Evidence or Wishful Thinking? The 'Science' of Reincarnation

Scientific Proof Of Reincarnation. Yes, The Soul Exists.

This entry is going to step away from the more “activist” areas of pseudoscience, and into a more supernatural one. While the concept of reincarnation may or may not in itself be anti-scientific, I would argue that the specific article I am critiquing demonstrates a real disdain for the scientific method. It attempts to present biased non-evidence as scientific proof, and is therefore counter to the scientific method.

I myself have not seen any evidence to rule out the possibility of the soul, or most other religious superstitions for that matter, but I’m arguing here that they do not constitute ‘Scentific Proof’.

Alright,to start with Bancarz claims he’ll prove the soul exists by showing evidence of reincarnation - a process which, by definition, requires a soul (or something like it). Sounds reasonable on the surface, though “soul” itself is not here defined. It would certainly prove that human consciousness and memory is not bound to the physical body, so I can accept the premise. Next, he establishes that his “evidence” is based on abductive reasoning - a process where you observe a phenomenon and form a hypothesis that seems to explain its cause. You see a potted plant growing near a window and leaning toward the sun, you can abduce that it is “reaching” for the nourishing sunlight. Fair enough, but that’s step one. You still need experimentation to confirm or refine your hypothesis, until you can reliably use it to predict outcomes. But it’s still early, I’ll read on.

The very next paragraph states that reincarnation cannot be objectively measured, even going as far as to muse that “it may even be in principle non-provable using the scientific method”. Wait, what was the title of this article again? This is getting a little self-contradictory as he says he’s going to assemble enough evidence to make a case for reincarnation, presumably to the exclusion of other possible explanations.

He then goes on for several paragraphs detailing the work of one Dr. Ian Stevenson, whose career was defined by his investigations of this very topic. When Stevenson began to publish, his work was quite popular, but it has been thoroughly critiqued as well. All of his “evidence” was anecdotal, and he was very much prone to confirmation bias. There was even a high instance of the subjects he interviewed being personally familiar with friends and/or relatives of the deceased whose souls were supposedly reborn. Ordinarily, this is where I’d give you a few links to specific references, but this time I only need to give you one. This Wikipedia article details the problems with Dr. Stevenson’s work, complete with a bibliography of their sources.

It is also mentioned that many of the cases Stevenson investigated involved birthmarks or birth defects that resembled injuries from the soul’s previous incarnation. What isn’t mentioned is that the vast majority of cases investigated were in regions where reincarnation was a common cultural belief, (see the above link), and it would seem to follow naturally from this that parents in these regions whose children were born with unusual markings or deformities would seek to explain it, or at least encourage their children to see past their own differences, with stories of past individuals who suffered similar wounds.

Before concluding his article, Bancarz embeds a video of news footage where a family was interviewed claiming their young son to be the reincarnation of a fighter pilot. The video itself includes a skeptical viewpoint, but allow me to give my two cents.

• The young boy was interested in planes from infancy. Not that unusual, especially among boys who are probably already surrounded with images and models of various vehicles, to varying degrees of realism or brightly colored anthropomorphism.
• Once the interest was established, the parents likely indulged him with even more toys and media related to his interest. The mother claims she “knows what he’s watching” on TV, but she also admitted that her first instinct regarding the nightmares was that he was watching “too much TV”, so at the very least she knows he’s been exposed to the idea of crashes.
• When he started to talk about details that the less interested parents had missed, his father admits to becoming passionate about the idea that his son knows something he shouldn’t, and is therefore special. Most young boys’ natural reaction to a father suddenly showing such interest and pride in the boy’s interests would be to emphasize it even further, paying attention to Dad’s research and reactions. What makes Dad excited is worth more attention.
• By the time they’ve narrowed down the events enough to start contacting experts, the kid’s had plenty of practice in reading Dad and giving the right answers. He’ll have been vague at first, but the more the grown-ups fill in the blanks, the more the kid can extrapolate. Of course, he may not have consciously thought about it in such complex terms, but he appears to have been a smart kid, and techniques such as “cold reading” are well known and effective, even if you don’t know you’re using them.

Bancarz’ actual conclusion is likely the same as Stevenson’s: he was looking for evidence of reincarnation, and he is predisposed to interpret the available evidence as reincarnation. He claims that no natural phenomenon could explain how the children Stevenson interviewed knew what they did, but as I’ve explained above, I disagree.

Still, you’ll recall from the introduction, he was attempting to use abductive reasoning, which is not a valid method of developing conclusions anyway, just your hypothesis. So even if we accept the hypothesis, it is then up to the scientists making the claim to come up with an experiment to test it. Interestingly, Dr. Stevenson did devise an experiment, though even if it was successful, it would be quite difficult to repeat. In 1968, he purchased a combination lock, set his own combination based on a secret mnemonic device, and promised to send back the information in his next life to have it opened. He died in 2007, and as far as I can tell, he had yet to contact the university as of 2013. Well, it’s only been 8 years so far, it could still happen, right?