Articles
Scole Experiments Prove the Afterlife
'For the thinking open minded skeptic, the evidence for the afterlife
produced by the Scole experiments is abundant, legitimate, definitive and positively
conclusive.'
Once again the hard-core skeptics/critics came up with their anticipated
response by claiming fraud or 'hoaxing' or deceit of some sort by the Scole Experimenters'
Group and refuse to acknowledge that science has once more proved the existence
of the afterlife.
Unable to identify even one instance of fraud over the four years
and five hundred sittings of the group, the critics fell back on the argument
'positive results cannot be attained in psychic experiments so there must have
been fraud somewhere.'
It has to be remembered that three highly qualified field investigators
from the Society for Psychical Research, Professors and Ellison and Fontana who
have the highest proven integrity, professionalism and honesty actually participated
in many of the Scole sittings and stated that some contact with the afterlife
was made.
Further, Dr Gauld, one of the main SPR critics, himself acknowledged
that his personal acquaintance with Robin Foy (a main leader in the Scole group)
for more than 30 years makes it difficult to conceive that Foy could have been
capable of such deception.
As well it must be remembered that sittings were held in some
six different countries - Ireland, USA, Spain, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands
and were attended by NASA scientists and other highly accredited scientists in
England and Europe and elsewhere - including astrophysicists, electrical engineers,
mathematicians, field psychologists, criminologists and a lawyer. The astro-physicists
went on to form their own psychic group.
Given these circumstances one would find it rather disgusting
and utterly infantile to even implicitly suggest that all these highly acclaimed
mediums and senior field scientists somehow got together into some form of conspiracy
to fool the world about the Scole results!!
As Professor Arthur Ellison wrote the reply to the critics: 'No
serious student of the Scole investigation can reasonably conclude that their
four years' work and some 500 sittings, most of them closed to outsiders, warrants
the assumptions (of fraud) implicit in such a practice ...' and 'None of our critics
has been able to point to a single example of fraud or deception.'
When an open debate on the subject was held at the Kensington
Central Library, London in December 1999 speakers included senior and eminent
scientists, the authors of the Scole Report and other highly accredited specialists.
The debate supported the motion that paranormal events had taken place during
the Scole experiments.
Legitimate criticism is always to be encouraged. Informed feedback
is gold - that is how continuous refinement takes place. No one is asked to be
sequacious - to blindly follow or to just accept any belief or evidence without
testing it.
But it would be rather foolish, unintelligent and pushing ignorance
to its extreme not to have the incisive professional and empirical discrimination
to identify legitimate authentic psychic results.
With absolute certainty, a court jury would have no problems at
all accepting the statements and the credibility of the aforementioned field experimenters.
Yet one armchair critic and consistently highly negative SPR critic/skeptic
had the audacity to state that it is an 'insult' to suggest that humans on earth
could communicate with intelligences from the afterlife.
We are informed that this same critic/skeptic of the Scole Report
who did NOT participate in any of the experiments, in fifty years never found
proof that 'anything paranormal happened'. I state that any informed, objective,
impartial and non-committed referee or adjudicator of the Scole experiments would
have no hesitancy in completely disallowing any feedback from this said consistently
negative SPR critic.
The SPR skeptics cannot make up their own rules for others to
follow blindly. It is most unfair, unacademic and managerially irresponsible for
any senior executive member to warn negatively that the SPR has a 'strong survivalist
element.' Someone ought to remind this gentleman that the SPR is a society for
research - this means bona fides researchers do NOT have a closed, pre-conceived
negatively geared mind. Legitimate research implies objectivity, integrity and
open-mindedness.
If Professor Carr insists on adopting a closed minded negatively
prejudicial approach to research then it is only reasonable to suggest that he
ought to head a society for psychic skepticism not a research society.
Evidence vs Proof
What the SPR skeptics did was to apply the 'impossible to pass
test' they do not apply to their own skepticism and their profession, especially
in the case of the psychologists. It is clear that they come across as failing
to apply the distinction between admissible evidence and proof.
For example, in a courtroom situation, it may come as a shock
and surprise for Professor Gauld that although he can produce positive evidence
as to his identity he, technically, would never ever be able to absolutely prove
beyond any doubt that he is the person he claims to be. For example, the opposing
lawyer could demand absolute proof that in early childhood Gauld did not take
the place of somebody else. Dr Gauld would NEVER be able to prove this absolutely.
Then using Dr Gauld's own tests of absolute validity, we ought
to assume that Dr Gauld may not be the authentic Alan Gauld. Doubt could always
linger as to his true identity.
Is it not reasonable to ask the legitimate question: why on earth
would the SPR place these closed minded skeptics in senior executive positions?
Would the Labor Party in England allow a staunch Thatcherite on its executive?
Or the Bush administration allow a staunch Democrat in the Inner Republican Circle?
Notwithstanding the strong academic representation in the SPR,
its skeptics' credibility must come under closer scrutiny for any unfair anti-psychic
negativity, willful neglect and intentional or unwarranted indirect aggression
towards psychic phenomena and psychics generally.
Closed-minded skeptics perhaps do not realize that their unfair,
unreasonable and illegitimate criticism is an egregious insult to the investigators,
mediums, scientists and all those who legitimately and positively regularly participated
in the Scole experiments.
In stating the following it should not be implied that I am in
any way encouraging anyone to litigate. Courts are not the proper venue for psychic
matters and for any disagreements between the empirical psychic researchers and
the closed minded skeptics.
However perceiving the grossly unfair and improper criticisms
by the skeptics of the Scole Report it would not be difficult at all for an impartial
jury to conclude that although the said critics may not have been malicious in
their attack on the Scole experimenters and mediums, given that they have NOT
looked at the evidence as a whole there is sufficient material which could amount
to technical transgressions and which would inevitably exclude any defenses of
fair comment.
Theoretically, implied in the general skepticising of the Scole
experiments is the 'presumption of fraud' and cheating which (in the legal context)
IMPUTES that the investigators and the mediums were at times individually or conspiratorially:-
- willfully fraudulent,
- intentionally dishonest,
- intentionally indulging in cheating,
- intentionally indulging in deliberate and fraudulent misrepresentation,
- technically 'incompetent'.
It seems clear to me that the SPR skeptics of the Scole Report:
- made improper, unfair and illegitimate objections,
- exhibited gross deficiency as to what technically constitutes fundamental
'evidence',
- ignored 'probative value' of evidence,
- ignored positive fundamental evidence,
- did not allow for the objectivity of scientific method as a proper criterion
for assessment of evidence,
- exhibited ignorance or did not discriminate as to what is fundamental and
what are ancillary often vexatious objections.
Don't these skeptics understand that the voluminous substantive positive evidence
which was NOT rebutted stands valid and will stand valid until it is rebutted?
If you the reader were one of the Scole's scientist experimenters, would you
not feel humiliated, angry and insulted if some armchair skeptic stated directly
or indirectly that for you to have obtained positive results, you indulged in
cheating, in fraud, in misrepresentation and in deception?
What is to be done?
What could be done forthwith is for the whole of the Scole Report be put on
affidavit.
Some astute lawyer was able to put the statements of the Fox Sisters parents'
and other witnesses to genuine psychic phenomena on affidavit. This enormously
increased the weight of the evidence over time- see Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's History
of Spiritualism Vol.1. Once the evidence is put on affidavit, even the closed
minded skeptics will find it technically difficult to denigrate the positive results
of the Scole experiments by claiming conspiracy to defraud.
Also, the critics ought to withdraw their vexatious objections and try to account
- in the negative or the positive - for the substantive evidence which hitherto
has not been done.
Notwithstanding the above, we must give thanks to those who participated in
the Scole experiments, to the mediums, to the sitters, to the investigators and
to the spirit team which was vital in producing evidence that will enormously
assist so many thousands now and probably millions in the near future and beyond.
-- Victor Zammit (April 2001)
<< Return to
Articles |
