Keith Augustine’s critical evaluation of the essay contest sponsored by the Bigelow Institute of Consciousness Studies (BICS) is an interesting but problematic review. It mixes reasonable and detailed criticisms of the contest and many of the winning essays with a disappointing reliance on some of the most trite and superficial criticisms of parapsychological research. Ironically, Augustine criticizes the winning essays for using straw-man arguments and cherry-picked evidence even though many of his own arguments commit these same errors.

Michael Nahm's preceding commentary accuses me of seven misrepresentations. One of these is an acknowledged good-faith error about a peripheral detail, while the remaining six are demonstrably accurate descriptions of Nahm's statements. At the same time, Nahm verifiably misrepresents me frequently and intentionally over issues that he takes to be consequential, which is a much more serious offense. All authors should call out when an interlocutor get their points wrong, but only when they can definitively back up the charge. Where (...) Nahm weakly attempts to show that I misrepresented him, I will show that, if anything, his showcase consists of six verifiably accurate characterizations of his Bigelow Institute contest-winning essay's conclusions. His commentary exemplifies the truism that one can appeal to a million frivolous reasons to dismiss what an opponent has to say if one is absolutely determined not to hear him. Though committed survivalists will undoubtedly be satisfied that survival researchers have responded to me regardless of whether they have responded well, those that care about the underlying issues will hopefully find value in my reply. -/- 1. Introduction -- 2. My (One) Accidental Misattribution -- 3. Nahm's (Repeated) Intentional Mischaracterizations -- 4. Nahm's Mischaracterizations to Shift the Burden of Proof -- 5. Nahm's Seven Wonders of the World -- 6. Conclusion: Assertions Should be Supported. (shrink)

The failure of five psychical researchers to confront my critique of Bigelow Institute contest-winning essays with counterpoints or concessions responsive to its novel criticisms is disappointing. Their defensive and scattershot reply lost sight of whether the critiqued essays met their directive to provide "hard evidence 'beyond a reasonable doubt'" of the survival of human consciousness. In the critique I also questioned the scientific validity of seeking ostensible evidence for discarnate personal survival without giving due care to potential evidence against it, (...) for no scientific (or even legal) investigation of evidence tips the scales in favor of a preordained conclusion by simply never adding any opposing items to the opposite scale. Survival researchers, though, have consistently proceeded in this partisan way. Those who claim that science should expand its metaphysically conservative picture to include things otherwise not known to exist assume the burden of showing what they claim. My interlocutors' almost exclusively testimonial evidence does not adhere to the long-standing scientific principles required by the scientific community. For the kind of evidence that could be publicly confirmed is simply not the kind that survival researchers have been able to provide, just as we would expect of a hodgepodge of deception, embellishment, malobservation, misreporting, self-deception, and so on; but which would be surprising on the hypothesis that discarnate personal survival occurs. The survival evidence does not even survive elementary scrutiny, let alone outweigh our everyday experience of the biological fragility of our own minds. The totality of the evidence renders discarnate personal survival highly unlikely. Attempts to reinterpret this evidence away through various analogies fail because a hypothesis that makes false predictions, like that of the independence of individual consciousness from a functioning brain, will continue to make them no matter what analogy one uses to illustrate it. -/- 1. The "Best" Survival Evidence: Mental Mediumship -- 2. Testimonial Evidence and the Burden of Proof -- 3. Does Physical Mediumship Provide Good Evidence of Survival? -- 4. Advancing Beyond Eternally Debatable Evidence -- 5. Prospective Experimental Tests of Survival -- 6. Setting the Record Straight -- 7. Rising to the Neuroscientific Challenge -- 8. Conclusion: Reframing Facts Does Not Change Them. (shrink)

Prior experimental studies of anomalous information reception (AIR) have been touted as strong evidence for postmortem survival of consciousness yet are plagued by several methodological weaknesses that preclude clear evidence of positive results. The present team provides an adversarial collaboration to identify and compensate for the major limitations of these previous approaches. We outline a more rigorous preregistered study design that eliminates or minimizes researcher bias in (a) data cleaning and (b) statistical analysis. Obtaining positive results with our recommended design (...) would arguably yield data that skeptics and sympathetic researchers would agree is more clearly interpretable and offers stronger support for a survivalist interpretation. However, this proposed study is not intended to be definitive but rather only a next step in a research program that aims to improve on earlier published efforts. It would also admittedly be time-consuming and expensive to implement, as well as raise ethical considerations in utilizing vulnerable research populations. However, these costs are required to achieve the rigor necessary to advance scientific knowledge in survival research. 1. Introduction -- 2. Laying a Working Foundation -- 3. Choice of "Survival Effect" -- 4. The Recommended Preregistered Protocol -- 5. Considerations and Caveats -- 5.1. Strengths of Such Protocol -- 6. Concluding Thoughts. (shrink)