Sunday, October 2, 2016

Ian Stevenson - Reincarnation Research

Dr. Ian Stevenson's Reincarnation Research 
By Kevin Williams

Ian Stevenson (1918-2007) was a psychiatrist who worked for the University of Virginia School of Medicine for 50 years. He was Chair of the Department of Psychiatry from 1957 to 1967, the Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and a Research Professor of Psychiatry from 2002 until his death.

He was also the founder and Director of the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies investigating parapsychological phenomena such as (1)  reincarnation, (2) near-death experiences, (3) out-of-body experiences, (4) after-death communications, (5) deathbed visions, (6) altered states of consciousness and psi. His researches were made possible by an estate left by an entrepreneur for investigating specially these areas.

He did rigorous research. He found evidence suggesting that memories and physical injuries can be transferred from one lifetime to another. He traveled extensively over a period of 40 years, investigating 3,000 cases of children around the world who recalled having past lives. His meticulous research presented evidence that such children had unusual abilities, illnesses, phobias and philias which could not be explained by the environment or heredity.

Read the full article and refer the bibliography of research papers by Ian Stevenson.
http://www.near-death.com/reincarnation/research/ian-stevenson.html



Evidence against Socio-Psychological Hypothesis

Contrary to expectation, B and A cases of India and Sri Lanka all yielded
approximately equal percentages of correct statements and the average overall number
of statements was lower for the A cases. These findings suggest that the sociopsychological
process of "creating" more, and more correct, statements after the families
meet does not take place or at least does not influence the data to a measurable degree.
The very fact that B cases exist indicates that a meeting between families is not a
necessary condition for the occurrence of CORT. Because the data appear not to confirm
the essential predictions derived from the socio-psychological hypothesis, this hypothesis
seems unable to explain CORT.
Conclusion
No evidence was obtained to support the hypothesis that socio-psychological
circumstances promote a false elaboration of apparent memories of previous lives.
Sybo A. Schouten, Ph.D.
Ian Stevenson, M.D.
in Paper: The Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease
Issue: Volume 186(8), August 1998, pp 504-506
Does the Socio-Psychological Hypothesis Explain Cases of the Reincarnation Type?



Bibliography

Ian Stevenson’s Case for the Afterlife: Are We ‘Skeptics’ Really Just Cynics?
By Jesse Bering on November 2, 2013
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/ian-stevensone28099s-case-for-the-afterlife-are-we-e28098skepticse28099-really-just-cynics/