I have a couple friends who have long differed sharply with me for my “materialist”, “empiricist” views. I do not know if they have caught wind of this story, but I would like to be prepared if and when they do.
It sure sounds hard to explain as described, but I would count myself among those listeners the NPR host described as having the “there’s just no way” reaction. I have faith that most people here will feel similarly; and more importantly I’m hoping someone will be able to explain it away.
This psychiatrist is a poor excuse for a scientist. All he’s doing is collecting anecdotes with no matter of control over the accuracy as evidenced by the example used in this interview:
But in fact, there are loads of possibilities. One is simple chance: if you look long enough for something inexplicable, you will find it eventually. Interview enough children, and you’ll find a story that matches up with something. Granted, the match is very good, but that doesn’t make it impossible; you’ll have to make a call whether you consider the result to be more likely than the transmigration of nonphysical souls. And sometimes one just gets lucky!
Additionally, you have to assess how much to trust the information you’re getting. It may be unlikely, but certainly not impossible that the father researched all that stuff beforehand and just planted it in his son’s mind. Or maybe there is some obscure TV documentary which mentions the case that happened to be playing one day. Maybe a prankster relative just wanted to have some fun with the family, and now the whole thing’s blown up doesn’t want to come forward. And so on.
Granted, all alternative explanations I can think of are very unlikely. But that’s a far cry from impossible. Asserting that any other explanation is impossible is indicative of severe bias. And given the prima facie reason we have for believing in reincarnation—which is none, while we can be pretty certain that coincidences, cheating, or honest mistakes occur—, any of these provides a valid alternative.
Plus, there’s always the possibility that it’s something I haven’t thought of. We all like to think of ourselves as smart, but when we can’t find an explanation for something, that doesn’t in any way entail that none exists; it means just that we can’t think of one. People are, as a rule, quick to confuse those two things. Just think about how often you have been absolutely flabbergasted by a stage magician’s illusion, only to then, upon being told how it works, smack your forehead. Now consider how this would play out if you hadn’t known that there’s a trick involved (either because not everybody admits their trickery upfront, or because there actually isn’t anybody deliberately playing a trick)—there’s a good chance that you’d leave the experience with the near-certainty that there just can’t be an explanation, when in reality, there is—you just haven’t thought of it.
The only detail that prevents me from dismissing this claim out of hand is the supposed fact that the young boy provided specific details about his nightmarish crash. Without those specific details, the story could be easily dismissed as overactive imagination, perhaps from a WWII film that he saw on TV.
Naturally, what needs to be addressed is just how the boy provided that information – was it something he came up with naturally, or did Mr. Scientist “guide” him towards those specifics? And in either case, the whole story may be one gigantic coincidence; when you consider how many American pilots were lost in the Japanese Theater, it’s no surprise, statistically speaking, that one of them bore a name as common as “Jack Larsen” – heck, the name itself may have come from a TV documentary, but that’s a major stretch.
From a spiritualist perspective, this story is quite compelling. But from a scientific viewpoint, it’s a failure. Mr. Scientist clearly wants this story to be true, and the fact that he did not address any alternate possibilities means that his methodology is inherently suspect. So I would invoke Occam’s Razor and conclude that most likely, the specific identifying details as given are most likely false (perhaps manipulated, perhaps merely mistaken) – and even if that’s not the case, the story draws from too large a data pool for mere **coincidence **to be ruled out. Think your friends will buy that?
As described in one of the links referred to earlier the actual steps allow for a lot of inaccuracy:
Boy has nightmares about crashing planes.
Boy is sent to “therapist” who promotes reincarnation ideas.
With the “help” of the therapist boy starts being more detailed.
Father spends years looking for information to prove/disprove reincarnation hypothesis.
“Scientist” collects anecdote along with boatloads of similarly poorly controllable anecdotes and considers them a good starting point for pure woo use of words like Quantum.
I have no doubt that this is bogus simehow, and I too roll my eyes at the so-called scientist’s dismissal of materialism. And the museum thing does help. I do wish there was something more solid to debunk this though.
Part of what bothers me is that the fact that I in no way give any credence to the possibility that this actually represents reincarnation forces me to confront the accusations my friends level, namely that my beliefs are just as faith-based as theirs on some level. Normally that accusation is easily dismissed; but in this case there is some truth to it.
I imagine a lot of parent intervention connecting of dots and filling in details that were never there to begin with. Like the basic kids game telephone where the details get chaned with each telling.
The dad asks the kid the name of the boat and the kid says “no-no”, dad researches boat names and finds Natoma, decides the kid must have meant Natoma, tells people the kid said Natoma.
Or kid says his pilot friends name was Jack, dad finds a story of a crashed pilot, pilot has a mate named Jack Larsen, kid must have meant Jack Larsen, tells people the kid said Jack Larsen.
People twist details all the time in retelling what other people said intentionally or unintentionally. Often to make the story better or fit what they imagine the story to be.
"At 18 months old, his father, Bruce Leininger, took James to the Kavanaugh Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas, where the toddler remained transfixed by World War II aircraft. "
I can rebut this right there. No 18-month-old can be the father of a toddler.
The story about the boy who, allegedly, spontaneously began having memories of being a fighter pilot in World War II is actually the subject of this book:
The book is written by his parents. So if you wanted to debunk this particular case study, you could do so by reading that book and trying to find flaws with it. One obvious flaw, is the very fact that there is a book. This implies a financial motive.
In any event, I have read this book and there are a few particularly interesting tidbits that were not mentioned in the linked NPR interview. I recall that the boy’s parents actually arranged to have the boy attend a reunion of his fellow shipmates, and the boy went. In the book, there are photographs with the boy, sitting alongside 80 year old men, who must have been absolutely dumbfounded by the entire affair. Also, the boy’s parents contacted the dead pilot’s sister, and the boy told her a few things that, apparently, only the deceased man would have known. One detail that I recall had something to do with a painting that was kept in the attic of their old home (the home of the deceased WWII pilot). I think the boy also called her by a name that only the deceased pilot would have called her.
Anyway, some of the posters above have faulted this scientist for his method, but, ultimately, the nature of this sort of study does not lend itself to controlled experiments. Even if you had an orphanage at your disposal, full of young kids you could question about their “previous lives,” just by questioning them, you would be influencing them to give a a response, which they could make up on the spot. I cannot imagine a way to test these sort of cases that would satisfy the rigors of the scientific method, so it is what it is: interesting anecdotes.
So, here, it seems that we just have these unfalsifiable case studies, which are in the vein of the scientist’s own predecessor at the University of Virginia, Ian Stevenson, who famously “confirmed” about 2,500 of these cases (he “confirmed” them by actually following the leads that the children provided, via details of their “former life,” and matching them up with actual records or witness testimony; such work is, admittedly, a post hoc analysis).
I think these cases are interesting, but they can really only be taken at face value. What do they prove? Nothing. And the scientist in this interview even admits as much.
“TUCKER: Well, I don’t know that I’m necessarily trying to prove anything, but I’m trying to sort of find out for myself what seems to be going on here.”
Well, good for you: at least you’re open to the idea that you can be blinded by your preconceptions.
A good scientist is skeptical, and doesn’t jump to conclusions. There’s an awful lot of good reasons to be skeptical of supernatural claims, the main one being that none have ever been scientifically validated (as valid observations of things that are inexplicable by science – which doesn’t necessarily make them supernatural). Of course, by law of averages, there will be some studies that show spooky correlations, but if you take them en toto it’s noise.
But just because there’s good reason to be a physicalist, or materialist, or logical positivist, or whatever brand I prefer, that doesn’t mean that I’m 100% certain that there is no supernatural, or is nothing that people would call supernatural that today’s science can’t explain.
So maybe there’s something to this. Of course, as a skeptic, I’d want to see a lot more evidence, and not just anecdotal evidence that is subject to wishful thinking and a lot of other misleading forces.
The trickiest aspect is the question of whether there are things that exist but the process of trying to study them objectively causes them not to appear. Yup, that’s a bit of a stumper to us folks who prefer objective studies. In any case, I remain skeptical until someone shows me convincing evidence, which takes a lot more than a few anecdotes.
There certainly is a lot of stuff that people used to believe that few people believe today. In the future, they’ll be able to say that about some of the stuff we think we know now. (Tomorrow’s superstitions were yesterday’s knowledge.)
I would not only want to see more evidence that this has happened, I would want some kind of explanation for how this could have happened. There is just so much overwhelming proof that our thoughts, our personalities, and our memories are physically created, and reside, in our brains. Think of how much people’s personalities change from head injuries; now think about a plane crash! So someone’s neurons get copied into the brain of a little kid?
The only remotely comceivable way for this to happen IMO is as a practical joke played by some very advanced aliens (thinking of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote about advanced tech and magic)
At this point, hearing about the book, my supposition is that the whole thing is a hoax on the part of the boy’s parents.
Jack Larsen played cub reporter Jimmy Olsen in the hugely popular Adventures Of Superman TV show. Debuted in 1952, cancelled in 1958 and reruns for many, many years.
Funny. But gee, I wonder if that museum had exhibits and videos about crashing fighter planes that an 18-month-old might have seen? Add some “help” from the therapist and parents and voila, some very specific “memories” emerge.
Marked skepticism about stories like this is based on reality, including the many many such stories that have been debunked by solid evidence and reasoning.
It’s a favorite meme among the woo crowd - “your science is just a religion har har har”, but using one’s critical faculties and seeking rational explanations to phenomena is the antithesis of religion.
I’m an authority on this. I got an A- in my freshman tutorial based on the required paper “Is A Scientist Religious”?*
*I would have gotten an A except the professor (of chemistry) was a devout Christian. Then again, maybe not. It wasn’t that good a paper.
I had seen the story on the kid who thought he was a corsair pilot that was shot down. I assumed he was exposed to various elements of WW-II trivia and it turns out he was. Of course, the TV version had him completely isolated from the world and all of a sudden he’s “remembering” stuff.
What we need is a set of journals with what the child actually said, recorded with date, to compare with what the parent’s “research” uncovered. I have no doubt that the “unknowable facts” were far more generic when first uttered, and much of the corroborative detail has been added to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative