The Shepherd - Issue 3 - Page 7
posted by Destiny Helix at
7:37 PM
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
URBAN LEGEND: 21 Grams
All students of the paranormal take notice!
The other day Jake and I were talking about life, death, God, the paranormal, etc. As you may have gathered from our comics, we are interested in the supernatural. We both enjoy and are passionate about learning and investigating things generally recognized as unreal or paranormal. Jake is a bit more optimistic and trusting. I am much more skeptical.
That's not to say I don't believe. I certainly WANT to. It's just that from a scientific standpoint, belief is irrelevant. It's the same thing Indiana Jones said about archaeology: it's a search for fact, not truth. You have to know the difference. The truth may very well be that ghosts exist. The fact is, no one has ever proven it. It's also important to recognize the difference between evidence and proof: evidence is a piece of scientifically valid material or information, whereas proof is a cumulative body of evidence, compelling enough that it eliminates any reasonable doubt. I've seen a lot of ghost hunter shows where they collect one piece of evidence and "Oh, we've got a ghost! Let's go home!". The fact remains that all the evidence those guys ever collected is, cumulatively, still not compelling enough to draw a reasonably irrefutable conclusion. You've also got to think of what everyone else will say to refute your evidence and if your evidence isn't able to stand up to said scrutiny, it all falls apart. That's why it's YOUR responsibility to evaluate the validity of your own evidence fairly. You need to be your own greatest skeptic, if you are to have any credibility. Otherwise, you're just going to embarrass yourself and the entire paranormal community.
Anyway, Jake brought up an experiment I'd heard of many times before, but only from other people. That a human body immediately loses 21 grams upon death and that this supposedly could only be explained by the departure of the soul. I had no idea where it came from, but the myth (as I heard it) says a university had conducted it a few years ago. I decided to look into it. And I'm glad I did. If something sounds too good to be true...
So, it turns out the experiment was done in 1907 by a Dr. Duncan MacDougall of New York and in the 101 years since, it has never been successfully repeated or verified. The experiment was not conducted by a university, but by a physician in private practice using his own patients. In the experiment, patients near death were placed on a scale and a sudden drop in mass was recorded upon their deaths, but results were only recorded from 2/3 of the test subjects and only drew from a test population of SIX people to begin with. The other results were discarded because, in one case: "unfortunately our scales were not finely adjusted and there was a good deal of interference from people opposed to our work...". Huh? Does that mean the family of the test subject were objecting? Unfortunately, he doesn't elaborate. Even the successful results were greatly varied in weight as well as the speed with which the weight was lost. The doctor expressed that he had difficulty in determining the exact moment of death in some cases. In addition, he weighed dogs before and after death to verify that they, in fact, had no souls. He writes that he was unable to find dogs dying of natural causes, and it has been alleged that he poisoned the dogs himself. Dr. MacDougall also admitted in his journal the tests would have to be run many times more to achieve a scientifically reliable population sample, but he never ran the tests again before dying 13 years later.
But other scientists attempted to recreate the experiment in 1915 using mice and recorded similar mass loss to the previous human test, until the experiment was repeated in glass tubes, at which time the mass loss stopped. They concluded the very slight loss of mass to be the result of surface moisture evaporating off the skin, which was subsequently prevent by the glass.
So, even ignoring the potential ethical breaches, Dr. MacDougall's experiments were never run with a controlled enough environment to definitely rule out the evaporation of surface moisture or mechanical malfunction, or with a large enough population sample to provide a statistically reliable result. Not only were they never successfully repeated or verified but, were actually refuted by most reliable scientific bodies of the day.
Does the soul have mass? Dunno, but nobody's proved it yet. Or apparently tried since 1907, and the only evidence is shaky at best. But for that matter, if the soul is energy, it probably wouldn't have a measurable mass anyway. Certainly not 21 grams of it. Light only has mass because if its dual particle/wave nature.
So if you're gonna use science to argue the existence of the soul, (or for that matter, anything) make sure it's not BAD science. If you really wanna investigate the paranormal and educate people about it like we do, you need to read up on the sources of your information. The better information sounds, the less likely it is to be true. If you don't follow up on this stuff, you're just going to spread disinformation, hurt your own cause, and embarrass yourself and people who share your passion in the unknown. Verify everything you hear before you pass it on, no matter who it comes from.
The "X-files" tagline works on a lot of levels when it comes to the supernatural: TRUST NO ONE.
SOURCES (Without which, I would hope you believe none of this.)
Wikipedia's entry on Dr. MacDougall
Snopes article (including MacDougall's journal excerpts)
American Medicine original article from April 1907
Article on the mouse experiments
The other day Jake and I were talking about life, death, God, the paranormal, etc. As you may have gathered from our comics, we are interested in the supernatural. We both enjoy and are passionate about learning and investigating things generally recognized as unreal or paranormal. Jake is a bit more optimistic and trusting. I am much more skeptical.
That's not to say I don't believe. I certainly WANT to. It's just that from a scientific standpoint, belief is irrelevant. It's the same thing Indiana Jones said about archaeology: it's a search for fact, not truth. You have to know the difference. The truth may very well be that ghosts exist. The fact is, no one has ever proven it. It's also important to recognize the difference between evidence and proof: evidence is a piece of scientifically valid material or information, whereas proof is a cumulative body of evidence, compelling enough that it eliminates any reasonable doubt. I've seen a lot of ghost hunter shows where they collect one piece of evidence and "Oh, we've got a ghost! Let's go home!". The fact remains that all the evidence those guys ever collected is, cumulatively, still not compelling enough to draw a reasonably irrefutable conclusion. You've also got to think of what everyone else will say to refute your evidence and if your evidence isn't able to stand up to said scrutiny, it all falls apart. That's why it's YOUR responsibility to evaluate the validity of your own evidence fairly. You need to be your own greatest skeptic, if you are to have any credibility. Otherwise, you're just going to embarrass yourself and the entire paranormal community.
Anyway, Jake brought up an experiment I'd heard of many times before, but only from other people. That a human body immediately loses 21 grams upon death and that this supposedly could only be explained by the departure of the soul. I had no idea where it came from, but the myth (as I heard it) says a university had conducted it a few years ago. I decided to look into it. And I'm glad I did. If something sounds too good to be true...
So, it turns out the experiment was done in 1907 by a Dr. Duncan MacDougall of New York and in the 101 years since, it has never been successfully repeated or verified. The experiment was not conducted by a university, but by a physician in private practice using his own patients. In the experiment, patients near death were placed on a scale and a sudden drop in mass was recorded upon their deaths, but results were only recorded from 2/3 of the test subjects and only drew from a test population of SIX people to begin with. The other results were discarded because, in one case: "unfortunately our scales were not finely adjusted and there was a good deal of interference from people opposed to our work...". Huh? Does that mean the family of the test subject were objecting? Unfortunately, he doesn't elaborate. Even the successful results were greatly varied in weight as well as the speed with which the weight was lost. The doctor expressed that he had difficulty in determining the exact moment of death in some cases. In addition, he weighed dogs before and after death to verify that they, in fact, had no souls. He writes that he was unable to find dogs dying of natural causes, and it has been alleged that he poisoned the dogs himself. Dr. MacDougall also admitted in his journal the tests would have to be run many times more to achieve a scientifically reliable population sample, but he never ran the tests again before dying 13 years later.
But other scientists attempted to recreate the experiment in 1915 using mice and recorded similar mass loss to the previous human test, until the experiment was repeated in glass tubes, at which time the mass loss stopped. They concluded the very slight loss of mass to be the result of surface moisture evaporating off the skin, which was subsequently prevent by the glass.
So, even ignoring the potential ethical breaches, Dr. MacDougall's experiments were never run with a controlled enough environment to definitely rule out the evaporation of surface moisture or mechanical malfunction, or with a large enough population sample to provide a statistically reliable result. Not only were they never successfully repeated or verified but, were actually refuted by most reliable scientific bodies of the day.
Does the soul have mass? Dunno, but nobody's proved it yet. Or apparently tried since 1907, and the only evidence is shaky at best. But for that matter, if the soul is energy, it probably wouldn't have a measurable mass anyway. Certainly not 21 grams of it. Light only has mass because if its dual particle/wave nature.
So if you're gonna use science to argue the existence of the soul, (or for that matter, anything) make sure it's not BAD science. If you really wanna investigate the paranormal and educate people about it like we do, you need to read up on the sources of your information. The better information sounds, the less likely it is to be true. If you don't follow up on this stuff, you're just going to spread disinformation, hurt your own cause, and embarrass yourself and people who share your passion in the unknown. Verify everything you hear before you pass it on, no matter who it comes from.
The "X-files" tagline works on a lot of levels when it comes to the supernatural: TRUST NO ONE.
SOURCES (Without which, I would hope you believe none of this.)
Wikipedia's entry on Dr. MacDougall
Snopes article (including MacDougall's journal excerpts)
American Medicine original article from April 1907
Article on the mouse experiments
Labels: 21 grams, paranormal, Shadowlands, skeptic, soul mass, supernatural
posted by Destiny Helix at
8:34 PM
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