A Partial Answer to His Question About UFOs

UFOs are a baffling phenoenon. You might ask many questions about UFOs that I could not answer. But I think I have a partial answer to one question about UFOs recently posed at the NBC News web site.site. The question (posed by Rizwan Virk) was "The U.S. military takes UFOs seriously. Why doesn't Silicon Valley or academia?"

I can't answer the part about Silicon Valley. Although I very long worked as a software developer in high-tech teams, I don't claim to know much about what people in Silicon Valley firms are thinking these days, and I am not sure why anyone would even expect such firms to pay attention to UFOs. But I do know a bit about the behavior of the science professors of academia.  So I can give a partial answer to Virk's question by saying this: those in scientific academia pay no attention to UFOs because their behavior conforms  to a strange set of customs and habits that include pretending to know very big things they don't really know, and deliberately ignoring evidence that conflicts with their pretensions of knowledge. 

The great majority of tenured science professors are white males (the source here tells us in the sciences 81% of full professors are male). Male science professors are above all Men of Custom, just as Catholic priests are Men of Custom. The habits of science professors include the following not-very-logical customs when writing science papers:

• The custom of almost always describing observations in the passive voice, saying something like, "The mice were weighed and had their length measured," rather than using the active voice and saying something like "John Davis weighed the mice and measured their length."
• The custom of almost never mentioning the specific person who made a measurement (which is very convenient for concealing  the use of possibly incompetent trainee scientists and students to make measurements).
• The custom of failing to mention the day when a particular measurement was made (making it harder for people to sort out the chronology involved in an experiment, such as whether it was preceded or followed by failing experiments that did not find the reported effect). 
• The custom of almost always failing to mention the exact location and piece of equipment that was used to make a particular measurement (useful for avoiding challenges to a measurement based on the use of inferior or faulty or outdated equipment).
• The custom of failing to publish in advance of  experiments a research plan discussing which hypothesis will be tested, exactly how measurements will be done, and exactly how measurements will be analyzed (making it easy for experimenters to play around with data and observations in a hundred different ways until something is reported as a discovered effect, often something that was not originally being tested for).
• The custom of writing scientific papers as if you were paid five dollars for each piece of jargon you use, and rather as if your likelihood of getting published was proportional to how opague and obscure your writing was. 
• The custom of often cluttering up scientific papers with mathematical equations that no one would ever write when trying to clearly communicate mathematical reasoning, but which someone might write if he were trying to be deliberately obscure, like some priest speaking in Latin. 
• The custom of failing to have (in a paper having a report of some positive result) a discussion of all similar experiments done by the same researchers that failed to produce such a result. So under the conventions of modern science, a scientist who does 14 weeks of experiments failing to show evidence for Effect X (and 1 week showing marginal evidence of such an effect) can publish a paper mentioning only the one successful week, without mentioning all the unsuccessful weeks. 

These Men of Custom that are male science professors also have the following strange habits:

• The strange pre-pandemic custom of jetting great distances to attend scientific conferences that have not been really needed since the invention of a high-speed Internet, while at the same time frequently scolding those who have too high a carbon footprint because of things such as jetting around unnecessarily.
• The strange pre-pandemic custom of teaching classes in pretty much the same way that classes were taught two thousand years ago, by having groups of people listen to lectures by a teacher standing in front of them, despite innumerable more modern possibilities by which students might learn more effectively. 
• The custom of almost always using the phrase "Materials and Methods" as a section title in their experimental scientific papers, even when no materials were used and even when the experimenters seem to have no method other than gather data and slice and dice it until something "statistically significant" could be reported. 
• The custom of describing scientist activity in some romanticized idealized way, as if it were some pristine and impartial Quest for Truth, without discussing all of the sociological and careerist and monetary reasons why it is very often something much less grand and noble (such as a Quest for Paper Citations or a Quest for Tenure or a Quest for Consulting Fees or a Quest for Grant Money or a Quest for Greater Paper Counts or a Quest for Speaker Fees or a Quest for Lucrative Book Contracts). 

When it comes to making statements about human beings, these Men of Custom that are male science professors have certain speech customs that they follow with great regularity, like monks praying at the same time every day.  Our Men of Custom generally claim that their tribe understands the origin of the human race.  Like rabbis telling us the story that Moses carried down from Mount Sinai tablets written by the finger of God, the Men of Custom who serve as science professors reverently recite the legend that Charles Darwin discovered how mankind originated, long before scientists even understood a hundredth of what they now know about the complexity and organization of cells and protein molecules and biochemistry.  The same Men of Custom have the tradition of  claiming that mental phenomena such as memory and thinking are mere products of the brain. 

There are very many facts and observations that conflict with such claims.  The Men of Custom that are male science professors have a custom to help them be bothered little by such a difficulty. The custom is: simply avoid paying attention to evidence that conflicts with anything that you have proclaimed to be true.  We might call this senseless custom the Rule of Inattention, and define it like this:  do not seriously study any evidence that might conflict with boasts of knowledge you have previously made. 

Following the Rule of Inattention, the Men of Custom who serve as science professors mostly avoid seriously studying a great number of important things, including the following:

• Many decades of compelling laboratory experimental evidence that humans have extrasensory perception (ESP) that cannot be explained by any neural hypothesis. 
• Abundant anecdotal testimonies that humans have such ESP. 
• Two hundred years of very carefully written published testimony that some humans have had the power of clairvoyance, much of it written by doctors and scientists who carefully observed such powers.
• Well over a hundred years of  published testimony (often written by scientists) that inexplicable paranormal events occur in the presence of mediums. 
• Abundant testimony of inexplicable apparitions, deathbed visions and near-death experiences.
• Abundant low-level neuroscience evidence that brains are too slow, too noisy and too unstable to be the source of regular human abilities such as instant recall, very fast thinking, and the retention of memories for 50 years or more. 
• Abundant evidence that humans can think well and remember well even after losing most or half of their brains due to surgery or disease.
• Very many fantastically organized biological systems that are too complex and functionally fine-tuned to be credibly explained by any Darwinian explanation of accumulation of random mutations.
• Dreams that seemed to foretell a death. 
• Out-of-body experiences, many in which people seemed to perceive details they should not have been able to perceive given the physical position of their bodies. 
• Many examples of very precise fine-tuning in the laws and fundamental constants of the universe, things that conflict with commonly stated scientist claims that beings such as humans arose merely because of lucky accidents. 
• Abundant testimony of inexplicable phenomena in the sky. 

It is clear why the first several of such things are ignored by our Men of Custom under their Rule of Inattention. The reason is that such phenomena conflict with their claims that the human mind is merely the product of the brain, and also conflict with claims that humans understand the origin of the human race.  If humans have souls with mysterious powers, such a reality discredits any claim that we understand the origin of the human race by means of simple ideas such as Darwinian evolution. 

It is rather less clear why the Men of Custom who sit in science professor  chairs would pay almost no attention to abundant testimony of inexplicable phenomena in the sky. One possible reason is that once someone starts exploring one type of very unexplained spooky phenomena, he may become more likely to start investigating many other types of very unexplained spooky phenomena. The Men of Custom who sit in professors chairs would very much prefer that you not do that, because the more you read up on such phenomena, the less confidence you will have in their boastful flimsy claims to understand how minds arise and how humans arose. Or perhaps our Men of Custom are afraid that once a person starts believing in mysterious powers producing manifestations in the sky, he may be much more likely to doubt scientist claims that they understand the origin of humans, claims based on an assumption of no interference by any higher power. 

It should be noted that this Rule of Inattention only prohibits seriously and thoroughly studying the many topics on a kind of informal List of Forbidden Topics. It does not prohibit speaking or writing about such things. So our Men of Custom manning professorial chairs feel no hesitation about speaking or writing about many things that they have not seriously studied,  making negative comments that are not matched by any real scholarship on their part. 

Postscript: My point about the Rule of Inattention not prohibiting professors from writing about things they haven't studied is well illustrated by this post in which astronomer Jason Wright gives us wrong information about UFOs, while at the same haughtily bragging that he has not studied UFOs.  Contradicting himself, Wright says in his title "I Look for Aliens for a Living, and No, I Don't Study UFOs," but then says in his text "I have seen the videos" claiming to show UFOs, and also videos debunking such videos. Wright makes various wrong claims about UFOs: that reports tend to be of things violating the laws of physics, that UFOs are "mostly a very recent and very American phenomenon." No, UFO reports have occurred at about the same intervals in each of the past seven decades, and UFO sightings have often been reported in Canada and Europe and Australia.  The fact that UFOs are often reported as moving fast without making a sound does not violate any law of physics, as Wright attempts to insinuate. There is no law of physics that fast moving things have to make sonic booms, and fast-moving meteors often fail to make sonic booms.  

Why We Should Be Skeptical If NASA Ever Announces ET Life Was Found

 Let us imagine a future event that would attract great worldwide attention. First, we can imagine that rumors start to spread around the Internet that NASA is about to anounce the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Then NASA announces a press conference in which it will release momentous news.  We might see newspaper headlines like the ones below:

We can imagine CNN and Fox News covering the press conference, in which some NASA officials or NASA scientists solemnly proclaim that life has been discovered somewhere in space.  If that happens, should we believe the announcement? 

We probably should not, because NASA has a bad record when speaking on the topic of extraterrestrial life and the origin of life. Let's look at some of its misstatements on such topics. 

On August 7, 1996 NASA released a press announcement with the headline "METEORITE YIELDS EVIDENCE OF PRIMITIVE LIFE ON EARLY MARS." The press release tried to convince us that some NASA scientists had found evidence of life on Mars by studying some meteorite. After a White House photo opportunity with President Bill Clinton, this story was carried all over the world. But now such evidence is not generally regarded as good evidence for life on Mars. It seems that NASA got overexcited about some marginal hard-to-interpret indications in a rock. 

There have been other similar cases in which NASA announcements on extraterrestrial life or the origin of life were not credible.  One such case was when NASA announced in 2019 "NASA Study Reproduces Origins of Life on Ocean Floor."  The experimental study (discussed here) did no such thing.  The study merely produced alanine, one of the simplest amino acids. Claiming that you reproduced the origin of life when you merely produced alanine is as brazen a falsehood as claiming that you produced a novel when you merely produced some paper.  The study did not even discuss an experiment realistically simulating any early Earth conditions. The alanine was produced in closed glass vials. 

In 2018 the Daily Express had a headline, “NASA announcement shock: space agency closing in on finding alien life.” The paper quotes the agency as saying, “As we continue checking off items on the habitability list, we'll draw closer and closer to finding a world bearing recognizable signs of life.”  The headline and the statement were both false. NASA was not closing in on finding extraterrestrial life, and was not getting “closer and closer” to finding a world with extraterrestrial life.  An example of the reality is a recent paper reporting a search of 10 billion stars for evidence of radio signals, a search that found nothing. 

A recent NASA press announcement states, "Massive Stars Are Factories for Ingredients to Life."  The headline and story are misleading in two respects. The use of the term "factories" implies that something complex is being created.  That is not correct, because the report merely refers to very simple things: water (H₂0), ammonia (NH₃), methane (CH₄), and acetylene (C₂H₂).  All of these have chemical formulas much simpler than the amino acids that are the simplest things that could be called building blocks of life.  And neither ammonia nor methane nor acetylene is actually an ingredient of life, in the sense of being any kind of building block of life. 

It seems that NASA has a poor record of speaking accurately about matters relating to the origin of life or extraterrestrial life. So why should we have much confidence if it were to claim that extraterrestrial life had been found? 

In today's science news, there is a BBC article which wonders whether microbes could have traveled recently from Earth to Mars, riding on NASA spacecraft that may have been imperfectly sterilized. The article states the following: "Although Nasa and its engineers in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have precise and thorough protocols to ensure their spacecraft are free from any organisms that might inadvertently hitchhike on a space mission, two recent studies highlight how some organisms might have survived the cleaning process." So if NASA ever announces life was found on Mars, it could merely be an earthly microbe that was found.  Any such announcement would be an enormous boost to the prestige of NASA, possibly causing an increase in its funding. So we may wonder whether NASA has a motivation for sterilizing spacecraft to Mars in a somewhat less-than-foolproof manner. 

One type of announcement that could be made would be one claiming to have found radio signals from extraterrestrials. Any such announcement should be treated with skepticism. For one thing, there is a large possibility that some artificial radio transmission from Earth or from a satellite might be mistaken for a signal from extraterrestrials, a radio transmission that was never intended to be mistaken for a signal from extraterrestrials. 

For another thing, there is the fact that a radio signal resembling a signal from extraterrestrials can very easily be faked. One way to do that would be to have a satellite or space probe transmit a radio signal that was designed to look like an extraterrestrial radio signal. The possibility of such mischief by a foreign nation can hardly be dismissed in light of claims of foreign interference in the United States elections. 

Given such claims, there would always be the possibility that a radio signal that we thought was coming from another planet was actually coming from somewhere else in our solar system, perhaps from one of the satellites or probes of China or Russia or some other nation. There could be any number of reasons why a nation might resort to such a trick. One reason is that such a ruse might be used to create a distraction diverting public attention from some scandal or suspicions involving that nation, such as supicions of a pandemic arising from a lab leak coming from that nation. Or if a nation were planning on launching a surprise attack or doing a military buildup, it might create illusory “radio messages from extraterrestrials” to get the world's attention focused on such a matter, and away from threatening troop movements or weapons deployments the nation was starting to make.

Another reason for doubting the source of a message claimed as coming from extraterrestrials is that such a message might crop up as a result of computer hacking. The radio telescopes scanning for extraterrestrial signals are linked up to computers and software needed to analyze the signals. Such computers and software might be subject to computer hacking. Hackers might download a fake signal fooling astronomers into thinking they had received a message from the stars. If this sounds too far-fetched, consider all the high-profile large-scale hacks that have gone on in recent years, such as North Korea supposedly breaking into the computer systems of a major corporation, and the very recent major ransomware hack of Colonial Pipeline, a very large US energy distribution system.  Anyone reading the list of computer hacks given here (typically involving hundreds of millions of customers) should not doubt the possibility that hackers could hack into the computer networks of a small number of scientists searching for radio signals from space. 

A recent news headline

There are any number of reasons why hackers might want to create such a deception.  One would be the sheer fun of creating the ultimate prank.  There might also be more serious reasons. An announced discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence might cause various movements in the prices of particular stocks. For example, a manufacturer of radio telescopes or a defense contractor might find their stock prices rising much higher after such an announcement.  So some hacking group might invest in futures or options on some corporation expected to have its stock price rise after an announcement claiming signals had been found from extraterrestrials.  Then such a group might cause some SETI systems hack creating fake data leading scientists to make such an announcement. The result might be a financial windfall for the hacking group, if it had invested in futures or options of the corporations with prices expected to rise after such an announcement.  

A Biologist's Monstrosity Yearnings

For twenty years the Edge Foundation seemed to exist mainly to publish an annual survey in which a group of people (mainly scientists) were asked some Annual Question, and wrote their answers at length.  These annual surveys were published in book form between 1998 and 2018, and you can read most of them for free on this page of the Edge Foundation's site.  Most of the financial contributions that funded the foundation came from Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced billionaire who committed suicide in jail after being charged with the sex trafficking of minors.  Epstein was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008, but he continued for quite a few years before and after that conviction to mingle with scientists and high-tech luminaries at exclusive social events such as dinner parties and cocktail parties, as his sex crimes continued.

What we always got in the yearly books answering the Annual Question were a group of people advancing an Epstein-friendly view of the world, by which I mean any viewpoint which would not trouble Jeffrey too much as he continued his predatory sex crimes (which seemed to have started long before 2008).  Typically humans would be depicted as accidental piles of chemicals rather than souls or bodies that are mysteriously arising marvels of biological organization. It was as if each of the 100+ essays in each book had been carefully chosen to avoid anything that might make Jeffrey Epstein uncomfortable.  Although occupation-wise the authors were a fairly diverse group, the books were a very monochrome affair, with almost no writers deviating from the Official Party Line of modern academia.  One of the worst examples of the Epstein-compatible viewpoints was the following appalling statement by biologist Richard Dawkins for the 2006 Annual Question:

"But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment."

During the twenty years in which the Annual Question books were being published, we seemed to have heard scarcely a peep from any professor along the lines of "I don't want to participate in some book series mainly financed by a child-abusing sex criminal."  During the same period, the contributors to the Annual Questions were marketed as some kind of brilliant elite.  A page on the Edge Foundation web site describes the contributors in these worshipful words: "scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are." But the 2013 answers to the Annual Question serves as a testimony to the poor predictive powers of these supposedly brilliant minds. The question was "What Should We Be Worried About?" A great number of scientists gave not-very-brilliant answers, and virtually no mention was made of the risk of a pandemic.  The only three mentions of the word "pandemic" were passing references saying nothing substantive about pandemics. 

Among the not-very-brilliant answers given by scientists (to the question of what we should worry about) were the following:

• "One Universe" (Lawrence Krauss)
• "The Loss of Death" (Kate Jeffrey)
• "The Danger from Aliens" (Seth Shostak)
• "Can They Read My Brain?" (Stanislas Dehaene)
• "The 'Nightmare Scenario' for Fundamental Physics" (Peter Woit)

The 2006 Annual Question book featured such hilarious howlers as a chemistry professor predicting that the origin of life would be understood in five years (the year 2011), and a neuroscientist claiming that because he can use the internet,  he has "achieved omniscience for all practical purposes." There was also silliness such as the claim that "the purpose of life is to disperse energy,"  and a few statements of the evil nonsense that is free will denial. 

In 2009 the foundation's Annual Question was "What Will Change Everything?" In his answer to that question, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins speaks wistfully about some things he yearns to have, but does not have at all. 

The first thing on Dawkins' wish list is something he expresses with this odd sentence: "The discovery of relict populations of extinct hominins suchHomo erectus and Australopithecus."  I guess he meant "such as Homo erectus."   Dawkins does not explain why such a discovery (kind of like discovering a Bigfoot species) would "change everything."

The second thing on Dawkins' wish list is "a successful hybridization between a human and a chimpanzee," which Dawkins claims would send "salutary" shock waves throughout society, and "would change everything," although he quotes someone else as calling such a thing as being utterly immoral.  No such chimp-human has ever been produced, although we can understand why evolutionary biologists  (who frequently tell us the absurd falsehood that humans are apes or very apelike) would yearn for such a thing, as such a monstrosity might give some substance to their claims. 

The third thing on Dawkins' wish list is expressed by his statement below:

"What if we were to fashion a chimera of 50% human and 50% chimpanzee cells and grow it to adulthood? That would change everything."

The fourth thing on Dawkins' wish list is some silly nonsense  that suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of genomes. He states the following:

"The human genome and the chimpanzee genome are now known in full. Intermediate genomes of varying proportions can be interpolated on paper. Moving from paper to flesh and blood would require embryological technologies that will probably come on stream during the lifetime of some of my readers. I think it will be done, and an approximate reconstruction of the common ancestor of ourselves and chimpanzees will be brought to life. The intermediate genome between this reconstituted 'ancestor' and modern humans would, if implanted in an embryo, grow into something like a reborn Australopithecus: Lucy the Second. And that would (dare I say will?) change everything."

Scientists keep claiming that humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor, but no one has ever found fossils of such a common ancestor.  Since the half-life of DNA is only about 521  years, we have nothing like even a quarter genome of any hominid species that lived more than 100,000 years ago. What Dawkins fantasizes about here is someone imaginatively creating some speculative genome thought to correspond to some alleged ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, and then creating some ape-like organism from that.  But why would that "change everything"?  Such a stunt would not prove that such a genome had ever existed in the real world. 

Dawkins presupposes here the utterly false claim that erring scientists have often taught: that genomes or DNA are a blueprint or recipe for anatomy.  They are no such thing. DNA merely specifies low-level chemical information, not high-level anatomical information.  Not being any specification of how to make a human, DNA does not even specify how to make any of the 200 types of cells in the human body. So the idea that you can bring back to life an extinct organism by recreating its DNA is an absurdity. This is the "Jurassic Park" fallacy.  If we were to find in some block of amber a drop of dinosaur blood containing the dinosaur's DNA, it would never allow you to bring a dinosaur back to life, because the DNA of a dinosaur does not specify how to build a dinosaur, or even how to build any one of its cells. And speculatively recreating the DNA of some alleged ancestor of humans and chimps would never allow you to bring such an organism back to life. 

Of course, Dawkins would not have all these yearnings and longings if the evidence for humans evolving from an ape-like ancestor was solid.  You only yearn for more evidence if the evidence you have is not good enough. Scientists lack any credible theory of how any very complex visible biological innovations could occur, or how any dramatic innovation of intellectual capability could occur.  The claim that Darwin advanced such a theory is merely a self-serving myth told over and over again by the tribe of legend-mongering evolutionary biologists like Dawkins, a piece of tribal folklore that serves to elevate their social status, causing us to falsely regard them as Lords of Explanation.  Darwin merely advanced a lame theory of accumulation, not a theory of organization. So the stratospheric levels of organization scientists have discovered all over the place at every level in biological organisms (almost all of which Darwin knew nothing about) are not explained by Darwinist ideas. 

The Dawkins essay mentioned above is quite like a prosecutor giving this closing argument:

"You should vote to convict Wilbur Kowalsky of murdering John Kenning, because we have established his guilt beyond any reasonable doubt. But it's interesting to think of some things I wish I had. I would like to have the body of John Kenning, which no one has found.  By proving that Kenning is actually dead, that would change everything. I would also like to have some eyewitness testimony that Kowalsky killed Kenning. That would change everything. I would also like to have some motive for why Kowalsky might have killed Kenning. That would change everything. I would also like to have some evidence that Kowalsky might have ever been on the same continent as Kenning, or that he might have touched some kind of weapon that might have killed him, or that he might have been physically capable of killing him without a weapon. That would change everything! But I digress. Please convict Wilbur Kowalsky of murdering John Kenning, because we have established his guilt beyond any reasonable doubt."

When a biologist with healthy thinking is asked what he yearns for, he might say something like a cure for malaria or a cure for cancer. When a biologist's thinking is debased, he may yearn instead for monstrosities such as something half-human and half-chimp. 

In an  answer to a 2007 Annual Question of "What Are You Optimistic About?" Dawkins speaks like he was a dupe  of groundless science progress legends.  He says he is optimistic that physicists will "discover the final theory of everything." There is no truth in the  widely repeated claim that scientists are working on such a theory.  What happened was that some scientists started to engage in wild speculations about a theory that might combine two not-very-compatible things: general relativity (basically a theory of gravity) and quantum mechanics.  Such a barely-even-started theory should have been called a Theory of Two Things. But most deceptively, some scientists started calling it a Theory of Everything. It was no such thing, being a theory that did not involve chemistry, psychology, biology, history and dozens of other disciplines. Dawkins sounds as if he's bought the baloney that some physicists are working on a theory that will explain everything.  

On the same page, Dawkins says that biology went on even after "Darwin solved its deep problem." There are actually very many deep unsolved problems in biology, such as the problem of how human mental phenomena can occur despite a brain showing no signs of explaining such phenomena, how life originated, how fantastically organized anatomical innovations originated at various points in natural history, why almost all of the animal phyla originated in a relatively short time, how so many millions of types of miracle-if-it-started-by-luck protein molecules could have originated, and how a speck-sized egg is able to progress to become a full grown adult, despite the lack of any specification of anatomy in DNA.  None of these problems was  solved by Darwin. The claim that Darwin solved one of these problems by a theory of "natural selection" is as groundless as the claim that physicists are working on a Theory of Everything. And just as the phrase "Theory of Everything" is a misleading phrase, so is the phrase "natural selection," which does not actually postulate any real selection (selection being a thing performed only by conscious agents who make a choice). 

A news story at today's mainstream science news sites makes it clear that many experts have been telling us groundless stories about human origins. The news story is entitled "Most human origins stories are not compatible with known fossils."  We read the following: " 'When you look at the narrative for hominin origins, it's just a big mess -- there's no consensus whatsoever,' said Sergio Almécija, a senior research scientist in the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Anthropology and the lead author of the review."

Still More Dreams or Visions That Seemed to Foretell a Death

In two previous posts (here and here) I discussed dreams or visions that seemed to foretell a death. Let us look at some more cases of this type. 

The 1874 book Dead and Gone by James Samuel Pollock (which you can read here) is a a book deserving much more attention than the very little attention it has received so far.  It is a book filled with accounts of paranormal experiences, such as apparition sightings, dreams that seemed to foretell death, and deathbed visions. Many of the accounts were told to Pollock as he worked as a pastor. 

The account below (#42 from page 16) is one that Pollock says that he was told first-hand:

"Mr. D___ was superintending some large railway works in Scotland. One morning he observed that one man’s work was not being done. On inquiry, he was told that Larry ___ had had a dream of being killed, and he refused to work that day. Mr. D___ said if Larry-did not do his work some one else must be found to take his place. Some time after, Mr. D ___ was looking out of his window, which gave him a view of the work, and saw a number of men carrying something. It was Larry ___. The men had persuaded him to come to work. The first truck he filled was being tilted over; it fell on him and killed him."

Pollock also received the following account first hand (#60):

"The night after my child was born I awoke out of a sound sleep, very much frightened and screaming. The nurse came to know what was the matter, and I asked her where my child was, as I dreamt he was grown up a big child, and had been thrown from a carriage and killed. This terrible accident did happen when he was fifteen."

Pollock also received the following account first hand (#299): a Mrs. K. had two dreams on a Friday night that an aunt had died, and very soon found out that she had died on that very night.  Pollock also received first hand an account (#444) that a woman had seen her mother and grandmother in a dream, looking very happy, and saying, "It is sad for you, but think how happy it is for him and us." A similar dream was repeated several times that night. In the morning she found that her brother had died that night. 

On page 167 we read an account Pollock received in which a woman stated she had a dream of ordering a coffin, and then seeing her aunt in the coffin. She soon found out that her aunt had died at about the same hour that the dream occurred. 

A nineteenth century work tells us this account (in which "ironed" means held captive in iron chains):

"On the same night his mother at Greenwich dreamed that she saw her son in prison, and ironed : she beheld him also arraigned at the bar with the woman, found guilty, and condemned to die, whilst the woman was acquitted. This calamitous dream was carried still farther. She saw her son going in a cart to Tyburn, and there executed with four other offenders."

The woman soon found her son in prison with "the place all around was just as she had viewed it the preceding night." The son was soon executed. 

In a nineteenth century work we read of a child who dreamed that her father had died by drowning after a boat turned over. It was later found that the father had died at a  distant location "at that very time" when his boat was turned over. On the same page we read of a father who dreamed that his son was thrown over the side of a boat, with the boat passing on. He later found out that on the same night, the son had died of a fever on a boat, and that he was buried at sea, by being tossed from a boat. Later in the same book we read of a woman who dreamed twice in one night that her husband had died in a hunting accident after falling from a horse.  That day her husband did die in a hunting accident after falling from a horse. The wife had pleaded with her husband not to go on the hunting trip, but he went anyway. 

In the same nineteenth century work, we read this account:

"A gentleman of fortune was awakened by his wife one night, who said she had had a most unpleasant dream. She thought that a friend of theirs, who was in the East India Company’s land service, had been killed in a duel ; she likewise described the situation of the place where the duel was fought, and where the dead body had been laid, which was in a shed near the place where he fell. The husband, who did not place much credit in dreams, endeavoured to pacify her, representing to her the absurdity of those disturbed imaginations in sleep, and told her he hoped the next accounts from India would announce the health of their friend. A few months after, however, he received the melancholy news from that country, that his wife’s dream was but too true. A gentleman who came from India, informed him that the captain had fought a duel, and was unhappily killed upon the spot ; and, as a token of his regard, had bequeathed him the sum of five hundred pounds. What renders this dream remarkable, is, that the body of the gentleman who fell, was carried to a shed near the spot, as the lady had described in her dream ; which particular circumstance was related by the gentleman who brought the news."

On page 402 of the same book we read this account of a mother who failed to keep a promise to attend a graduation ceremony at Cambridge:

"In my youth, when I was at Cambridge, my brother Henry lying with me, early one morning I dreamed that my mother passed by with a sad countenance, and told me that she would not come to my Commencement (having promised at that time to come to Cambridge). When I related this dream to my brother, (both of us waking together in a sweat) he protested he had dreamed the very same. The next carrier brought us word of our mother’s death."

In Catherine Crowe's extremely interesting book The Night Side of Nature, we read on page 42 the following account:

"A farmer, in Worcestershire, dreamed that his little boy, of twelve years old, had fallen from the wagon and was killed. The dream recurred three times in one night; but, unwilling to yield to superstitious fears, he allowed the child to accompany the wagoner to Kidderminster fair. The driver was very fond of the boy, and he felt assured would take care of him ; but, having occasion to go a little out of the road to leave a parcel, the man bade the child walk on with the wagon, and he would meet him at a certain spot. On arriving there, the horses were coming quietly forward, but the boy was not with them; and on retracing the road, he was found dead, having apparently fallen from the shafts, and been crushed by the wheels."

On page 3 of the book ESP in Life and Lab Louisa E. Rhine, we read of a woman in Virginia who had a dream that her husband's brother had died, and that the wife of that brother had called the woman to inform her of the death, crying and screaming during the call. The next day the woman received exactly such a call, from the wife of the husband's brother, who told of his sudden death that day after falling.  An incident like this cannot actually be esplained by the idea of telepathy, since no one on Earth was thinking of such an event when the dream occurred.  The incident seems to suggest precognition. 

On page 11 of the same book we read of a woman who had a dream that her husband was dressed in a black suit, and saying, "He isn't coming back." The woman was afraid that this was a reference to one of her sons. The same day her son Jack disappeared after setting out on a raft.  His body was not found for another month. 

On pages 102-105 of the same book we read of a student nurse who had an incredibly specific dream about a death. Her dream was that arriving in a hospital (not through the usual entrance) there would come a very sick six-year-old boy, who would ask to be carried by the nurse up into his room; and that the boy would die before 1 PM the next day. Within the next hours exactly the same events in the dream happened, with the nurse carrying the boy just as in the dream, and the boy dying before 1 PM the next day.   

On page 117 of the same book we read of a woman who had a very specific dream of a man and woman on a wagon crossing a bridge with a kind of inverted V shape. In the dream the bridge collapsed, causing the man to get a board driven through his chest. The next day the woman's husband told her, "Your dream came true." A bridge had collapsed, killing a man and a woman.  A piece of wood had pierced the man's chest. 

On page 188 we read an account of a woman who had a dream that almost exactly predicted the situation of her mother's death. She dreamed that she and her mother looked down on a woman, with the mother sobbing, "She was my best friend." A month later her mother died of a heart attack, and she stood next to the best friend, as they looked down on the mother, with the best friend sobbing, "She was my best friend." 

On page 196 we have an account from a father who states, "I had a dream that revealed in clear-cut imagery a scene in which my eldest son was killed."  Two months later his young son was killed in a crash at a remote location resembling the topography seen in the dream. In the dream the man saw four soldiers carrying off the son in a stretcher, with a voice saying they were carrying the broken body of the son. 

On page 215 we have an account from a man who woke up at 3:15 AM with a very sharp pain, somehow convinced that his mother had died. His daughter dismissed what she called his "crazy dream." But the man found his mother had died of a heart attack at exactly that time.  The event may be best described as a kind of inexplicable sudden conviction rather than a dream or vision. 

David Mandell says that years before the collapse of the two World Trade Center towers after terrorist attacks, he had a dream of two smoking towers shaking like there was an earthquake, followed six months later by a dream of an airplane crashing into a building.  I know that about a year before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center (I can't remember exactly how many months),  I had a dream of the World Trade Center collapsing. In my dream I was standing on a floor of one of the towers of the World Trade Center, when the floor suddenly collapsed underneath me, leading to what seemed to be a fatal plunge. I told my wife that day that I had a dream that the World Trade Center (where I worked at the time) had collapsed.  It was the only time I had ever had some dream about a specific building collapsing. 

The Aberfan coal mining disaster in 1966 was a disaster so appalling that it in Wales it seemed to strike with the same force as the  September 11 attacks.  Suddenly 144 people were killed, most of them school children. The site here  discusses dreams that seemed to foreshadow the disaster.  In one a child  (Eryl Mai Jones) dreamed that her school had been covered with something black.  The next day later the school was suddenly buried in coal sludge, as a fatal mining-related avalanche destroyed it. 

The same account of Eryl Mai Jones is given at the site here, which tells us the following account: in early 1979 David Booth dreamed "ten nights in a row" of an aviation disaster involving a plane veering off a runway and bursting into flames. Later on May 25, 1979 the disaster of American Airlines Flight 191 occurred, in which more than 270 people died when an aircraft crashed into a trailer park less than a mile from the runway.  (The site here lists the death count as 273.) 

In the case reported here, on page 19, a woman had a dream of a plane crashing at the shore of a lake, with a cottage being damaged, and a man burning up. Later that day she saw a plane, and yelled to her husband, "That's the plane -- the one that's going to crash!"  The plane then did crash, with the pilot being burned to death; and a cottage was damaged.

On page 322 of Volume 5 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, which you can read here,  a woman reported a "dream or vision" in which she saw her son fall over a cliff. At the cliff was a stranger. In the dream or vision she asked the stranger his name, and he answered, "Henry Irvin." The woman soon found out that the son did die in an accident while with another man. She also talked with this other man and found out that the other man had been introduced as "Henry Irvin Jr." during some theatrical shows. 

This year has been the "year of the death dream" for me, with my dreams being relentlessly thematic since the year's beginning,  repeating over and over again themes of danger, death, and life after death, in a very focused and non-random kind of manner, as if some purposeful signaling effect was at work. Because the dreams massively repeat a theme of life after death as often as they massively repeat a theme of death, they do not cause any anxiety for me.   The record of my death-related dreams I have at the post here may be the most extensive collection of death-related dreams anyone has published.  But as long as I update blogs such as this one, the tale of me having such dreams lacks the denouement it would need to be cited as any evidence of precognition.