Professor Gary Schwartz is Director of the Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science, University of Arizona.

Gary,

Many thanks for this excellent report.

This begs the question, why has Prof. Archie Roy kept quiet about the revolutionary mediumship of Rita Goold that he witnessed in 1983? I introduced him to the Rita Goold experiment. This type of experiment cannot be faked. You would know in two seconds flat if you were speaking to and touching your "dead" mother or a person that close to you.

He was unable to complete his experiments but I can't see why he should clam up completely because as many as six recently deceased people fully materialised every time Rita gave a demonstration. Every demonstration was free of charge. Rita's only motive was to bring enlightenment to mankind. To give proof to grieving people that losing a loved one is only a temporary tragedy.

As this experiment is only an extension to the proof that we already have - the published results of experiments with materialisation mediums carried out by Crookes, Richet, Schrenck-Notzing, Hamilton and many others - surely he could have reported what I have been doing since 1983, or at least backed me to some extent.

It's all on my website: the crushing proof of survival carried out by the journalist Alan Cleaver when he made sure he reunited the "dead" Helen Duncan with her daughter on Earth. This happened before Archie Roy and his SPR team witnessed the Rita Goold experiment. The SPR team met families who have been physically reunited with their "dead" children on scores of repeatable experiments. Why have these "experts" left it to me to tell people all over the world about this proof of survival? Why did the President of the Society for Psychical Research - Prof. Bernard Carr - officially censor my report of the Rita Goold experiment?

A Rational Scientific Explanation for so-called Psychic Phenomena

This paper was submitted to be presented at the 23rd International Conference of the Society for Psychical Research in 1999. Prof. Carr and his committee, that included Dr. Susan Blackmore, also officially censored Ronald Pearson's scientific paper that he presented for the same conference. His mathematical theory gave the crushing scientific back up to these experiments where "dead" people fully materialise proving they have survived the death of their physical bodies. We have discovered people in the invisible part of the universe and all the public are allowed access to are the thoughts of Dr. Richard Wiseman and a small army of "experts" who are dedicated to blocking the proof of survival after death.

Sorry Gary, I just don't share your enthusiasm for the hierarchy of the SPR. They allow evidence of survival after death to be published in their magazines but the proof of survival is always censored - repeatable experiments backed up with a mathematical theory. This is much too close to the truth for comfort. Keep the masses in ignorance is the name of the game, the same as it has always been for thousands of years.

Michael Roll

Scientific Proof - Letter from Prof. Archie Roy to Michael Roll (May 9, 1983)

Recording the proof of survival - Letter from Prof. Archie Roy to Michael Roll (August 22, 1983)

A First-Hand Account of Materialisation Mediumship - Michael Roll describes an experiment he attended with the materialisation medium Rita Goold. This account was written in 1983, but was not accepted for publication until 1992.

The Chemist Sir William Crookes Proved Survival With Repeatable Experiments Under Laboratory Conditions - by Michael Roll

A Rational Scientific Explanation for So-called Psychic Phenomena - by Michael Roll

"The Afterlife Experiments" - by Gary Schwartz (2003)

The Afterlife Experiments - Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture, given by Prof. Gary Schwartz (April 24, 2003)

Observations from Gary Schwartz concerning his recent trip to London (April 30, 2003)

My trip to London was "eye opening" (to say the least). I had the great fortune to stay with Monty Keen and his wonderful wife Veronica. Besides receiving the best of British hospitality (and gaining a few pounds thanks to Veronica's breakfasts and lunches!), I had the opportunity to have detailed conversations with Monty and Veronica, plus others of significance to survival research.

Monty introduced me to historical research on mediumship that I was not aware of - including yet to-be-published research that has been kept secret for more than half a century. Monty Keen and Archie Roy have a scholarly manuscript plus a lay book in preparation that will add additional fuel to the survival fire (to put it mildly).

Archie Roy has promised to email me an address he his giving that includes important historical information on mediumship. I hope Archie agrees to share this address with everyone in the testingmediumship group. I found especially important his description of the LETHE Cross-Correspondence Experiments that convincingly speak to "intelligence" in the providing of information to mediums.

Monty and I spoke at some length about the existing data for intelligent design in mediumship experiments as well as precognitive experiments. Monty hopes to hold a conference / study day on this in the future.

I had meaningful conversations with Monty Keen, Archie Roy, Tricia Robertson, and Rupert Sheldrake concerning the scoring of information obtained by mediums. Monty and I have come up with a "WOWNESS" scale (a bit of humor - I suggested to Monty that W.O.W. might stand for "Worthy of wonder") that has the potential to make it possible to assess the subjective meaningfulness of specific pieces of mediumship information that can be independently scored by judges following Peter Hayes' proposal (which I find especially useful). Monty and I will share our evolving proposal soon.

Monty and I also spoke at length about "constellations" of information in mediumship research and how to weigh it mathematically (Archie, Tricia and I also spoke about this). Some relatively straightforward scoring procedures can be constructed.

I spoke at length with Rupert Sheldrake about future designs that might test implicit assumptions in mediumship. I proposed one design, Rupert proposed another - we combined the two designs and realized that together they took the work a meaningful step further.

Rupert reminded me that the evolution of the "double-deceased" paradigm speaks strongly for the survival hypothesis, and that I should write a paper describing the context in which the design was realized - since the context itself turns out to be curiously consistent with survival and not so-called superpsi.

Archie and Tricia's latest double-blind mediumship research is especially important. I will speak with Peter about replicating and extending their research in the US. However, some aspects of their procedure would never be approved by University IRB committees!

My Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture was very well received. I decided to focus it on current research with the late Susy Smith. I did this partly to honor Susy and also to save the more methodological issues for the SPR Study Day.

The SPR "Study Day" was VERY REVEALING. Archie spoke about the legal criteria of BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT. I spoke about the distinction between BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT and BEYOND ANY DOUBT. I pointed out, for example, the BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT is appropriate for making a judgement of guilt or innocence in terms of jail, but in the case of the sentence of the death penalty (the ultimate penalty), in order to remove the possibility of mistaken executions (which happen too often), that the criteria of BEYOND ANY DOUBT be required for the sentence to be applied.

Using this REASONABLE vs ANY distinction, how does the 100 plus years of mediumship research, including the Schwartz and Robertson / Roy studies, fair concerning the survival hypothesis?

Cirian O'Keefe (a skeptic who worked with Richard Wiseman - O'Keefe presented at the Study Day), told me in private that he was of the conviction that the evidence for survival was BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT, but not BEYOND ANY DOUBT - i.e., that for conservative science to accept the hypothesis, the evidence must be 100% convincing.

Dr. Donald West, a three-time past president of the SPR, also spoke for the skeptics. He said that he agreed that the present evidence rules out fraud and cold reading beyond a reasonable doubt, for example, but he wanted to see experiments that TOTALLY REMOVED ANY POSSIBILITY FOR FRAUD.

I realized that the bar of doubt is different for different individuals. Some of us will draw conclusions based upon the BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT, while others will draw conclusions only based upon BEYOND ANY DOUBT.

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Best wishes, Gary

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