Mediumship in His Trade Book Term Paper

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Schwartz happens to be a Gemini, but John had a one in twelve chance of getting that one right. John continues to take stabs at guessing more about Gary Schwartz's family, guesses that are completely and probably deliberately vague. Not only could the mediums be making wild and general guesses but they could have also acquired information through traditional sources or nonverbal cues. For example, the medium might have known beforehand that Schwartz's birthday fell during the Gemini month, and that his mother's name contained the letter "S" in it. Barring such obvious fraud, guesswork seems as plausible an explanation as any other.

Schwartz fields accusations of fraud at several points in his book. One of his rebuttals is that "mediums need not be perfect," they just have to be better than everyone else (54). In fact, Schwartz designed all of his studies with this premise in mind, using a control group of mostly undergraduate students who had no mediumship experience. Schwartz claims that "mediums are neither frauds nor freaks," and that the experiments presented in the book proves this is that case.

Hyman states that a true control group would more closely resemble the mediums; they would have had similar life experiences and similar demographics. Although Schwartz conducted a series of experiments, each more strident than the next, only the last experiment he conducted was a double-blind study. Schwartz boasts about his double-blind study, indicating that if it doesn't prove the existence of life after death, nothing will. In the double-blind study, Schwartz claims that there was no possibility for sensory leakage or any other potential flaw in the research design.

Hyman, however, accuses Schwartz of "just another blatant attempt to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat," stating that the author twisted and spun negative results to make them appear positive, and that the results were no better than chance.

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Hyman further notes that Schwartz's studies and their results are deliberately vague and far too simple to be taken seriously by the scientific community.

Schwartz's ultimate response to critics such as Hyman rests on what he calls "skeptimania," the zeal to debunk any theory of the paranormal to the extent of disallowing any valid testimony (216). While Schwartz is accurate in his observation that many skeptics are indeed more closed-minded than they are objective, Hyman's close examination and critique of Schwartz's work indicates a healthy skeptical response. Schwartz's evidence seems compelling mainly because of the way he presents the material: it is accessible to the general public, published in a trade book available in any major book store. The graphs, charts, and statistics impress the layperson, bolstering the impact of Schwartz's research. Yet few studies exist to back up or replicate Schwartz's findings, and Hyman notes that Schwartz engages in some serious statistical misinterpretations.

Most importantly, Schwartz does not adequately prove that consciousness persists after death. One alternate hypothesis to what Schwartz shows is that mediums act as clever conduits of information, that they might indeed be adept at creating the illusion of paranormal phenomenon. While it is tempting to believe that people can communicate with departed loved ones, such a conclusion is irrational and not based on properly collected scientific data. Schwartz's Afterlife Experiments are a decent, yet imperfect, beginning to potential future scientific research in the area of mediumship. Other scientists like him would do well to heed the voices of the critics and design more stringent studies if their findings are to be accepted by the scientific and academic communities.

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