Gary Schwartz

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Gary E. Schwartz is an American psychologist, author, parapsychologist [1] [2] and professor at the University of Arizona and the director of its Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health. [3] Schwartz researches the veracity of mediums and energy healing. [4] [5]

Contents

Biography

Schwartz received his PhD from Harvard University and was a professor of psychiatry and psychology at Yale University as well as Director of the Yale Psychophysiology Center and co-director of the Yale Behavioral Medicine Clinic from 1976 to 1988. Currently, he is Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery and the Director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona. [6] [7]

Schwartz says that his initial interest in psychic ability stemmed from a car accident he had with his then wife while driving on the FDR highway in Manhattan. The car was reportedly stopped on the roadway when he "heard a voice" tell him to "put his seat belt on." He told his wife to do so, and moments later, said they were rear ended by a car going 50 MPH. He claims that having his life saved by a mysterious voice prompted him to begin his research into where that voice might have come from. [8]

In his early career, Schwartz wrote on biofeedback research and health psychology. Schwartz's more recent research has been in parapsychology and consciousness-based healthcare. His VERITAS research project, which concluded in 2008, was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or identity) of a person survives physical death.[ non-primary source needed ] [9] Schwartz performed experiments at the University of Arizona testing mediums such as John Edward, of the TV show Crossing Over , and Allison DuBois, who inspired the TV series Medium . Schwartz believes that DuBois could contact dead people. Schwartz says his experiments with DuBois included a reading for proponent of alternative medicine Deepak Chopra following the death of his father that Chopra characterized as 77% accurate. [10]

Gary Schwartz is viewed as a leader of counter-Establishment using his academic career to enable “the happy fantasies of pseudoscience and the paranormal.” [6] : 309-310  Among his hundreds of academic papers is a 3-part series entitled “God, Synchronicity, and Postmaterialist Psychology” [11] [12] [13] published in the journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice by the American Psychological Association, where Schwartz describes eleven coincidences that he found so “increasingly improbable,” he figured God must have been signaling him that souls of dead people collaborate with the divine to orchestrate personally meaningful synchronicities. [6] : 310 

Controversies

On Fox News on the Geraldo at Large show, October 6, 2007, Geraldo Rivera alleged Schwartz had overstepped his position as a university researcher by requesting money from a bereaved father to fund research into mediumship. [14]

Schwartz's methods have prompted criticism from skeptics such as University of Oregon professor Ray Hyman, who says Professor Schwartz's research deviates from the accepted norms of scientific methodology, and criticizes Schwartz for research errors such as inappropriate statistical tests and using subjects predisposed to believe in psychic abilities. [1] Skeptic Robert Todd Carroll maintains that Schwartz's evaluation of mediums is subjective and a product of "wishful thinking." [10] [2] When retired stage magician and skeptic James Randi asked the University of Arizona to submit Schwartz's research data to an independent panel for evaluation, Schwartz declined because he thought that the panel, which he believed would be picked by Randi, would be biased.[ non-primary source needed ] [15]

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parapsychology</span> Study of paranormal and psychic phenomena

Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc. Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it. Parapsychology has also been criticised by mainstream critics for claims by many of its practitioners that their studies are plausible despite a lack of convincing evidence after more than a century of research for the existence of any psychic phenomena.

Parapsychology is a field of research that studies a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and apparitional experiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telepathy</span> Psychic ability

Telepathy is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and has remained more popular than the earlier expression thought-transference.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychic</span> Person claiming extrasensory perception abilities

A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, such as psychokinesis or teleportation. Although many people believe in psychic abilities, the scientific consensus is that there is no proof of the existence of such powers, and describes the practice as pseudoscience. The word "psychic" is also used as an adjective to describe such abilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ganzfeld experiment</span> Pseudoscientific test for extrasensory perception (ESP)

A ganzfeld experiment is an assessment used by parapsychologists that they contend can test for extrasensory perception (ESP) or telepathy. In these experiments, a "sender" attempts to mentally transmit an image to a "receiver" who is in a state of sensory deprivation. The receiver is normally asked to choose between a limited number of options for what the transmission was supposed to be and parapsychologists who propose that such telepathy is possible argue that rates of success above the expectation from randomness are evidence for ESP. Consistent, independent replication of ganzfeld experiments has not been achieved, and, in spite of strenuous arguments by parapsychologists to the contrary, there is no validated evidence accepted by the wider scientific community for the existence of any parapsychological phenomena. Ongoing parapsychology research using ganzfeld experiments has been criticized by independent reviewers as having the hallmarks of pseudoscience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Blackmore</span> British writer and academic (born 1951)

Susan Jane Blackmore is a British writer, lecturer, sceptic, broadcaster, and a visiting professor at the University of Plymouth. Her fields of research include memetics, parapsychology, consciousness, and she is best known for her book The Meme Machine. She has written or contributed to over 40 books and 60 scholarly articles and is a contributor to The Guardian newspaper.

Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen subject, purportedly sensing with the mind. Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. Physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, parapsychology researchers at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), are generally credited with coining the term "remote viewing" to distinguish it from the closely related concept of clairvoyance. According to Targ, the term was first suggested by Ingo Swann in December 1971 during an experiment at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ray Hyman</span> American professor of psychology (born 1928)

Ray Hyman is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and a noted critic of parapsychology. Hyman, along with James Randi, Martin Gardner and Paul Kurtz, is one of the founders of the modern skeptical movement. He is the founder and leader of the Skeptic's Toolbox. Hyman serves on the Executive Council for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Dean Radin investigates phenomena in parapsychology. Following a bachelor and master's degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in educational psychology Radin worked at Bell Labs, as a researcher at Princeton University and the University of Edinburgh, and was a faculty member at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He then became Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, USA, later becoming the president of the Parapsychological Association. He is also co-editor-in-chief of the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. Radin's ideas and work have been criticized by scientists and philosophers skeptical of paranormal claims. The review of Radin's first book, The Conscious Universe, that appeared in Nature charged that Radin ignored the known hoaxes in the field, made statistical errors and ignored plausible non-paranormal explanations for parapsychological data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allison DuBois</span> American psychic

Allison DuBois is an American author and purported medium. DuBois claims she used her psychic abilities to assist U.S. law enforcement officials in solving crimes, forming the basis of the TV series Medium. Those officials deny it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mediumship</span> Practice of purportedly mediating communication between spirits and human beings

Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanley Krippner</span>

Stanley Krippner is an American psychologist and parapsychologist. He received a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1954 and M.A. (1957) and Ph.D. (1961) degrees from Northwestern University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Théodore Flournoy</span> Swiss professor of psychology

Théodore Flournoy was a Swiss professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and author of books on parapsychology and spiritism. He studied a wide variety of subjects before he devoted his life to psychology. Flournoy had an interest in a very skeptical area of psychology. He did extensive observations on a participant to investigate psychical phenomena. He was the President of the Sixth International Congress of Psychology, the Chair of Experimental Psychology at the University of Geneva in 1891 and was the first professor of psychology in Europe to become a member of the Faculty of Sciences instead of the Faculty of Philosophy.

<i>The Afterlife Experiments</i>

The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death is a book written by Gary Schwartz and bestselling author William L. Simon, with a foreword by Deepak Chopra. The book, published in 2003, reviews several experiments which aimed to investigate the possibility of life after death through the use of psychic mediums. Included in these experiments is one filmed and aired as part of an HBO special. Two studies stemming from the experiments were also published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. The substance of the book and the studies it describes was generally claimed by the media as scientific evidence of life after death. However, there was significant criticism from the scientific community of the studies, their methodologies, and resulting data analyses.

Rosemary Altea is a British author who describes herself as a medium and healer. She has appeared on various programs, including Larry King Live, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and featured in the series premiere of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! alongside mentalist Mark Edward. She has written six books and claims to have a "healing foundation".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Alcock</span> Canadian educator (born 1942)

James E. Alcock is a Canadian educator. He has been a Professor of Psychology at York University (Canada) since 1973. Alcock is a noted critic of parapsychology and is a Fellow and Member of the Executive Council for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a member of the Editorial Board of The Skeptical Inquirer, and a frequent contributor to the magazine. He has also been a columnist for Humanist Perspectives Magazine. In 1999, a panel of skeptics named him among the two dozen most outstanding skeptics of the 20th century. In May 2004, CSICOP awarded Alcock CSI's highest honor, the In Praise of Reason Award. Alcock is also an amateur magician and is a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. As of 2020, he is currently on leave from York University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Franklin Prince</span> American parapsychologist

Walter Franklin Prince was an American parapsychologist and founder of the Boston Society for Psychical Research in Boston.

In psychology, anomalistic psychology is the study of human behaviour and experience connected with what is often called the paranormal, with few assumptions made about the validity of the reported phenomena.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzane Northrop</span> Claimed psychic medium

Suzane Northrop is an author, podcaster, TV show host, and purported psychic medium. She has written at least four books, and hosted the television show, The Afterlife with Suzane Northrop. She participated in The Afterlife Experiments which was turned into a book by Gary Schwartz. The experiments and their conclusions were widely criticized across the scientific community for not being blinded, and for the lack of inclusion of any other scientifically credible evidence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph F. Rinn</span>

Joseph Francis Rinn (1868–1952) was an American magician and skeptic of paranormal phenomena.

References

  1. 1 2 Hyman, Ray (May 2003). "How Not to Test Mediums: Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments". Skeptical Inquirer. pp. 20–30. Retrieved 2023-03-12.
  2. 1 2 Carroll, Robert Todd (2007). "Gary Schwartz's Subjective Evaluation of Mediums: Veritas or Wishful Thinking?". Skeptic’s Dictionary . Retrieved 2008-01-24.
  3. ↑ "Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health: Lab Members". Department of Psychology. Archived from the original on November 18, 2017. Retrieved May 11, 2015.[ non-primary source needed ]
  4. ↑ Dotinga, Randy. "Academia Embraces Spooky Studies". 10.11.05. Wired. Retrieved 26 July 2012.
  5. ↑ Harriet A. Hall (March 2008). "Gary Schwartz's Energy Healing Experiments: The Emperor's New Clothes?" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer . Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. 32 (2): 48–51. ISSN   0194-6730. Wikidata   Q117083351.
  6. 1 2 3 Andersen, Kurt (2017). "How the Mainstream Enabled Fantasyland: Squishies, Cynics, and Believers". Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. ISBN   978-1400067213.
  7. ↑ "Lab Members | Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health". www.lach.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2021-11-06.
  8. ↑ Martini, Richard (2014). It's a Wonderful Afterlife: Further Adventures in the Afterlife volume two. Homina Publishing, p. 58. ISBN   0970449976
  9. ↑ "The VERITAS Research Program | Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health". Lach.web.arizona.edu. Archived from the original on 2011-03-26. Retrieved 2013-01-17.
  10. 1 2 McClain, Carla (January 17, 2005). "Varied readings on Arizona psychic". Arizona Daily Star. Archived from the original on 16 May 2007. Retrieved 10 December 2009.
  11. ↑ Schwartz, Gary E. (2014). "God, synchronicity, and postmaterialist psychology: Proof-of-concept real-life evidence". Spirituality in Clinical Practice. 1 (2): 153–162. doi:10.1037/scp0000017.
  12. ↑ Schwartz, Gary E. (2015). "God, synchronicity, and postmaterialist psychology II: Replication and extension of real-life evidence". Spirituality in Clinical Practice. 2 (1): 86–95. doi:10.1037/scp0000038.
  13. ↑ Schwartz, Gary E. (2015). "God, synchronicity, and postmaterialist psychology III: Additional real-life evidence and the higher power healing hypothesis". Spirituality in Clinical Practice. 2 (4): 289–302. doi:10.1037/scp0000079.
  14. ↑ Aykroyd, Peter. and Nart, Angela. (2009). A History of Ghosts: the True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters. Rodale, p. 216
  15. ↑ Schwartz, Gary E. (2005). The Truth about Medium. Hampton Roads Publishing, p. 106. ISBN   1-57174-459-2
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