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Reincarnation research is a field of inquiry that records and analyzes the discourse of people who claim to have had suggest that claims of Reincarnation originate from Selective Thinking , Confabulation , and the psychological phenomenon of False Memories . RESEARCH ON EARLY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND BIRTHMARKS Young children sometimes claim to remember a previous life, and will talk about the events and the people they knew in that life. Typically, the child will begin talking about these memories at around three years of age, and will lose these memories at around age seven.Tucker, 2005 In some cases these memories appear to be corroborated, since the child's memories are shown to match closely with actual people and events. If scientists can interview these children ''before'' contact is made with persons familiar with the supposed previous family, then an objective comparison can be made between the statements made by the child and the actual features of the previous life.Tucker, 2005 University of Virginia Several researchers are examining cases of early childhood past life memories and birthmarks at the University Of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies. Two of the best known researchers at Virginia are the psychiatrists Dr. Jim Tucker and Professor Ian Stevenson Roach, 2005 and between them they have published many books and dozens of research papers in peer-reviewed journals.University of Virginia, Division of Perceptual Studies, Books and Articles by Division Staff The most detailed collections of personal reports in favor of reincarnation have been published by Professor Ian Stevenson, in books such as '' Twenty Cases Suggestive Of Reincarnation ''. In 1977, the ''Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases'' devoted most of one issue to Stevenson's work and the editor of the journal described Stevenson as "a methodical, careful, even cautious investigator."Shroder, Tom. Ian Stevenson; Sought To Document Memories Of Past Lives in Children ''The Washington Post'', 11 February 2007. Stevenson has spent over 40 years devoted to the study of children who have spoken about past lives. In each case, Stevenson methodically documents the child's statements. Then, he identifies the Deceased person the child allegedly identifies with, and verifies the facts of the deceased person's life that match the child's memory. Cadoret, Remi. Book Review: European Cases of the Reincarnation Type ''The American Journal of Psychiatry'', April 2005.Rockley, Richard. Book Review: Children who remember previous lives In a fairly typical case, a boy in Beirut spoke of being a 25-year-old mechanic, thrown to his death from a speeding car on a beach road. According to multiple witnesses, the boy provided the name of the driver, the exact location of the crash, the names of the mechanic's sisters and parents and cousins, and the people he went hunting with -- all of which turned out to match the life of a man who had died several years before the boy was born, and who had no apparent connection to the boy's family. Another case involved an Indian boy, Gopal, who at the age of three started talking about his previous life in the city of Mathura, 160 miles from his home in Delhi. He claimed that he had owned a medical company called Sukh Shancharak, lived in a large house with many servants, and that his brother had shot him after a quarrel. Subsequent investigations revealed that one of the owners of Sukh Shancharak had shot his brother some eight years before Gopal's birth. The deceased man was named Shaktipal Shara. Gopal was subsequently invited to Mathura by Shaktipal's family, where the young child recognised various people and places known to Shaktipal. The family was particularly impressed by Gopal's mention of Shaktipal's attempts to borrow money, and how this had led to the shooting — information that was known only to the family. Professor Ian Stevenson ''The Telegraph'', 12 February 2007. In interviewing witnesses and reviewing documents, Professor Stevenson searched for alternate ways to account for the testimony: that the child came upon the information in some normal way, that the witnesses were engaged in fraud or self-delusion, that the correlations were the result of coincidence or misunderstanding. But in scores of cases, Stevenson concluded that no normal explanation sufficed. Stevenson believes that his meticulous methods rule out all possible "normal" explanations for the child’s memories. However, it should be noted that a significant proportion of the University Of Virginia 's reported cases of reincarnation originate in Eastern societies, where dominant Religions often permit the concept of reincarnation. In India - where this phenomenon is quite common - if a child from a poor family claims to be the reincarnated person from a rich family, this can lead to the child to be adopted by that family, a motive that has led to children making fraudulent reincarnation claims.James Randi Educational Foundation, An Interesting Account from India As Stevenson himself said about the 2500 cases of children, who appeared to remember past lives, which he and his associates investigated:
Professor Stevenson has also matched Birthmarks and Birth Defects to wounds and Scar s on the deceased, verified by Medical Records such as Autopsy Photograph s.Stevenson, Ian. (1997). ''Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects'' Stevenson's research into birthmarks and congenital defects has particular importance for the demonstration of reincarnation, since it furnishes objective and graphic proof of reincarnation, superior to the (often fragmentary) memories and reports of the children and adults questioned, which even if verified afterwards probably cannot be assigned the same value in scientific terms.Stevenson, Ian. (1993). "Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons", ''Journal of Scientific Exploration'', 7:403-410. Many of the birthmarks are not just small discolourations. They are "often unusual in shape or size and are often puckered or raised rather than simply being flat. Some can be quite dramatic and unusual in appearance."Tucker, 2005, p.10 Dense with statistical data, Professor Stevenson's research avoided any theoretical speculation on Eastern philosophical theories about the transmigration of the soul.Pressly, Linda. Many happy returns ''BBC News'', 15 December 2004. In fact, "soul" was a word Stevenson was always keen to avoid. He preferred the term "personality", and was always careful to state that the mountain of evidence accumulated in his research "permitted", rather than compelled, a belief in reincarnation. Professor Ian Stevenson ''The Telegraph'', 12 February 2007. RESEARCH BASED ON HYPNOTIC REGRESSION See Also: Past life regression The second major field of research requires the direct intervention of the researcher, who places subjects in a hypnotic trance in order to elicit memories of past lives. The advantage of this procedure is that almost anyone can provide testimony about reincarnation, not just the rare children who speak of past lives. The disadvantages of the procedure are that, first, the testimony of subjects is immediately suspect, because hypnosis is known to sometimes produce False Memories , and second, that the events described are invariably so long ago, so patchily described, and so poorly documented in the historical record that no objective comparison can be made between the events described and actual events. Nevertheless, because so many hypnotic subjects spontaneously remember past lives, some psychologists have become convinced of the legitmacy of the phenomenon.Fiore, Edith. (1991). ''You Have Been Here Before: A Psychologist Looks at Past Lives'' Peter Ramster Peter Ramster, a psychotherapist, has used trance and hypnosis that induced a number of patients to make claims about past lives. Four of these patients, housewives who had never left Australia and who, under trance, had come up with all sorts of details, and names of people and places, were taken to Western Europe an countries where they said they had been living in the 18th and 19th century. Prior to their arrival, in 1983, Ramster and local historians searched archives, looking for and finding the names given in Australia. Similarly, villages and hamlets mentioned under hypnosis were found on old Map s. Some of these settlements no longer existed, yet some names given turned out to be correct. A lawyer presents the case for the afterlife The most suggestive case of all, according to Ramster, is Gwen McDonald who said she was Rose Duncan in . Ramster's research has almost completely been ignored by the scientific community, and scientists such as Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker have some concerns about Past Life Regression .University of Virginia, Division of Perceptual Studies, Hypnotic Regression to Previous Lives SKEPTICAL REACTIONS The most obvious objection to reincarnation is that there is no evidence of a physical process by which a personality could survive death and travel to another body,Beyerstein, Barry. Review of Reincarnation: A Critical Examination ''Skeptical Inquirer'', Jan/Feb 1999. and researchers such as Professor Stevenson recognize this limitation. Another fundamental objection is that most people simply do not remember previous lives, although it could be argued that only some, but not all, people reincarnate. Certainly the vast majority of cases investigated at the University Of Virginia involved people who had met some sort of violent or untimely death.Tucker, 2005, p.214 Cadoret, Remi. Book Review: European Cases of the Reincarnation Type ''The American Journal of Psychiatry'', April 2005. Skeptics suggest that claims of reincarnation originate from .Almeder, Robert. A Critique of Arguments Offered Against Reincarnation ''Journal of Scientific Exploration'', 11(4). The fallibility of memory See Also: False memory It is common experience that Human Memory may be unreliable to some degree, whether by failing to remember at all or by remembering incorrectly. Confabulated evidence presented by children in police cases such as the Kern County Child Abuse Scare and McMartin Preschool Trial could cast doubt on the reliability of claims children might make with regards to reincarnation. False memories are not an issue in reincarnation research where birthmarks and birth defects are matched to wounds and scars on the deceased, verified by medical records such as autopsy photographs. Dr. Carl Sagan : ''See also: Carl Sagan '' Carl Sagan was a noted scientist, teacher and skeptic.Morrison, David. Carl Sagan’s Life and Legacy as Scientist, Teacher, and Skeptic , ''Skeptical Inquirer'', Jan/Feb 2007. Sagan was a founding member of a group that set out to debunk unscientific claims, and wrote the book '' The Demon-Haunted World '' in which he said that there were several areas in parapsychology which deserved serious study:
This is not to say that Carl Sagan believed in reincarnation, but he believed that reincarnation research should be taken more seriously.Tucker, 2005, p.186 because to dismiss such research out of hand would be unscientific. SEE ALSO
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