Science Educators Are Doing a Poor Job of Educating the Public

Based on my frequent reading of poor-quality literature written by science professors and science journalists, I had the strong suspicion that a large fraction of the general public have a poor understanding about basic facts of science and fundamental theories of science.  I tried to get some data confirming this suspicion, but this turned out to be very hard work, "like pulling teeth." It seems that our science educators are very bad about polling the general public to determine how well average people understand basic facts of science. I could not find a single paper or article involving a poll in which the general public was asked something like 100 multiple-choice questions to determine how well they understand basic facts of science. 

But after spending hours looking for information, I was able to find a few revealing indications of just how poor a job our science educators have done.  One was a Pew Research poll which asked people whether electrons are smaller than atoms. One of the most basic facts of physics you can learn is that atoms are composed of three types of particles: electrons, neutrons and protons.  If our science educators were doing a good job, we would expect that at least a majority of the public would answer "Yes" to the question "Are electrons smaller than atoms?"  But according to the Pew Research poll discussed here, only 47% of the US public think electrons are smaller than atoms. 

In the poll discussed here, over 700 people were asked questions testing their knowledge of the location of bodily organs. For each organ, they were shown four pictures, each depicting the organ in a very different part of the body.  Only 46% of the general public could correctly identify the location of the lungs; only 27% could correctly identify the location of the stomach; and only 40% could correctly identify the location of the ovaries. 

In the paper here ("A Study of Common Beliefs and Misconceptions in Physical Science") about 300 people were asked whether this statement was true:

"An astronaut is standing on the moon with a baseball in her/his hand. When the baseball is released, it will fall to the moon’s surface."

Only about one third of the people answering gave a correct answer identifying the statement as true. The statement tests whether someone understands the basic idea between the law of gravitation, that all massive bodies exert a force of gravity. 

In some cases when the population is asked a rather basic science question, almost all of the people answering will give the same answer, an answer that is wrong. In the paper "Hints of a Fundamental Misconception in Cosmology" we read of a poll in which 167 college students were asked if they had heard of the Big Bang theory. Only 54% answered "yes." That 54% were then asked if the Big Bang theory described an "explosion from pre-existing matter" or an "explosion from nothing." 80% answered "explosion from pre-existing matter," only 1% answered "explosion from nothing," and 18% declined to answer.  The Big Bang theory does not describe any explosion from pre-existing matter. The theory describes the universe suddenly beginning in an expanding state, with its radius or diameter starting out as zero, something that is best described as "explosion from nothing" rather than "explosion from pre-existing matter." 

It is rather clear from these examples that science educators have done a very bad job of educating the public.  There are two main ways in which such educators have gigantically failed us.

Gigantic Failure #1: Indoctrinating the Public in False or Very Dubious Claims

One of the main ways in which a science educator can fail is by teaching doctrines that are dubious or untrue, selling such doubtful claims as "science." Sometimes such a failure is relatively harmless. For decades cosmologists and astronomers have endlessly taught the dubious speculative ideas of dark matter and dark energy. Neither have been directly observed, and neither has any place in the Standard Model of Physics.  Relatively little harm is done by such poor teaching. We are told that the universe consists mainly of invisible dark energy, and that most of the universe's matter is invisible dark matter. Such dogmas have very little to do with who we are or how we got here, so teaching such dogmas does little harm. 

An entirely different state of affairs involves the false or dubious dogmas taught by biologists and psychologists, dogmas that misinform about who we are, how each of our individual bodies and minds arose, and how humanity itself arose. These include the following very dubious or groundless dogmas endlessly repeated by our science educators:

• The groundless legend that a biologist of the nineteenth century (Charles Darwin) created a theory that explains the origin of species such as the human species.
• The groundless boast that biologists currently understand how there arose fantastically organized organisms such as birds, mammals and humans. 
• The completely fictional claim that scientists have some understanding of how life could have originally started on our planet.
• The untrue claim that DNA or its genes have some blueprint or program for making a human body, and that the progression from a speck-sized zygote to the state of vast organization that is an adult human body occurs because of the reading of such a blueprint or program. 
• The unfounded claim that human minds can be explained as being products of the human brain.
• The falsehood that there is little difference between humans and animals, and that humans are a type of animal (the latter claim being one that is "proven" solely by appealing to senseless and arbitrary classification conventions of biologists).
• The unfounded claim that human memory processes such as memory formation, lifelong preservation of memories and instant memory recall can be explained by processes in the brain. 

By teaching these untrue or very dubious claims, our science educators have committed an enormous crime against the general public: the crime of filling people's minds with false or very dubious ideas about who they are, how their bodies and minds arose, and how their species arose. Such miseducation is not merely a failure, but a kind of intellectual crime of a very bad type. Teaching boastful claims that benefit the prestige of science educators like themselves at the severe cost of filling people's minds with the worst type of false or unfounded ideas, our science educators have been guilty of errors as bad as those committed by medieval educators who taught that sickness is caused by demon possession. 

Gigantic Failure #2: Failing to Properly Educate the Public About Many of the Most Important Realities of Bodies, Minds and Nature

Our biology educators have been extremely bad about educating the public about many of the most important realities regarding life, minds and matter.  Such a failure often seems to have a strategic nature. It is as if our biology educators are deliberately trying to teach "crayon sketch" depictions of living things, so that the public will be more likely to believe in ideas of accidental unguided origins. 

Consider the question of the origin of life. Biology educators are constantly using the very misleading phrase "building blocks of life." We constantly get a phony story that goes like this:

"Long ago there was a primordial soup that was rich in chemical building blocks of life. Then with the help of some lucky event such as lightning or heat, life got started."

The idea of simple "building blocks of life" is profoundly erroneous, for reasons discussed in the visual below. 

 

Beside the deceit depicted in the visual above, there is a lot of additional deceit involving claims of building blocks of life. Science educators often claim without warrant that "building blocks of life" would have been abundant in the early Earth, a claim not supported by any experiments realistically simulating the early Earth. Science educators often make untrue claims such as "the building blocks of life are abundant in space." A look at the abundances of units such as amino acids in space will show that they exist in only the tiniest amounts such as 1 part per billion. 

Our science educators habitually make untrue claims suggesting progress in understanding a natural origin of life, something that has not at all occurred.  The reality of investigative failure is rarely described. 

Our science educators routinely present to us the most preposterous claims about the origin of life, such as claims that life can originate from non-life when some "spark of life" occurs from something like lightning. Our science educators can get away with such deceptions because they have committed the most appalling failure to properly educate people about the vast complexity and enormous organization of even the simplest living things. 

Our science educators routinely fail to properly educate the public about the complexity of cells. Such educators fool people into thinking that cells are thousands or millions of times simpler than they are, by using deceptive diagrams of cells, diagrams that make cells look very simple.  Human cells are so complex it is sometimes said they are as  complex as factories or cities. 

 

Continuing to teach the outdated and groundless legend that the origin of species was explained in the 19th century by Charles Darwin, our science educators fail to educate the public about the enormous hierarchical organization of the human body. That organization is listed in the table below. The items in yellow are facts that Darwin never knew about during his lifetime.

HUMANS CONSIST OF HUMAN BODIES AND HUMAN MINDS.	Human minds have displayed a vast number of capabilities, many of which mainstream scientists fail to properly study.
HUMAN BODIES MAINLY CONSIST OF ORGAN SYSTEMS AND A SKELETAL SYSTEM.	The human skeletal system contains 206 bones.
ORGAN SYSTEMS CONSIST OF ORGANS AND SUPPORTING STRUCTURES.	Examples of organ systems include the circulatory system (consisting of much more than just the heart), and the nervous system consisting of much more than just the brain.
ORGANS CONSIST OF TISSUES.
TISSUES CONSIST OF VERY COMPLEX AND VASTLY ORGANIZED  CELLS	There are more than 200 types of cells in the human body, each a different type of system of enormous organization. Cells are so complex they have been compared to factories with many types of manufacturing devices.
CELLS TYPICALLY CONSIST OF VERY COMPLEX MEMBRANES AND THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS OF ORGANELLES.	A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few mitochondria, but cells typically have many thousands of mitochondria, as many as a million. A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few lysosomes, but cells typically have hundreds of lysosomes. A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few ribosomes, but a cell may have up to 10 million ribosomes. A cell diagram will typically depict one or a few stacks of a Golgi apparatus, each with only a few cisternae. But a cell will typically have between 10 and 20 stacks, each having as many as 60 cisternae.
ORGANELLES CONSIST OF VERY MANY PROTEIN MOLECULES AND PROTEIN MOLECULE COMPLEXES.	There are some 100,000 different types of protein molecules in the human body, each a different type of complex invention. Protein molecule complexes are groups of different types of protein molecules that work together as team members to achieve a function that cannot be achieved by only one of the proteins in the complex. Very many protein complexes have so many parts working together dynamically that such complexes are now being called "molecular machines."
PROTEIN MOLECULES CONSIST OF HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS OF WELL-ARRANGED AMINO ACIDS, EXISTING IN A FOLDED THREE-DIMENSIONAL SHAPE.	Small changes in the sequences of amino acids in a protein are typically sufficient to ruin the usefulness of the protein molecule, preventing it from folding in the right way to achieve its function.  See "The Fragility of Fine-Tuned Protein Molecules" section of the post here for quotes stating this.
AMINO ACIDS CONSIST OF ABOUT 10 ATOMS ARRANGED IN SOME SPECIFIC WAY.	Some amino acids have 20 atoms. Given 10+ atoms in amino acids, and an average of about 470 amino acids per human protein molecule, a human protein molecule contains an average of about 5000+ very well-arranged atoms. Amino acids in living things are almost all left-handed, although amino acids forming naturally will with 50% likelihood be right-handed.
ATOMS CONSIST OF MULTIPLE PROTONS, NEUTRONS AND ELECTRONS.	A carbon atom has 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons.

Why do our science educators fail to decently educate the public about all these different levels of organization? I suspect because it is such educators may sense that the more you know about the vast amount of complexity and organization in human bodies, the less likely you will be to accept the boast that science educators seem hell-bent on promulgating: the boast that scientists understand how the human species originated. Claims of the accidental origin of something are inversely proportional to the complexity and organization of that thing. The more organized and the more well-arranged something is, and the more well-arranged parts it has,  and the more fine-tuned the arrangement of its parts, the less credible is a claim that the thing arose by blind accidental processes.  For example, someone throwing a deck of cards into the air many times might produce one or two times a "house of cards" consisting of one card leaning diagonally against the other. But if the whole universe was filled with people throwing decks of cards into the air, doing that half of their lives, it would be vastly improbable that even one of them would ever accidentally produce a triangular house of cards consisting of thirty very well-arranged cards.  

We are now in a situation where it is very clear that the wonders of biology are far greater in their hierarchical organization and fine-tuned dynamic complexity than anything that humans have ever constructed. An aircraft carrier is a less impressive work of fine-tuned organization than the human body. Humans know how to make aircraft carriers equipped with all of their aircraft. There is not a corporation in the world or a nation in the world that could construct from lifeless materials a living adult human body. It is notable that humans are completely incapable of creating machines that can reproduce themselves.  There is not a robot in the world capable of building from raw materials a robot just like itself. But self-reproduction is something that occurs throughout the world of biology, as does molecular machinery. 

What we see in biological organism are massive numbers of engineering effects and endless examples of information-rich fine-tuned architecture. Such a reality makes nineteenth century explanations of biology origins sound like old wives' tales. Ink splashes don't produce long functional essays telling how to perform complex tasks; accidents don't engineer things; and random variations don't create novel astonishing works of information-rich fine-tuned architecture. It is not true that we can explain such wonders of biology by a simple principle of "random variations occur, and nature saves the good stuff," because most of the good stuff we see  requires arrangements of atoms so improbable you would never get such good stuff from random variations.  The reason that would never happen is pretty much the same as the reason why ink splashes don't produce well-written essays telling how to do complex things. 

But our science educators keep senselessly claiming that the wonders of biology are not the product of intelligent agency, but mere accidents of nature, as accidental as mountains. They keep telling us that we must follow opinions of the scientist Darwin, reached around the year 1859.  To keep such a legend afloat, our science educators fail over and over again to teach about the reality of the enormous engineering effects in our bodies. As a substitute, they offer the crudest "crayon sketches" of our bodies and our minds. 

Below from page 137 of a PhD thesis is a list of biological systems described as if they were very impressive machinery:

Subcellular assembly	Sample of ‘molecular machine’ language	Source reference
Ribosome	“probably the most sophisticated machine ever made”	Garrett (1999)
Proteasome	“a molecular machine designed for controlled proteolysis”	Voges et al. (1999)
Glideosome	“a molecular machine powering motility”	Keeley et al. (2003)
Spliceosome	“among the most complex macromolecular machines known”	Nilsen (2003)
Blood clotting system	“a typical example of a molecular machine”	Spronk et al. (2003)
Photosynthetic system	“the most elaborate nanoscale biological machine in nature”	Imahori (2004)
Bacterial flagellum	“an exquisitely engineered chemi-osmotic nanomachine”	Pallen et al. (2005)
Myosin filament	“a complicated machine of many moving parts”	Ohki et al. (2006
RNA degradasome	“a supramolecular machine dedicated to RNA processing”	Marcaida et al. (2006)
RNA Polymerase	“a multifunctional molecular machine”	Haag et al. (2007)

An article by scientists discusses molecular machines in the human body:

"A molecular machine (or ‘nanomachine’) is a mechanical device that is measured in nanometers (millionths of a millimeter, or units of 10^-9 meter; on the scale of a single molecule) and converts chemical, electrical or optical energy to controlled mechanical work [1,2]. The human body can be viewed as a complex ensemble of nanomachines [3,4]. These tiny machines are responsible for the directed transport of macromolecules, membranes or chromosomes within the cytoplasm. They play a critical role in virtually every biological process (e.g., muscle contraction, cell division, intracellular transport, ATP production and genomic transcription)...Myosin, kinesin and their relatives are linear motors that convert the energy of ATP hydrolysis into mechanical work."

We do not learn about such impressive realities from the vast majority of our science educators.  Instead of teaching about such sophisticated realities, such educators have endlessly repeated childish "old wives tales" about how a human body originates. The main such tale has been the lie that a human body arises from a reading of a blueprint in human DNA, a blueprint of how to make a body. No such blueprint exists in our DNA, which does not even tell how to make any of the cells in our body.  And if such a blueprint existed, it would not explain how we get our bodies, because blueprints don't build things. 

Our science educators should have very humbly confessed the truth, saying: "We don't understand how humanity originated; we don't understand how any human mind originates; we don't understand how any adult human body originates; and we don't even understand how human cells are able to reproduce."  But instead, having crowned themselves as Grand Lords of Explanation, our science educators kept telling whatever lies they needed to tell to get people to believe their achievement boasts. 

A large part of the failure of science educators has been the failure to teach the public about many important observations having the greatest relevance to the nature of the human mind: observations of spooky events that humans can't explain and anomalous human mental powers that scientists can't explain. Senselessly our science educators declared such observations to be taboo, largely because they help undermine the dogmas that such educators try to promote, such as the dogma that the mind is merely the product of the brain.

When teaching about the brain, our science educators routinely fail to tell us about some of the most important facts we could learn, such as the very heavy signal noise all over the place in the brain, the unreliable transmission of signals across chemical synapses, the lack of any microscopic discovery of learned knowledge in human brains, the lack of any understanding of a neural system by which memories could be encoded, the lack of any thing in a brain that could explain instant memory recall, and so forth. We were not told about such things because our science educators wanted us to believe a dogma that they cherished, that minds are merely the products of brains. 

Some of the main science educators are science journalists, who these days are notorious for their production of misleading clickbait stories with frequently phony headlines. 

Nowadays science journalism is a kind of "anything goes" hall of mirrors in which the chief object seems to be to attract clicks on interesting-sounding headlines that lead to pages containing ads, pages that generate revenues for various parties. 

In the area of physics and cosmology, our science educators had the most meaningful and interesting account that they could have told: an account of a universe mysteriously appearing out of nothing, in an incredibly fine-tuned state, equipped with very many fine-tuned fundamental constants and fine-tuned laws necessary for the existence of creatures such as humans.  But our science educators failed to tell that story properly. Instead of learning of such an account in high school, which would have kept students interested, our high school physics students were tortured by boring calculation problems.  

Our science educators taught us a naive, authoritarian model of science, a kind of triumphal "scientists keep gloriously marching towards the truth" story. This was not a correct description of the "a loop of two steps forward, and one step backward" reality of science: the reality that scientists are conformist members of belief communities that often promote outdated dogmas that are balls-and-chains inhibiting the progress of science, and that groupthink and herd behavior frequently chains scientists to bad old ideas that keep being taught way past their proper expiration date. Our science educators constantly advanced a profoundly erroneous "they can explain all the big stuff" portrait of scientists at odds with the reality that human knowledge is merely fragmentary, and that what humans know is very tiny compared to what they don't know. 

When it comes to science education, the public has been very badly misled. The public put its trust in science educators, entrusting them with the enormous responsibility of acting as guides to help understand who we are and what kind of universe we live in.  Very many or most of our science educators have badly betrayed that trust. 

A Professor's Reality Filter

Scientists tend to have what I call a reality filter. A reality filter is a set of habits that tends to prevent a person from receiving observations or analysis or facts that contradict his worldview, while allowing the reception of observations or analysis or facts consistent with his worldview. 

Let's look at a hypothetical case of how such reality filtering works, considering the many ways that a Professor Smith excludes observations that conflict with his belief system, using his power as an editor, a peer-reviewer, an authority to be quoted, and a person yielding power in various ways. 

Researcher #1: Here is my careful set of observations of a truly baffling spooky phenomenon....

Professor Smith: We don't talk about stuff like that in this journal, so I recommend non-publication.  

Researcher #2: So what do you think of out-of-body experiences and reports of seeing apparitions?

Professor Smith: They must just be hallucinations.

Researcher #2: Have you studied them in any depth?

Professor Smith: I don't study that kind of spooky stuff. I leave that to what I call "fringe" researchers. 

Researcher #3: I've written a paper drawing conclusions just like those you have made. 

Professor Smith: Great, I'll give you a laudatory quote you can use for your press release! 

Researcher #4: Here's a paper on a topic you research, but drawing conclusions radically different from yours. 

Professor Smith:  I don't think we need any more papers on this topic right now. 

Researcher #5: Here's my 500-page book challenging the dogmas typically taught by professors such as you. Can you read it and provide a "blurb"?

Professor Smith:  That would be a waste of time, because you're not a professor.

Researcher #5: But I treat some of these topics much more deeply than you have ever have done in your writings. 

Professor Smith:  That doesn't matter. 

Reporter #1: What is your comment on the new paper of Professor Jones offering a new theory challenging the conclusions of scientists such as you?

Professor Smith:  I am not impressed.

Reporter #1: Did you read his paper and his other papers on his theory?

Professor Smith:  I am a busy professor. I don't have time for "fringe studies."

Professor #1: So we have two candidates to be a new professor in our department. There's that "maverick" contrarian independent thinker and that guy who seems to always parrot what we say.

Professor Smith:  That's a "no brainer." Go with the "team player" so we can maintain smooth team dynamics. Nobody likes it when people are having loud arguments. 

Student #1:  Why did you give a C- grade to my original 50-page term paper, when my friend got an A+ grade on his 20-page rehash rush job paper? 

Professor Smith:  You had too much "out of the box" and "fringe" stuff. It's risky to "go contrarian." Remember, always respect the views of your superiors. 

Student #2:  Why doesn't your class mention any of the strange spooky things that scientists can't explain?

Professor Smith:  Professors like me have a rule you might call "nothing fringe" or "nothing spooky." I wouldn't want to get in trouble with the other professors in my department. 

Researcher #6:  I made some important observations as part of our scientific experiment, but you didn't even mention them in the paper.

Professor Smith:  Remember, the typical scientific paper is a particular storyline, and your observations did not fit in with the storyline.  It's harder for papers with "clashing storylines" to get published. 

Researcher #7:  Here's my new book making claims just like the ones you keep making.

Professor Smith:  Great, I'll write a nice little "blurb" line, like saying, "This is a very important contribution of great insight."

Researcher #8:  Here's my new book making a case against the ossified orthodoxy of today's scientists. It includes hundreds of fascinating relevant observations. 

Professor Smith: What makes you think I have time to read "heretic" writings?

Researcher #9:  We did nine experiments trying to show some effect in the brain. One showed the effect with marginal significance, and the others failed to show any such effect. What should we do?

Professor Smith: The answer is obvious. The eight experiments that failed go into our file drawer, and the one success gets written up as a scientific paper. 

Reporter #2: What is your comment on those strange new UFO sightings everyone is talking about?

Professor Smith: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Reporter #2: Have you studied those sightings?

Professor Smith: No, I was just quoting a line that professors like to quote when they are asked about something spooky. 

Student #7: Professor, three in our class including me saw an apparition of that student who died in a car crash. 

Professor Smith: You must all be liars. Don't spread such stories. 

Student #3: Professor, I just read a paper saying that during DNA transcription, cells actually proofread their results, to reduce copying errors. And I read of some human protein molecules with thousands of amino acids that have to be in just the right sequence before the molecule is functional.  How could things so fantastically complex and fine-tuned have arisen through Darwinian processes?

Professor Smith: I need not delve into that, because as we professors like to say, "The answer is always Darwin."

It Seemed the Paranormal Was Her Near-Constant Companion

Recently I had a dream about the late Kate Fox, one that struck me as being perhaps of great significance.  I dreamed I was standing in front of an elevator, and someone said, "Kate Fox wants to see you." I got in the elevator, and pressed a floor number. But it seemed I pressed a series of digits making a number much larger than 1000, as if I was trying to ascend very many times higher than the top of the world's tallest building. The combination of the motif of the deceased person wanting to see me and the motif of an ascent to some super-high elevation made the dream one of 400+ dreams I have had suggesting life after death. 

Kate Fox was one of the famous Fox sisters involved in the events in  Hydesville, New York beginning in 1848, and the events not long after in Rochester, New York, events that were the beginning of a series of dramatic manifestations that lasted for decades, and were reported in very many places in the United States and Europe, mostly when none of the Fox sisters were present.  The manifestation began as inexplicable sounds that were called "rappings" or raps.

The important American newspaper figure Horace Greeley reported on the visit of the Fox sisters to New York City:

"Mrs. Fox and her three daughters left our city yesterday, on their return to Rochester, after a stay here of some weeks ; during which they have subjected the mysterious influence by which they seem to be accompanied to every reasonable test and to the keen and critical scrutiny of hundreds who have chosen to visit them, or whom they have been invited to visit. The rooms which they occupied at the hotel have been repeatedly searched and scrutinized ; they have been taken without an hour's notice into houses they had never before entered ; they have been unconsciously placed on a glass surface, concealed under the carpet in order to interrupt electrical vibrations ; they have been disrobed by a committee of ladies, appointed without notice, and insisting that neither of them should leave the room until the investigation had been made, etc. , etc. ; yet we believe no one to this moment pretends that he has detected either of them in producing or causing the 'rappings,' nor do we think any of their contemnors has invented a plausible theory to account for the production of these sounds, nor the singular intelligence which [certainly at times] has seemed to be manifested through them. Some ten or twelve days since they gave up their rooms at the hotel, and devoted the remainder of their sojourn here to visiting several families, to which they had been invited by persons interested in the subject, and subjecting the singular influence to a closer, calmer examination than could be given to it at an hotel, and before casual companies of strangers, drawn together by vague curiosity more than rational interest, or predetermined and invincible hostility. Our own dwelling was among those they thus visited, not only submitting to, but courting the fullest and keenest inquiry with regard to the alleged ' manifestations' from the spirit-world by which they were attended.

'' We devoted what time we could spare from our duties, out of three days, to this subject ; and it would be the basest cowardice not to say that we are convinced beyond a doubt of their perfect integrity and good faith in the premises.  Whatever may be the origin or cause of the 'rappings,' the ladies in whose presence they occur do not make them. We tested this thoroughly, and to our entire satisfaction."

In 1855 Canadian author Susanna Moodie described a meeting she had with Kate Fox, who Moodie describes as having the most beautiful eyes she ever saw, eyes of a dark purple color:

"Miss F. [Kate Fox] told me to write a list of names of dead and living friends, but neither to read to her, nor to allow her to see them. I did this upon one side of a quire of paper, the whole thickness between her and me, writing with her back to me. She told me to run my pen along the list, and as a test the spirits would rap five times for every dead, and three times for every living, friend. I inwardly smiled at this. Yet strange to say, they never once missed."

Moodie reports a name being spelled out by raps, apparently under the common system of this time by which the alphabet would be recited, and a letter would be written down whenever a mysterious rap occurred after a letter was named.  The name spelled out (Anna Laura Harral) was someone whose name was unknown to Kate Fox, but who Moodie had made a compact with, under which either of the two people surviving death would try to communicate evidence of survival to the surviving person.  Moodie reports a wide variety of inexplicable sound phenomena occurring around Kate Fox (as did quite a few distinguished authors), including sounds (combined with vibrations) coming from the dirt or rocks Moodie stood on. Moodie reports a piano playing by itself, soon after Kate Fox suggested that it would. 

Moodie reports asking that the birth year and death year engraved under a ring Mr. Moodie was wearing be identified by the mysterious raps. The correct years were given, she says, as was her father's name and the date of his birth and death, and the place and cause of her father's death. Like countless other witnesses, she reports such questions were correctly answered, even though posed only mentally rather than orally. 

In an 1861 book Benjamin Coleman gives this remarkable account of meeting Kate Fox:

"The rappings in her presence are very loud and precise. When I  called on her one morning, the room resounded on all sides as if a host were giving me a joyous welcome. I asked if the spirits who were present would give me their names, and the names of Harry, Isabel, and Sylvester were spelt out, no names having been mentioned by me in Miss Fox's presence, and of course I and my family relations were wholly unknown to her. These were followed by other names of friends, spelt out in full, and one, a relative of my wife's said, 'Let me speak.'  A message followed, of a specially significant and touching character, which I am precluded from giving, as it relates to private family affair; but I may mention that the tenor of the message is an actual apology offered for an assumed injustice done to me during her life-time, now 20 years ago."

Alfred Russel Wallace (co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection) stated this about Kate Fox in 1874:

"Miss Kate Fox, the little girl of nine years old, who, as already stated, was the first ‘medium ' in the modern sense of the term, has continued to possess the same power for twenty-six years. At the very earliest stages of the movement, sceptic after sceptic, committee after committee, endeavoured to discover ' the trick ;' but if it was a trick this little girl baffled them all, and the proverbial acuteness of the Yankee was of no avail. In 1860, when Dr. Robert Chambers visited America, he suggested to his friend, Robert Dale Owen, the use of a balance to test the lifting power. They accordingly, without pre-arrangement with the medium, took with them a powerful steelyard, and suspended from it a dining-table weighing 121 pounds. Then, under a bright gaslight, the feet of the two mediums (Miss Fox and her sister) being both touched by the feet of the gentlemen, and the hands of all present being held over but not touching the table, it was made lighter or heavier at request, so as to weigh at one time only 60, at another 134 pounds. This experiment, be it remembered, was identical with one proposed by Faraday himself as being conclusive. Mr. Owen had many sittings with Miss Fox for the purpose of test ; and the precautions he took were extraordinary. He sat with her alone ; he frequently changed the room without notice ; he examined every article of furniture; he locked the doors and fastened them with strips of paper privately sealed ; he held both the hands of the medium. Under these conditions various phenomena occurred, the most remarkable being the illumination of a piece of paper (which he had brought himself, cut of a peculiar size, and privately marked), showing a dark hand writing on the floor. The paper afterwards rose up on to the table with legible writing upon it, containing a promise which was subsequently verified. (‘ Debateable Land,'  p. 293.)

But Miss Fox’s powers were most remarkably shown in the séances with Mr. Livermore, a well-known New York banker, and an entire sceptic before commencing these experiments. These sittings were more than three hundred in number, extending over five years. They took place in four different houses (Mr. Livermore’s and the medium’s being both changed during this period), under tests of the most rigid description. The chief phenomenon was the appearance of a tangible, visible, and audible figure of Mr. Livermore’s deceased wife, sometimes accompanied by a male figure, purporting to be Dr. Franklin. The former figure was often most distinct and absolutely life-like. It moved various objects in the room. It wrote messages on cards. It was sometimes formed out of a luminous cloud, and again vanished before the eyes of the witnesses. It allowed a portion of its dress to be cut off, which though at first of strong and apparently material gauzy texture, yet in a short time melted away and became invisible. Flowers which melted away were also given. These phenomena occurred best when Mr. L. and the medium were alone; but two witnesses were occasionally admitted, who tested everything and confirmed Mr. L.’s testimony. One of these was Mr. Livermore’s physician, the other his brother-in-law ; the latter previously a sceptic. The details of these wonderful séances were published in the Spiritual Magazine in 1862 and 1863 ; and the more remarkable are given in Owen’s ' Debateable Land,' from which work a good idea may be formed of the great variety of the phenomena that occurred and the stringent character of the tests employed. Miss Fox recently came to England, and here also her powers have been tested by a competent man of science, and found to be all that has been stated."

The scientist who Wallace refers to was William Crookes, not merely a "competent man of science" but one of the most accomplished physicists of his time, being the discover of the element thallium and inventor of the Crookes tube that was the technological ancestor of the television set. In the same year (1874) Crookes published his "Notes of an Enquiry Into the Phenomena Called Spiritual" in which he described various classes of inexplicable phenomena. Crookes listed as Class II "The Phenomena of Percussive and other Allied Sounds."  Describing that class of phenomena he stated this:

"The popular name of 'raps' conveys a very erroneous impression of this class of phenomena. At different times, during my experiments, I have heard delicate ticks, as with the point of a pin; a cascade of sharp sounds as from an induction coil in full work; detonations in the air; sharp metallic taps ; a cracking like that heard when a frictional machine is at work; sounds like scratching; the twittering as of a bird, &c.

These sounds are noticed with almost every medium, each having a special peculiarity; they are more varied with Mr. Home, but for power and certainty I have met with no one who at all approached Miss Kate Fox. For several months I enjoyed almost unlimited opportunity of testing the various phenomena occurring in the presence of this lady, and I especially examined the phenomena of these sounds. With mediums, generally, it is necessary to sit for a formal séance before anything is heard; but, in the case of Miss Fox it seems only necessary for her to place her hand on any substance for loud thuds to be heard in it, like a triple pulsation, sometimes loud enough to be heard several rooms off. In this manner I have heard them in a living tree—on a sheet of glass—on a stretched iron wire—on a stretched membrane—a tambourine—on the roof of a cab—and on the floor of a theatre. Moreover, actual contact is not always necessary; I have had these sounds proceeding from the floor, walls, &c., when the medium’s hands and feet were held—when she was standing on a chair—when she was suspended in a swing from the ceiling—when she was enclosed in a wire cage—and when she had fallen fainting on a sofa. I have heard them on a glass harmonicon—I have felt them on my own shoulder and under my own hands. I have heard them on a sheet of paper, held between the fingers by a piece of thread passed through one corner. With a full  knowledge of the numerous theories which have been started, chiefly in America, to explain these sounds, I have tested them in every way that I could devise, until there has been no escape from the conviction that they were true objective occurrences not produced by trickery or mechanical means.

An important question here forces itself upon the attention. Are the movements and sounds governed by intelligence? Ata very early stage of the enquiry, it was seen that the power producing the phenomena was not merely a blind force, but was associated with or governed by intelligence: thus the sounds to which I have just alluded will be repeated a definite number of times, they will come loud or faint, and in different places at request ; and by a pre-arranged code of signals, questions are answered, and messages given with more or less accuracy."

Wallace's account above refers to accounts in The Spiritual Magazine in 1862 and 1863. You can read some of those accounts here (pages 193 -201) and here (pages 260-264).  We read of some dramatic phenomena, but as evidence the accounts are far inferior to the accounts involving the materialization seances of Florence Cook. The reason is that there are not multiple named witnesses. Conversely, the seances of Florence Cook were promptly described in the greatest detail for very many months by very many named witnesses, who quickly published their accounts, typically within weeks (as I describe in my posts here and here). 

Wallace refers to the account of the Livermore seances with Kate Fox given by Robert Dale Owen in his book "The debatable land between this world and the next : with illustrative narrations." You can read the account by using the link here to access pages 483 and the next ten pages or so. On page 487 we have this narrative from Livermore of an event at a seance with Kate Fox:

"At last a luminous globe which had remained stationary some six feet to my left floated in front, and came within two feet of me. It was violently agitated, crackling sounds were heard, and a figure became visible by its light. Then there was revealed the full head and face of Estelle, every feature and lineament in perfection, spiritualized in shadowy beauty, such as no imagination can conceive or pen describe. In her hair, above the left temple, was a single white rose ; the hair being apparently arranged with great care. The entire head and face faded and then became visible again, at least twenty times ; the perfection of recognition, in each case, being in proportion to the brilliancy of the light." 

The physicist William Crookes gave this account of a meeting with Kate Fox:

"I was sitting next to the medium, Miss Fox, the only other persons present being my wife and a lady relative, and I was holding the medium's two hands in one of mine, whilst her feet were resting on my feet. Paper was on the table before us, and my disengaged hand was holding a pencil.  A luminous hand came down from the upper part of the room, and after hovering near me for a few seconds, took the pencil from my hand, rapidly wrote on a sheet of paper, threw the pencil down, and then rose up over our heads, gradually fading into darkness."

From such accounts above, you can get an idea of why a man like me might take it very seriously upon having a dream in which someone says,  "Kate Fox wants to see you." 

Kate Fox (later Kate Fox Jencken)

Old Newspaper Articles Describing Near-Death Experiences

Near-death experiences first started to become well-known around 1975, with the popularity of Raymond Moody's book on the concept (entitled Life After Life). But we have very good reason to believe that such experiences have been a fact of human experience long before Moody's book.  In my posts below I document near-death experiences dating from long before 1975: 

Near-Death High-Speed Life Reviews From Before 1950

An Early Veridical Near-Death Experience

Out-of-Body Experiences and Near-Death Experiences Long Before 1975

The Evidence for Out-of-Body Experiences

Two More Near-Death Experiences of the Nineteenth Century

Four Near-Death Experiences of the Nineteenth Century

Let us look at some more cases of near-death experiences or out-of-body experiences dating from long before 1975, and in this post rather than quoting text I will be giving images from old newspapers. The Chronicling America web site makes it very easy to search the text of old newspapers, but once you've found a story, there's no easy way to copy text from the story. So I'll have to use images instead. 

The story below appeared in 1911:

The story appeared on the page you can read here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84020630/1911-02-27/ed-1/seq-8/

Methodist ministers of the time typically believed in the doctrine of the Resurrection, that the dead were silent and lifeless, waiting for some future Judgment Day, in which they would all be resurrected.  So this account of seeing deceased parishioners alive in an afterlife is not an  account in which a Methodist minister saw what he expected to see. 

The story below appeared in 1915, and involved a young girl who clearly was very close to death.  We can't be sure whether the being identified as God by the girl was a supreme being or perhaps some other supernatural entity or paranormal entity the girl identified as God. Clicking on the image may allow you to read the text more carefully:

The newspaper page with the story can be read using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/97071090/1915-05-14/ed-1/seq-4/

Below from 1907 we have the remarkable story of Eula Wilson, a blind or nearly-blind young girl who recovered from a death-like state that no one nearby thought she would recover from. She reports a near-death experience (click on the image if you have trouble reading the text):

You can read the full account below, which includes additional text not shown above. The full account gives us the additional very interesting detail that the child was blind in one eye before her near-death experience, but reportedly had perfect vision after the experience.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn97070124/1907-06-22/ed-1/seq-1/

A similar story is told by a man in the 1911 story below.  When we get accounts of seeing God or "the Lord" in such accounts, they may be guesses about mysterious powerful-seeming figures seen. Click on the image if you have trouble reading the text. 

The story can be read on its original newspaper page using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87057096/1911-01-05/ed-1/seq-3/

The 1897 account below also involves trances in a young girl, apparently trances occurring in a state near death. We have some interesting evidence cited suggesting that more than mere imagination is involved:

You can read the account on its original news page using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92064073/1897-05-27/ed-1/seq-6/

The 1903 account below involving Mary A. Kidder is of possible interest in this context, although it merely mentions trances rather than a state near death. I include it because it rather tends to corroborate the account above, both involving reported trips to heaven during trances:

You can read the account using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024827/1903-12-02/ed-1/seq-1/

I find it interesting that the child reports what she calls angels moving through the air, although she says "they have no wings," telling us something different from what a child might tell based on traditional images of heaven and angels. 

We may presume that the 1912 account below refers to a girl who was close to death, as the account reports that the vision occurred while the girl slept for five days:

The reference to Henry Ward Beecher refers to a preacher who died in 1887. You can read the account using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1912-08-06/ed-1/seq-1/

Another story that seems like an early account of a near-death experience is the 1897 one below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91068084/1897-02-26/ed-1/seq-1/

Did She Foretell Her Own Birth?

 I will have a normal-length post on this site tomorrow. For anyone checking in today, I merely have two old news stories that are so gigantically strange-sounding they may be worth your visit at this site today. The first is a very interesting story that appeared in a newspaper in 1913 (click on the image if you have trouble reading it):

The story can be read using the link here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045433/1913-08-17/ed-1/seq-5/

The very serious researcher Ian Stevenson MD actually spent years trying to accumulate birthmark evidence for reincarnation, and you can study some of his results here.  He claimed weighty evidence about this. 

Then there is the "she married a ghost" story reported below (click on the image to more easily read it):

The claim appears here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88063294/1943-05-16/ed-1/seq-96/#date1=1756&index

The newspaper page below gives more details about this case of Margaret Simmonds, telling us the source of the account is the very serious philosophy professor C. E. M  Joad, a person who was the author of quite a few long and very serious volumes (as you can see here). But alas the story on the page kind of fades away like a vanishing apparition. Only those willing to squint will be able to extract some more details.  Apparently the bride's husband soon vanished, never to be seen again; and there were reasons she suspected he was a ghost (such as that she met him at a house reputed to be haunted, and he was none of the invited guests). 

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88063294/1943-05-16/ed-1/seq-104/

Although the story above claims that Professor Joad asserted the story of Margaret Simmonds was "entirely authenticated," I don't know whether the story above is true. But I do know the story line could probably be expanded into a successful romantic comedy movie, perhaps with a title such as "Ghosted." I can also imagine someone turning the story into a courtroom drama.  A spouse might be arrested for the murder of a vanished husband, with a defense of "he was only a ghost, so he disappeared."  There might be spooky events in the court room (such as a jumping gavel) which might cause the jury to wonder whether the wild story was true. 

More Accounts of Deathbed Visions

In the 2023 scientific paper here ("A Review of Clinical Signs and Symptoms of Imminent End-of-Life in Individuals With Advanced Illness"), we read this about End-of-Life Dreams and Visions (ELDVs):

"It is estimated that nearly 50-70% of dying people experience ELDVs (Dam, 2016; Mazzarino-Willett, 2010). While ELDVs often occur when death is imminent within days or hours before death, it is often non-specific and may also occur about weeks or months before death (Depner et al., 2020; Kerr et al., 2014; Levy et al., 2020; Nyblom et al., 2022; Santos et al., 2017)."

The paper "The Importance of the Exceptional in Tackling Riddles of Consciousness and Unusual Episodes of Lucidity" by Michael Nahm reports the cases below:

"Some time ago, we cited a report about a woman who was completely paralyzed after having suffered serious strokes, but who sat up in her bed, and, apparently perceiving a near-death vision, stretched out her arms, smiled, called the name of her deceased husband, laid back, and died (Nahm et al., 2012). Just lately, I was informed about a very similar case: Here, a man had supposedly become entirely paralyzed due to strokes. Even his facial expression was immobile. Yet, after he had stayed in this vegetative state for one month, he suddenly sat up in his bed, looked at his wife and two sons for a few seconds in turn with an alert expression, smiled, laid back, and died. In another recently published case, a non-responsive patient whose brain stem had been destroyed by cancer suddenly opened her eyes so widely that the white was showing completely around her irises, tracked something moving in the room, looked at her two sisters who stayed at her bed, and died (SCRI, 2022)."

On page 87 of the memoir Memorials of a Southern Planter, we have this account:

"James died on the 9th and Thomas on the 15tb of July...James died first, and Sophia, dreading the effect on Thomas, allowed no one to tell him that his playfellow was gone. In dying Thomas called out, 'Oh, I see Jimmy! Oh, gold all around! So beautiful!' "

 On page 145 of the book Contact with the Other World by James H. Hyslop, we have this account of a deathbed vision:

"It seems their child was dying and a very short time before death told his mother that the teacher (public school teacher) was in the room. The child’s mind, so far as they could tell, was clear. The strange part is that a very short time before, perhaps an hour or so, the teacher had suddenly died. Her death was unlooked for and the child knew nothing of it, and so far as I can learn none of those with the child knew of teacher’s death."

On page 33 of a volume of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, we have an account of a woman who saw a vaporous form seem to emerge from her father-in-law's body when he died (following the link may require a Google login):

"He smiled , but said nothing, gave a sort of a sigh and puffed his breath out through his lips . The breath seemed to form a cloud , as breath does often in cold weather , and floated upward and away from him . She followed the cloud , which was of no definite shape , for a few seconds with her eyes , and then turned to look down again at Mr . Baldwin and noted a sort of settled look that had come over his face and body . She had seen few people pass out , but felt that he had done so , and she called to Mr. Baldwin, Jr ., her husband , to come in , for she thought their father had died , which proved to be the case."

In the year 2000 book One Last Hug Before I Go by Carla Wills-Brandon, we read on pages 12-13 the following account:

"The paramedics had arrived, but Dad and I knew they were too late. I sat there with my mother as she died and watched this gray wisp of vapor leave her body. As it disappeared, I knew Mother was gone."

Similarly on page 215 we hear an account by a nurse who claims to have seen "a white cloud sort of hanging over the woman's bed," a woman who was dying of a terminal illness. 

On page 142 of the book we read an account of a woman who in 1995 got a call from her aunt, who described a dream. In the dream the aunt's sister (who died three months earlier) and another deceased sister asked the aunt to join them. The aunt said she did not want to. Three days after reporting this dream, the aunt died.  On the next page we read a similar account, involving a man who died seven days after having a dream in which his deceased mother and sister ask him to come with them. 

Similarly, on page 163 of the book, we read of an aunt who had a dream of a family gathering that included a son who had died in Vietnam. In the dream somebody asked the son why he was there, and the son said that he was there to take somebody back with him. Very soon later,  the aunt's brother died. 

Similarly on page 108 of Sir William Barrett's Deathbed Visions we read this account:

"He says that at about 3.30 p.m. he and his wife were standing one on each side of the bed and bending over their dying son, when just as his breathing ceased they both saw 'something rise as it were from his face like a delicate veil or mist, and slowly pass away.' He adds, 'We were deeply impressed and remarked, ‘How wonderful! Surely that must be the departure of his spirit.' "

One researcher photographed his dying wife, and got some mysterious blobs in his photos that he thought might have been caused by the departure of his wife's soul. You can see some of the photos here. 

Below we have accounts from a 2007 newspaper account on deathbed visions, one describing some very interesting paranormal phenomena:

The full account can be read here. 

The news account here describes a deathbed vision experienced by the famous television and movie star Jack Benny. A moving story of a dying boy's deathbed vision is told here. 

The 2024 paper "Nurses' encounters with patients having end-of-life dreams and visions in an acute care setting – A cross-sectional survey study" reports this: "Fifty-seven nurses participated from a workforce of 169 (34% response rate), of whom 35 (61%) reported they had encountered end-of-life dreams and visions." We read this: 

"A meta-analysis of studies of estimates of patient reports indicated that 77% (95% confidence intervals [CI] 69%–84%) of people dying an ‘expected death’ may report an ELDV (Hession et al., 2022). Across the world, studies provide consistent findings about ELDV." 

The survey gives us these interesting results for the 55 of 57 participants who answered "Yes" to one or more of the survey questions (I will round down the percentages). The percentages seem to refer to anything that the respondents either witnessed themselves or things the respondents observed other people reporting. 

• "Visions of dead relatives or religious figures ‘collecting’ or ‘taking away’ the dying person": 45%. 
• "Visions of dead relatives sitting on or near the patient's bed providing emotional warmth and comfort":  56%.
• "Patients reporting a sense of going back and forth from a different reality during the dying process": 32%
• "Coincidences, usually reported by friends and family of the person who is dying who say that the dying person has visited them at the time of death":  40%.
• "Dying dreams or visions through which the patient seems to be comforted and prepared for death": 38%
• "A comatose patient suddenly becomes alert enough to coherently say goodbye to loved ones at the bedside":  46%.