Spookiest Years, Part 1: The Year 1848

This is the first in a series of posts that will appear at intermittent intervals on this blog, interrupted by other posts on entirely different topics. Each of the posts in this series will look at some year in which there were reports of very spooky things happening. To a very large degree today's academia and today's mainstream press have enforced a certain type of historical amnesia, in which accounts of the paranormal are a kind of "forbidden history" that is "kept hidden in sealed boxes"; and this "Spookiest Years" series will try to do a tiny bit to lessen such amnesia by discussing important reports made long ago of hard-to-explain events. 

An extremely important principle when dealing with claims of the extraordinary or paranormal or supernatural is: search diligently for all the earliest known eyewitness accounts, and study them very carefully.  The quality of evidence for claims of the extraordinary or paranormal or supernatural often depends on how quickly preserved eyewitness accounts were written or filmed. For example:

• An account by someone who had a near-death experience written or recorded within a week or two after the experience occurred is very good quality evidence. But if the account is merely someone telling what happened to him twenty years ago, such evidence is of much lower quality. During that twenty years the person may have gradually embellished his account. Also, a firsthand account is much better evidence that someone telling you that he was told something by someone else. 
• A year 2023 account of what happened in Roswell, New Mexico in July, 1947 is of much less value than newspaper accounts written in July, 1947. Any serious student of the famous Roswell incident should study the exact text of the earliest newspaper reports, such as the text of the original Roswell Daily Record account of the crash, and the reports a few days later in the same paper claiming that the crash was a mere balloon crash. 
• Anyone attempting to seriously study the anomalous events in Fatima, Portugal in 1917 should concentrate on finding the text of the earliest known reports and eyewitness statements, rather than basing his opinions solely on things written about such events decades later. 

Anyone should follow such principles when trying to sort out what happened in upstate New York in 1848, the case of the famed mysterious raps that were the beginning of decades of intense interest in spiritualism in the United States, with the interest spreading to other countries such as England and Brazil.  First involving the Fox family including the famed Fox sisters, the relevant events first occurred in Hydesville, New York in March, 1848, with the phenomenon soon being reported in nearby Rochester, New York, later that year. You could form an opinion on this series of incidents by reading Volume 1 of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The History of Spiritualism," written in 1926, which can be read here. But that would not be the best approach, because who knows what embellishment of the original account may have occurred between 1848 and 1946.  Better yet, you could  form an our opinion on this incident by reading the 1870 book "Modern American Spiritualism: a Twenty Years' Record of the Communion Between Earth and the World of Spirits" by Emma Hardinge, which can read here. But that would still not be the best approach, because who knows what embellishment of the original account may have occurred between 1848 and 1870.  The best approach is to seek out the earliest written documents on this affair. 

I was able to find the earliest document written about the mysterious raps reported by the Fox family.  The document is an 1848 booklet entitled "A Report of the Mysterious Noises Heard in the House of Mr. John  D. Fox in Hydesville, Arcadia, Wayne County, Authenticated by the Certificates, and Confirmed by the Statements of the Citizens of That Place and Vicinity by E. E. Lewis (1848), which you can read here.  We have eyewitness testimony cited here, and the testimony is the most reliable type of testimony: testimony recorded only a small number of days after the described incidents.  Based on the dated reward offer at the end of the book offering $50 (quite a bit of money in those days) to anyone who could disprove the claims made, a reward offer which has a date of April 20, 1848, we may presume the document was published about April 20th, 1848,  which is only three weeks after the start of the claimed paranormal phenomenon. 

On the first page of the book, the author (E. E. Lewis) gives us some reasons for trusting what he writes:

(1) The author has no ax to grind. His purpose is not to convince anyone of any doctrine or even convince anyone that some supernatural events were occurring. Indicating a very open mind on this topic, he states this on the first page:

"But whether it be owing to supernatural means or not, will probably be developed in time. It maybe the result of trickery, or fear, or superstition, or all combined."

(2) The author has interviewed all of the witnesses soon after the events occurred. He states this on the first page:

"We have spent several days in that place [Hydesville], for the purpose of investigating this strange affair, and if possible to solve the mystery. During that time, we had an opportunity to converse with scores of the most respectable citizens of that place, who had themselves spent no little time in endeavoring to satisfy their own minds as to the cause of these noises.. They had all heard them at different times. during the past two weeks, and manifested a strong desire that the truth should be made known,—that the noises should be accounted for as the effect of some natural causes."

This is all very good from the standpoint of the credibility of the account. The author has shown up only a few days after the spooky events started happening, and has interviewed all of the witnesses.  Moreover, the witnesses aren't even people with any interest or motive in spreading false stories about the paranormal.  It must be emphasized that at the time E. E. Lewis recorded the testimony of the witnesses, there was zero financial motivation for any of them to be telling false stories about the paranormal. No one at this time could ever dream what would have resulted as an aftermath from the strange reports. At the time Hydesville, New York was a "one horse" town "in the middle of nowhere," and the prospects of anyone financially profiting from the tales told would have seemed like zero at the time. In April 1848 no one had any idea of the astonishing phenomenal events that would follow the Hydesville rap reports, and no one had any idea that the Hydesville events would seem like the seed of a major new development in American spirituality. No one in 1848 had any idea that there would several years later be mediums who charged fees for claimed contacts with the dead, or people who made money from books on the topic of spiritualism, which no one had heard about in 1848.

The first eyewitness account given by E. E. Lewis in his 1848 booklet appears on page 6. We have an account dated April 11, 1848 given by Margaret Fox, the wife of John D. Fox and the mother of the famed Fox sisters. Here are some quotes from  the account (I will make no attempt to correct any of the sentences that seem like writing style shortfalls):

"We moved into this house on the 11th December, 1847, and have resided here ever since. We formerly resided in the city of Rochester. We first heard this noise about a fortnight ago. It sounded like some one knocking in the east bed-room, on the floor; sometimes it sounded as if the chair moved on the floor ; we could hardly tell where it was. This was in the evening, just after we had gone to bed. The whole family slept in that room together, and all heard the noise. There was four of our family, and sometimes five. The first night that we heard the rapping, we all got up and lit a candle; and searched all over the house. The noise continued while we were hunting, and was heard near the same, place all the time. It was not very loud‎ yet it produced a jar of the bedsteads and chairs, that could be felt by placing our hands on the chair. or while we were in bed. It was a feeling of a tremulous motion, more than a sullen jar. lt seemed as if we could feel it jar while we were standing on the floor. It continued this night until we went  to sleep. I did not go to sleep until nearly 12 o'clock. . The noise continued to be heard every night.

On Friday night, the 31st of March, it was heard as usual, and, we then for the first time called in the neighbors. Up to‎ this time we had never heard it in the day time or at least did not notice it at all." 

Mrs. Fox said that one of the two Fox daughters, aged 12 and 15, tried to imitate the rapping sound by cracking her fingers; and that a rapping noise was soon heard, as if response to such a thing. We then read Mrs. Fox say this:

"The other girl, who is in her 15th year, then spoke as in sport and: said: 'Now,  do this just as I do. Count one, two, three, four,'  &c., strikiing one band in the other at the same time. The blows which she made were repeated as before. It appeared to answer her by repeating every blow that she made. She only did so once. She then began to be startled ; and then I spoke and said to the noise, 'Count ten,' and it made ten strokes or noises. Then I asked the ages of my different children successively, and it gave a number of raps, corresponding to the ages of my children.

I then asked if it was a human being that was making the noise ? and if it was, to manifest it by the same noise. There was no noise, I then asked if it was a spirit / and if it was, to manifest it by two sounds. I heard two sounds as soon as the words were spoken. I then asked, if it was an injured spirit ? to give me the sound, and [ heard the rapping distinctly.. I then asked if it was injured in this house ? and it manifested it by the noise. If the person was living that injured it ? and got the same answer. I then ascertained, by the same method that its remains were buried under the dwelling, and how old it was.

When I asked how many years old it was? it rapped 31 times ; that it was a male; that it had left a family of five children-; that it had two sons and three daughters, all living. I asked if it left a wife? and it rapped. fits wife was then living ? no  rapping; if she was dead? and the rapping was distinctly heard how long she had been dead? and it rapped twice."

Mrs. Fox then tells how she called in a Mrs. Redfield to observe the phenomenon, with similar results occurring when Mrs. Redfield was there. Mrs. Redfield then called in "Mr. Duesler and wife, and several others."  They were followed by a Mr. and Mrs. Hyde, and a Mr. and Mrs. Jewell. Mrs. Fox reports that in questioning by asking for raps, Mr. Duesler seemed to get an account that the rap originator was murdered five years ago in the house, by a slitting of the throat.  We read Mrs. Fox say that the house soon had many visitors:

" On the next day the house was filled to overflowing all day. This was on Saturday. There was no sound heard through the day: but in the evening the noise commenced again. Some said that there were three hundred people present at this time. They appointed a committee, and many questions were asked. I did not know much what was done that night, only by hearsay, as I went to Mr. Duesler's ‎ to stay all night. On Sunday morning, the 2nd day of April, the noise commenced again, and was heard throughout the day by all who came here."

Mrs. Margaret Fox concludes her account with this statement:

"I am not a believer in haunted houses or supernatural appearances. l am very sorry that there has been so much excitement about it. It has been a great deal of trouble to us. It was our misfortune to live here at this time ; but I am willing and anxious that the truth should be known, and that a true statement should be made. I cannot account for these noises; all that I know is, that they have been heard repeatedly, as I have stated. I have heard this: rapping again this (Tuesday) morning, April 4.  My children also heard it.

I certify that the above statement has been read to me; and that the same is true ; and that I should be willing to take my oath that it was so, if necessary. (Signed,)

April 11th, 1848                MARGARET FOX."

We have here several indications of a high reliability: (1) the mention of very numerous witnesses, many named, who reported the same phenomenon; (2) the indication that the original statement dates from April 11, 1848, only a few days after the reported events; (3) the statement by the author that she is "not a believer in haunted houses or supernatural appearances," and is thereby reporting evidence contradicting her own belief tendencies; (4) a lack of any motive for lying about such a matter, with the whole matter seeming to be just a nuisance. I may note that the author of this statement is not to be confused with her daughter of the same name. 

The next statement we have in the document is from John D. Fox, Margaret's husband. He states the following:

"I have heard the above statement of my wife, MARGARET Fox, and hereby certify that the same is true, in all its particulars. I heard the same rapping which she has spoken of, in answer to the questions, as stated by her. There have been a great many questions besides those asked, and answered in the same way. Some have been asked over a great many times, and they have always received the saine answer; there never has been any contradiction whatever.

I do not know of any way to account for these noises, as being caused by any natural means. We have searched in every nook and corner in and about the house, at different times, to ascertain if possible whether any thing or any body was secreted here, that could make the noise, and have never been. able to find any thing which explained the mystery. It has caused a great deal of trouble and anxiety... Hundreds have visited the house, so that it is impossible for us to attend to our daily occupations ; and I hope that whether caused by natural, or supernatural means, will be ascertained soon. The digging in the cellar will be resumed as soon as the water settles ; and then it can be ascertained whether there are any indications of a body ever having been buried there; and if there are, I shall have no doubt but what this is a supernatural appearance. I am willing to make the statements which I have made about this matter, under oath, if you wish to have me do so. The rapping has been heard again to-day in answer to the questions.

April 11th, 1848.  (Signed); JOHN D. FOX."

The document then gives a statement of a William Duesler of Acadia, who says that he was first very skeptical but also heard the strange rapping noises.  The most relevant part of Duesler's account from an evidence standpoint is the part below in which he asks questions at the Fox house:

"I then asked it to rap my age ? the number of years of my age. It rapped 30 times. This is my age, and I do not think that any 

one about here knows my age, but myself and my own family.

I then told it to rap my wife's age ? and it rapped 30 times, 

which is her exact age : several of us counted it at the time.— I then asked it to rap A. W. Hyde's age? and it rapped 32, which he says is his age : he was there at the time, and counted, it with the rest of us :—then Mrs. A. W. Hyde’s age ? and it rapped 31, which she said was her age : she was also there at the time. I then continued to ask it to rap the ages of different persons, (naming them, ) in the room ? and it did so correctly, as they all said. 

I then asked the number of children in the different families

in the neighborhood ? and it told them correctly in the usual way, by rapping. Also, the number of deaths that had taken place in these families? and it told correctly."

The answers above are relevant to all claims that the raps were produced by one of the Fox daughters rapping her knuckles or cracking her joints; for here we have the mysterious rapping effect producing many correct answers that should have been unknown to such daughters. Such claims about knuckle rapping or joint cracking were never credible. The original report by Mrs. Fox mentioned a strong tremulous effect, which innumerable subsequent witnesses of such an effect in the next years would repeat, often reporting thunderous shakings. Such effects cannot be explained by knuckle rapping or joint cracking. 

Duesler ends with this statement:

"I can in no way account for this singular noise, which 1 and others have heard. It is a mystery to me, which I am wholly unable to solve. I am willing to testify under oath that I did not make the noises or rapping which I and others heard; that I do not know of any person who did or could have made them; that I have spent considerable time since then, in order to satisfy myself as to the cause of it; but cannot account for it on any other ground than it is supernatural... I never believed in haunted houses, or heard or saw any thing but what I could account for before ; but this I cannot account for as yet.

April 12, 1848. (Signed, ) WM. DUESLER."

The document then contains numerous accounts by other witnesses, all of them reporting the hearing of mysterious raps. None of the witnesses have any theory to advance of a natural cause of the sounds, and several of them state they can think of no natural explanation. Repeatedly the witnesses state that the answers were consistent, and that when the same question was asked, the same answer was given. The material in the last part of the document is not very relevant. It includes:

(1) One of more statements of a previous occupant of the house (before the Foxes) saying they witnessed something rather spooky, but nothing as dramatic as what the document reports. 

(2) A not-very-relevant statement by quite a few people saying they can vouch for the character of one John C. Bell, who some thought might have had something with a murder occurring in the Fox house before they occupied it. 

All in all, the 1848 booklet entitled "A Report of the Mysterious Noises Heard in the House of Mr. John  D. Fox in Hydesville, Arcadia, Wayne County, Authenticated by the Certificates, and Confirmed by the Statements of the Citizens of That Place and Vicinity by E. E. Lewis (1848), which you can read here, makes a remarkably powerful testimony in favor of a paranormal event.  The testimony of the witnesses is in agreement on the reality of the mysterious raps, and the lack of any natural explanation for them. The testimony is written testimony from the eyewitnesses, written down and sworn to within days (or at most two weeks) after the reported events. I may contrast this account with the Ariel school UFO report in Zimbawe. The event involving child witnesses took place on September 16, 1994, and Harvard professor John Mack showed up to interview witnesses on December 2, 1994. Mack's evidence is pretty good, involving a gap of only 6 weeks. But the evidence published by E. E. Lewis is even better, as he has taken sworn statements within two weeks of the reported incidents; and all of the witnesses quoted by Lewis are adults. 

It was interesting for me to compare the account of Mrs. Margaret Fox in the 1848 document above, and an almost identical account cited in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1920 "History of Spiritualism." The words quoted are almost identical, but in the beginning Doyle's version is slightly different in a few sentences. The differences are all trivial. In a case of a textual diversion like this, we should regard the earlier document as being the more accurate account.  Doyle states this: "The author has in vain attempted to get an original copy of the pamphlet, 'A Report of the Mysterious Noises heard in the House of Mr. John D. Fox,' published at Canandaigua, New York, but he has been presented with a facsimile of the original." It is such a "facsimile" that he is quoting, but it has a few minor divergences from the original. On www.archive.org we have the original pamphlet that Doyle sought in vain to get, the one I have been quoting from in this post, which you can read here; and that should be quoted as the original account, not Doyle's "facsimile." Similarly, the 1870 book "Modern American Spiritualism: a Twenty Years' Record of the Communion Between Earth and the World of Spirits" by Emma Hardinge, which can read here, tells the story of March 31, 1848 in Hydesville with some slight differences from the 1848 booklet by E. E. Lewis I have quoted above. It is that booklet which we should regard as the better source, since it was written very soon after that day in 1848, rather than 22 years later.   The 1855 book here quotes very much of the account quoted above from the 1848 booklet by E. E. Lewis.

In judging the credibility of the account quoted here, we should ask ourselves: did anyone else in some other place or time report a similar phenomenon? In this case we must answer "yes" in a very loud voice. There is modest evidence that such mysterious raps occurred before the phenomenon at Hydesville. For example, a nineteenth century author states being told this by a member of the Shakers religious community:

"It seemed that manifestations of spiritual presence, through rappings, movings of furniture, visions, trance, clairaudience, and clairvoyance, had been common amongst the Shakers since the time of their foundation, some seventy years ago ; but the particular visitation to which the visitors desired to call attention, took place about 1830, when a multitude of spiritual beings, with the most solemn and forcible tokens of their presence, in a variety of phenomenal ways indicated the approach of a great spiritual crisis, in which they designed for a season to withdraw the special gifts enjoyed by the Shakers, and pour them out in mighty floods upon the ' world's people,' who, for the realization of certain divine purposes, faintly shadowed forth, were to be visited by unlooked-for and stupendous tokens of spiritual presence."

An 1824 book ("Memoirs of the Wesley Family") concerns the family of John Wesley, the distinguished clergyman who was founder of the Christian denomination known as Methodism.  In a document entitled "An Account of Noises and Disturbances in my House at Epworth, Lincolnshire, in December and January, 1716" by Samuel Wesley, we hear of a family observing all kinds of mysterious noises and raps.  Below is an excerpt:

"The next night but one we were awaked at about one by the noises, which were so violent, it was in vain to think of sleep while they continued. I rose, and my wife would rise with me. We went into every chamber, and down stairs; and generally as we went into one room, we heard it in that behind us, though all the family had been in bed several hours. When we were going down stairs, and at the  bottom of them, we heard, as Emily had done before, a clashing among the bottles, as if they had been broke all to pieces, and another sound distinct from it, as if a peck of money had been thrown down before us.... It began with knocking in the kitchen underneath, then seemed to be at the bed's feet, then under the bed, at last at the head of it. I went down stairs, and knocked with my stick against the joists of the kitchen. It answered me as often and as loud as I knocked....When we were at prayers, and came to the prayers for King George and the Prince, it would make a great noise over our heads constantly, whence some of the family called it a Jacobite. I have been thrice pushed by an invisible power, once against the corner of my desk in the study, a second time against the door of the matted chamber, a third time against the right side of the frame of  my study door, as I was going in."

Later in the same 1824 book we have a long account by the distinguished John Wesley of mysterious raps heard by quite a few family members, sometimes so loud "it seemed the house shook from top to bottom."   Below is one part:

"We then heard a knocking over our heads; and Mr. Wesley catching up a candle, said, ' Come, Sir, now you shall hear for yourself.' We went up stairs ; he with much hope, and I (to say the truth) with much fear. When we came into the nursery, it was knocking in the next room ; when we were there, it was knocking in the nursery. And there it continued to knock, though we came in, particularly at the head of the bed (which was of wood) in which Miss Hetty and two of her younger sisters lay. Mr. Wesley, observing that they were much affected though asleep, sweating, and trembling exceedingly, was very angry ; and pulling out a pistol, was going to fire at the place from whence the sound came."

The main reason we must answer "yes" to the question of whether  anyone else in some other place or time reported a similar phenomenon is that following the incidents in the spring of 1848 in Hydesville, New York there occurred a huge abundance of similar reports of mysterious raps, from a very large variety of different places in the United States and different countries,  some of which were recorded by distinguished scientists, along with abundant reports of many other types of inexplicable paranormal phenomena such as levitations and tables moving around inexplicably when no one touched them. The January 1, 1853 edition of a periodical publication (The Spiritual Telegraph) describes the spread of the manifestations like this:

"The 'Manifestations' were not long confined to the Fox family. They were soon beard of in different towns of Western New York; then in Western Ohio; then in Providence,  R. I. , and various parts of Now England; and in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St. Louis...and recent letters speak of them as quite extensively witnessed in California ; while late advices chronicle their outbreak in Hull, England."

Most of the times such things happened when the Fox sisters were not present, and many of the times such raps seemed to answer questions as if  some mysterious agency possessed knowledge the Fox sisters could not have had.  A later 1853 edition of the same periodical would report this about one of the spooky phenomena that seemed like an aftermath of the Hydesville events: "There is hardly a house in Paris that the phenomenon has not invaded." To read about that, you can read some additional installments of this "Spookiest Years" series, which will be published at various irregular intervals in the next few months. I may note that there is no question that the  E. E. Lewis  1848 booklet quoted above, which you can read here, is an authentic 1848 publication and the earliest account of the Hydesville events. In researching this topic I have by now read quite a few other documents published in the next few years which quote the Lewis booklet as I have quoted it, citing is as the earliest known account. 

Beyond Hydesville lay a spooky path

The Explanatory Timidity at the Core of the "Ancient Aliens" Series

The History Channel's Ancient Aliens TV series is now in its nineteenth season. Some may think that the show has been very bold from an explanatory standpoint, willing to stick its neck out by engaging in outlandish-sounding speculation. We do see on the show a discussion of history and folklore that boldly attempts to suggest extraterrestrial intervention throughout human history. An example was an episode that discussed the British legend of Merlin, the teacher of King Arthur, reputed to have magic powers. The show suggested that maybe Merlin's suite of magic powers was some extraterrestrial technology Merlin was using.  A similar type of suggestion has occurred a hundred times on the "Ancient Aliens" show, such as a show trying to suggest that the Ark of the Covenant was some machinery built by extraterrestrials, and a show suggesting the Vikings had extraterrestrial help in forging metal, and that Valhalla was an extraterrestrial spaceship.  A standard formula of the show is to discuss some ancient or medieval marvel or legend, and to try to suggest that it arose because of some kind of mysterious interaction humans had with extraterrestrials.  For example, at the 39:35 mark of the Season 5 Ancient Aliens episode "The Monoliths," we hear David Childress saying this:

"And then we have these ancient obelisks that were at one point apparently, all around the world.  It would seem that there was a worldwide system similar to a wireless broadcasting system. These obelisks would broadcast power into the atmosphere,  and remote locations around the world could pick up that power, much like a radio today, or a television set, or a satellite phone, or a computer. This seems to be the system that was set up by extraterrestrials thousands of years ago on this planet, and incredibly, they didn't just do it on planet Earth."  

The episodes that use this formula may have a certain amount of speculative boldness. But the core explanation offered by the "Ancient Aliens" show is actually an example of explanatory timidity. I have been watching this show for many years, and I have noticed no real progression in its core explanation.  For more than a dozen years the show has been pushing the same central explanation for human beings, one that does not work to explain who we are and how we got here.  The core explanation offered by the show is that at one or more points in the past, extraterrestrials altered human DNA. 

We had a presentation of this core explanation at the 38:55 mark in the  "Alien Operations" episode of Season 6, which you can see on Netflix. At the 38:55 mark we had this presentation:

 Klemens Hertel, molecular genetics phD: "What we don't know about humans in terms of evolutionary genetics is based on what we don't know about genetics nowadays. For example, we do not know the genetic basis of the thought process.  We don't know memory. We cannot create any ideas of how changes occurred to evolve the human brain to the functional being that it is right now."

Narrator: Could this incredible map [of the human genome] eventually solve the great mystery of human evolution? Might it help explain why humans, unlike any other living species, can think, reason and have the power of speech, or why they can create art, music, and spend time contemplating the reason for their own existence?

Graham Hancock: "It's not until about 40,000 years ago that you get a very radical change in human behavior.  Our hunting strategies get better.  Our tools and our weapons get better. It's as though some untapped faculty of the human brain and of the human imagination switched on."

Narrator: "Is it possible that the reason humans suddenly evolved from primitive beasts to sentient humans is due to otherworldly intervention? According to ancient astronaut theorists, the answer is a profound yes." 

Gorgio A. Tsoukalos: "One of the basic tenets of the ancient astronaut theory suggests that a long time ago, our DNA was artificially changed by extraterrestrials. And we can see that this is exactly what happened,  because all of a sudden we made a giant intellectual leap, and all of a sudden we became Home sapiens sapiens. "

David Childress: "This was the time when the very first extraterrestrial genetic engineering took place. And in some ways, this was like phase one in the creation of modern humans beings as we know them."

Narrator: "Did extraterrestrials deliberately alter Homo sapiens DNA?"

You can summarize the typical explanations of today's Darwin-venerating biologist like this: "Evolution explains DNA; DNA explains bodies; bodies explain minds."  Every part of that explanation is wrong. Evolution in the form of Darwinian natural selection does not offer a credible explanation of what we see in human DNA: about 20,000 genes that correspond  to more than 20,000 human protein molecules.  Each a repository of fine-tuned information representing a functional sequence of hundreds or thousands of well-arranged amino acid parts, such genes are too hard-to-achieve through an accumulation of random mutations as imagined by Darwinists. DNA does not explain human bodies.  Contrary to the myth so often told by biologists and chemists, DNA is not any specification for how to build a human body or even any of its organs or cell types. DNA does not even specify how to make the main components of cells: organelles and protein complexes. All that DNA specifies is very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up particular proteins. Very many scientists have confessed this reality, and at the post here you can read a list of more than 25 scientists and doctors who tell us that DNA is not a specification, blueprint or program for making a human.  

As for the claim that bodies make minds, it is false. There are very many reasons (discussed in the posts of the blog here) why the human brain fails to be an explanation for the human mind and human memory. Ironically, the molecular geneticist quoted above on the Ancient Aliens show actually pointed us a bit in the right direction by saying this:

"For example, we do not know the genetic basis of the thought process.  We don't know memory. We cannot create any ideas of how changes occurred to evolve the human brain to the functional being that it is right now."

Yes, and neuroscientists do not have any substantive idea of how a brain could cause someone to think or remember.  A very thorough study of the many physical shortfalls of the brain will lead to the idea that the brain cannot be the cause of human mental phenomena such as very fast thinking and instant recall and the lifetime preservation of memories. 

What does the Ancient Alien series offer as a correction to the bungled explanations of typical biologists? You could explain it like this:

Bad old thinking: "Evolution explains DNA; DNA explains bodies; bodies explain minds."

Bad new thinking, "Ancient Aliens" style: "Evolution and gene-tinkering by extraterrestrial visitors explains DNA; DNA explains bodies; bodies explain minds."

What the Ancient Aliens series gives us is just a rather timid tweak on the old nonsensical explanations of 1960's biologists. So instead of the idea that we got the wonders of DNA by only blind unguided processes, we now have the idea that some of human DNA is the result of purposeful interventions by visiting extraterrestrials. That might be a move in the right direction towards a more credible theory of how we got human DNA.  But a huge problem is the show's continual speaking as if some suitable DNA explains how we got humans.  You cannot explain humans by the arising of suitable DNA. DNA does not explain the origin of the human body. And neither DNA nor human bodies explain the origin of the human mind. 

DNA does not explain the origin of any human body because DNA merely specifies very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids constitute a protein.  So we are left with the gigantic unanswered question: how is it that a speck-sized zygote in a newly impregnated woman is able to progress to become the vastly more organized state of hierarchical dynamical organization that is a full-sized human being? There is nothing in DNA and nothing known to biology that explains this progression, which is a miracle of organization a million times more impressive than a hotel-sized sandcastle with 100 ramparts and 20 turrets arising only from the wind and water at the edge of a beach. There is no hypothesis about visiting extraterrestrials that can do anything to explain this marvel of hierarchical organization that is at the center of biology. 

Neither DNA nor anything in the brain explains the wonders of human memory and the wonders of the human mind.  DNA does not explain the arising of any human body, any human organ or any type of human cell, none of which is specified in DNA. So it does not work to claim that we got the marvels of our minds and memories because visiting extraterrestrials did something to alter our DNA. There is nothing in either our DNA or our brains that explains the main wonders of our minds. 

To explain the wonders of the human body and the wonders of the human mind, we need ideas far bolder than the rather timid idea that visiting extraterrestrials tinkered with human DNA. It is very strange that we seem to never get from the Ancient Aliens series the kind of reasoning that would best support its main explanatory claim. Such reasoning would require educating TV viewers about the stratospheric levels of fine-tuning and functional complexity of genes and protein molecules, and the mountainous heights of dynamic hierarchical organization in the human body. TV viewers would get an explanation of why the average gene is something as unlikely to arise by unguided processes as a well-written useful grammatical paragraph of 100 or 200 words. TV viewers would get an explanation of why you cannot credibly explain the origin of such repositories of functional information by imagining an accumulation of random mutations. TV viewers would be educated in the relevant probability mathematics, and fundamental principles such as that the chance of the accidental origin of a functional structure skyrockets in a geometric and exponential fashion whenever there is a simple linear increase in the number of well-arranged parts needed for such a structure. After such an education, the viewers could be told that it is just too improbable that unguided Darwinian evolution could have produced such wonders of functional complexity, and that we must postulate some guided assistance, which could have occurred by extraterrestrial intervention. 

But such a presentation seems to never occur on the Ancient Aliens show. Instead the show seems to spend the vast majority of its time trying to persuade us that various wonderful-seeming things (in history or in legend) are things suggesting extraterrestrial visitors in the past. The results rarely sound convincing, although the show does serve as an entertaining vehicle for educating us about facts and aspects of human history and bygone human culture. 

You may realize there's a kind of explanatory timidity of the Ancient Aliens series when you consider that the main idea advanced by the show is the idea that extraterrestrials engaged in gene splicing long ago; and gene splicing is a technology that humans already possess.  Knowing that intelligence could have arisen on other planets any time in the past billion years, and could easily be many millions of years older than mankind, astronomers have assumed that any extraterrestrial civilization reaching our planet would have god-like powers dwarfing our own. But you're not imagining any god-like power if you imagine visiting extraterrestrials doing some fiddling with human DNA. Humans already know how to fiddle with DNA. 

Part of the problem is the show's title. The show should have had some title that did not chain it to one particular explanation. With a title such as "Human Origins: Contrarian Ideas" the series would have been free to move beyond its "von Daniken straightjacket." But with the title "Ancient Aliens" the TV series is chained to the same old explanation, year after year.  It's rather like how the typical biology professor stays chained to the same old bad explanations decade after decade, parroting a "same old same-old" origins storyline reminding us of the 19-year run of the Ancient Aliens series. Just as the Ancient Aliens series clings religiously to the same old conventions year after year (such as lamely trying to validate speculations by claiming that "ancient astronaut theorists" believe them, and by pronouncing the word "extraterrestrial" in a way emphasizing the "res" syllable), our biologists cling to the same old dubious conventions year after year, such as promulgating the legend that vast wonders of biological organization not yet discovered in the 19th century were explained by someone who died in that century (which is kind of like claiming that smartphones or tablet computers are explained by something in the writings of Plato). 

Imagining gene-splicing ancient extraterrestrial visitors does not really help in origins problems.  Each a very complex functional invention requiring hundreds or thousands of well-arranged parts, the fine-tuned genes and protein molecules in the human body are so mathematically improbable to arise by unguided processes that we should expect none of them to arise by unguided processes in the history of the observable universe, even if there are a billion trillion planets in such a universe.  You don't help that problem by imagining that such miracles of luck occurred on a nearby solar system, helping to give rise to extraterrestrials who came to Earth to tinker with human genes.  That's kind of like "robbing Peter to pay Paul," just moving the "unbelievable 20,000 miracles of luck" from one solar system to another one.  It's kind of like someone answering the objection "a house of 52 well-arranged cards could never arise by someone throwing a deck of cards into the air with his left hand" by saying "I didn't use my left hand to throw the deck of cards into the air; I threw the deck of cards with my right hand."  

For the truth about the bad old thinking discussed above, see my long post "Evolution Does Not Explain DNA, DNA Does Not Explain Bodies, and Bodies Do Not Explain Minds."

Near-Death Experience Testimonies From the AWARE II Study

Near-death experiences are not merely topics in books, but also the object of rigorous scientific research. A 2004 study on near-death experiences was published in the British medical journal The Lancet in 2001. The study interviewed 344 patients who had a close encounter with death, generally through cardiac arrest. 62 of those reported some kind of near-death experience. 15 reported an out-of-body experience, 19 reported moving through a tunnel, 18 reported observation of a celestial landscape, 20 reported meeting with deceased persons, and 35 reported positive emotions. 

In 2014 there was published the long-anticipated results of the AWARE study led by Dr. Sam Parnia. Over 2000 cardiac arrest cases were studied, and there were only 330 who survived to leave the hospital. Of those 330, only 101 met eligibility requirements, agreed to be interviewed, and also agreed to “stage 2” interviews. So the study ended up with a group of only 101 persons who had experienced a close encounter with death, generally because of a cardiac arrest. 

Of this pool of 101 persons, 22% answered “Yes” to the question, “Did you have a feeling of peace or pleasantness?” 13% answered “Yes” to the question, “Did you feel separated from your body?” 13% answered “Yes” to the question, “Were your senses more vivid than usual?” 8% answered “Yes” to the question, “Did you seem to encounter a mystical being or presence, or hear an unidentifiable voice?” 7% answered “Yes” to the question, “Did you seem to enter some other, unearthly world?” Only 3% answered “Yes” to the question, “Did you see deceased or religious spirits?”

These results were corroboration of published accounts of what typically happens in a near-death experience, although the numbers are smaller than those reported in the Lancet study. The AWARE study quoted one respondent who gives an account very much like what has been published in previous books on near-death experiences:

“I have come back from the other side of life. . .God sent (me) back, it was not (my) time—(I) had many things to do. . .(I traveled) through a tunnel toward a very strong light, which didn’t dazzle or hurt (my) eyes. . .there were other people in the tunnel whom (I) did not recognize. When (I) emerged (I) described a very beautiful crystal city. . . there was a river that ran through the middle of the city (with) the most crystal clear waters. There were many people, without faces, who were washing in the waters. . .the people were very beautiful. . . there was the most beautiful singing. . .(and I was) moved to tears. (My) next recollection was looking up at a doctor doing chest compressions”.

The 2014 AWARE study seemed to “hit the jackpot” in regard to one case of a 57-year-old patient who said that he floated out of his body while being revived from his cardiac arrest. The man said that a woman appeared in a high corner of the room, beckoning him to come up to her. He said that despite thinking that was impossible, he found himself up in the high corner of the room, looking down on the medical team trying to revive him. The man described specific details of the revival efforts, including the presence of a bald fat man with a blue hat, a nurse saying, “Dial 444 cardiac arrest,” his blood pressure being taken, a nurse pumping on his chest, a doctor sticking something down his throat, and blood gases and blood sugar levels being taken.

Here is what the scientific paper said in regard to the accuracy of these recollections:

"He accurately described people, sounds, and activities from his resuscitation...His medical records corroborated his accounts and specifically supported his descriptions and the use of an automated external defibrillator (AED). Based on current AED algorithms, this likely corresponded with up to 3 minutes of conscious awareness during CA [cardiac arrest] and CPR."

So here is a man who had a heart attack, and should have been unconscious during the medical efforts to revive him. Instead he accurately describes the details of what happened. Moreover, he claims that he observed these details while in a position above his body, in the high corner of the medical room. What we have here is what seems like a good-as-gold vintage “out of the body experience,” one with details that have been verified. This is an example of what is called a veridical near-death experience – one with observations that were subsequently verified.  Quite a few other examples of this are discussed here. 

This year we had the publication of an AWARE II study that is kind of a sequel to the 2014 AWARE study, but one with a much lower budget, studying only about one fifth as many people as the original AWARE study.  In the AWARE II study 567 people suffering in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) were studied.  We read, "Of 567 IHCA, 53(9.3%) survived, 28 of these (52.8%) completed interviews, and 11(39.3%) reported CA [cardiac arrest] memories/perceptions suggestive of consciousness."  The authors claim that 3 of these 11 reporting memories of experiences during cardiac arrest reported "dream-like" experiences, while twice as many (6) reported what the authors call "transcendent recalled experience of death." 

A "substudy" part of the study made some attempt to get brain wave readings from people who doctors were trying to resuscitate from cardiac arrest. Some graph shows that there were some brain wave readings occurring twenty or thirty or forty minutes after resuscitation efforts began.  But that doesn't tell us anything important. Of course, if you revive someone's heart through resuscitation efforts, that will start to get his brain waves back to normal.

The design of the study was rather strange, and there were two rather odd aspects:

(1) There was a bizarre element in which a tablet computer was clamped above the head of the people who doctors were trying to resuscitate, and the tablet displayed visual and auditory cues such as an auditory mention of three random fruits.  The study reports that one of the people suffering cardiac arrest correctly identified the random auditory mention of three fruits, when asked to name three fruits. But with 28 surviving subject that could have happened with about a 2% likelihood, and doesn't really offer any clues about near-death experiences. 

(2) There is some very strange affair in which we have graphs mixing data from the studied hospital subjects and a larger data set of 126 "community CA survivors" obtained from mail-in reports or from some near-death experience website (www.nderf.com).  Reports obtained from such a way do not have the same evidence quality as interviews you have made from people you know suffered cardiac arrest, shortly after they suffered such cardiac arrest. So the idea of having a graph made from some mixture from between the two data sets seems odd. 

Because they are lower-quality evidence not as good as the accounts from verified cardiac arrests taken soon after their cardiac arrest, I will ignore the quotes taken from 126 self-reports from "community CA survivors," merely noting that they match some of the details mentioned in the paragraphs quoted below. The quotes from these "community CA survivors" are found in the Supplemental Information part of the paper. Below are some interesting quotes in the main text of the study, apparently all accounts taken from verified cardiac arrest survivors soon after their cardiac arrest:

An Out-of-Body Experience

The main body of the Aware II paper has this quote of someone describing an out-of-body experience. 

"I was no longer in my body. I floated without weight or physicality. I was above my body and directly below the ceiling of the intensive therapy room. I observed the scene that was taking place below me ... I, who no longer was the body that had belonged to me just a moment prior, found myself in a position which was … more elevated. It was a place that had nothing to do with any kind of … material experience."

Going Through the Tunnel

The main body of the Aware II paper has this quote of someone describing the extremely common account of going through a tunnel during a near-death experience. 

“I remember entering a … tunnel. The feelings I experienced … were much more intense than [usual]. The first feeling was a feeling of intense peace. It was so calm and serene with an incredible amount of tranquility. All of my … worries, thoughts, fears, and opinions were gone. The intensity of the tranquility was so incredible and overwhelming that there was no fear in what I was experiencing. I had no fear about where I was going and what to expect when I arrived there. Then I felt warmth … Then there was the desire to be home.”

A Being of Light and a Life Review

The main body of the Aware II paper has this quote of someone giving the extremely common account of encountering a being of light during a near-death experience.

“I do remember a being of light … standing near me. It was looming over me like a great tower of strength, yet radiating only warmth and love … I caught glimpses of my life and felt pride, love, joy, and sadness, all pouring into me. Each images was of me, but from the standpoint of a being standing with me or looking on… I was shown the consequences of my life, thousands of people that I'd interacted with and felt what they felt about me, saw their life and how I had impacted them. Next I saw the consequences of my life and the influence of my actions.”

An Account of a Mystical Place

The main body of the Aware II paper has this quote of someone giving the extremely common account of encountering a mystical or heavenly-seeming place during a near-death experience:

"I went directly to a place of light. It was calm and immediate … The place where I was I perceived to be analogous in a way to the exterior of an entry way…There was one major being of love and many other beings of love … There was nothing but love, goodness, truth, and all things to do with love. There was no room for fear or evil or anything but this love. It was more wonderful than any of my best hopes or experiences [in this place]. It was beyond perfect and loving, as we in our human state know it. There are no words to describe it. I was so happy to be there.”

Faced With a Choice About Returning to the Flesh

The main body of the Aware II paper has this quote of someone giving the extremely common account of being faced with a choice about whether to return to earthly life  during a near-death experience:

"I was asked if I wanted to come home (meaning there) or wanted to come back here. I told them that my two sons needed me and I had to go back. I was suddenly in my body again feeling my achy joints flaring in pain. I really don't remember what was going on around me at that point, just that I hurt.”

We read this about the attempts to get people to remember auditory and visual stimuli during cardiac arrest episodes:

"Nonetheless, among 28 survivors, nobody described explicit recall of seeing the independent image on the tablet, nor hearing the auditory stimuli. Regarding implicit learning, nobody identified the displayed visual image (from 10 candidate-images) and 1/28(3.5%) chose the correct three fruits (apple, pear, banana)."

The supplemental information tells us that patients who did not recall hearing any fruits were then then told that the names of three fruits were played, and asked to guess them. One of the 28 gave a correct answer. Given about 1000 possible combinations of three fruits, such a success would have had about a 3% probability.  The result is not very impressive, since it does not prove that perception occurred when the heart was stopped.  

What we have here is nothing terribly new, compared to previous results regarding near-death experiences. It's simply more of what already exists massively: evidence of the reality of such experiences and more evidence that people report very similar observations during such reports.  Considering the 1975 book Life After Life by Raymond Moody, it is amazing how well the generalizations made in that book keep standing up to continued scrutiny and continued tests.  In that book Moody reported an archetype or typical near-death experience that had elements such as a perception of floating out of the body, feelings of peace and joy, a life-review that occurs very quickly or in some altered type of time, a passage through a tunnel, an encounter with a being of light,  seeing deceased relatives (often in some mystical or unearthly realm), and being faced with a choice about whether or not to return to earthly life.  The same elements keep appearing in new accounts of near-death experiences, accounts such as the new accounts quoted above. 

Moreover, a study of pre-1975 literature shows many examples with features like the ones mentioned above, as I report here. The pages here and here describe out-of-body experiences of the nineteenth century. The page here lists a nineteenth century near-death experience involving the "life review" so often reported in near-death experiences.  The study here reports that 40-percent of a sample of survivors of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China (who very probably knew nothing of Moody's book) reported near-death experiences, and that "the great majority of these NDEs were of the cognitive and transcendental types," with the reports only "somewhat different" from those reported in the West. A study of near-death experiences in Iran reported remarkable similarities to Western accounts.  

The CNN article on the AWARE II study has the misleading headline "Near-Death Experiences Tied to Brain Activity After Death, Study Says."  But the text of the article quotes the study's main author and states, "It's correct that the study was not able to match electrical activity with a near death experience in the same patient, Parnia says."  Such a thing goes on all the time nowadays: mainstream press headlines that do not match the facts reported in the story. 

In a 2018 paper some authors seem to sound like they are worried about all the people who are reporting striking experiences after being revived from cardiac arrest.  The authors suggest that it's time to develop a protocol for sedating such people.  It sounds like a "suppress the evidence for the paranormal" program. 

In Neuroscience and Astrobiology, What Was Not Seen Matters As Much As What Was Seen

Another day, another not-really-true story in our "science news" feeds. The story is one appearing in the Daily Mail, claiming that "A gas 'uniquely associated with life' when found on Earth has been discovered in the atmosphere of K2-18 b, which is known as a 'super Earth' because it is bigger than our planet but smaller than Neptune." The actual scientific paper (which you can read here) makes no such claim of a discovery about such a gas (dimethyl sulfide), merely stating "The spectrum also suggests potential signs of dimethyl sulfide (DMS)."  The text of the paper says, "We find marginal evidence for DMS," which is sure not a claim of a discovery.

Dimethyl sulfide is not a very complex molecule, having a formula of six hydrogen atoms, two carbon atoms and a sulfur atom. On Earth dimethyl sulfide is produced only by biological processes, but on some extraterrestrial planet with a greatly different chemistry, it might be produced by nonbiological processes.  There's a big reason why we should not regard the "marginal evidence" for dimethyl sulfide as any indicator of life on K2-18 b: the scientific paper reports that the search for chemicals on the planet produced no sign of water. We read this:

"We do not find significant contributions due to H2O or NH3, but find 95% upper limits of -3.21 for log(XH2O) and -4.46 for log(XNH3 ) in the no-offset case. These upper limits are also consistent with those from the other retrieval cases, as shown in Table 2. The non-detections of both molecules are important considering their strong spectral features and detectability expected in the 0.9- 5.2 µm range (Madhusudhan et al. 2021; Constantinou & Madhusudhan 2022). The non-detection of H2O is at odds with its previous inference using the HST WFC3 spectrum in the 1.1-1.7 µm range (Tsiaras et al. 2019; Benneke et al. 2019a; Madhusudhan et al. 2020)."

It is generally agreed that water is absolutely necessary for any form of life of life to exist. The non-presence of water at K2-18 b is a reason for thinking that life does not exist there. The story on www.yahoo.com very much misinforms us by stating this:

"The ability of a planet to support life depends on its temperature, the presence of carbon and probably liquid water. Observations from JWST seem to suggest that that K2-18b ticks all those boxes."

No, the scientific paper says that water was not detected on  K2-18b, even though a sensitive test was made that should have detected traces as low as 1 part in a billion. 

What we have here is a "what was not found tells us very much" case a little like what happened with the 1976 Viking lander on Mars. The lander had multiple tests to try to gather evidence for life on Mars. In a result that might have been caused either by a deficiency of the experimental equipment or by some unusual chemistry producing an effect mimicking what microbes would have produced, a test called the labeled release experiment seemed to indicate the existence of life. But other instruments on the lander failed to find any evidence of organic matter. Organic matter (matter rich in carbon) is as necessary for living things as water.  

In this case scientists had to pay equal attention to what was observed and what was not observed. The non-observation of organic molecules seemed to say in a loud voice that Mars (or at least the part of Mars tested) was lifeless. Other missions found the tiniest traces of some biologically irrelevant organic molecules, but only in negligible amounts. 

Table 1 of the 2023 paper here lists all of the missions that have searched for organic compounds on Mars, and exactly what they found. We find no mention of any of the molecular components of living things. There's no mention of amino acids (the components used to build proteins), and no mention of any of the chemicals used to make RNA or DNA. The organic compounds listed as being found by the Perseverance mission are merely benzene and naphthalene, neither of which is a component of living things. The largest abundance mentioned is only 300 parts per billion, about 1 part in 3 million. 

The non-observation of amino acids is an extremely important clue telling us that Mars is almost certainly lifeless, and suggesting that any attempt to return Mars rocks or soil to Earth will almost certainly not reveal either life or traces of previous life.  Based on the non-observation of amino acids  on Mars, scientists should have told NASA to cancel its plan to retrieve soil and rock samples from Mars.  But scientists have failed to do that. It's a case of scientists paying insufficient attention to what was not found. 

Something similar occurs in the world of neuroscience. Neuroscientists pay endless attention to tiny little details observed in brains. But they senselessly seem to pay almost no attention to what has not been found in brains. What has not been found in brains tells us just as much (and possibly more) as anything that has been found in brains. 

Billions have been spent on studying brains. Brain tissue has been examined with instruments of ever-increasing power. Below is an interesting graph from a web page of the National Institute of Health. You can see the graph by using the link here. The original graph had a hard-to-read use of a yellow line, so I have changed the colors, and added a phrase identifying which line represents neuroscience funding. 

We see from this graph that there was a great spike of funding for neuroscience, which reached its peak around 2012, when the NIH was paying nearly 500 million dollars a year for neuroscience research. In that year funding for neuroscience exceeded funding for things such as immunology and health sciences.  But despite all of this lavish funding, there are some very important things that neuroscientists have never found:

Not found #1: any trace of learned human knowledge or experience in a piece of microscopically examined brain tissue.  

Within cells below the neck, there is stored information in DNA using a system of representations called the genetic code. Scientists were able to discover such a system in the middle of the 20th century, and were able to start recovering information stored using such a system, which was all low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up particular proteins. If the human brain stored memories, there would be brain areas storing memories that could be studied microscopically to find what a person had learned or experienced. Scientists would then be able to find out some of the things someone (living or dead) had learned or experienced by studying his brain, and would be able to say things such as "I see he studied French" or "I see this dead man once lived in a blue house." No such memories have ever been discovered by microscopically examining brain tissue, even though scientists today have vastly more powerful microscopes than they had in the 1950's.  No one has ever been able to find any trace of what a person learned or experienced by studying such a person's brain tissue through a microscope or any other device. 

Not found #2: any encoding system by which human experiences and learned information could be converted into neural states or synapse states.

If a human brain stored memories, there would need to be some system or systems of encoding by which information you learned in school and experiences you had were stored as brain states.  Because  of the vast variety of things that people can remember (some experiential, some visual, some auditory, some textual, and some musical), it seems there would have to be not one simple system of encoding (like the genetic code) but many very complex systems of encoding allowing all the different things people can experience and learn to be stored as neural states. No such system of encoding can be found anywhere in the brain.  Besides failing to even microscopically find the words "cat" or "dog" or any other word stored in brain tissue, scientists don't even have any credible theory of how text or images or life experiences or concepts could be stored as neural states or synapse states. Given that the genetic code was discovered in the 1950's, and that the "footprints" of some code for converting human learned knowledge and human experience into stored memories would have to be much larger than such a genetic code, I estimate that if such a "neural code" for storing memories existed, it would have been discovered in the 1950's. 

Not found #3: any token repetition in the brain other than the nucleotide base pair tokens capable of representing only low-level chemical information such as sequences of amino acids.

Even when there is an encoding system that has not yet been deciphered or figured out, there will be indications that such an encoding system exists. The indications are repeated tokens. Before Europeans were able to figure out how hieroglyphics worked, they knew that hieroglyphics used some type of encoding system, because they could see how frequently there was a repetition of individual tokens or symbols. Not counting the genetic information stored in neurons and many other types of cells, where we do see an enormous amount of token repetition, there is no sign of any token repetition in the brain. This is a clear sign that the brain does not use any system of encoding to store human memories.  And if there is no such system of encoding, we should not think that brains store memories; for some system of encoding would be required to convert human experiences and human learned knowledge into brain states. 

Not found #4: any physical characteristics in the brain that might enable the kind of instant recall of correct answers that humans show when asked a question. 

Human recall typically occurs instantly. If you ask me "where was Abraham Lincoln shot," I do not say, "Hold on, let me scan through my memories, and after a while I'll tell you." Instead, the instant you have finished answering the question, I answer, "Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C."  If such a thing were to occur by brain activity, the brain would need to have aspects that can explain instant recall.

 Humans manufacture objects that allow instant retrieval of information, things such as books with numbered pages and indexes, encyclopedias with alphabetically sorted entries, and computers that can instantly retrieve information.  We know from such things that humans make what are the kind of things that enable instant retrieval using material objects. They are things such as sorting, addressing and indexing. In a book, page numbers are the addresses, and the indexes are sorted and make use of such page numbers. Computers that connect to relational databases or web pages (as all computers do these days) also use sorting, indexing and addressing. Every web page has an address, and relational databases use sorting, indexing and addressing to allow instant recall.  But in the brain there is no sign whatsoever of any sorting, indexing or addressing.  Neither neurons nor synapses have any addresses, and given the strongly entangled physical structure of neurons, it is impossible for brains to sort their neurons. No sign of any indexing can be found in the brain, and since indexes require sorting and addressing (things not found in the brain), there cannot be any indexing in the brain.  The lack of any addressing, indexing and sorting in the brain is a strong sign that instant recall of correct answers cannot be any activity of the brain. Scientists have no credible tale to tell of how the instant recall of correct answers could occur by brain activity. 

There are quite a few other examples of important things not found in the brain. Collectively such important neural shortfalls suggest that the brain cannot be the storage place of our memories and cannot be the source of our minds. But alas the members of the neuroscientist belief community fail to pay attention to what has not been found by studying brains. They fail to recognize the very important principle that what is not observed can tell you as much (and sometimes more) as what was observed.

Postscript: Since today's post is partially about astrobiology, I should comment on the story in today's Daily Mail with this headline: "Alien' bodies with three-fingered hands, 'unknown DNA and eggs inside' are presented by UFO expert at Mexican congress - with the 'non-humans' found in Peru said to be 1,000 years old."  A few random thoughts:

(1) The objects displayed are about the size of a human baby, and the heads look about one quarter the size of a human head.  A materialist might wonder: how could such tiny-brain creatures be smart enough to master interstellar travel?

(2) From outward appearances, the objects displayed look more like sculptures than corpses. We see no signs of clothing, and may ask: why would extraterrestrials be walking around naked on Earth?

(3) We have a caption claiming "the corpses, recovered from a mine in Cusco, Peru, had a genetic composition 30% removed from that of human beings."  We would expect any extraterrestrial life to have a genetic composition 100% different from humans.  Earthly life uses a system of representations (the genetic code, shown above) that is an arbitrary scheme of representations.  We would never expect life arising on some other planet to have even 20% genetic similarity with humans.  A "genetic composition 30% removed from that of human beings" would suggest some undiscovered earthly species (along the lines of Bigfoot) rather than a species coming from some other planet. 

Wired magazine has an article claiming the Peru objects are a mixture of animal and human material, held together with glue.  On September 14, 2023 NASA  released its much-anticipated report on UFOs and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. It's a mere "going through the motions" affair that reads like about as lazy an effort as could have appeared, as if written by people with no interest in this topic, unwilling to seriously study the topic, who just "phoned it in." 

Almost all of the press coverage on the K2-18 b study discussed above has been of very low quality. Almost all press reports claimed incorrectly that a discovery of dimethyl sulfide had been made, which was not a claim made by the paper. The paper merely claimed "marginal evidence" for dimethyl sulfide. The press articles almost all fail to tell us that no water was detected despite a very sensitive search (something that removes any biological relevance for K2-18 b); and quite a few of them mislead us by trying to insinuate that K2-18 b has water.  Some of the headlines in mainstream publications told the big fat lie that "signs of life" had been found in space. Let this be a lesson: the information presented by the science press very often consists of falsehoods or cherry-picked facts and spin designed to be clickbait or to get you to believe as the author wishes; and it is very common for the science press to fail to inform you of the most important relevant facts and observations relating to some topic being written about. 

Postscript:  In 2024 scientists produced a paper arguing that K2-18 b was not a "Hycaean" planet covered by an ocean, but instead a gas planet like Neptune with no ocean. The paper was "JWST Observations of K2-18b Can Be Explained by a Gas-rich Mini-Neptune with No Habitable Surface" authored by Nicholas F. Wogan and others. The 2025 paper "A Comprehensive Reanalysis of K2-18 b's JWST NIRISS+NIRSpec Transmission Spectrum" reanalyzes the data on K2-18 b and says "we find no statistically significant or reliable evidence for CO2 or DMS [dimethyl sulfide]."