The Forgotten Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Argument From Cosmic Fine-Tuning

Discussions of arguments for the existence of God have traditionally mentioned three different arguments:

1. An argument called the cosmological argument, which is metaphysical.  
2. An argument called the argument from design, based on aspects of the universe that seem designed or organisms in nature that seem designed. 
3. A metaphysical argument called the ontological argument. 

There are different versions of the argument from design. Prior to 1950 most versions of the argument seemed to be based almost entirely on appearances of design in biology. The classic exposition of such an argument was William Paley's book Natural Theology. 

But after 1980 there began to arise a different version of the argument from design, one based on physics and cosmology. We can use the name "the argument from cosmic fine-tuning" to refer to this version of the argument from design. The argument was based on seemingly fine-tuned aspects of two different things: (1) the Big Bang event that apparently began the universe, and (2) the universe's laws and fundamental constants. 

What is a fundamental constant? It is a number that is the same everywhere in the universe, a number that crucially affects the behavior and appearance of matter and systems in the universe. The table below lists some of these fundamental constants. 

Speed of light	299,792,458 meters per second
Planck's constant	6.62607004 × 10-34 m2 kg / s
Gravitational constant	6.67408 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2
Proton rest mass	1.6726231 × 10-27 kg
Electron rest mass	9.1093897 × 10-31 kg
Proton charge	1.60217733 × 10-19 coulomb
Electron charge	-1.60217733 × 10-19 coulomb

These numbers are called constants because they appear to be unvarying throughout the universe. Apparently everywhere in the universe all resting protons have a mass exactly equal to the proton mass stated above. Apparently everywhere in the universe all resting electrons have a mass exactly equal to the electron mass stated above. Apparently everywhere in the universe all protons have an electric charge exactly equal to the proton charge stated above. Apparently everywhere in the universe all electrons have an electric charge exactly equal to the electric charge stated above. The electric charge of all protons (a positive charge) is the very precise opposite of the electric charge of all electrons (a negative charge), something which physical science fails to explain.  

The argument from cosmic fine-tuning argues that some or most of these fundamental constants are fine-tuned, in the sense that they have values within a very narrow range compatible with the existence of intelligent life in the universe. The same argument appeals to fine-tuning in the laws of nature, and fine-tuning in natural quantities that could have been vastly different, such as the universe's initial expansion rate and the universe's initial entropy. An interesting question is: who first advanced something like this argument from cosmic fine-tuning?

To answer this question, we must go all the way back to the year 1834. In this year there was published the work "Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology" by William Whewell, which can be read here and here.

The Google Gemini infographic below summarizes Whewell's accomplishments in science, mathematics and education. 

Wikipedia gives a biographical sketch of William Whewell here. It is an article describing someone who seemed to be a figure of very high brilliance. We read that Whewell was a "polymath" who was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. We read this:

"The breadth of Whewell's endeavours is his most remarkable feature. In a time of increasing specialisation, Whewell belonged in an earlier era when natural philosophers investigated widely. He published work in mechanics, physics, geology, astronomy, and economics, while also composing poetry, writing a Bridgewater Treatise, translating the works of Goethe, and writing sermons and theological tracts. In mathematics, Whewell introduced what is now called the Whewell equation, defining the shape of a curve without reference to an arbitrarily chosen coordinate system. He also organized thousands of volunteers internationally to study ocean tides, in what is now considered one of the first citizen science projects. He received the Royal Medal for this work in 1837.

One of Whewell's greatest gifts to science was his wordsmithing. He corresponded with many in his field and helped them come up with neologisms for their discoveries. Whewell coined, among other terms, scientist, physicist, linguistics, consilience, catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and astigmatism; he suggested to Michael Faraday the terms electrode, ion, dielectric, anode, and cathode."

We read in the Wikipedia article of the most astonishing output by Whewell, mainly in the fields of science and mathematics. 

On page 9  of his  work "Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology" William Whewell stated this:

"It will be our business to show that the laws which really prevail in nature are, by their form, that is, by the nature of the connexion which they establish among the quantities and properties which they regulate, remarkably adapted to the office which is assigned them ; and thus other evidence of selection, design, and goodness, in the power by which they were established." 

Whewell attempted to discover numbers in nature that seemed fine-tuned. He discussed examples such as the length of the year, the length of the day, and the mass of the earth. These are examples pertaining only to our planet, and cannot be called part of a cosmic fine-tuning argument. But some of Whewell's statements foreshadowed the argument from cosmic fine-tuning we see today. For example, on page 43 he said this:

"Now, it will be very obvious that if the intensity of gravity were to be much increased, or much diminished, if every object were to become twice as heavy or only half as heavy as it now is, all the forces, both of involuntary and voluntary motion which produce the present orderly and suitable results by being properly proportioned to the resistance which they experience, would be thrown off their balance ; they would produce motions too quick or too slow, wrong positions, jerks and stops, instead of steady, well conducted movements. The universe would be like a machine ill regulated ; every thing- would go wrong ; repeated collisions and a rapid disorganization must be the consequence."

He follows on page 50 with similar comments, discussing the disastrous effects  "if the force of gravity were much lessened." After discussing how much earthly life depends on the force of gravity having the right quantity, Whewell states this on page 51:

"The arbitrary quantity, therefore, of which we have been treating, the intensity of the force of gravity, appears to have been taken account of, in establishing the laws of those forces by which the processes of vegetable and animal life are carried on. And this leads us inevitably, we conceive, to the belief of a supreme contriving mind, by which these laws were thus devised and thus established."

On page 110 Whewell begins to discuss "the laws of electricity," but he failed to grasp the supreme importance of electromagnetism to the habitability of the universe. You can read about that importance in my posts here and here and here. 

On page 141 Whewell summarizes some of his arguments thus far:

"It has been shown in the preceding chapters that a great number of quantities and laws appear to have been selected in the construction of the universe ; and that by the adjustment to each other of the magnitudes and laws thus selected, the constitution of the world is what we find it, and is fitted for the support of vegetables and animals, in a manner in which it could not have been, if the properties and quantities of the elements had been different from what they are."

On page 144 Whewell states this:

"Now, in the list of the mathematical elements of the universe which has just been given, why have we such laws and such quantities as there occur, and no other? For the most part, the data there enumerated are independent of each other, and might be altered separately, so far as the mechanical conditions of the case are concerned....All natural philosophers will, probably, agree, that there must be, in this list, a great number of things entirely without any mutual dependence....There are, therefore, it appears, a number of things which, in the structure of the world, might have been otherwise, and which are what they are in consequence of choice or of chance. We have already seen, in many of the cases separately, how unlike chance every thing looks: — that substances, which might have existed any how, so far as they themselves are concerned, exist exactly in such a manner and measure as they should, to secure the welfare of other things : — that the laws are tempered and fitted together in the only way in which the world could have gone on, according to all that we can conceive of it. This must, therefore, be the work of choice ; and if so, it cannot be doubted, of a most wise and benevolent Chooser."

Whewell then proceeds to discuss at great length favorable features of our solar system that we would not expect chance to have produced, many of which are needed for humans to exist. On page 216 Whewell returns to a discussion of gravitation, pointing out that the law of gravitation has features (such as its inverse square rule)  it easily could not have had, features needed for our existence. He states this: "The answer to this is, that no reason, at all satisfactory, can be given why such a law must, of necessity, be what it is ; but that very strong reasons can be pointed out why, for the beauty and advantage of the system, the present one is better than others." 

Around pages 233-234 Whewell discusses Newton's laws of motion, discussing how life would be a long shot if they did behave as they do (for example, Earth would stop spinning if there did not exist Newton's first law of motion stating that objects maintain their state of motion unless something acts to change such a state). Whewell points out that there's no known why such laws have to behave as they do, and that for most of recorded history people thought matter did not behave as Newton's first law states. He states this:

"Such is the necessary consequence of the first law of motion ; but the law itself has no necessary existence, so far as we can see. It was discovered only after various perplexities and false conjectures of speculators on mechanics. We have learnt that it is so, but we have not learnt, nor can any one undertake to teach us, that it must have been so. For aught we can tell, it is one among a thousand equally possible laws, which might have regulated the motions of bodies."

A bit later Whewell concludes this:  "And as, along with this, it has appeared that we have no sort of right to attribute the establishment of this law to anything but selection, we have here a striking evidence of design, suited to lead us to a perception of that Divine mind, by which means so simple are made to answer purposes so extensive and so beneficial."

There seems to be validity in his comments about how critical laws of nature could just as easily have been vastly different. The three laws of nature most crucial to life are discussed in the table below.

PHENOMENON	OPERATING PRINCIPLE
Gravitation	Inverse square law (diminishes gradually as distance increases)
Electromagnetism	Inverse square law (diminishes gradually as distance increases)
Strong nuclear force	Glue-like operation (extremely strong at very short distances, disappearing at slightly greater distance)

Whewell's arguments about how providential are the features of our planet and solar system now seem prescient, given that astronomers have discovered thousands of planets revolving around other stars, but still have not discovered an extrasolar planet with either intelligent life or life of any type. Such arguments about our planet and solar system were only part of Whewell's arguments, which dealt considerably with things such as the strength of gravitation and the universal laws of nature, which are the same throughout the observable universe (gravity varying from planet to planet always depends on the same fundamental constant symbolized by G in Newton's famous equation expressing the law of gravitation). Whewell's arguments about how providential are the features of our planet and solar system have been restated and improved on by writers in recent decades. For example, the long paper here discusses multiple solar system habitability zones and multiple galactic habitability zones, giving a discussion of  quite a few "bullseyes that must be hit" that reinforces many of Whewell's claims. 

Whewell's 1834 book "Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology" did not get very many readers. A few decades later, a person less intelligent than the very brilliant Whewell (Charles Darwin) wrote a book with the racist-sounding title "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."  Atheists got busy constructing the untrue triumphal legend that a genius had explained the design in nature, and that the need to postulate a cosmic designer had been eliminated. The legend was untrue not merely because of the weakness of Darwinian explanations of biological phenomena, but also because of the complete failure of Darwinism to explain the evidence for fine-tuning in the laws and parameters of nature, the very evidence Whewell had discussed. Very strangely, the science professors of academia fervently embraced the mathematics-blind reasoning of the mathematics-ignorant Darwin rather than the opposing reasoning of the science genius and mathematics genius Whewell. 

That the academic world made Darwin its darling rather than Whewell was not merely an intellectual tragedy but a moral tragedy. Whewell's book was a book of both intellectual and moral brilliance. Whewell spent much of the book teaching an elevated ethics. Conversely, Darwin's "Origin of Species" was a book devoid of moral teachings, one that suggested an immoral code of conduct based on the idea of a ruthless "struggle for existence" in which "survival of the fittest" was the main rule. The disastrous moral effects of Darwinism are described in my post "The Poisonous Effects of the 'Struggle for Life' Ideology," which you can read here. 

But in the 20th century there occurred what we might call "Whewell's Revenge," as scientists made arguments like Whewell's, and with greater force. Part of this came in the writings of Harvard biological chemistry professor Lawrence J. Henderson, author of the 1913 book "The Fitness of the Environment," pointing out many cases of how nature seemed to be "pre-adapted" to allow the possibility of life's appearance In a later 1917 book Henderson stated this:

"The process of evolution consists in increase of diversity of systems and their activities, in the multiplication of physical occurrences, or, briefly, in the production of much from little. Other things being equal there is a maximum 'freedom' for such evolution on account of a certain unique arrangement of unique properties of matter. The chance that this unique ensemble of properties should occur by 'accident' is almost infinitely small (i. e., less than any probability which can be practically considered)."

On the next page Henderson stated this: 

"Therefore the properties of the elements must for the present be regarded as possessing a teleological character....This complex connection is almost infinitely improbable as a chance occurrence."

On page 205 Henderson flatly stated this: "For biological organization is teleological and non-mechanical."

In the 1974 paper "Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology," Brandon Carter discusses several examples of cosmic fine-tuning. He stated on page 298 that if the strong nuclear force were "rather weaker hydrogen would be the only element." Referring to "the main sequence" that basically refers to the set of all regular stars, he stated this on page 297:

"If the gravitational coupling constant were weakened significantly..(or if the fine structure constant were increased 

by only a very small amount, the other parameters being fixed) then the main sequence would consist entirely of convective red stars. Conversely if the gravitational constant were rather stronger than it is (or if the fine structure constant were very slightly reduced) then the main sequence would consist entirely of radiative blue stars."

The fine-structure constant referred to is computed by using three of the fundamental constants listed above: the speed of light, the electron mass and Planck's constant. Blue stars are short-lived stars, and red stars (called red dwarfs) are thought to be "long shots" in regard to supporting planets on which intelligent life can evolve. 

In 1979 there was published in the journal Nature the important paper "The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World" by physicists B. J. Carr and M. J. Rees. which you can read here. This was a very influential paper that accelerated discussion of the topic of whether the universe was fine-tuned. The physicist authors noted that "several aspects of our Universe—some of which seem to be prerequisites for the evolution of any form of life—depend rather delicately on apparent ‘coincidences’ among the physical constants." Many examples were given. For example, the authors stated this about the gravitational constant G: "Were G...slightly larger, all stars would be blue giants; if it were slightly smaller, all stars would be red dwarfs."  Neither of the star types mentioned are stars like the sun. Blue giant stars have short lifetimes of only a few million years, too short to allow the evolution of life.  While some think that life could exist on a planet revolving around the type of star called a red dwarf, it is usually maintained that planets revolving around such red dwarf stars would be much less likely to be habitable than planets revolving around yellow stars like our sun. 

Carr and Rees discussed many cases of fine-tuned fundamental constants. A book-length discussion of such cosmic fine-tuning occurred in the long 1984 work "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" by John Barrow and Frank Tipler. 

In later years, more and more scientists began to state that the universe is astonishingly fine-tuned to allow life to exist in it. Below are some quotes, all from scientists. 

• "The universe appears designed." -- Stephen Hawking, in a statement to physicist Thomas Hertog (link). 
• "The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned, and very little in physical law can be altered without destroying the possibility of the development of life as we know it.” -- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow,  The Grand Design (page 161),
• "The simple FLRW-based ΛCDM lambda cold cark matter] model has been so successful in fitting data. However one of its ‘simple’ parameters is the Cosmological Constant Λ which, interpreted as the energy density of the quantum vacuum, would require fine-tuning of two unrelated terms to at least 60 decimal places to enable the Universe to exist in its present form. It is clear that simplicity is in the eye of the beholder." -- Four scientists, "Colloquium: The Cosmic Dipole Anomaly" (link). 
• "Of all the universes that could exist, ours is spectacularly well configured to bring forth life....The universe’s biofriendliness, it turns out, concerns the laws of physics themselves. There are numerous features in these laws that render the universe just right for living things...But the density of vacuum energy seems to be 10¹²⁰ times lower than physicists expect based on theory. If the vacuum energy density of the universe were just a tad larger, however, its repulsive effect would be stronger and acceleration would have kicked in much earlier. This would have meant that matter was so sparsely distributed that it couldn’t clump together to form stars and galaxies, once again precluding the formation of life. The laws of physics and cosmology have many more such life-engendering properties. It almost feels as if the universe is a fix – a big one." -- Physicist Thomas Hertog (link).
• "We conclude that a change of more than 0.5 % in the strength of the strong interaction or more than 4 % change in the strength of the Coulomb force would destroy either nearly all C [carbon] or all O [oxygen] in every star. This implies that irrespective of stellar evolution the contribution of each star to the abundance of C or O in the ISM would be negligible. Therefore, for the above cases the creation of carbon-based life in our universe would be strongly disfavoured." -- Oberhummer, Csot, and Schlattl, "Stellar Production Rates of Carbon and Its Abundance in the Universe."
• "From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 Mev energy level in the nucleus of ¹²C [Carbon 12 isotope] to the 7.12 Mev level in ¹⁶O [Oxygen 16 isotope]. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? Following the above argument, I am inclined to think so.  A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."  -- Astronomer Fred Hoyle, "The Universe -- Past and Present Reflections" (link). 
• "The cosmological constant must be tuned to 120 decimal places and there are also many mysterious ‘coincidences’ involving the physical constants that appear to be necessary for life, or any form of information processing, to exist....Fred Hoyle first pointed out, the beryllium would decay before interacting with another alpha particle were it not for the existence of a remarkably finely-tuned resonance in this interaction. Heinz Oberhummer has studied this resonance in detail and showed how the amount of oxygen and carbon produced in red giant stars varies with the strength and range of the nucleon interactions. His work indicates that these must be tuned to at least 0.5% if one is to produce both these elements to the extent required for life."  -- Physicists B.J. Carr and M.J. Rees, "Fine-Tuning in Living Systems." 
• "The Standard Model [of physics] is regarded as a highly 'unnatural' theory. Aside from having a large number of different particles and forces, many of which seem surplus to requirement, it is also very precariously balanced. If you change any of the 20+ numbers that have to be put into the theory even a little, you rapidly find yourself living in a universe without atoms. This spooky fine-tuning worries many physicists, leaving the universe looking as though it has been set up in just the right way for life to exist." -- Harry Cliff, particle physicist, in a Scientific American article.
• "If the parameters defining the physics of our universe departed from their present values, the observed rich structure and complexity would not be supported....Thirty-one such dimensionless parameters were identified that specify our universe. Fine-tuning refers to the observation that if any of these numbers took a slightly different value, the qualitative features of our universe would change dramatically. Our large, long-lived universe with a hierarchy of complexity from the sub-atomic to the galactic is the result of particular values of these parameters." -- Jeffrey M. Shainline, physicist (link). 
• "The overall result is that, because multiverse hypotheses do not predict the fine-tuning for this universe any better than a single universe hypothesis, the multiverse hypotheses fail as explanations for cosmic fine-tuning. Conversely, the fine-tuning data does not support the multiverse hypotheses." -- physicist V. Palonen, "Bayesian considerations on the multiverse explanation of cosmic fine-tuning."
• "A mere 1 percent offset between the charge of the electron and that of the proton would lead to a catastrophic repulsion....My entire body would dissolve in a massive explosion...The very Earth itself, the planet as a whole, would crack open and fly apart in an annihilating explosion...This is what would happen were the electron's charge to exceed the proton's by 1 percent. The opposite case, in which the proton's charge exceeded the electron's, would lead to the identical situation...How precise must the balance be?...Relatively small things like atoms, people and the like would fly apart if the charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Larger structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion." -- Astronomy professor emeritus George Greenstein, "The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos," pages 63-64. 
• "What is particularly striking is how sensitive the possibility of life in our universe is to a small change in these constants. For example, if the constant that controls the way the electromagnetic field behaves in a vacuum is changed by four percent, then fusion in stars could not produce carbon....Change the cosmological constant in the 123rd decimal place and suddenly it's impossible to have a habitable galaxy." --  Marcus Du Sautoy, Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, "The Great Unknown," page 221. 
• "The evolution of the cosmos is determined by initial conditions (such as the initial rate of expansion and the initial mass of matter), as well as by fifteen or so numbers called physical constants (such as the speed of the light and the mass of the electron). We have by now measured these physical constants with extremely high precision, but we have failed to come up with any theory explaining why they have their particular values. One of the most surprising discoveries of modern cosmology is the realization that the initial conditions and physical constants of the universe had to be adjusted with exquisite precision if they are to allow the emergence of conscious observers. This realization is referred to as the 'anthropic principle'...Change the initial conditions and physical constants ever so slightly, and the universe would be empty and sterile; we would not be around to discuss it. The precision of this fine-tuning is nothing short of stunning. The initial rate of expansion of the universe, to take just one example, had to have been tweaked to a precision comparable to that of an archer trying to land an arrow in a 1-square-centimeter target located on the fringes of the universe, 15 billion light years away!" -- Trinh Xuan Thuan, Professor of Astronomy, University of Virginia, “Chaos and Harmony”  p. 235.
• "If we are indeed simply requiring suitable conditions for the evolution of intelligent life just here, then the figure of ~ [1 in 10 to the 10 to the 124th power] that  we appear to find for the improbability of the universe conditions that we actually seem to find ourselves in is ridiculously smaller than the much more modest figure needed just for ourselves."  -- Cosmologist Roger Penrose,  "Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe," page 313 (link).

During the past 70 years scientists have learned more and more about how enormously fine-tuned the universe is. During the same period, scientists have learned more and more about how enormously organized and fine-tuned biological organisms are, how enormously rich creatures such as humans are in gigantically complex components that are enormously interdependent on each other to be functional. The more we learn about such things, the less credible Darwinist explanations are.  The more we learn about things such as an abundance of many types of accidentally unachievable fine-tuned molecular machines in our bodies, the less credible gradualist explanations are. Gradualist explanations of biological wonders fail enormously, for reasons discussed here. 

Consequently a very powerful case can now be made that the 19th century scientific figure who did a better job of pointing us in the right direction about the type of universe we live in was not Darwin but Whewell.  And as I will clarify in a later post, of the often-mentioned pair of Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, it is becoming increasingly more clear that the one who characterized humans more accurately was Wallace, not Darwin. 

Pathologizing Scientists May Try to Stigmatize Witnesses of the Spooky

The Society for Scientific Exploration or SSE is an organization doing research on the anomalous and the paranormal. The SSE publishes a monthly bulletin called the Explorer, and a quarterly journal with back editions you can read here, without being blocked by a paywall. 

The current leader of the SSE is James Houran. Houran makes frequent use of the extremely elastic "shame and slur them" jargon term "transliminality," a not-really-scientific term presumably designed to stigmatize various witnesses or believers in reasonable things as being guilty of "fantasy proneness" or "magical ideation."  The word "transliminality" has appeared in the titles of ten papers Houran has authored or co-authored. In one paper Houran uses that term "transliminality" 15 times, and the term "transliminal" 5 times.  The definition he gives of the term "transliminality" in one paper is the nonsensical-sounding definition of "a hypothesized tendency for psychological material to cross thresholds into or out of consciousness." 

In the latest edition of the SSE's Explorer, we have a defense of the term "Haunted People Syndrome," which seems to be a term used by a very tiny group of psychologists to try to pathologize or stigmatize some witnesses of the paranormal, to make them sound psychologically disturbed.  The word "pathologize" is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as "to unfairly or wrongly consider something or someone as a problem, especially a medical problem."

The term "Haunted People Syndrome" was coined in 2019 by a group of researchers including Ciarán O’Keeffe and James Houran. In the latest edition of the Explorer, we read a defense of that term "Haunted People Syndrome," denying that it is a term that pathologizes witnesses of the paranormal. Referring to the term "Haunted People Syndrome", someone incorrectly claims "the HP-S model is not diagnostic or pathologizing." That is not correct, because this HP-S model is pathologizing. 

The writer of the Explorer article is not identified, but we may suspect it is either Houran (currently in charge of the Society for Scientific Exploration) or Ciarán O’Keeffe, who is thanked at the end of the article. Misspeaking badly, the Explorer writer claims this:

"Unfortunately, the technical term 'syndrome' is often misread by non‑specialists as implying a psychiatric disorder or condition. Instead, as is common in behavioral sciences, it refers to a cluster of signs, symptoms, or features with no established cause. It is a descriptive label—not a diagnostic one—and carries no implication of pathology."

That is not correct. The term "syndrome" definitely does carry an insinuation of pathology.

The quote below from the original 2019 paper introducing the term "Haunted People Syndrome" should make you suspect that the authors such as Houran and O’Keeffe were introducing the term in an attempt to pathologize or stigmatize some witnesses of the paranormal or people reporting spooky events: 

"The term 'syndrome' refers to a set of signs and symptoms that occur together to characterise an abnormality or condition (British Medical Association, 2018), therefore the concept of HP-S [Haunted People Syndrome] most obviously encompasses percipients within the general population who invoke labels of ghosts or other supernatural agencies to explain a specific set of anomalous events that often are perceived recurrently." 

In that paper the authors suggest that this "Haunted People Syndrome" tag of shame should be applied to people such as witnesses who report "apparent object movements, malfunctioning of electrical or mechanical equipment, and inexplicable percussive sounds like raps or knockings." I made a very exhaustive study of the very many people in the nineteenth century who reported the extremely widely-reported phenomenon of mysterious raps, focusing on the original, earliest published reports of such cases. I found no sign at all that any of the reports could be explained by any theory of psychological disturbance in some individual. To the contrary, the most notable feature of such reports is how very often they occurred as reports in which multiple witnesses (very often more than three) were simultaneously reporting hearing the strange sounds occurring very loudly. My posts documenting such occurrences can be read using the link here leading to a free online book collecting the posts. 

A look at the papers co-authored by Houran on the topic of this "haunted people syndrome" leaves me with a very clear impression that the authors wish to stigmatize, pathologize and delegitimize certain types of witnesses of the spooky.  For example in the paper here Houran states that his "Haunted People Syndrome" or HP-S "equates the psychological drivers of these anomalous events to some of the fundamental mechanisms that stoke outbreaks of mass (contagious) psychogenic illness or autohypnotic phenomena." And in the paper here Houran and his co-authors state, "This view essentially equates ghostly episodes to the same fundamental mechanisms that stoke instances of mass (contagious) psychogenic illness."  And the beginning of Houran's paper here states, "Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S) denotes individuals who recurrently report various 'supernatural' encounters in everyday settings ostensibly due to heightened somatic-sensory sensitivities to dis-ease states (e.g., marked but sub-clinical levels of distress), which are contextualized by paranormal beliefs and reinforced by perceptual contagion effects." 

Whoever claimed in the recent SSE Explorer article that "Haunted People Syndrome" is not an example of pathologizing people has misstated the truth badly.  Claims of "Haunted People Syndrome" are pretty obviously examples of "shame the witnesses" stigmatizing that can be called gaslighting or pathologizing, and seem like examples of weaponized psychology in which the chief goal seems to be to destroy or damage the credibility of certain types of witnesses and claimants (I here use the word "gaslighting" in the broader sense of the word, to mean someone trying to undermine the report of some witness by suggesting pathology in the witness). 

On page 180 of the document here, in a paper entitled "Quantifying the Phenomenology of Ghostly Episodes: Part II – A Rasch Model of Spontaneous Accounts," we read of a "Survey of Strange Events" created by Houran and O’Keeffe. It is a type of survey that rather seems to be designed to get as many "Yes" answers as possible, with all "yes" answers being used to discredit or suggest pathology in the people taking the survey.  Some of the items are very questionable, given the purpose of the survey. Among them are these:

#1: "I saw with my naked eye a non-descript visual image, like fog, shadow or unusual light." 

#4: "I smelled a mysterious odor that was pleasant."

#5: "I smelled a mysterious odor that was unpleasant."

#6: "I had a positive feeling for no obvious reason, like happiness, love, joy, or peace."

#7: "I had a negative feeling for no obvious reason, like anger, sadness, panic, or danger."

#8. "I felt odd sensations in my body, such as dizziness, tingling, electrical shock, or nausea (sick in my stomach)."

#9: "I had a mysterious taste in my mouth." 

#16: "I heard mysterious sounds that could be recognized or identified, such as ghostly voices or music (with or without singing)." 

#17: "I heard mysterious 'mechanical' or non-descript noises, such as tapping, knocking, rattling, banging, crashing, footsteps or the sound of opening/closing doors or drawers."

22. "I saw objects moving on their own across a surface or falling." 

25. "Pictures from my camera or mobile device captured unusual images, shapes, distortions or effects." 

26. "Plumbing equipment or systems (faucets, disposal, toilet) functioned improperly or not at all." 

27. "I saw objects breaking (or discovered them broken), like shattered or cracked glass, mirrors or housewares."

28. "I heard mysterious 'mechanical' or non-descript noises, such as tapping, knocking, rattling, banging, crashing, footsteps or the sound of opening/closing doors or drawer."

Very strangely, this survey is introduced with the claim of "we calibrated a 32-item, Rasch-based 'Survey of Strange Events (SSE)' to quantify the phenomenology of ghostly episodes." But none of the 14 items above refer exclusively to anything involving ghosts or spirits, and only one of the items listed above refers to ghosts or spirits. 13 out of 14 items are items that might be reported by someone experiencing natural events having nothing to do with ghosts or spirits.  For example, anyone seeing a shadow would answer "yes" to question 1; any anyone seeing anything falling might answer "yes" to question 22; anyone who ever had a clogged toilet would answer "yes" to question 26; and anyone who ever twice dropped a glass and saw it shatter would answer "yes" to question 27. 

So I am left puzzled by this survey, which seems badly designed. Why would anyone add such items in a survey alleged to be quantifying "the phenomenology of ghostly episodes"? Maybe to get survey scores as high as possible, or to get a nonzero score from as many people as possible, even those who had not reported seeing or hearing or feeling a ghost or spirit.

The survey also has other items which are badly worded, taking the form of "leading questions" seemingly designed to elicit a dogmatic answer from the person taking the survey.  So, for example, an item 16 that should have been some non-dogmatic statement as "I experienced something that could have been communication with the dead" or "I experienced something that could have been a sign from the dead" appears as the dogmatic statement "I communicated with the dead or other outside force." 

Because of all of these defects in this Survey of Strange Events, I cannot take seriously any paper using it in an attempt to validate the existence of such a thing as "Haunted People Syndrome." So when Houran and O' Keeffe use such a survey in the paper here, one entitled "The Dr. John Hall story: a case study in putative 'Haunted People Syndrome' ", we should have no confidence in their methodology. And we should be left with a low confidence in the paper when we consider that this "Survey of Strange Events" contains mostly first-person statements beginning with the word "I," with 27 out of 32 survey items beginning with "I"; but the authors of the paper did not get any completion of the survey from the person who is the subject of their paper (Hall). So in Table 2 of the paper authors or their helper rather seem to be "putting words in the mouth" of the target subject (Hall), by counting him as answering "Yes" to questions on a survey he did not actually take.  (We read, "An experimentally-blind rater reviewed Hall’s (2009) self-reported group-stalking experiences and coded their alignment with the SSE [Survey of Strange Events] categories.") The authors claiming the case of Hall as validation for their attempted explanation of "ghostly episodes" is  laughable, as Hall's claims apparently do not even involve supernatural-seeming events, judging from a book of his that makes no substantive mention of ghosts, spirits or the supernatural, but instead makes claims of shadowy clandestine intrusions and interference by governments or their agents. 

A very close look at the Table 2 of that paper may leave the reader shaking his head in dismay, because there seems to be occurring multiple misclassifications in which events that do not match the items on the Survey of Strange Events are being counted as matches of items on that survey. For example, "lies spread about victim" are being counted as examples of a survey item referring to "ghostly voices"; spam emails and spam phone calls are being counted as examples of a survey item referring to spooky electrical malfunctions;  suspicions of being secretly followed or spied on are being counted as examples of a survey item referring to ghosts and apparitions; and cases of "left unwanted items" or "unsolicited letters" are being counted as examples of the survey item "I experienced objects disappear or reappear around me." All four of these seem like classification errors by the paper authors. 

A similar "putting words into someone's mouth" seems to be going on in the paper "Haunted People Syndrome Redux: Concurrent Validity From an Independent Case Study," in which Houran and O' Keeffe apply their "Survey of Strange Events" survey (containing mainly first-person assertions) to a case (investigated by Auerbach) involving people who never actually completed their survey.  Table 3 of that paper has 27 first-person sentences beginning with "I" (such as "I saw objects flying or floating in midair"). But that table was not filled in by any actual witness or person reporting something spooky, but was instead filled in by someone else, basically "putting words into the mouth" of someone else after studying what someone else reported. 

This seems to be methodology that has gone badly astray. Researchers eager to try to validate the "Haunted People Syndrome"  concept have committed methodology bungling. No one should ever be filling in for someone else some survey consisting mainly of first person assertions beginning with "I," just as your friend should not be doing your income tax form without your consent, in an attempt to validate some theory he has about you. 

Referring to Houran and O'Keeffe's paper mentioned above ("Haunted People Syndrome Redux: Concurrent Validity From an Independent Case Study"), another paper mentions voluminous objections to that paper, by stating this:

"We take issue with a number of O’Keeffe et al.’s claims on logical, empirical, conceptual, and clinical grounds, and since our counterarguments are too extensive to meet the 10,000 word limit allotted to us by the JSE, we instead present them in the collection of papers contained herein, prefaced by introductory remarks from L.A."

The authors of that  paper (or collection of papers) seem to have some complaints similar to those I discuss above; and we hear mention of a complaint of "what appears to be a possible misinterpretation or seeming misrepresentation of Auerbach et al.’s data." 

The concept of "Haunted People Syndrome" is a relatively recent invention contrived by a tiny band of researchers such as Houran and O'Keeffe, a group probably small enough to fit in a small room.  The term "Haunted People Syndrome" does not appear in the standard manual of psychiatric diagnostics, the DSM-5. Even if you were to get the original witnesses to fill out some survey such as the Survey of Strange Events, that would do nothing to show the validity of the "Haunted People Syndrome" concept.  That survey does not even mention fear or distress, so it seems senseless for Houran to keep  trying to suggest that some score on that survey validates a "Haunted People Syndrome" concept based on claims of distress or fear causing reports of the anomalous. A high score on this Survey of Strange Events merely suggests that something very spooky was reported, and does nothing to show a cause of such reports. 

Houran and O'Keeffe seem like people who may be clinging to old stereotypes about reports of apparitions. I pointed out in a 2014 post that such stereotypes were discredited by a study published in that year, a study of 39 people who claimed to see an apparition. The study concluded that “nearly all of our participants identified either a positive or nonthreatening encounter with a ghost.” The study discredits the "Haunted People Syndrome" idea of Houran that apparition sightings are best explained as being caused by "marked but sub-clinical levels of distress." These days apparitions sightings most commonly occur as deathbed visions, and such things tend to be not scary at all, but comforting. To read about deathbed visions, read my series of posts here. 

You could easily write a very long book solely on the topic of psychologists and other scientists who have unfairly pathologized and stigmatized healthy people by trying to gin up some narrative of mental problems. One chapter of that book would discuss how homosexuality was long classified as a mental illness, with pseudoscientific Freudian claims used to try to justify such a classification. Another chapter of that book would discuss all the psychologists who gave a diagnosis of "sluggish schizophrenia" to many healthy dissidents merely because they expressed dissatisfaction with the so-called "worker's paradise" of the Soviet Union. An additional chapter in that book could be written from the very many posts of the "Mad in America" website that abundantly document  cases of eager-to-pathologize psychiatrists or psychologists applying psychiatric labels (or psychiatric-sounding labels) to people  in some very dubious manner, with unnecessary harm often resulting.  Another chapter of that book would discuss all of the psychologists and scientists who wrongly used the word "hallucination" when describing spooky observational reports by psychologically normal witnesses with no history of mental illness. 

The very high prevalence of reports of the paranormal tends to suggest the invalidity of attempts to explain them by evoking rare psychological syndromes. According to the paper "Psychic Experiences in the Multinational Human Values Study: Who Reports Them?" here: "Three items on personal psychic experiences (telepathy, clairvoyance, contact with the dead) were included in a survey of human values that was conducted on large representative samples in 13 countries in Europe and in the U.S. (N = 18,607). In Europe, the percentage of persons reporting telepathy was 34%; clairvoyance was reported by 21%; and 25% reported contact with the dead. Percentages for the U.S. were considerably higher: 54%, 25% and 30% respectively." 

Similar results are reported below:

• A 2015 Pew Research poll found that 18% of Americans said they've seen or been in the presence of a ghost, and that 29% said that they've felt in touch with someone who died.  
• A 1976 survey of 1467 people in the US asked people if they had ever "felt as though you were really in touch with someone who had died?" 27% answered "Yes."

On the page here, we read this:

" A new YouGov poll asked Americans about their paranormal experiences. Most Americans say they’ve had at least one paranormal experience, and many believe that they personally have a paranormal ability."

The poll was a survey of 1136 American adults. Among the more interesting findings were these:

• 18% of the Americans polled reported "seeing unexplained orbs of light."
• 16% of the Americans polled reported "seeing a spirit or ghost." Of these, the majority said they had seen such a thing more than once.
• 23% of the Americans polled reported "seeing lights or other devices turn on or off without explanation."
• 17% of the Americans polled reported "seeing an object move without explanation."
• 16% of the Americans polled reported "seeing a door open or close without explanation."

There is a strong reason for suspecting that the survey results given above are underestimations, because of self-censorship by survey respondents. We must remember that authorities in our culture have a long history of shaming, gaslighting, misrepresenting and attempting to pathologize people who report experiences of the paranormal. For many decades and centuries such authorities (including professors, skeptics and clergy) have attempted to portray people reporting paranormal experiences as neurotic, psychotic, liars, fakes, fools or people dabbling with the diabolical. Consequently we should assume that there is a significant degree of self-censorship in which many  people who had paranormal experiences do not report them, for fear of "getting in trouble" or being embarrassed, shamed, ridiculed or gaslighted. To help limit such self-censorship, all surveys of paranormal experience should be secret-ballot type surveys, but probably most of the surveys above were not surveys that guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity to respondents. Because of the self-censorship factor, the number of people experiencing the phenomena asked about in the surveys above could easily be 25% or 50% larger than the numbers reported in the surveys. 

When Science News Stories Mislead, the Paper Author May Be the Culprit

 Sometimes you may read some moonshine in the science news, some bunk article promoting the latest science paper, and then ask yourself: who is to blame for this baloney, this BS? Is it one or more of the paper authors, or is it the author of a university press release, or is it some science journalist working from the press release and the paper?  So you have a kind of "figure out the culprit" challenge that is a bit like playing the board game Clue. 

Who was the confusion culprit?                      

Tuesday April 22, 2026 was a banner day for hype and groundless boasts in the science world. There was a press conference announcing some findings regarding Mars. It was announced that some organic molecules had been found in Mars, but only simple molecules that existed in a very low concentration of a few parts per billion.  Most of the science news headlines used the phrase "building blocks of life," although such a headline was entirely unjustified, as no such thing had been found. All that was found (in very low amounts) was what are called "organic molecules." That term is used for any molecule containing carbon. Most types of organic molecules found in space have no relevance to life. 

The misleading press accounts were heralding the scientific paper here. None of the chemicals reportedly found on Mars (trimethylbenzene, tetramethylbenzene, naphthalene, and benzothiophene) is actually a building block of life in any sense. So our clickbait-hungry science press was deceiving us very badly on this topic. 

Using the term "nmole" to mean nanomoles, the paper states, "Molecular abundances in the SAM TMAH experiment range from 0.1 ± 0.0 to 1.7 ± 0.3 nmol, consistent with the range of abundances of individual molecules identified by SAM from other Gale crater outcrops." This means the chemicals were found at a very low level of very roughly 1 part per 100,000,000. This amount is correctly described as a negligible trace amount. 

The building components of life are proteins and nucleic acids, both of which are extremely complex molecules -- so complex that it is always misleading to call them "building blocks" (as blocks are things of very low complexity). Given just the right arrangement of a large number of proteins and nucleic acids, you might have a cell capable of self-reproduction.  But an organic molecule is simply any molecule containing carbon, one that may either be very simple or one that may be complex. The very term “organic molecule” is a poor one, because many of the so-called organic molecules have nothing to do with life. 

It is true that proteins and nucleic acids are organic molecules, but that doesn't mean you have found anything like a building block of life merely because you have found an organic molecule. The building blocks of an opera company are string musicians such as violinists, and singers such as tenors, sopranos and baritones that can sing Italian. All of these are organisms. But it would make no sense to say, “I have some building blocks of an opera company because I have two mice in my cage, and they are organisms.” It makes equally little sense to say that you have some building blocks of life merely because you have simple organic molecules.

But if the organic molecules found on Mars are not the building blocks of life, are they at least the building blocks of the building blocks of life? No, they are no such thing. The building blocks of proteins are amino acids. The building blocks of nucleic acids are chemicals called purines and pyrimidines. None of these has been found on Mars. So not only have we not found the building blocks of life on Mars, we haven't even found on Mars the building blocks of the building blocks of life.

Related to coal tars, the reportedly found chemicals (trimethylbenzene, tetramethylbenzene, naphthalene, and benzothiophene) are neither building blocks of life nor the building blocks of the building blocks of life.  So the science news sites were misleading us badly by describing the finding as a finding of "building blocks of life."

The Guardian story here gives us an example of the carnival barker BS and baloney that was occurring. The story has the  hogwash headline "‘Is it life? We can’t tell’: Nasa’s Curiosity rover finds organic molecules on Mars." The paper's lead author (Professor Amy Williams) says, " “Is it life? We can’t tell, based on this information.” That statement is  baloney.  Living things are not made from any of the chemicals found, so you sure can tell that no life is being detected. 

Later on Williams gives us this mostly false statement:

" 'There are several steps between what we found and DNA,' Williams said. 'It is definitely a building block to how DNA is made now. But it is truly just the bricks, not the house. You can generate these molecules geologically.' "

The statement is mostly untrue. DNA is not made from any of the chemicals that the scientific paper claimed to find. DNA is made from entirely different chemicals, called nucleobases, phosphate groups and sugars. So there's no truth to Williams'  claim "it is definitely a building block to how DNA is made now." Nowhere in nature is DNA being made from  the chemicals the paper reports finding (trimethylbenzene, tetramethylbenzene, naphthalene, and benzothiophene). The paper does not even use the term "DNA," and refers to nucleic acids only in a tentative passing comment about a "possibility" involving nucleic acids. 

The Guardian's story is bunk, but here we must absolve the story author, who got a bum steer from a science paper author making misleading claims about her research. 

Later in the Guardian article Williams gives us this unbelievable "magic meteorites" tall tale: "The same stuff that rained down on Mars from meteorites is what rained down on Earth, and it probably provided the building blocks for life as we know it on our planet." Why would anyone claim that chemical constituents of the earliest life came from meteorites, when you can more simply imagine them coming  from Earth's surface, without evoking falling meteorites?  Similarly, it would be pretty silly to speculate that your dinner date did not show up  because a  meteorite ruined his car, when you can just as easily claim that he got a flat tire by driving over something sharp. 

One of the news articles tried to make it sound like the discovery of these biologically irrelevant chemicals was a discovery of life on Mars, an inhospitable wasteland where neither life nor its building components have been found. The clickbait-hungry hucksters of the dysfunctional "Science News" infosystem tend to follow a rule of "give us an inch, and we'll take a mile." So when scientists issuing papers misstate and misspeak, they are planting seeds that very quickly grow into the poison fruit that is Fake News. 

Postscript: The issue of earthly contamination throws great doubts on the credibility of all reports of finding something on Mars in the tiniest trace amounts, as anything detected in some tiniest trace amount might have been on the scientific equipment when it left Earth. The same contamination issue undermines the credibility of all claims to have detected amino acids in samples retrieved from asteroids. In that case the contamination possibilities are doubled, because the tiniest "1 part in 100,000,000" microscopic traces of some chemical could have  come from the spacecraft involved in the retrieval or from an earthly laboratory analyzing the retrieved sample. A recent article by an astronomer tells us that scientists got excited about claims that glycine (the simplest amino acid) was detected in space through spectroscopic analysis. But she says "astrochemists now generally agree that glycine had not been found in star-forming nebulae." If we cannot even find by spectroscopic analysis the simplest amino acid in outer space, it seems we should have little confidence in the claim by Williams that " meteorites ...probably provided the building blocks for life as we know it on our planet." 

When People Dream of Someone's Death at the Same Time the Person Dies Far Away

 Below is a newspaper account of a sister who had a dream of a young brother's death far away, on the same night or day that the death occurred:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042462/1907-10-11/ed-1/seq-1/

On the same 1907 page there is a story that is now ironic, for it boasts about how the Luisitania has set a speed record. The same ship was sunk during World War I. 

Below is an account of someone having a dream of someone's death at the same time that person was dying far away. It is from page 579 of the September 5, 1935 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here. The "he went over the top" reference refers to leaving a trench to make an attack during World War I, something that often resulted in the death of the attacker.

Here is a similar account, from page 331 of the May 23, 1935 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here:

"Amalia Burzio, a peasant woman of Passignana (Valenza) dreamed of the death of her mother who lived near Novara. On awaking she told her husband of the dream, and he tried in vain to calm her distress. The following afternoon she received a telegram informing her that her mother had died suddenly in the night, exactly at the hour of her dream."

The accounts below are mentioned on page 771 of the December 1, 1933 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here:

Below is another account of someone dreaming of someone's death on the night of that person's death:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85026214/1879-07-20/ed-1/seq-1/#

Given the reported chronology here, the dream of a son drowning at a distant location seems to have occurred about when the drowning occurred.  We read that the body was returned a few hours after the death, and also that this was a few hours after the father had a dream of the son's death. 

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89060127/1924-07-26/ed-1/seq-3/

On page 311 of the September 23, 1916 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here, we read the following:

"Another lady, Marguerite Ober, of the Metropolitan Opera Company, writes : At the beginning of this awful war I had a friend who volunteered his services to the French. One night, in the midst of a dead sleep, a vision of him came to me suddenly, as distinct as if the scene were photographed and flung on the wall . I saw him wounded, lying in a trench, his life flowing away. The vision lasted for perhaps a minute and then faced out. I rose, turned on the light, and immediately wrote to a friend in France. ' I know that Bruno Seyler is dead ,'  I wrote ; tell me the details .'  My letter passed, in mid-ocean, a letter from a friend telling me of Bruno's death, and every detail was precisely as I had dreamed it."

Below is an account found on page 203 of the June 24, 1916 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here:

Below is an account found on page 166 of the May 20, 1916 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here:

The newspaper report below from 1887 (which you can read here) describes a son who had a dream that seemed to depict his father dying at sea in a ship. The father was captain of a ship named the Muskoka. We read at the end of the account, "The Muskoka is missing and given up as lost." 

The account below is from the year 1900, and can be read here. We read of a brother who had a dream of his sister's death far away, about the same time it happened. 

Below is a newspaper account from 1913 you can read here:

Below is a 1909 newspaper account you can read here. Although it does not have the simultaneity mentioned in my title, it is close enough to deserve inclusion in this post. 

"An instance of what seems to be a remarkable proof of unusual psychic phenomena has occurred in this city in connection with the death of Chester N. Jessie, a 19 year old lad who was accidentally killed in a landslide at Eugene, Ore,, last Thursday. Mrs. Carlton N. Davis of 1050 Stanyan street, wife of a local businessman, and a sister of the decedent, had a mental vision of her brother's death the day following the accident, and before news of the tragic occurrence reached her."