It Seemed Her Suicide Was Not Her End

In late October of every year we have the annual ritual of people decorating their houses in a spooky fashion, and also the annual ritual of children going "trick or treating" from door to door, ending up with bags of candy. There is also in late October a kind of annual ritual of people who are not scholars of the paranormal publishing ignorant unscholarly articles trying to explain away reports of apparitions and ghosts, through implausible explanations such as mold exposure, drafts, carbon monoxide or low-frequency sound. A careful scholar of apparition sightings would have discovered the fact that they mainly occur during death-bed visions, because a significant fraction of dying people report seeing apparitions of their relatives. 

Some examples of deathbed visions can be found here and here and here.   A survey of family members of deceased Japanese found that 21% reported deathbed visions. A study of 103 subjects in India reports this: "Thirty of these dying persons displayed behavior consistent with deathbed visions-interacting or speaking with deceased relatives, mostly their dead parents." A study of 102 families in the Republic of Moldava found that "37 cases demonstrated classic features of deathbed visions--reports of seeing dead relatives or friends communicating to the dying person." Such deathbed visions typically occur in normal clean warm hospital or hospice rooms, or normal modern houses, not moldy drafty old houses or weird places suffering from low-frequency "infrasound" or carbon monoxide poisoning. 

Among the principal scholarly works typically never read by the dilettante authors of such late October dismissive articles is the massive two volume work Phantasms of the Living by Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers and Frank Podmore.  Volume One of the work can be read online here, and Volume Two of the work can be read here. A significant fraction of the 700+ cases reported in that two-volume work are cases in which someone reports seeing or hearing an apparition of a particular person they did not know was dead, only to find out later that just such a person had died on about the same day or exactly the same day (and often on the same hour and day). I found more than 75 such cases in "Phantasms of the Living." I have cited many of those cases in the series of posts you can read below:

An Apparition Was Their Death Notice

25 Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

25 More Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

Yet Another 25 Who Were “Ghost-Told” of a Death

Scientific American's Very Lame "Ghost Explanations"

They Also Were "Ghost Told" of a Death

More Accounts of Veridical Apparitions

Even More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Serve as Announcements

Still More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Act as News Bulletins

They Too Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

They Seemed to Ghost-Learn of Someone's Death

An example of one of the cases in "Phantasms of the Living" not cited above is the case on page 213 of Volume 1, in which a gardener named Alfred Bard reported seeing a Mrs. de Freville in a churchyard, who looked "much whiter than usual." She seemed to mysteriously vanish. The next day Alfred's son told her that the same Mrs. de Freville had died on the previous day. 

A long and very interesting article about the "Phantasms of the Living" volumes appeared in an 1890 edition of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.  The article entitled "A Defense of Phantasms of the Living" was written by Frederic Myers, one of the three co-authors of "Phantasms of the Living." You can read the article here.  The appendix of the article has three accounts that collectively offer substantial evidence for life after death. 

In the article Myers criticizes some attempts by his co-author Frank Podmore to explain the cases in Phantasms of the Living as mainly mere examples of telepathy.  Podmore attempted to explain the book's many cases in which a person reported seeing an apparition of someone he did not know was dead or dying, and later found that the person had died at about the same time the apparition was seen. Podmore tried to suggest that such cases were a kind of "burst of telepathy" produced by the dying person.  On page 315 Myers states this:

"For Mr. Podmore starts from a thorough belief in the reality of telepathy between living men, and endeavours to explain the so-called phantasms of the dead as being in reality generated by minds still clothed in flesh. His explanations, as he frankly admits, are many of them 'far-fetched and improbable' ; but he regards them as less far-fetched, as less improbable, than the supposition that anything in man survives the tomb."  

On page 318 Myers makes a good point about ideas such as this, stating this about telepathy: "I probably go beyond Mr. Podmore in holding that the simplest case of true thought-transference, if once admitted, breaks down the purely physiological synthesis of man, and opens a doorway out of materialism which can never again be shut." Any capability of a human to transmit thoughts at a distance to someone else far away is a capability that would be utterly incompatible with claims that the human mind is merely the product of a brain.  We can state it this way: telepathy is a soul capability, and cannot be a brain capability. The utter incompatibility of any notion of telepathy with materialist ideas of the body is one reason why materialists have been so stubborn about refusing to accept the overwhelming laboratory evidence for telepathy (discussed here, here and here). Such materialists seem to realize that once you concede that humans can transmit thoughts to other humans telepathically, it is pretty much "game over" for any claim of materialism or any claim that minds are purely the product of brains. The intransigent denialism of materialists about accepting 200 years of strong evidence for ESP is a reminder of the true situation:  once telepathy is established, then the non-material origin of the mind is all but proven.   

This is why a "dying spasm of telepathy" theory such as Podmore's is futile. If you concede that humans are capable of very strong bursts of telepathy, so strong as to cause an image to appear in the mind of another person, you are then in a territory in which it makes no sense to be denying something like a human soul that can survive death. Similarly, once you conceded that someone can throw a baseball from the back of an outfield to the infield, you will not be plausible in claiming the same person could not throw a football 40 meters.  

A point not made by Myers against Podmore's theory is that it is rather ridiculous to think that some dying person would tend to have some ability to release some stupendous burst of telepathy, showing a power he lacked during his ordinary healthy life. Believing such a thing would be rather like thinking that just before people die, they gain the ability to stand up above the ground, supported only by their hand pressing against the ground. 

On page 336 Myers points out that in quite a few cases we have not merely an apparition of a person who died, but cases of someone stating (with or without an apparition) that he has already died. Such cases are incompatible with any theory that apparitions arise merely from some strange spasm of telepathy from a dying person.  I will not summarize in full the rebuttals of Podmore which Myers made. Instead I will describe some extremely interesting cases Myers presents in the Appendix of his article, to support his claims.  

On page 341 Myers gives a Case #1 in which we read a letter from Karl Dignowity, who states this on December 12, 1889, describing an apparition he saw at night, of a brewer named Wunscher:

"Still thinking on it I hear Wunscher's voice scolding outside, just under my window. I sit up in my bed at once and listen, but cannot understand his words. What can the brewer want ? I thought, and I know for certain that I was much vexed with him, that he should make a disturbance in the night, as I felt convinced that his affairs might surely have waited till the morrow. Suddenly he comes into the room from behind the linen press, steps with long strides past the bed of my wife and the child's bed ; wildly gesticulating with his arms all the time, as his habit was, he called out, 'What do you say to this, Herr Oberamtmann ? This afternoon at five o'clock I have died.' Startled by this information, I exclaim, 'Oh, that is not true !' He replied: 'Truly, as I tell you; and, what do you think ? They want to bury me already on Tuesday afternoon at two o'clock,' accentuating his assertions all the while by his gesticulations. During this long speech of my visitor, I examined myself as to whether I was really awake and not. dreaming. I asked myself: Is this a hallucination ? Is my mind in full possession of its faculties ? Yes, there is the light, there the jug, this is the mirror and this the brewer ;-and I came to the conclusion: I am awake...I impart this experience to the Society for Psychical Research, in the belief that it may serve as a new proof for the real existence of telepathy. I must further remark, that the brewer had died that afternoon at five o'clock and was buried on the following Tuesday at two." 

Here is a case that cannot be explained under any theory that apparitions arise from some burst of telepathy produced by dying people -- for why would a dying man say that he was already dead? Case #2 in the appendix of the Myers article is just as noteworthy. On page 343 of his article he quotes a case that appeared in the German journal Psychische Studien (page 67 of the Volume 16, 1889, which can be read here). I will quote the translation that Myers provides. I got a semantically equivalent translation when I copied text from page 67 of that edition into Google Translate, using German as the translation language. The narrator is M. Aksakof.

"On January 19th, 1887 I received a visit from the engineer Kaigorodoff, who resides in Wilna. He narrated to me the following circumstances. He had as governess for his children Mdlle. Emma Stramm, a Swiss, from the town of Neufchatel, who possessed the gift of automatic writing. At a seance held at nine o'clock on the evening of January 15th, at the house of Herr Kaigorodoff, at Wilna, the following communication was given in French in his presence. I have been shown the original, and quote this from a copy of it. 

The medium, who was in her normal state, asked :- 'Is Lydia here ?' (This was a personality which had manifested itself at previous sittings.) 

'No, Louis is here, and wishes to impart a piece of news.. to his sister.'

' What is it ?'

'A person of thy acquaintance passed away...about three o'clock to-day.'

' What am I to understand by this ?'

'That is to say, he is dead.'

'Who?' 

'August Duvanel.'

'What was his illness?'

'The formation of a clot of blood...Pray for the redemption of his soul.' 

Two weeks later, Herr Kaigorodoff, who was again in Petersburg, showed me a letter from David Stramm, the father of the medium, dated from Neufchtel, on January 18th, 1887 ....thus written three days after the death of Duvanel. This letter was received at Wilna on January 23rd. In it her father informs her of the event in the following words. I copy them literally from the original :-- ' My much loved daughter...August Duvanel died on January 15th, about three o'clock in the afternoon. It was, so to speak, a sudden death, for he had only been ill a few hours. He was attacked by blood-clotting ... when he was at the bank. He spoke very little, and everything that he said was for thee. He commended himself to thy prayers. These were his last words. " 

The case here involves no apparition, but seems weighty as evidence. At a seance on the evening of January 15th, word is received (supposedly from Louis, a deceased brother of the medium) that one August Devanel died on that day (January 15th), of blood clotting (something that can kill people suddenly because blood clotting can lead to sudden fatal pulmonary embolisms). Not long after, notification is received by writing that this exact person did suddenly die on January 15th, from blood clotting. 

Case #5 cited by Myers in the appendix of his article is just as noteworthy. On page 337 he cites M. Aksakof as the source of the case, stating he believes he is publishing it for the first time. On page 355 we read this:

"Document 1.-Copy of report of seance held November 18th, 1887, in the house of M. Nartzeff, at Tambof, Russia...The sitting began at 10 p.m. at a table placed in the middle of the room, by the light of a night-light placed on the mantelpiece. All doors closed...Sharp raps were heard in the floor, and afterwards in the wall and the ceiling, after which the blows sounded immediately in the middle of the table, as if someone had struck it from above with his fist; and with such violence, and so often, that the table trembled the whole time.

M. Nartzeff asked, 'Can you answer rationally, giving three raps for yes,. one for no ?' 

' Yes.'

'Do you wish to answer by using the alphabet ?'

' Yes.'

' Spell your name.' The alphabet was repeated, and the letters indicated by three raps-' Anastasie Pereliguine.'

' I beg you to say now why you have come and what you desire.'

' I am a wretched woman. Pray for me. Yesterday, during the day, I died at the hospital. The day before yesterday I poisoned myself with matches.' 

'Give us some details about yourself. How old were you ? Give a rap for each year.' Seventeen raps. 

'Who were you ?" 

'I was housemaid. I poisoned myself with matches.'

'Why did you poison yourself ? '

'I will not say. I will say nothing more.' 

After this, a heavy table which was near the wall, outside the chain of bands, came up rapidly three times, towards the table round which the chain was made, and each time it was pushed backwards, no one knew by what means. Seven raps (the signal agreed upon for the close of the sitting) were now heard in the wall; and at 11.20 p.m. the s6ance came to an end. Signed, A. SLEPZOF, N. TOULOUCHEFF, A. NARTZEFF, A. IVANOF." 

On page 356 of the article there is a Document II on this case, dated April 6th, 1890,  in which all four of the witnesses above state that they had no previous knowledge of the death of Anastasie Pereliguine.  On page 356 of the article there is a Document 3 on this case, dated April 15th, 1890,  written by N. Touloucheff, one of the signed witnesses listed above:

"At the sitting held at M. Nartzeff's house, November 18th, 1887, we received a communication from an intelligence giving the name of Anastasie Pereliguine. She asked us to pray for her; and said that she had poisoned herself with lucifer matches, and had died on the 17th of that month. At the first moment I did not believe this ; for in my capacity as physician of the municipality I am at once informed by the police of all cases of suicide. But since Pereliguine had added that her death had taken place at the hospital and since at Tambof we have only one hospital, that of the 'Institutiona de Bienfaisance,' which is in no way within my official survey, and whose authorities, in  such  cases  as  this,  themselves  send for  the  police  or  the  magistrate  ;  I sent a letter to my colleague, Dr. Sundblatt, the head physician of this hospital. Without explaining my reason I simply asked him to inform me whether there had been any recent case of suicide at the hospital, and, if so, to give me the name and particulars. I have already sent you a copy of his reply, certified by Dr. Sundblatt's own signature. The original is at M. Nartzeff's house, with the protocols of the seances. Tambof, rue du Seminaire. N. TOULOUCHEFF."

Document 4 (reproduced on page 356) was a reply by Dr. Sundblatt, dated November 19, 1897:

"My  dear  Colleague, — On  the  16th  of  this  month  I was  on duty  ; and  on  that  day  two  patients  were  admitted  to  the hospital,  who  had  poisoned  themselves  with  phosphorus.  The first,  Vera  Kosovitch,  aged  38,  wife  of  a clerk  in  the  public service  . . . was  taken  in  at  8 p.m.  ; the  second,  a servant  in the  insane  ward  [a  part  of  the  hospital],  Anastasie  Pereliguine, aged  17,  was  taken  in  at  10  p.m.  This  second  patient  had swallowed,  besides  an  infusion  of  boxes  of  matches,  a glass  of kerosine,  and  at  the  time  of  her  admission  was  already  very ill.  She  died  at  1 p.m.  on  the  17th,  and  the  post-mortem examination  has  been  made  to-day.  Kosovitch  died  yesterday and  the  post-mortem  is  fixed  for  to-morrow.  Kosovitch  said that  she  had  taken  the  phosphorus  in  an  access  of  melancholy, but  Pereliguine  did  not  state  her  reason  for  poisoning  herself."

So the seance witnesses reported that on November 18, 1897 Anastasie Pereliguine claimed through mysterious raps that she had killed herself by swallowing matches; and a prompt  inquiry to a hospital revealed that a person with exactly that name did kill herself the previous day, by swallowing matches and kerosene.  The links above go the original article stating these accounts, and require scrolling to the page numbers I have given. Anyone wishing to avoid the trouble of scrolling to the right pages can use the link here, which will take you to the exact spot where a 1924 book quotes these passages as I have done. 

The topic of psychic phenomena and the paranormal is a topic of oceanic depth that requires deep efforts by investigators and long serious study by anyone who advises the public about the topic. The evidence accumulated by men such as Frederic Myers was extremely weighty, with Myers writing the 740-page tome Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, which can be read here. Men such as Myers, Podmore and Gurney (and many of their colleagues at the Society for Psychical Research) did the leg work and face-to-face work and the scholarly work needed to seriously investigate reports of apparitions, with very fruitful results that it is folly for the modern age to ignore. There is no comparison between the efforts of such weighty figures and the unscholarly efforts of the "psychic phenomena dilettantes" who write the typical late October dismissive articles on apparition sightings, sounding just as if they were too lazy to do their homework. The difference is like the difference between major league baseball and little league baseball.   

Postscript: The book Apparitions and Survival of Death by Raymond Bayless is an interesting book that can be read online. Chapter 13 of the book (which can be read using the link here) is entitled "Appartitions Showing Intelligence and Awareness." The chapter cites quite a few cases in which apparitions seemed to act like agents aware of where they were seen or people who observed the apparitions. Such accounts cast further doubt on attempts to explain apparitions as a kind of telepathic projection of a dying person.  

On page 92 of a July 1951 edition of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, we read this account of an observer in Indianapolis, Indiana:

"One night after being asleep for three or four hours I was awakened by someone calling my name. I sat up in bed and there stood granddad. Very calmly he said, ‘Don’t be frightened, it’s only me. I have just died.’ I started to cry and reached across the bed to awaken my husband. Granddad continued. ‘This is how they will bury me.’ I saw him dressed with a black bow tie. ‘Just wanted to tell you I’ve been waiting to go ever since Ad was taken.’ Adaline was my grandmother who had been gone several years. My husband awoke and asked what was the matter. I told him my grandfather was just here and that he told me he had just died. My husband insisted it was a nightmare but I knew it wasn’t....My husband went to a public telephone on the corner and called my parents’ home in Wilmington to prove to me that 1 had been asleep, but my mother answered. She was surprised at the call and said she had been up most of the night. She was waiting to call us in the morning to let us know that Granddad had died at 4 :00 o’clock that morning.”

Another person corroborated the story:

"My son-in-law called our home in Wilmington from Indianapolis early in the morning of June 11, 1923, and told us Gladys woke him up and said my father had been there (Indianapolis) and told her he had just died. Gladys had always been my father’s favorite grandchild and we had promised her to let her know if and when he became seriously ill. (He made his home with us.) He took sick the day before. We called the doctor and thought he was going to be all right. The end came suddenly around four o’clock in the morning. We were going to wait until later in the morning to get in touch with Gladys ... I believe sincerely in the truth of this experience as my daughter writes it.” (Rev.) Walter E. Parker, Sr.

Oops, NASA's 16-Person UFO Panel Has No Scholars of the Paranormal

At www.inverse.com we have a news story entitled "NASA ANNOUNCES ITS UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL PHENOMENA RESEARCH TEAM TO EXAMINE MYSTERIOUS SIGHTINGS." We read a list of 16 people who will be on some NASA-funded committee that will investigate UFO's.  Unfortunately, there are some shortfalls regarding the list of people on the investigation committee.

The committee will be led by an astronomer, and consists largely of astronomers. The panel will have five astronomers (counting two so-called "astrobiologists" as astronomers), and one person identified as a "telescope scientist." Why should there be so many astronomers on such a panel? Astronomers nowadays spend most of their time analyzing data from space observatories and space probes.  Astronomers spend most of their time studying things outside of our planet. People almost never report seeing UFOs looking through telescopes. So it is not clear that expertise in astronomy would be a good qualification for analyzing mysterious things seen in the atmosphere. 

About the only obvious case you can think of in which astronomical expertise would be helpful in analyzing UFO reports would be a case of someone reporting a dim point-like light acting like a "shooting star" (crossing the sky in only a few seconds) or a case of someone reporting a bright large object acting like a meteor (also crossing the sky rapidly).  An astronomer could point out that such reported cases were probably only "shooting stars" (mere pebble-sized objects incinerating as they entered the earthly atmosphere) or meteors (larger objects  incinerating as they entered the earthly atmosphere). But probably 97% of UFO reports do not sound like someone observing a shooting star or a meteor.  So it's not very clear why you need to load up a UFO investigative panel with astronomers.  The facts about the observations of so-called "shooting stars" and meteors are so simple that anyone can learn them in ten minutes. So it's not clear that you need some astronomy PhD to tell us of facts so simple. 

What there does not seem to be anywhere on NASA's 16-person panel is anyone who is a scholar of the paranormal or human reports of anomalous phenomena. I used Google Scholar to look up the papers of the panel members, and I could find no sign of any scholarship on the topics of UFOs or the paranormal. So we have a 16-person panel that will attempt to investigate observations of the paranormal, but none of its members is a student of human observations of the paranormal. That makes about as much sense as having a 16-member panel investigating the origin of COVID-19, consisting of 16 people who don't know anything about viruses or biology. 

Reports of UFOs have always been entangled with other types of anomalous and paranormal phenomena. The following is a quote on the wikipedia.org article on UFO investigator J. Allen Hynek:

"Regarding hypotheses of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and extradimensional intelligence (EDI), Hynek continued, 'There is sufficient evidence to defend both'. As evidence for the ETI hypothesis, he mentioned the cases involving radar as good evidence of something solid, as well as the cases of physical evidence. Then he turned to defending the EDI hypothesis: in addition to the observations of materialization and dematerialization, he cited the 'poltergeist' phenomenon experienced by some people after a close encounter; the photographs of UFOs, sometimes in only one frame, and not seen by witnesses; the changing of form in front of witnesses; the puzzling question of telepathic communication; that in close encounters of the third kind, the creatures seem to be at home in Earth's gravity and atmosphere; the sudden stillness in the presence of the craft; levitation of cars or people; and the development by some of psychic abilities after an encounter. "

According to the 2018 book "Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non Human Intelligence," UFO close encounters may often be more spiritual or psychic than typically  reported in the press. FREE is the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiences. Early in the book we read this about a survey of people claiming such close encounters:

"FREE's research suggests that the physical aspects are but a small fraction of the attributes associated with these complex manifestations. Indeed, it is the persuasive non-physicality, the parapsychological and other paranormal aspects, that comprise the majority of survey respondents' experiences. We firmly believe that the field of parapsychology needs to take note and,  instead of remaining distant from the UAP phenomenon, the field needs to embrace it." 

Next in the book we read an interesting hypothesis. Using the term NIH for "non-human intelligence," the book states this:

"FREE hypothesizes that types of contact with NIH (contact via NDEs, OBEs, UAP Contact, Remote Viewing, Channeling, communication with ghosts/spirits, Hallucinogenic Shamanic Journeys, Telepathic Contact, sightings of Orbs, PSI, and other types of 'paranormal' Contact with NIH) might actually be one phenomenon that should not be studied separately. We call all of the ways that humans have pierced the veil and have had contact with NIH the 'Contact Modalities'...We firmly believe that cross comparative academic research on 'Experiencers' of the Contact Modalities may provide insight into the validity of various models of consciousness. Once the necessary cross comparative research has been undertaken among the various Contact Modalities, numerous commonalities will be derived that are shared by many of the experiencers of the Contact Modalities."

That's quite a mouthful, and to aid anyone confused by this "alphabet soup," let me explain some of the terms used:

• "NDE" means "near-death experience."
• "OBE" means "out-of-body experience," a type of experience which most commonly occurs near death, but which can also occur in those not near death. 
• "UAP Contact" means contact (visual or otherwise) with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (another term for UFOs). 
• "Remote Viewing" is a reported ability to observe in a paranormal fashion distant locations.
• "Channeling" is when someone speaks (often in an unusual voice) in an anomalous way, and later claims that the words came not from his own mind but from some other person's mind (living or dead).  A very similar term is "voice mediumship." 
• "Hallucinogenic Shamanic Journeys" can occur after someone takes a drug or uses a natural substance (such as certain mushrooms), and may then report seeing otherwordly beings. 
• "Sightings of Orbs" sometimes occurs visually (as in the 32 cases described here), but the most common related experience is photography of hard-to-explain orbs (as shown here, here and here). 
• "Psi" is a general term for human "sixth sense" abilities such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and mind-over-matter. 

The strange occurrences at Skinwalker Ranch may be further evidence of the entanglement of UFO sightings with other kinds of paranormal phenomena. For years a TV series has documented seemingly paranormal events at the location, where UFO sightings have only been part of the spooky things reported. A PhD in optical physics (Travis Taylor) has attested to the diversity of very hard-to-explain events at the location, and has said that he has seen many UFOs there. A scholar of UFOs (Jacques Valee) has produced works such as Passport to Magonia suggesting that UFO sightings are part of a wider human experience involving the paranormal, one that stretches back centuries in time.  

A UFO investigation committee such as the one created by NASA should have included at least one serious scholar of the paranormal, including a scholar of UFO sightings. But there seems to be no such scholar on the NASA panel. Could it be that this knowledge gap could be made up for with a little quick study? I doubt that very much.  For about two hundred years humans have been writing long documents describing observations of the paranormal, and the topic of anomalous human observations is a topic of oceanic depth. A deep study of the topic requires reading hundreds of long volumes. I doubt whether anyone on the NASA panel has read any of those volumes. 

Let's hope that the NASA panel does not produce the kind of error-speckled hack job that appeared when one well-known astronomer took up the task of writing about the paranormal. The astronomer was the well-known scientist Carl Sagan, and the result of his work was a book called "The Demon Haunted World." The long book shows quite a bit of erudition and has quite a few scholarly flourishes, but the erudition is mainly concerning extraneous or tangential topics. Sagan showed zero signs of having seriously researched any of the better evidence for paranormal phenomena.  He shows no sign of having read any of the 50 most important books he should have read before writing on such a topic. Writing from his ivory tower, he always seemed like someone very reluctant to talk to people who said they saw things paranormal.  The bibliography of the book suggests that Sagan made no serious effort to investigate human reports of the paranormal. We see an almost total failure to cite original source material and first-hand accounts. 

Such a thing is just what we should expect to come when the conformist yes-men of materialist academia approach an investigation of the paranormal. Science professors are often members of a regimented belief community in which there are hallowed belief dogmas and very strong taboos.  We fail to realize how often science professors are members of tradition-driven church-like belief communities, because so many of the dubious belief tenets of such professor communities are successfully sold as "science," even when such tenets are speculative or conflict with observations. 

Fairly discussing reports of the paranormal is a taboo for science professors, who are typically men whose speech and behavior is dominated by moldy old customs and creaky old taboos.  There are many other socially constructed taboos such as the taboo that forbids saying something in nature might be a product of design, no matter how immensely improbable its accidental occurrence might be. The main reason why science professors shun reports of the paranormal is that such reports tend to conflict with cherished assumptions or explanatory boasts of such professors. Also, reports of the paranormal clash with the attempts of vainglorious science professors to portray themselves as kind of Grand Lords of Explanation with keen insight into the fundamental nature of reality. 

In an article in the journal Science this year we got a taste of how the materialist mainstream views UFO witnesses:

• The article uses the term "ardent believers" for people suspecting UFOs exists, thereby suggesting some element of fanaticism. 
• It quotes one person referring to UFO believers or UFO scholars as "fringy people."
• It refers to "UFO zealots."
• It quotes another person referring to UFO believers or UFO scholars as "these fringe people" who you "lose far more" by contacting. 
• It uses the term "notorious" for UFO believers or UFO scholars, thereby trying to insinuate they are scoundrels.
• It approvingly quotes a scientist saying that those who are looking for UFO's are like "those who are hoping to find mermaids or unicorns." 

The same journal later tried to get an investigator fired from some Pentagon UFO inquiry, largely it seems because he reported some unsettling observations. Will the NASA panel engage in this kind of "shame and smear the witnesses" approach? We might worry that it will, given its lack of any scholars of the paranormal. 

The NASA panel should have included one or two people with experience grilling people and tracking down leads, people such as former police detectives. A person like that would be good at doing the kind of human contact work needed to sort out the reliability of witness accounts. Astronomers, conversely, are telescope guys not well known for their human contact skills. 

Very recently a poll by YouGovAmerica surveyed 1000 Americans about any paranormal experiences they may have had. More than two-thirds reported having some type of paranormal experience. Some of the most common experiences were:

"Feeling a presence or unknown energy": 37%

"Hearing a voice of someone who wasn't there": 29% 

"Feeling an unexplained change in temperature": 28%

"Seeing lights or other devices turn on or off without explanation": 25%

"Seeing an object move without explanation": 22%

"Seeing unexplained orbs of light": 22%

"Seeing a door open or close without explanation":  20%

"Seeing a ghost or spirit": 20%

"Seeing an angel": 13%

You would think that with such large numbers of Americans reporting observations of paranormal phenomena that mainstream scientists would take such reports seriously and investigate such phenomena fairly and fully. But very, very few of them do that. Rather than following a rule of "investigate in proportion to how  often people have claimed to see something," today's astronomers seem to waste a large fraction of their time trying to verify never-seen things such as dark matter, dark energy, primordial cosmic inflation, a planet beyond Pluto, and life on other planets. I'm not sure why NASA thinks that astronomers are "just the ticket" for distinguishing observational reality from cherished hypotheses. 

According to the poll above, a full 22% of Americans report "seeing unexplained orbs of light." There is extremely abundant photographic evidence of unexplained orbs, which appear in many different colors, and often seem to be moving very fast. In many hundreds of photos, such orbs appear with stripes, unlike what we would expect from any natural causes. A very strong effect of repeating patterns in mysterious striped orbs has been very well-documented photographically. Such mysterious orbs seem to show up equally in photos taken outdoors and also indoors in clean dry air. The phenomenon of the repeating patterns is particularly interesting, as it seems to suggest the involvement of some intelligent agency. Will the NASA panel take any interest in such a thing? Probably not. Probably the experts will follow a rule of "we have no interest in it unless it was in the sky," and also a rule of "we have no interest in unexplained things photographed when ordinary people used ordinary cameras." 

Here's an example of why you need some scholars of the paranormal on a panel such as the NASA UFO panel. Imagine there's some case in which a witness reports some ESP going on in connection with a UFO sighting (apparently not uncommon, based on some things quoted above). If no one on a panel has studied the evidence for ESP, the whole case may be discarded as a fantasy. But if there are some scholars of the paranormal on the panel, they can start familiarizing other panel members with the evidence for ESP, and urge that the case not be discarded on such grounds. 

Astronomers sometimes display a kind of technological snobbery, rather like some Apple user who disdains Android tablet users. You'll sometimes hear astronomers speaking as if it hardly counts if you just photographed something with a cheap point-and-click camera. Such an attitude makes no sense, since nowadays simple smartphones and point-and-click cameras produce megapixel photos that can be perfectly good as evidence. It also makes no sense to have an attitude of witness snobbery, and ignore observations abundantly made by people who are not professors or pilots. 

When an expert has been trained in an academia culture of anomaly aversion, in which those making observations of the inexplicable are shamed and stigmatized and gaslighted, we cannot expect that such an expert will follow a "leave no stone unturned" approach  when investigating something spooky. More likely such an expert will be following a rule of "do not open doors that lead to things I don't want to find out about." Alas, such an investigative approach will be unlikely to yield much in the way of some new understanding of the anomalous. Nature gives up its secrets very, very slowly, and does not tend to reward timid investigators of its strangest phenomena, or investigators who insist on nature behaving in some way they expect, ignoring observations of the shockingly unexpected.   

Mysterious striped orbs photographed May 25, 2019

Let's hope that the NASA UFO investigation does not take an approach like the one in the fanciful document below.

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UFO INCIDENT REPORT FORM

Central State University, Dept. of Astronomy

Instructions: Please report your UFO incident below. Do not report strange orbs flying around in your home or in the sky. Do not report any incidents with psychic or ESP elements. Do not report "alien abductions," levitations or mysterious materializations. Do not report dream contact or telepathic contact with mysterious beings. Do not report any activity resembling poltergeist activity or mind-over-matter. Do not report mysterious non-metallic manifestations such as energy beings or anything that might be interpreted as a ghost, spirit or angel.  Do not report sightings of beings appearing non-human, particularly large hairy "Bigfoot" type creatures. Do not report weird patches of color or light in the sky, or any non-metallic sky manifestation. We are only interested in hearing about shiny metallic "nuts and bolts" saucer-like UFOs like those depicted in 1950's and 1960's science fiction movies. 

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Biologists Understand Neither the Origin Nor the Continuation of Any Adult Body

Basic molecular building blocks of the body, protein molecules are made up of hundreds of smaller molecules called amino acids. A particular protein molecule has its sequence of amino acids specified in DNA by a gene that is a sequence of nucleotide base pairs that stands for a series of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins).  Certain combinations of these nucleotide base pairs (guanine, cytosine, adenine, and thymine) represent particular amino acids, under the coding system that is called the genetic code. 

Now, based on what you have just been told, you might think that proteins are long string-like molecules like the long string-like molecule that is the DNA molecule. In other words, you might think that a protein looks like the chain we see in the visual below. A series of amino acids such as this, existing merely as a wire-like length, is sometimes called a polypeptide chain.

But protein molecules instead typically have intricate three-dimensional shapes. So a protein molecule isn't shaped like a simple length of copper wire. It looks more like some intricate copper wire sculpture that some artisan might make. Below is an example of one of the thousands of 3D shapes that protein molecules can take. There are countless different variations.

One of thousands of protein molecule shapes (Credit: RCSB Protein Data Bank)

Human DNA has about 20,000 different genes, each of which specifies a different type of protein molecule. Each protein molecule typically has a unique shape.  Protein molecules need to have shapes like the shapes they have in order for them to function properly.  A protein molecule will not do its job if it exists as a simple string-like object. 

A fundamental question is: how do protein molecules get their three- dimensional shapes?  This problem is known as the protein folding problem. We might have an answer for this if it happened that each amino acid stored in it three numbers specifying the 3D position that it should go to. We can imagine a setup in which an amino acid would store three different numbers: one representing the X-axis coordinate that the amino acid should exist at, another representing the Y-axis coordinate the amino acid should go to, and a third representing the Z-axis coordinate the amino acid should go to. We can imagine some complicated molecular machinery that would read such numbers, and drag each amino acids to the appropriate X, Y and Z coordinates (a particular point in 3D space) that the amino acid should go to. Under such a system, a 3D protein molecule like the one above might be constructed from a one-dimensional string-like chain of amino acids. 

But that is not at all the way nature works. An amino acid does not store any numbers. An amino acid stores neither 3D coordinate numbers, nor any other type of number. So how do the more than 20,000 types of protein molecules in our bodies get their intricate 3D shapes?

Around the year I was born, the question was a profoundly troubling one for materialist biologists. It seemed around then that nature was making very many thousands of intricate hard-to-achieve 3D molecular shapes, and no one knew how it was happening. The materialist biologist was therefore like some owner of a private island who kept seeing endless varieties of intricate sand castles being constructed on the beaches of the island, without any explanation of who was doing it. 

Eventually an idea arose that helped make materialist biologists feel much better. The idea was that the three-dimensional shape of each protein molecule was somehow determined by its one-dimensional sequence of amino acids. The idea was originally presented under the name of the Thermodynamic Hypothesis. The idea was that there was one particular 3D shape under which some polypeptide chain would use the least amount of free energy, and that polypeptide chains migrated to this state, which corresponded to their folded 3D shapes. This Thermodynamic Hypothesis was stated like this by Christian B. Anfinsen in 1973: "This hypothesis states that the three-dimensional structure of a native protein...is the one in which the Gibbs free energy of the whole system is lowest; that is the native conformation is determined by the totality of inter-atomic interactions and hence by the amino acid sequence, in a given environment." Later the same idea was called Anfinsen's Dogma, and was stated as simply the idea that the three-dimensional structure of a protein molecule is determined by its one-dimensional amino acid sequence. 

Anfinsen's Dogma is represented by the visual below:

There were some reasons why Anfinsen's Dogma never was plausible. In 1969 scientist Cyrus Levinthal calculated that a protein with about 100 amino acids could be folded into about 3 to the 198^th power shapes. If a protein molecule were to try so many shape permutations looking for and finding some state in which "the free energy of the state is lowest," it would have to explore so many possibilities that  it would take very many years – eons actually. But instead a particular protein will very rapidly form into a characteristic three-dimensional shape, in a very short time – seconds for small proteins, and minutes for large proteins. So it never made any sense to think that protein molecules reached their 3D shapes because they were finding some ridiculously hard-to-find  state of minimum free energy. This discrepancy between the calculated ridiculously long time protein folding should take (under a "thermodynamic hypothesis" such as Anfinsen postulated) and the actual very short time it does take is known as Levinthal's paradox.

But Christian B. Anfinsen claimed to have done some experiments supporting his dogma. He did some experiments in which he took one of the simplest proteins (something called ribonuclease), and caused it to lose its folded shape, by a process called denaturation. Anfinsen claimed that he had observed ribonuclease revert back to its folded three-dimensional shape. He claimed that this was evidence that the three-dimensional shape of the protein was a mere function of the amino acid sequence. This was always weak evidence for a claim that protein molecules in general get their three-dimensional shapes solely as a consequence of their amino acid structure and the laws of chemistry and physics. One reason was that ribonuclease has only 124 amino acids, but most protein molecules have far more amino acids. The average number of amino acids in a human protein molecule is about 470, and many human protein molecules have much more than 500 amino acids (some having nearly 1000 amino acids). 

Although his experimental evidence for Anfinsen's Dogma was weak, Anfinsen won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1972, along with two other scientists, specifically for his experiments with ribonuclease. We should not be too impressed by this fact. We must remember that when scientists really, really want to believe something, they may tend to award some prize for experimental or observational activity that claimed to back up the cherished belief.  The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Anfinsen and his colleagues was part of the social construction of the triumphal legend that Anfinsen's Dogma had been backed up by experimental work. 

A 2012 paper has a statement suggesting that scientists were lazy about trying to produce some other experiments that would support Anfinsen's Dogma. It states this: "In the half-century since the annunciation of the Anfinsen postulate, there has appeared no evidence which contradicts it, but neither, seemingly, has there been any systematic experimental work on other proteins which would have further established its validity." We should not take the first half of that statement too seriously, because scientists often claim that is no evidence contradicting some beloved dogma, when there does exist very much such evidence. 

A 2018 paper ("Modeling protein folding in vivo")  suggests that the assumptions of Anfinsen were incorrect, and were derived from biased experiments dealing with a set of simpler-than-average proteins. The paper states the following, using the term "in vitro" to mean "in a lab setting,"  "native conformations" to refer to the 3D shapes of protein molecules, and "denatured" to refer to proteins that have lost their characteristic three-dimensional shape, and reverted to a simpler string-like or chain-like one-dimensional shape:

"These models arose from studies conducted in vitro on a biased sample of smaller, easier-to-isolate proteins, whose native structures appear to be thermodynamically stable. Meanwhile, the vast empirical data on the majority of larger proteins suggests that once these proteins are completely denatured in vitro, they cannot fold into native conformations without assistance. Moreover, they tend to lose their native conformations spontaneously and irreversibly in vitro, and therefore such conformations must be metastable."

Referring to "premature optimism," the paper discusses a kind of "rush to uncork champagne bottles" involved with the Anfinsen experiments:

"The most famous of these studies were the experiments by C. Anfinsen and colleagues, which observed that some small proteins, notably pancreatic ribonuclease (RNAse A), will fold spontaneously to their native conformations from an apparently completely denatured state after the restoration of favorable conditions in vitro; such an ability was postulated – in our opinion, with premature optimism – to be inherent to most proteins. These ideas gave rise to the 'thermodynamic hypothesis'  stating that 'the three-dimensional structure of a native protein in its normal physiological milieu...is the one in which the Gibbs free energy of the whole system is the lowest' [17]. In other words, under physiological conditions all proteins were assumed to be able to fold spontaneously into their native conformation."

The paper states the following, using the term "in vitro" to mean "in a lab setting,"  "denatured" to refer to proteins that have lost their characteristic three-dimensional shape, and reverted to a simpler string-like or chain-like one-dimensional shape, and the term "native conformation" to refer to the three-dimensional shape that protein molecules have in living organisms:

"Simple and elegant as these models are, they fail to adequately accommodate some common empirical observations. The first one is the widely observed protein physical instability in vitro: most protein preparations that are initially isolated from cells in an active native conformation are not stable in vitro and inevitably denature and lose such native conformation (reviewed in [13,14,15,16]). The second is the body of experimental observations that even seemingly stable proteins, once experimentally denatured in vitro in isolation from other cell components, are often unable to fold back into their native conformations upon return to physiological conditions [29,30,31,32,33,34,35]. This phenomenon is observed for all classes of proteins, though it becomes more obvious and almost universal for proteins of larger sizes. It has been shown that many such proteins require the assistance of molecular chaperones for successful folding (reviewed in [36])...We are now witnessing the emergence of a third observation that casts doubt on the applicability of the thermodynamic folding model to the majority of proteins: despite the tremendous intellectual and computational efforts invested into modeling of protein folding in silico, software based on the current thermodynamic theory of folding is able to model the folding paths of only very short proteins, and the process is slow [41,42,43]. In other words, the model in which a polypeptide with a random starting conformation slides down the energy funnel towards the thermodynamic minimum, reducing its free energy at every step in the process, does not appear to yield successful in silico recapitulation of the folding pathways for the majority of proteins."

The limited success of the AlphaFold software (in attempts at protein folding prediction) does not invalidate any of the statements above. The AlphaFold software is able to predict the shape of many proteins not by any thermodynamic calculation process that tends to validate Anfinsen's Dogma, but instead by a frequentist "pattern matching" approach that relies on some vast database of known 3D protein shapes and their corresponding amino acid sequences. In discussions of the protein folding problem, it is very important to not mix up two very different problems:

(1) The protein folding problem, which is the problem of how it is that one-dimensional polypeptide sequences (chains of amino acids) very quickly within organisms fold into a three-dimensional shape needed for the function.

(2) The protein folding prediction problem, which is the problem of what computer techniques can be used to accurately predict the three-dimensional shape of a protein molecule, giving its one-dimensional polypeptide sequence. 

The AlphaFold software has made progress on the second of these problems, not the first.  News reports about the AlphaFold software will often inaccurately describe it as having made progress on the "protein folding problem" (the first of these problems), but such reports should be only reporting that progress has been made on the second of these problems (the protein folding prediction problem). 

Later attempts to replicate Anfinsen's work with ribonuclease have raised grave doubts about how valid his research was. A very interesting paper published in the year 2022 was entitled "The Anfinsen Dogma: Intriguing Details Sixty-Five Years Later." In it a team of scientists reported many a problem in trying to replicate Anfinsen's work with ribonuclease. They seemed to get only a small fraction of the success that is generally claimed in accounts of Anfinsen's experiments. 

Referring to what have been called metamorphic or "moonlighting" proteins which seem to be able to assume different 3D shapes, a paper states this about Anfinsen's "one sequence, one structure" dogma:

"Moreover, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR)-based and computational studies have demonstrated that each protein sequence can have considerable structural plasticity, such that the 'one sequence, one structure' dogma does not capture the complex nature of a protein’s structure. In fact, this flexibility is an intrinsic feature that contributes directly to the biological function of many proteins."

At the www.researchgate.net site (an "expert answers" site similar to Quora.com), there is a page handling the question "Are Anfinsen and Levinthal still considered valid in protein folding? The question is basically asking whether Anfinsen's Dogma is any kind of explanation for the biologically vital process of protein folding. A Michael Crabtree of Oxford University claims "Anfinsen's conclusion - that protein structures are encoded within their sequence - is still the main hypothesis for how proteins fold."  Be suspicious when a scientist does not claim that something is proven, but merely claims that it is "well-established" or "not controversial," for scientists often use such phrases to describe dubious claims that are not actually well-established. And when a scientist does not claim that something is well-established, but merely says that it is the "main hypothesis" to explain something, that means very little, because his "main hypothesis" to explain something may be a very bad one. Crabtree's response is then vigorously disputed at length on the page by Boguslaw Stec PhD. He states this:

"As you see there are significant developments that no longer support a simplistic notion of sequence-folding-function direct relationship. The best proof is an entire career of Baker who is the most prominent protein modeler in the world now. He showed a complete failure of the energy based optimization schemes for protein modeling."

Stec makes this sobering observation:

"This is mostly in line with a sobering recent realization of NIH in the US that around 90% all biology science results are NOT repeatable. Scientist publish what worked not a majority of experiments that do not, even if this is the same experiment."

After describing at some length why Anfinsen's Dogma does not hold up well in experiments, Stec offers this idea as an alternative:

"It looks like life is tinkering on the edge between stable and unstable world. What it practically means is that proteins are self organized systems that do not have any uniform organizing principle. The only universal principle is a utilitarian need for life (function)." 

Self-organization is a phrase that is routinely used by people lacking a theory of organization explaining how some very organized thing got organized. Stec makes it sound rather like proteins are little minds seeking out biological functions, but that cannot explain why sequences of amino acids (polypeptide chains) are able to form so very quickly into the correct three-dimensional shapes needed for biological function. Claiming self-organization in this case is no more credible than trying to explain the origin of well-written functional paragraphs by claiming that the letters self-organized into paragraphs. 

Very much undermining Anfinsen's Dogma is the fact that a large fraction of all protein molecules require other protein molecules (called chaperones) in order for them to achieve their folded state. Such an idea discredits the simplistic "amino acid sequence determines 3D folded shape" idea. A  Stanford University press release states this:

"Scientists have determined that TRiC chaperones are common in people and other mammals. Estimates are that 10 percent of all mammalian proteins need TRiC in order to fold properly. Another 20 percent bind to the smaller chaperone, Hsp70."

That already give you 30% of protein molecules requiring other protein molecules for them to fold properly, undermining Anfinsen's idea that all you need is the amino acid sequence to get the proper folding for a protein molecule. An encyclopedia page concurs, stating that "20 to 30 percent of polypeptide chains require the assistance of a chaperone for correct folding under normal growth conditions."

Further evidence against Anfinsen's Dogma comes in the fact that a large fraction of all human proteins are what are called "Intrinsically Disordered Proteins," a poor name for a large class of proteins that can each assume many different shapes. A much better name would be "shape-shifting proteins" or "morphologically plastic proteins." Besides such shape-shifting proteins (called IDPs), a protein with a characteristic 3D shape may have some particular part of itself that takes on different shapes, such a part being called an "Intrinsically Disordered Protein Region or IDPR." A rough analogy of proteins with such IDPRs might be a person with a magically shape-shifting face, who always looks the same below the neck, but whose face can shift between different faces.  It has been estimated that up to 40% of human proteins are either either such shape-shifting proteins (IDPs) or proteins that have shape-shifting regions (IDPRs). A scientific paper tells us this about such IDPs and IDPRs:

"IDPs/IDPRs, which are characterized by remarkable conformational flexibility and structural plasticity, break multiple rules established over the years to explain structure, folding, and functionality of well-folded proteins with unique structures. Despite the general belief that unique biological functions of proteins require unique 3D-structures (which dominated protein science for more than a century), structure-less IDPs/IDPRs are functional, being able to engage in biological activities and perform impossible tricks that are highly unlikely for ordered proteins. With their exceptional spatio-temporal heterogeneity and high conformational flexibility, IDPs/IDPRs represent complex systems that act at the edge of chaos and are specifically tunable by various means....Overall, IDPs/IDPRs are complex systems with sophisticated structurally and functionally heterogeneous organization. They are uniquely placed at the core of the structure-function continuum concept, where instead of the classical (but heavily oversimplified) 'one gene–one protein–one structure–one function” view, the actual protein structure-function relationship is described by the more convoluted 'one-gene–many-proteins–many-functions'  model [92, 93]."

What we have in the case of Anfinsen's Dogma is an example of what has repeatedly occurred in the history of modern biology: the social construction of a dubious achievement legend, one hoisted up triumphantly largely for ideological reasons, so that biologists could claim they understood some great mystery of nature they did not at all understand, and could avoid believing in something they did not want to believe in.  It works like this:

(1) Biologists will make observations of some type of extremely impressive phenomenon in nature, or some class of phenomena. 

(2) One or more biologists will come up with some simplistic half-baked hypothesis that purports to offer a naturalistic mechanistic explanation for the phenomenon or class of phenomena. Typically such a hypothesis is stated through the repetition of some "sound bite," slogan or catchphrase such as "energy minimization," "natural selection," or "synapse strengthening."

(3) It will be claimed that a few miscellaneous observations or experiments lend support to the hypothesis. 

(4) Limitations or defects of the observations or experiments will be ignored, and a grand chorus of biologists will start proclaiming in unison that the hypothesis is a suitable explanation for the phenomenon or class of phenomena. 

(5) Gigantic reasons for rejecting the hypothesis will be ignored or swept under the rug. 

(6) Illogical aspects of the hypothesis (or aspects contrary to facts) will be ignored or swept under the rug. 

(7) A triumphal legend will be socially constructed by the biologist community that the impressive phenomenon or class of phenomena has been explained, because of the hypothesis offered, and the weak cheesy evidence presented in favor of it. 

This is exactly what happened in the case of Darwinism, which never offered a credible explanation for the more impressive wonders of biological innovation occurring in natural history, merely offering the cheesy sound-bite slogan of "natural selection" and an implausible appeal to random mutations. This is also what happened in the case of the main  phenomena of the human mind, none of which are credibly explained by brain activity, for reasons I explain at great length in the posts of the blog here. 

Do not be fooled by claims that Levinthal's Paradox or the protein folding problem has been solved. Such claims are merely additional examples of the countless times scientists have made triumphant declarations that they solved problems they did not actually solve.  Each claim that Levinthal's Paradox or the protein folding problem has been solved typically involves appeals to dubious speculative physics, appeals that have not been substantiated by experiments.  The different claims of this type all disagree with each other, each presenting a different speculative framework. Claims that Levinthal's Paradox or the protein folding problem has been solved are as dubious and speculative as when some scientist claims to have solved the origin of life, the origin of consciousness or the puzzle of what could have caused the origin of the universe. 

A scientific paper states this, using "native conformation" to mean the characteristic 3D shape of a protein molecule:

"The problem of protein folding is one of the most important problems of molecular biology. A central problem (the so called Levinthal's paradox) is that the protein is first synthesized as a linear molecule that must reach its native conformation in a short time (on the order of seconds or less). The protein can only perform its functions in this (often single) conformation. The problem, however, is that the number of possible conformational states is exponentially large for a long protein molecule. Despite almost 30 years of attempts to resolve this paradox, a solution has not yet been found. A number of authors (see, e.g., Ben-Naim, 2013; Onuchic and Wolynes, 2004; Finkelstein et al., 2017) believe that there is a solution, but they disagree on the reasons. Other scientists (see, e.g., Berger and Leighton, 1998; Davies, 2004) believe that the paradox is not yet resolved."

The phenomenon of protein folding is one of the most important things that goes on in nature, and your biological persistence from day to day vitally depends on protein folding occurring each day. Most protein molecules are short-lived. For example, the proteins in brain synapses have an average life of less than two weeks. Your body requires for protein folding to continuously occur, so that short-lived protein molecules can be continually replaced by newly created protein molecules that almost all require just-the-right protein folding to work right. The paper "Systematic study of the dynamics and half-lives of newly synthesized proteins in human cells" tells us this: "The majority of the proteins quantified have half-lives within the range of 4–14 hours. About 6% of all quantified proteins (49) have half-lives <4 hours, while 51 proteins have long half-lives (>14 hours); the median half-life is 8.7 hours."

The fact that Anfinsen's Dogma is not a credible or well-established explanation for protein folding (and the fact there is no credible mechanistic explanation for protein folding) is a fact of the utmost philosophical importance. If the daily protein folding that occurs in your body is a marvel of organization very far beyond the explanatory capabilities of mechanistic science, then we should  suspect a gigantic reality totally contrary to the dogmas of mechanistic materialism: that your continued existence is continually dependent on some purposeful unfathomable agency that cannot be explained by mere physics or chemistry. Properly understanding the protein folding problem and the failures of attempts to explain it are one of quite a few factors that give rise to a doctrine that is the polar opposite of reductionist dogmatism: the doctrine of continuous life-force dependency explained here.  

The unsolved mystery of protein folding is related to the unsolved mystery of morphogenesis and human development, the problem of how a speck-sized zygote is able to progress to become the vastly more organized state of a human body.  Just as biologists had some very cheesy and dubious phrases to mutter to try to sweep the gigantic problem of protein folding under the rug (phrases such as "Anfinsen's Dogma" and "the amino acid sequence determines the final structure of the protein molecule") -- a problem they failed to solve in any credible way -- biologists had a not-actually-true phrase to mutter when people asked about morphogenesis: the claim that human structure arises because a DNA blueprint is read. Such a claim was always a phony childish tale. DNA does not specify any blueprint of human anatomy. DNA merely specifies low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up a protein.  And even if DNA had a blueprint for building humans, it would not explain the origin of an adult body, because blueprints don't build things. Things get built with the help of blueprints because purposeful agents such as construction workers get ideas about how to build thing using blueprints. 

The shocking truth (so immensely contrary to the triumphal boasts of biologists) is that biologists understand neither the origin nor the continuation of any adult human body, as the conversation below explains:

Jack: What did you say, that we don't understand how an adult body originates? Of course we understand that! Your body originated because your mother got pregnant, and your body grew in your mother's womb. 

Jill: How a mother gets pregnant is the simplest thing: just a uniting of a sperm and egg. But we don't understand how the next nine months occur. How does some fantastically organized human body -- with an arrangement of parts more impressive than in a jet fighter -- arise from the speck-sized simplicity of a newly fertilized egg, a zygote? We don't understand that. 

Jack: It's simple. There's a blueprint for making a body in your DNA, and the body reads that, and carries out its instructions. 

Jill: That's a fairy tale. There is no such blueprint in DNA. DNA just has low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up a protein molecule. DNA does not even specify how to make any of the 200 types of cells in our bodies, each a marvel of functional organization. We don't understand how adult bodies originate, and don't even understand how they continue to exist once they've appeared. 

Jack: What are you talking about? I continue to exist because I keep breathing air, keep eating food, and keep drinking water. So that fuels my heart so it keeps beating, and my lungs so that they keep breathing. 

Jill: Yes, you need all that. But you need a lot more. You need for your body every day to do protein folding. Strings of hundreds of amino acids, kind of like a long necklace of tiny beads, must always be folding in just the right way to make these elaborate 3D protein shapes that your body needs. Without that, you'd be dead in a few weeks. How does protein folding happen? It's a miracle of origination a thousand miles over our heads, like a thousand types of sand castles arising on a beach when there's no one there.  

The Anfinsen story is a classic example of folly in modern science. A scientist (Anfinsen) did an experiment with a very small molecule (less than one third the average size of a human protein), and claimed that this showed that the 3D structure of most proteins is determined solely by their amino acid sequence (Anfinsen's Dogma, also called the thermodynamic hypothesis). This was rather like a man claiming that he built a house, and claiming that this shows that a single man can build an entire cathedral. Because scientists were eager to embrace the mechanistic dogma that protein shapes are determined solely by amino acid sequences, a Nobel Prize was soon awarded to Anfinsen, and innumerable science books and articles started claiming that his work proved his dogma (even though it made no sense to make such a claim based on Anfinsen's meager experimental results involving so small a molecule). There was little work done to try to do further experiments that might verify Anfinsen's claims, such as trying tests like his with average-sized proteins. Scientists had their triumphal story, and did not want to do further tests that might spoil that story. After fifty years of the science literature making the groundless claim that Anfinsen's experiments had proven his dogma, some diligent scientists finally tried in their 2022 paper to replicate his experiments, and found they could not even replicate them. So it was fifty years of science literature misinforming us on this important topic of whether the 3D structure of protein molecules is determined by their amino acid sequence, stretching right up to the present Nobel Prize announcement. The failure to replicate Anfinsen's results has been largely ignored, and the misleading claim about Anfinsen keeps being repeated.