NEWS AND EVENTS

Occasional news and events will be featured on this page.

      On the occasion of the Royal wedding, I had the opportunity to collect data using a random event generator (REG) device and discovered a striking correspondence between changes in the REG and key moments of love and joy on the balcony where William and Kate kissed.  You can view these data below.

In October, 2010, I had the privilege to give an invited address at the Rhine Research Center on THE SACRED PROMISE,  While I was there I was invited to talk about THE SACRED PROMISE on North Carolina (NC) National Public Radio (NPR)  The host titled the show "Spooky Science" and said that Dr. Schwartz "also believes in ghostly spirits and has set out to prove their existence with science."   The interview is actually quite informative.  If you are interested in listening to it (or downloading it), you can reach it from the link below.

A historic paper on mediumship research was published in 2011 by Dr. Emily Kelly and Dianne Archangel from the University of Virginia in the peer reviewed Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.  This may be the first research paper on this topic published in a mainstream biomedical journal.  You can read a pdf copy of this landmark paper by clicking the button below.

A historic paper on the ability of college students to sense future events will be published in 2011 by Dr. Daryl J. Bem, an emeritus professor from Cornell University, in the peer reviewed Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Because this is a distinguished scientific journal, and Dr. Bem is a distinguished social psychologist / behavioral scientist, the article is creating quite a stir. 

In a story published in the New York Times on January 5, 2011 titled "Journal's paper on ESP expected to prompt outrage" the reporter Benedict Carey writes "The decision may delight believers in so-called paranormal events, but it is already mortifying scientists."   This is a curious sentence because it implies (1) that Dr. Bem is not a scientist, he is a "believer," and (2) "all" scientists will be "mortified" by the experiments and their implications (i.e. the reporter chose not to qualify the word "scientists").  Does this suggest a bias on the part of the reporter?

Carey quotes the long standing super-skeptic Dr. Ray Hyman, an emertus professior of psychology at the University of Oregon as saying "It's craziness, pure craziness.  I can't believe a major journal is allowing this work in."   This clearly extreme comment is curious because Dr. Hyman supposedly understands what careful peer-review means, and that the procedures Dr. Bem employed in his studies are all slight (but important) modifications of well established, mainstream procedures in experimental psychology.  I will discuss this  debate further in the "Response to Critics" page in the context of what "true skepticism" is.

You can read Dr. Bem's article, as well as the NYT "outrage" story by clicking the buttons below.