current and new hypotheses, as well as new psychophysical models, in order to make progress in comprehending the phenomenon. A list of the 105 cases used in the description of the phenomenology is provided along with their sources and their distribution across historical periods and geographical areas.

The Myth of the Decline Effect in Psi Research: The Empirical Evidence

Patrizio E Tressoldi — 2024-10-14

The decline effect (DE) has been discussed in “psi” research since the early times of experimental investigations, and many causes have been advanced from: individual psychology, social attitudes, electromagnetic fields, experimental artifacts, or physical properties often related to quantum physics. Bierman (2001) found small and statistically significant decline slopes in all experimental protocols, but the mind-matter interaction with random number generators, where he found a positive quadratic polynomial slope. This study aimed to update Bierman’s results, taking into account all studies completed up to 2023 and analyzed in different meta-analyses. Five experimental protocols were analyzed: including anomalous perception in a Ganzfeld condition, remote viewing, forced-choice design in extra-sensory perception, predictive physiological anticipation, and dream extra-sensory perception studies. The results showed that only one slope coefficient out of the five examined was statistically significant, indicating that there was no evidence of a general DE across the different experimental protocols.

Reader Advisory for Sudduth’s BICS Treatise: Preface to Long Essay Section

James Houran — 2024-10-14

The Augustine-Braude Bigelow Survival Debate: A Postmortem and Prospects for Future Directions

Michael Sudduth — 2024-10-14

In 2021, the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (hereafter, BICS) sponsored an essay competition designed to solicit the best evidence for the hypothesis that human consciousness survives bodily death, and more specifically, evidence that would prove this hypothesis beyond a reasonable doubt. The summer 2022 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration featured a special subsection on the BICS contest and its winning essays. Robert Bigelow and Colm Kelleher outlined the motivation, design, and judging criteria for the competition. Keith Augustine provided an extensive critical commentary on the contest design and eight of its prominent winning essays. Stephen Braude and several coauthors1 responded to Augustine’s criticisms, and Augustine provided a reply to Braude and his collaborators. Finally, the subsection concluded with a collaborative paper in which Etienne LeBel, Adam Rock, and Keith Augustine proposed a more rigorous experimental design for testing the survival hypothesis.

Dominion Lost

Steve Aspin — 2024-10-14

American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed Into the Lands and Imaginations of America

Stephen C. Jett — 2024-10-14

Are Quanta Real?: A Galilean Dialogue

Fred Alan Wolf — 2024-10-14

The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony

Kevin Randle — 2024-10-14

JSE Special Issue Editor Commentary on Rubinstein (2024)

Don Rubin — 2024-10-14

Response to Don Rubin

William Rubinstein — 2024-10-14

Announcements

Brian Laythe — 2024-10-14