ESP Evidence Breaches the Censorship of the Cornell Physics Paper Server

Professors and their servile press flunkeys do amazingly good jobs at isolating themselves in intellectual silos, using filter bubble techniques that keep them from being exposed to information that they do not want to learn about.  The ideological enclaves of such scientists are enforced through a wide variety of censorship  techniques and information restriction techniques. First, there is the "peer review" process under which anonymous scientist reviewers recommend non-publication for almost any paper finding some result that conflicts with the belief system of the modern scientist. Then there is the fact that scientific textbooks and college science lectures conveniently avoid mentioning (except in some brief deprecatory way) very many important observations that conflict with the dogmas that professors are trying to propagate.  Then there is the fact that science information web sites such as www.sciencedaily.com and livescience.com tend to only report news stories that are consistent with the worldviews of the modern scientist.  Then there are various subtle devaluation techniques by which hard-to-explain observations from residents of exotic locales such as India or China may be systematically devalued or excluded, or observations of hard-to-explain anomalies from before 1950 are systematically devalued or excluded. Then there is the "purse string" control by which professors channel research dollars away from subjects they don't want investigated, and towards subjects they are enthusiastic about, which are often very speculative.  Then there is the "keep our shelves modern" technique, by which "old-fashioned" books are gradually removed from the science book shelves of colleges, depriving readers of a host of inconvenient hard-to-explain observations from before 1950. 

An example of such an ideological enclave is the https://arxiv.org/ Cornell physics paper server. Mainly a storage place for preprints of physics papers, the server also stores a wide variety of other types of papers.  The server describes itself as "an open-access archive for 1,819,574 scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics." 

We can see the very high ideological bias of the arXiv.org server in the fact that at the beginning of this year the server stored countless tens of thousands of utterly speculative papers about never-observed things such as dark matter, exponential primordial cosmic inflation, dark energy and the theoretical constructs of string theory, but the server seemed to contain no papers discussing evidence for the very well-observed phenomenon of ESP (extrasensory perception), despite almost 200 years of abundant scientific observational evidence for such a phenomenon.  For example, a search on the arxiv.org server for papers with "dark matter" in their title produces 13,598 papers, but a a search on the arxiv.org server for papers with "ESP" or "telepathy" in their title produces only a few dozen matches, none of which are papers dealing with extrasensory perception or telepathy.  There is no direct observational evidence for dark matter, but almost two hundred years of dramatic observational evidence for ESP. 

Finally the other day a paper managed to breach this absurd censorship.  The paper by Dean Radin and biologist Stuart Kauffman is entitled "Is Brain-Mind Quantum? A theory and supporting evidence." I will skip over a discussion of the theoretical aspects of the paper, and focus on its citation of evidence for paranormal phenomena and psi, a broad term referring to things such as ESP, clairvoyance, mind-over-matter (sometimes called telekinesis or psychokinesis) and precognition (an anomalous ability to fortell the future).  On page 5 the paper tells us that such paranormal experiences are "even reported by a high proportion (over 90%) of randomly sampled contemporary scientists and engineers." On page 6 the authors commit the error of stating, "Psi effects have been systematically studied using the tools and techniques of science starting in the late 1800s."  To the contrary, psi effects have been systematically studied using the tools and techniques of science starting around 1825, the beginning of the committee of the Royal Academy of Medicine which found (after six years of diligent scientific study) in favor of clairvoyance (a psi effect) in 1831. 

On page 6 the paper notes that a review published in the American Psychologist (the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association) stated the following:

"The evidence provides cumulative support for the reality of psi, which cannot be readily explained away by the quality of the studies, fraud, selective reporting, experimental or analytical incompetence, or other frequent criticisms. The evidence for psi is comparable to that for established phenomena in psychology and other disciplines."

At the beginning of page 7 the authors start some reasoning that isn't very strong, something along the lines of psi effects can occur because "the world is quantum."  Theories of physics (such as quantum mechanics) have little relevance to the possibility of psi. The real issue is whether or not human minds are merely the results of brains, or whether the human mind is some spiritual reality or soul reality. Once we realize there is no proof for the claim that the mind is merely a product of brains, and examine all the reasons for thinking mind and memory are not brain effects, all kinds of psi effects seem perfectly possible.  If you have a soul or a spirit, then the limits of such a thing are unknown (just as we cannot say for sure anything about the limits of an extraterrestrial spaceship if it were to arrive). 

On page 7 the authors begin discussing evidence for telepathy (also called ESP).  The authors discuss only evidence for ESP gathered in recent decades, such as evidence from what is called the ganzfeld technique, a technique for testing ESP in subjects in a rather drowsy state of sensory deprivation. The evidence produced using this technique (which originated a few decades ago) is very good, but much better evidence was gathered in earlier decades by researchers such as Joseph Rhine of Duke University, and many doctors reporting dramatic clairvoyance in hypnotized subjects.   The authors give this summary of the telepathy evidence from the ganzfeld experiments, in which the success rate expected by chance is 25%:

"From 1974 to 2018, the combined ganzfeld database contained 117 studies. Of those, studies using targets sets with 4 possible targets included 3,885 test sessions, resulting in 1,188 hits, corresponding to a 30.6% hit rate. With chance at 25%, this excess hit rate is 8.1 sigma above chance expectation (p = 5.6 × 10^-16). Analysis of these studies showed that similar effect sizes were reported by independent labs, that the results were not affected by variations in experimental quality, and that selective reporting biases could not explain away the results. The Bayes Factors (BF) associated with the last 108 more recently published ganzfeld telepathy studies was 18.8 million in favor of H1 (i.e., evidence favoring telepathy). Given that BF > 100 is considered 'decisive' evidence, this outcome far exceeds the 'exceptional evidence' said to be required of exceptional claims.[48,49] By comparison, in particle physics experiments effects resulting in 5 or more sigma are considered experimental 'discoveries.' ”

The probability of 1 in 5.6 × 10^-16  cited is a likelihood of less than 1 in a quadrillion. So the ganzfeld experiments got results with a chance likelihood of less than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.  Given a 30% hit rate (5% above what was expected by chance), this very low probability should surprise no one familiar with what is called the law of large numbers.  This is the law that the more trials, the more unlikely it is that a result will differ from the result expected by chance. So given a deck of cards with four suits (clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds), you might guess by chance the suit of a randomly selected card at a rate much higher than 25% if you make only a few guesses. But the more guesses you make, the closer your  hit rate will be to the rate expected by chance. For example, with 1000 guesses you success rate by chance would be something close to 25%, and it would be incredibly unlikely that by chance you would get as high as 30%. 

I already knew about the results of the ganzfeld experiments being in excess of 30%. But I then learned something very interesting I did not know, that a certain subgroup of subjects scored at a rate of 40% (in these experiments with an expected chance result of 25%).  We read the following, mentioning a probability (p) of less than 1 in a  10 billion:

"The modest 5% advantage over chance expectation in the ganzfeld telepathy studies suggests that rudimentary forms of telepathy are widely distributed among the general population. We know this because the majority of participants in these studies were unselected, often just college students participating in an experiment to gain credit for their psychology courses. By contrast, in a subset of these studies where participants were selected based on their prior reports of telepathic experiences, maintaining an active meditative practice, engaged in creative pursuits, and/or having strong belief in psi, the hit rate was a more robust 40.1%, some 6.2 sigma above chance expectation (p = 2.8 x 10^-10)."

On page 9 we learn of some psychologists who disavowed belief in ESP, but who still got an incredibly unlikely success rate of 32% in ganzfeld experiments with an expected success rate of 25%. The authors then have a discussion of some not-very-convincing evidence under headings of "electrocortical evidence" and "autonomic nervous system evidence."  It would have been much better if such a discussion had been replaced with a discussion of ESP evidence gathered before 1950. 

On page 10 the authors discuss evidence for precognition, a seemingly paranormal perception of future facts that should have been unknown to a perceiver.  We read the following, which mentions a probability (p) of less than 1 in a trillion trillion:

"In the first case, a meta-analysis of forced-choice precognition experiments conducted between 1935 and 1987 (the date of the published meta-analysis) found 309 studies reported in 113 publications reported by 62 different principal investigators.

Over 50,000 participants contributed nearly two million trials in these studies. The experimental design asked participants to guess which of a limited set of possible targets would be randomly selected in the future. The results of each experiment were evaluated as the proportion of observed hits over many repeated trials, as compared to chance expectation. The result was a small positive effect size, but given the large sample size the effect was 11 sigma above chance (p = 6.3 x 10^-25). The effect size remained about the same over a half-century of replications while experimental quality systematically improved, and selective reporting biases were deemed incapable of reducing the overall results to null."

On page 11 the authors discuss evidence for what they call presentiment, an effect in which a body or mind will seemingly react to some stimulus  before it is received.  They discuss tests of such an effect:

"In a presentiment experiment, the participant’s skin conductance, heart rate, pupil dilation, EEG, or some other physiological measure is recorded before, during, and after exposure to a series of randomly selected stimuli. The stimuli might be photographs with different degrees of emotionality and valence, or the presence or absence of light flashes, audio tones, or electrical shocks. The hypothesis is that a few seconds prior to exposure, the physiological measure would respond differentially to the upcoming calm versus emotional or startling future event."

We then learn of some highly successful results:

"The first published meta-analysis of these studies retrieved 26 relevant publications from 1978 to 2010. The results showed a significant effect ranging from 5.3 sigma (p < 5 x 10^-8 ) to 6.9 sigma (p < 2 x 10^-12), depending on whether a random effects or fixed effects model was employed. Higher quality experiments resulted in larger effect sizes and greater levels of significance than lower quality studies, and selective reporting was deemed insufficient to explain the results."

We then read about experiments in mind-over-matter, sometimes called psychokinesis or telekinesis.  The most common such experiment tested attempts to mentally influence the results of dice throwing. We read of a probability (p) of less than 1 in a billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion:

"Systematic scientific tests of psychokinetic effects on dice began in 1935. A meta-analysis published in 1989 found 73 relevant publications, representing the efforts of 52 investigators from 1935 to 1987. Over that half-century, some 2,500 people attempted to mentally influence 2.6 million dice-throws in 148 experiments, and 150,000 dice-throws in 31 control studies where mental influence was not applied. The number of dice tossed in a single throw ranged from 1 to 96. The overall effect size was small, but the overall results were 19 sigma over chance expectation (p ≈ 10^-80)."

On page 13 the authors describe mind-over-matter experiments with random number generators. Such experiments often involve random number generators that worked through radioactive decay, a process that is inherently random and unpredictable.  We read this, describing results with a probability (p) of less than 1 in a trillion:

"The first meta-analysis of these studies, published in 1989, retrieved 152 publications, describing 597 experimental and 235 control studies reported by 68 different principal investigators.[83] Any experiment using an RNG as the target of mind-matter interaction was included in that analysis. The results showed a 6.8 sigma effect (p = 5.23 x 10^-12) in the experimental data, null results in the controls, no significant effects due to selective reporting, and null correlations with assessed experimental quality."

The authors have managed to get this compelling evidence for paranomal phenomena past the usual ideological censorship of the Cornell physics paper server by using a paper title that does not mention the paranormal, but uses the word "quantum" and uses the phrase "brain-mind." The evidence presented actually defies any such idea as a "brain-mind," and supports the idea that the human mind is something very different from the brain, and not the product of the brain. No one has any remotely credible account of how a brain could produce phenomena such as ESP or mind-over-matter.  But if a mind is an aspect of a soul or spirit, then we have no idea of what the limitations of such a thing may be, and we should not be surprised by phenomena such as ESP and mind-over-matter.  The slight mention of quantum mechanics in the paper is just a little superfluous semantic sprinkling.  Psi phenomena such as ESP and mind-over-matter do not tell us much of anything about quantum mechanics. But such paranormal phenomena do suggest something very important about the relation between the brain and the mind: that the prevailing dogma about such a relation (that the mind is merely the product of the brain) is dead wrong. Just after describing an astonishingly exact account of telepathy, Arthur W. Osborn states this in his very interesting book on precognition entitled The Future Is Now: 

"Many volumes have been filled with accounts of spontaneous telepathy and clairvoyance. As I have pointed out elsewhere, these facts destroy all mechanistic attempts to explain consciousness as being merely a product of neural functioning. If it is assumed that all our knowledge is derived only by means of the senses, then how can we know of events entirely beyond the reach of the senses?... Both spontaneous and experimental cases of paranormal cognition demonstrate that certain people do become aware of thoughts in other minds and of events at a distance under conditions of rigorous control which exclude the possibility of fraud and where it is impossible for any physical means of communication to operate....Clairvoyance and telepathy do indeed pose crucial problems for the classical theories of mind; and for those theories which postulate that consciousness is exclusively dependent on the physical organism they administer a coup de grace."

The same book by Osborn has many interesting accounts of paranormal phenomena. For example, we learn of the case of a Mr. Dencausse, who about eight days before his death declared that he knew that he would die on All Saint's Day.  Four days before his natural death, he was examined by a doctor, who found him to be "giving no indication of impending death."  On October 29, 1916 he announced "I shall die on All Saints’ Day, on the stroke of midnight, without suffering." We are told, "This prediction was exactly fulfilled, at midnight, Tuesday, October 31,1916, All Saints’ Day." 

Postscript:  The latest meta-analysis on Ganzfeld ESP experiments is here.  The analysis does an extremely poor job of clearly communicating the results, relying on an "effect size" estimate that the average person won't be able to understand.  To get the actual numbers involved, you must go to this page, scroll down to a yellow row, and then click on a link to download a spreadsheet.  To get the average hit rate, and the total number of trials and hits, you must use the AVERAGE function of the spreadsheet and the SUM function, as I did below in row 115. 

The bottom line that we see on row 115 is that over 46 years of tests, there were 4841 trials, producing 1520 successes, a hit rate of 31.5%, far over the expected-by-chance hit rate of 25%. 

Another Groundless Boast of Progress in Understanding the Origin of Flying Organisms

Scientists have three main problems in trying to understand the origin of flying organisms:

(1) Understanding the origin of flying insects, the oldest known form of flying organisms.

(2) Understanding the origin of flying reptiles such as pterosaurs. 

(3) Understanding the origin of birds. 

In a previous post I discussed a recent case in which some scientists were making a groundless boast of having made some progress on the first of these problems. The reported progress was merely a very silly speculation that shrimp-like crustaceans had a lobe on their legs, that this lobe had moved on to their back and up their back, and that this feature had somehow transformed into the wings on a flying insect (at the same time that crustaceans with two body segments were transforming into insects with three body segments and other major body differences). I compared this story to the tale that Cinderella's white mice and pumpkin transformed into a coach pulled by white horses.  Unsupported by any fossil evidence, this "leg lobes drastically migrating and turning into wings" story is as silly as the claim that animals got arms after their toes moved up the side of their legs and turned into arms. 

Recently on our science news sites we had another groundless boast of progress in understanding the origin of flying animals. We read one headline saying "Scientists clarify origins of pterosaurs, the dinosaur era's flying reptiles."  The story claims, "Scientists may have solved one of paleontology’s enduring mysteries - the evolutionary origins of the flying reptiles called pterosaurs that ruled the skies at the same time that dinosaurs dominated the land."  We read this: "Researchers said on Wednesday a poorly understood Triassic Period reptile group called lagerpetids, known from a few partial skeletons from the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Madagascar, appears to have been the evolutionary precursor to pterosaurs."

A paleontologist named Martin Ezcurra is quoted as saying, "We show that lagerpetids are the closest-known relatives to pterosaurs and bridge the anatomical gap between pterosaurs and other reptiles." The story conveniently has no picture showing what these lagerpedtids looked like. Another news story has a similar credulous headline, telling us "Pterosaurs evolved from small, wingless reptiles called lagerpetids, fossils suggest." But this story does have a visualization of what these lagerpetids look like. We see nothing in these lagerpetids that look anything like wings, and we can see that these lagerpetids looked nothing like flying dinsoaurs. So the claim that these lagerpetids "bridge the anatomical gap between pterosaurs and other reptiles" is just plain false. 

The story quotes Ezcurra as giving some not-at-all persuasive reasoning to try to back up his claim that lagerpetids "bridge the anatomical gap between pterosaurs and other reptiles." Ezcurra is quoted as saying this:

" 'If we considered the original position of lagerpetids as closer to dinosaurs, we needed very quick evolutionary rates to get the dinosaur body plan,' Dr Ezcurra said. 'But when we see lagerpetids as the closest relatives of pterosaurs, these evolutionary rates are lower and actually not different to other main groups of reptiles. So that shows that lagerpetids fill, not completely, but in a large degree, this anatomical gap between pterosaurs and other [earlier] reptiles.' "

This is sophistry. Lagerpetids had no structures resembling wings or even a predecessor of wings. So the claim that these lagerpetids "bridge the anatomical gap between pterosaurs and other reptiles" is just plain false.  In a Scientific American article on the topic, another paleontologist makes this very untrue claim: "Lagerpetids are essentially flightless pterosaurs."

The visual below shows how utterly false this statement is. The pterosaur is many times larger than the lagerpetid.

Credit for the left image: link.

Note the many differences above.  The heads have a very different shape. The arms on the left animal are short, and the arm-like bones on the second animal are very long. The legs on the first animal are long, and the legs on the second animal are short. One animal has huge wings, and the other has no wings, and nothing even a little like wings. The animal on the left has a very long tail making up a major fraction of its total weight, while the animal on the right has no tail at all. The second animal is six times bigger than the second. So it is a very obvious falsehood to claim,  "Lagerpetids are essentially flightless pterosaurs." That's like saying mice are essentially elephants without trunks. 

Scientists have no credible tale to tell of the origin of flying dinsosaurs, flying insects or flying birds. Flying dinosaurs appear in the fossil record fully-formed, and no trace of an intermediate fossil has ever been found. The same thing is true about flying insects. 

Before anyone pontificates about  biological origins, he should study and ponder at great length very many things:

• He should make a very thorough study of the organization, order, dynamic behavior, and complexity of living organisms, their cells, and their proteins, to help weigh whether such things can be reasonably explained through any known theory of natural origins. 
• He should make a very thorough study of development, morphogenesis, and the origin of individual human bodies, to see whether there is any known natural explanation for such things (it being senseless to claim you understand the origin of a whole species when you do not even understand the origin of a single organism of that species).
• He should make a very thorough study of cells, their complexity  and their reproduction (it being senseless to claim you understand the origin of a species when you do not even understand how a single cell is able to reproduce). 
• He should make a very thorough study of claims about the source of common human mental phenomena, such as memory, self-hood, imagination, thinking and creativity, to judge whether the origin of such things can credibly be explained by some mere hypothesis of an increase in brain sizes.
• He should make a very thorough study of exactly what is in DNA, to judge which side is correct, the many that keep describing DNA as a blueprint for making an organism, or the many other biology authorities who say that DNA is no such thing, being merely a repository of low-level chemical information (this question being of crucial importance to whether any credible theory of natural biological origins exists).
• He should make a very thorough study of the apparent fine-tuning of the universe's laws and fundamental constants, to see whether they show evidence of design that might be relevant to the question of biological origins. 
• He should make a very thorough study of the question of the origin of life, to see whether such a thing may show evidence of design that may be relevant to the question of the biological origins of particular organisms. 
• He should make a thorough study of evidence for paranormal phenomena, to judge whether or not there is evidence of some psychic abilities in humans that cannot be explained though any mere evolutionary account of an increase in brain size. 
• He should study fossils suggesting which organisms existed in  previous times. 
• He should study evidence regarding the genomes of various organisms, living and extinct. 
• He should study engineering, either mechanical engineering or software engineering, to help judge whether or not incredibly organized functional systems ever arise though any process in which there are innumerable tiny changes that each produce an improvement, or whether such hard-to-achieve systems almost always require a coordinated and purposeful effort in which multiple coordinated changes are introduced at the same time to help achieve the same functional end. 
• He should study great mysteries such as the origin of language, the origin of writing, and the origin of culture, to help judge whether such things can be easily explained by simple ideas such as a mere increase in brain size. 
• He should study the origin of the universe and the origin of large-scale order in the universe, to judge whether there is any sign of some creative force that might have had a role in biological origins.
• He should make a thorough study of the behavior of mammals, and the most remarkable achievements and performances of humans, to judge whether there is any truth in the very strange claim made by Darwin that "there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties." 
• He should study probability mathematics, to help understand whether it is credible to think that millions of different types of  protein molecules in the animal kingdom (most having hundreds of parts arranged in just the right way to achieve a functional end) might have arisen though some set of random mutations, each one changing only one such part, or whether the chance origination of each such protein innovation would have involved a likelihood like the likelihood of someone throwing a deck of cards into the air, and them all accidentally forming into a house of cards. 
• He should study the sensitivity of protein molecules, to learn about how they so often become non-functional when only a very small change is made in them, a consideration relevant to the likelihood of their natural origin by chance.
• He should study sociology and psychology, to judge whether popular triumphalist claims about understanding biological origins may be examples of cultural bandwagons and groupthink rather than very solid hardcore science based on direct observation. 

But paleontologists do not study or ponder most of these things at any considerable length. They mainly just study fossils. So paleontologists are rather like someone trying to understand Yellowstone National Park by only studying rocks from such a park.  A paleontologist thinking that old bones tell us how organisms arose is rather like some Marxist claiming that class struggle explains almost all historical events.

Over the years many paleontologists or their satellite press workers have been guilty of dubious procedural techniques. One technique involves recruiting  artists to draw paintings of organisms with an unknown appearance, and failing to label such speculative visualizations as mere conjectures. Another common technique is to collect together bone fragments found at various places at a site, and arrange them to look as if they were parts of a single skeleton or a single skull, even though it may not even be known whether the fragments were all part of a single organism's skeleton or skull.  For example, according to the New Scientist magazine one of the bones of the famous arrangement of bone fragments called "Lucy" was found to be a baboon bone unrelated to the other fragments.  Then there is the technique of often displaying in museums structures that countless visitors think are fossils, but which are merely fiberglass or plaster artworks inspired by some data obtained from studying fossils.  One large natural history museum confesses that only 85% of the specimens in one of its exhibit halls are actual fossils. 

Over the years some paleontologists have made very many misleading statements, and such misstatements keep appearing again and again.  A very misleading statement often made by paleontologists is when they use the term "early humans" when describing organisms that lived more than 100,000 years ago. A paleontologist may refer to some organism corresponding to a fossil that was dated to 500,000 years ago or 1,000,000 years ago, and call such an organism "an early human."  The defining characteristic of a human is the use of symbols and the use of language.  The oldest evidence for the use of symbols or language is not older than about 65,000 years old. Lacking any evidence of the use of symbols, culture, language or technology prior to 100,000 years ago, we have no evidence that any real humans existed before 100,000 years ago.  If there lived  organisms with bodies rather resembling humans at some time way before 100,000 years ago, we have no basis for calling such organisms "early humans." 

Postscript:  Darwinists have no credible explanation for the origin of winged pterodactyls in the fossil record.  A common attempt to explain a gradualist origin of birds is to imagine the evolution of birds from so-called flying squirrels, animals that can jump from one tree to another. But flying pterodactyls appear in the fossil record about 200 million years ago, which is 170 million years before the earliest appearance of squirrels in the fossil record.  Also, birds appear in the fossil record 30 million years before the first squirrels. 

A 2025 press release is entitled "Fossil brain scans show pterosaurs evolved flight in a flash." We read that "giant reptiles living as far back as 220 million years ago may have developed the ability to fly at the very start of their evolutionary history." We read this:

"Fabbri notes that pterosaurs also had enlarged optic lobes. Outside of this trait, however, he explains that their brain shape and size differed considerably from those of the lagerpetid.

'The few similarities suggest that flying pterosaurs, which appeared very soon after the lagerpetid, likely acquired flight in a burst at their origin,' Fabbri says. 'Essentially, pterosaur brains quickly transformed acquiring all they needed to take flight from the beginning.' "

Such statements undermine the credibility that pterosaurs could have evolved from lagerpetids through any type of gradual Darwinian process. Scientists lack any credible account of the origin of pterosaurs, which appear so suddenly in the fossil record, with such dramatic anatomical innovations (such as huge wings). 

Mind Treks of the Hypnotized Nearly Blind Clairvoyant

Among numerous other types of astonishing hypnotic anomalies  discussed at length in my recent post here, nineteenth century literature contains many accounts of dramatic clairvoyance in hypnotized subjects.  I have discussed such accounts here and here and here.  Some cases from the twentieth century are  discussed here.  One of the more interesting nineteenth century accounts of clairvoyance under hypnosis is found in the document here by William L. Stone, consisting of a very long letter he wrote to a Dr. Brigham with a date of September 10, 1837.  Stone was the author of quite a few books that included works of history, biography and a skeptical critique of religious fanaticism. 

Stone discusses how he did some reading about hypnotism (which was then described by various names such as Mesmerism, animal magnetism or somnambulism).  He describes arriving in the city of Providence on August 26, 1837 to see a woman named Loraina Brackett, who four years previously had an iron weight accidentally fall on her head, resulting in a gradual loss of vision culminating in blindness. Brackett's medical history was related to Stone by a Dr. Capron who introduced Stone to Brackett.  In his letter Stone calls Loraina Brackett "blind," but in another book the same Dr. Capron relates the exact medical history of Loraina Brackett, noting that as of August 31, 1837 "her vision is partially restored." In that other book a Henry Hopkins who housed Loraina for five weeks with his family states she was able to discern the outlines of objects. There is no clear discrepancy here, as people with only partial vision are often called "blind" or "legally blind."

On page 13 Stone states this: "In regard to Miss Brackett, I was assured, upon authority not to be questioned, that the power of seeing objects not present, or rather of transporting herself in imagination from one place to another, no matter how distant, and of viewing objects and scenes which she had never seen or heard described, and giving correct accounts of them herself, had been strikingly displayed in many instances."

On August 28 Stone met Loraina Brackett, at a house with multiple witnesses Stone names.  Dr. Capron began to hypnotize Loraina.  Stone says, "In five minutes the patient gave signs of drowsiness, and in four minutes more she was in a deep and profound slumber — insensible, as we ascertained by experiment, alike to the touch and the voices of all present, excepting her physician."  On page 17 Stone describes the first test of clairvoyance.  Wearing sunglasses that held wads of cotton to block vision,  the nearly blind Loraina was taken to a room in which there were pictures brought by Stone from the house of one of his friends.  Stone states this:

"She took up a portrait, while standing on the side of the room opposite to my friend and myself, and putting it to the side of her head, almost behind, as she remained alone, inquired — ' Is not this a likeness of John Foster? — John — Yes, it is John Foster.'  I immediately passed around the table to her, and held a brief conversation with her respecting the character and writings of Foster — of whom there had not been a word said, before she selected his picture and pronounced his name. Her reading of the names on the prints was very slow, as she read by lettering, as the freemasons call it ; that is, by studying each letter, and first repeating it in a whisper, as though to herself. But she made no mistakes that were discovered....Sometimes she would exhibit the simplicity of childhood, as in the case of an allegorical print suspended by the wall. The Inscription was — 'America guided by Wisdom.' My friend asked her to read it. She replied, that she would read half of it if he would read the other half. She then, after a moment of study, read 'America guided' — and would read no more; insisting, playfully, that the gentleman referred to must read the other two words."

The print "America Guided by Wisdom"

Dr. Capron then introduced the hypnotized Loraina to Stone, causing her attention to be focused on Stone:

"Having satisfied ourselves of the wonderful powers of 'vision without the use of visual organs,' as exhibited upon these objects, and of which I have given but a brief outline, Dr. Capron, by an exercise of the will, withdrew her attention from the whole circle to himself, and then gave her a particular introduction to me. Leading her to a seat, I sat down by her side, and the Doctor transferred her hand into mine, and clothed me with the power of enjoying her exclusive company."

There then follows quite a few pages describing a mental journey in which Loraina and Stone kind of mind-traverse Manhattan.  Such a kind of clairvoyant journey has been reported very many times in the literature describing a clairvoyance of hypnotized subjects. In such a "mind trek," a person who is not hypnotized and who is said to be "in rapport" with a hypnotized person (often holding that person's hand) will kind of mentally traverse some path the non-hypnotized person is very familiar with, and observe whether the hypnotized person seems to point out details that should have been unknown to that person, as if the hypotized person could see with clairvoyant perception various details along the path. 

After Loraina seemed to perceive well various features along the path to Stone's house in Manhattan, Stone guided this mental journey to his own house on Church Street, which Loraina had never physically visited.  Mentally guiding Loraina into the house, Stone asked her to look at various pictures on his walls.  Later Dr. Capron asked her about the pictures in Stone's house. We read the following:

"The Doctor continued — 'Mr. Stone told me there was a painting over the side-board — what kind of a picture was that ?'

'It was a lake, with mountains around it. I thought it very beautiful.'

Such is the fact. The picture is a charming mountain landscape, the scene being a beautiful lake among the Catskill mountains, by Hoxie. 

' Well, what other pictures did you see ? What is that picture which Mr. Stone told me was hanging over the settee?'

'Oh, it was a curious picture. It represents three Indians sitting in a hollow tree, which looks as though it had been dug out on purpose. And the tree is filled with marks.'  [Hieroglyphics.] 

This was the most wonderful reply we had had yet. The picture is a composition landscape, by Hoxie, containing the portrait of the decaying trunk of an enormous sycamore tree, standing in the neighborhood of Montezuma, N. Y. The artist has introduced a group of three Indians, and has likewise traced a number of hieroglyphics within the open trunk. These hieroglyphics are seldom noticed by visitors, unless specially pointed out. And yet this blind lady, with bandaged eyes, who had never been in New York, nor heard a whisper of the existence of the picture, had discovered them ! The fact seems not only incredible, but absolutely impossible. But, as I believe, it is nevertheless true." 

The doctor then asked Loraina about other pictures she saw in Stone's house during this clairvoyant mind walk. She identified  very exactly two pictures: a picture of Jesus with a crown of thorns, and a picture of an Indian chief with a head almost entirely shaved. Later we read that Loraina correctly identified a picture in Stone's house of someone pulling a cat's ear. These were all pictures in a house that Loraina had never physically visited. 

On page 51 Stone recounts that Loraina was given a mailed package consisting of several sealed envelopes. She was put into hypnosis, and asked to read what was in the innermost envelope. She said she would take it to bed with her and read it before morning. The next morning she said the statement in the innermost envelope was, "NO OTHER THAN THE EYE OF OMNIPOTENCE CAN READ THIS IN THIS ENVELOPEMENT, 1837."  Stone states this:

"I examined the seal with the closest scrutiny. It was unbroken, and to open the letter or to read it without opening, with human eyes, was impossible."

The sentence in the sealed package of several envelopes was this: "No other than the eye of Omnipotence can read this sentence in this envelope. — Troy, New York, Aug. 1837."  

On page 52 Stone discusses a similar test, involving a sealed letter he left for Loraina, which was mailed back to him:

"I also left a note, hastily prepared, for the blind lady to read, the contents of which were known only to myself. It was carefully folded, so as to preclude the possibility of reading it, by the natural sight, without opening, and sealed with seven wafers and two seals of wax, with my own private signet. By the mail of the following Saturday I received the letter ; the seals were unbroken, and exactly in the condition I had left them, with the answer written on the outside, in the hand-writing of the friend who had assisted me in obtaining the interview, which answer is correct, as far as it goes."

The note stated this: "The following is the title, equally quaint and amusing, of a book which was published in England in the time of Oliver Cromwell : — 'Eggs of  Charity, layed by the Chickens of the Covenant, and  boiled by the waters of Divine love. Take ye and eat.' " The attempted reading received by mail from Loraina (relayed by someone else) was this:

"The following is a title, equally amazing (or amusing) and quaint, of a book published in England in the time of Oliver Cromwell : — 

'Eggs of Charity'— 

Miss B. does not know whether the word is  amazing or amusing. Something is written after  the 'eggs of charity,' which she cannot make out." 

On page 56 Stone tells us that he is only one of very many witnesses who can tell similar accounts:

"Were it my desire to enlarge upon this subject, or rather, were it not my design to confine the present communication strictly to a narrative of facts transpiring under my own eyes, I might easily fill a hundred pages more with incidents and illustrations of the most surprising character, which have occurred at Providence and in its vicinity within the last few months, in the course of the experiments that have been made — as well attested, too, as the battle of Bunker Hill or the Declaration of Independence. These facts might be gathered by hundreds, from the most authentic sources — arising, not from two or three cases of nervous, debilitated, and practised females, nor under the auspices of one, or even two, magnetisers, — but in the course of hundreds of experiments, upon as many subjects, of different ages and sexes, under the care of gentlemen of the first character — lay and professional."

On pages 72-73 Stone quotes a case cited by a Dr. Brownell, who said that under hypnosis a woman (different from Loraina) "could tell correctly the time by a watch, though enveloped in a cloth, and at the same time having a bandage over her eyes." The woman was asked to "go in spirit" to the house of a patient, who was believed to have a liver problem. The woman said the man's liver was fine, but that his spleen was enlarged. The man soon died, and an autopsy showed that he had suffered from just such an affliction: "all that ailed the man was an enlargement of the spleen." 

In another book by another author, we read the testimony of an Isaac Thurber who tried a test of the clairvoyance of Loraina Brackett:

"I wrote this sentence on a sheet of paper, 'Animal Magnetism may be rendered useful,' and carefully folded up the sheet so that the writing was covered with three thicknesses, sealing it with four seals. I then directed it to Dr. Capron, with a request that he would find out the contents of the letter and write the same on the back of it. No person but myseif knew what was in it. Dr Capron brought it the next day to my courting room, and it was opened in the presence 

of a rumber of witnesses. The writing on the back corre- 

sponded exactly with the writing inside, and the seals had not 

been broken."

In the same book, we read an account by a Rev. Frederick A. Farley who describes how he took a hynotized Loraina Brackett to a house of his brother-in-law in Boston, a house she had never seen:

"In this interview, Miss B. exhibited the faculty of clair- 

voyance, in my house, with perfect accuracy. I do not re- 

member a single error in regard to the things around her in 

several distinct rooms. And, as I before hinted, the external 

appearance of the house at Boston, its entry or hall, both 

drawing-rooms, the china closet, and many articles of furni- 

ture, both what they were, and where placed, she also de- 

scribed as well."

Elsewhere in the same book, we read the testimony of a J. R. Knox who tells us about this test with Loraina Brackett. who he refers to as "the somnambulist," a test in which fifteen out of seventeen words in a heavily sealed envelope were identified::

"I wrote a note of four lines, directed to Miss Brackett, to the contents of which she could have no possible clue. I enclosed it in two envelopes, so that the writing was covered by four folds of paper. I sealed it with four wafers and four wax seals, and impressed it with a peculiar device. No light, however strong, could render it possible to discover that there was anything written within. This was left with the somnambulist, and two days after Dr. Capron returned it to me with the contents of the note written on the outer envelope, with the exception of one word, which she could not decipher. This was, no doubt, owing to the illegible character of the handwriting, as, on opening it, I was convinced I could not have read it myself but from recollection. She likewise wrote ' sentiments' instead of 'selections' — another mistake certainly attributable to the same cause. The note contained seventeen words, which were known to no one but myself. It was returned as it was given, without the slighest appearance of having been handled or crumpled. The supposition of the removal or opening of the seals was out of the question. The idea that the discovery was a happy conjecture is absurd."

On a recent episode of the History Channel's series The UneXplained, hosted by William Shatner,  we saw children who could read even though their eyes were covered by fancy high-tech devices that acted like blindfolds.  We heard the director of the recent two-hour film Superhuman: The Invisible Made Visible discuss her filming of such children, along with high-tech tests verifying that no light was getting through such blindfold-like devices.  You can see the trailer for the film here. The show discussed this almost as if it was a novel anomaly, but such abilities were abundantly documented in nineteenth century literature describing hypnotized subjects, as you can read by following some of the links above. Similar clairvoyance has been widely reported among non-hypnotized Chinese children in the late twentieth century, as discussed here. 

In a remarkable book entitled Breakthrough to Creativity that you can read online here, Shafica Karagulla MD discusses similar experiments:

"I had been doing some experiments with people who could read blindfolded by simply touching a page of print or a picture with their fingertips...I asked them how they would explain such a phenomenon. Dr. James immediately insisted that such a 

thing was impossible, totally impossible. 'But,' I in- 

sisted, 'I’ve been working with people who can do it. 

I’ve tested them.' "

Dr. Karagulla then describes doing such an experiment with a blindfolded doctor, who correctly identified details of a photo he touched. 

If you go to www.youtube.com, and do a search for "reading while blindfolded," you can find many videos showing such an ability -- for example, the one here and here. On page 102 of the June 12, 1964 edition of Life Magazine, there was a long story entitled "Seeing Colors with the Fingers." You can read the story by using the link here, and scrolling down to page 102. The story discussed at great length the scientific investigation of clairvoyants such as Rosa Kuleshova. We read at great length quite a few scientific authorities attesting that Rosa could read while blindfolded, and we read at length about similar paranormal abilities in other people.

Science End-of-Year Recap Stories Suggest Shortfalls

The end of the year is a time for "top 10" and "top 5" stories in the science press. Unfortunately, while it has been a good year for applied science (with COVID-19 vaccines being developed), it has been a lackluster year for explanatory science. So our year-end "top 10" and "top 5" stories don't list anything very exciting in terms of explanatory science. 

An article at  www.pbs.org is entitled "Nova's Top 5 Science Stories of 2020." There is no discussion of any significant progress in explanatory science, other than the "applied science" research regarding COVID-19.  The top 5 include "scientists race to understand and contain the virus,"  a mention of a boring retrieval of dusty rock from an asteroid, "racial disparities in science and medicine persist," "climate change intensifies," and "scientists discover molecules on three of our celestial neighbors." The molecules mentioned are nothing interesting. 

The article here is entitled "Berkeley Lab's Top 10 Science Stories of 2020." There is no mention of any progress in explanatory science. The things mentioned are mainly just technological and applied science things.  The journal Science has an article entitled "Our favorite science news stories of 2020 (non–COVID-19 edition)." Once we dismiss the untrue claim the article makes that artificial intelligence is evolving all by itself (a claim about something technological rather than scientific), we find there is no mention of anything very important or even anything very interesting (with the exception of the mention of the discovery of a virus with no genes found in any other organisms). 

On the Live Science site (www.livescience.com) we have an end-of-year recap article with the phony title "Here's what we learned about aliens in 2020." The aliens referred to are extraterrestrials. Of course, we did not learn anything about aliens in the year 2020, so the title is misleading.  The story has section titles such as "There could be 36 alien civilizations in our galaxy" and "White dwarfs could be alien strongholds."  At the same site, there is a story entitled "The 10 biggest physics stories of 2020," which fails to mention any major progress in physics. 

At the Smithsonian web site, there is an end-of-year-recap article with the title "Ten New Things We Learned About Human Origins in 2020."  In huge boldface letters we see a section heading entitled "Fossils Show Ancient Primates Also Undertook Major Journeys." We are then told the extremely absurd claim that monkeys rafted across the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, no fossils told any such tale. It was merely a case that some New World monkey fossils millions of years old were found similar to equally old monkey fossils from Africa.  Rather than realize that this is an indication that their ideas of the common ancestry of all species are wrong or in need of repair, evolutionary biologists have asked us to believe in the proposterous fable that monkeys from Africa rafted across the Atlantic ocean to the Western hemisphere.  This migration tall tale reminds me of another motion fable: the story that Dorothy traveled to Oz when a tornado blew her house up into the air, causing it to land in the land of Oz. 

In the account we learn of a new element in this most absurd tale: the suggestion that a floating raft of vegetation was conveniently equipped with a fruit tree to sustain the continent-crossing monkeys:

"In April, Erik Seiffert from University of Southern California and colleagues announced a new tiny soup-can-sized fossil monkey species, Ucayalipithecus perdita, based on four fossil monkey teeth that they found deep in the Peruvian Amazon. This newly discovered species belongs to an extinct family of African primates known as parapithecids, which are now the third lineage of mammals that made the more than 900-mile transatlantic journey from Africa to South America, most likely on floating rafts of vegetation that broke off from coastlines during a storm. Sounds improbable, but monkeys can survive without access to fresh water if they get enough food—like fruit that could have been growing on a tree and part of the vegetation raft."

This is one of the silliest tales I have ever heard told.  No one has ever observed a land-originating vegetation raft with or without a tree moving in the middle of a sea or an ocean.  It seems that our "Ten New Things We Learned About Human Origins in 2020" article is in the same  class as our "Here's what we learned about aliens in 2020" story. It seems that the biologists who scorned a scriptural origins story involving a fruit tree (Eve and the apple) now are asking us to believe in another origins story involving a fruit tree, a tale as magical-sounding as the story they scorned. 

At the same Smithsonian web site, we have an article entitled "The Ten Most Significant Science Stories of 2020." None of the stories refers to any major progress in explanatory science. The only story with a headline sounding like progress in explanatory science is a story listed as "New AI Tool Cracks a Decades-Old Problem in Biology." This is just a credulous repetition of some unfounded PR hype released in a corporate press release.  The program referred to (which uses vast databases of information compiled from studying countless thousands of organisms) has not actually solved the protein folding problem (as I explain at length here), which is the problem of how protein folding is able to occur in organisms that do not have any such databases as the program relied on. 

Our scientists have made little progress in explanatory science during the year 2020, and our science journalists seem to be filling in the gap by telling us tall tales of accomplishments that were not actually achieved. 

Why is there so little progress in explanatory science these days? It's because so many of our scientists are on the equivalent of hamster wheels. Dedicated to proving dogmatic claims of materialism, many scientists spend year after year churning out poorly designed studies and speculative papers of little value. Meanwhile, our mainstream scientists ignore many areas of research that have produced very dramatic results previously (results that our mainstream scientists are careful not to study or discuss), and which could yield many more dramatic results if they were well investigated with modest funding.  Such taboo research areas are ignored because our university scientists are afraid of discovering things that conflict with their cherished dogmas about how reality works, how minds arise, and how humans originated.