Journal of Scientific Exploration 25: 2 Summer 2011

The Journal of Scientific Exploration is devoted to the open-minded examination of scientific anomalies and other topics on the scientific frontier. Its articles and reviews, written by authorities in their respective fields, cover both data and theory in areas of science that are too often ignored or treated superficially by other scientific publications. This issue of the Journal features papers on a variety of subjects. The lead article describes an intriguing study of a currently popular method of using technology to attempt communication with the deceased. This research compared the results of experimental and control sessions of responses to randomly produced short speech elements. The second paper addresses the issue of what proper controls are for anomalies research, and, accordingly, what the criteria are for declaring some observed phenomenon to be an anomaly. The third paper concerns Hessdalen lights, unexplained earthquake lights usually seen in the Hessdalen Valley in Norway. The authors challenge a currently widely-held proposal that the lights result from piezoelectricity generated under a rock strain. The next paper addresses the concept of objective reality from the point of view of quantum physics and an ontological model in which correlations of events in the configuration space of the wave function are considered invariant with respect to changes of observer. The next paper comments critically on a previously published JSE article arguing that cases of the reincarnation type (CORTs) could best be explained by appealing not to reincarnation but to a form of psychic functioning among the living. Following this commentary, the author of the original article offers his reply. The final paper is an essay concerning the long-standing human fascination with flight. The author surveys ancient manuscripts, oral traditions, and artifacts, looking for evidence that previous civilizations attempted to develop flying machines. This issue of the JSE is then filled out, as usual, with a large selection of substantive book reviews.