Clarifying Muddied Waters, Part 2: What the Sudduth-Tucker Exchange Concerning James Leininger Suggests for Reincarnation Research

Abstract

Part 1 of this paper presented a secure timeline for the James Leininger reincarnation case, showing Michael Sudduth’s criticisms of it to be unfounded. Part 2 begins with an analysis of the exchange in this journal between Sudduth and Jim Tucker over Tucker’s investigation, then recommends improvements that might be made in the investigation and reporting of reincarnation cases to address criticisms, overcome a will to disbelieve in the evidence, and reach scientists and scholars open to following the research findings where they lead. Proposals are grouped under three headings: Case Study Methodology, Reporting Standards, and Statistical Analysis.

A Guardian Angel Gone Astray: How NOT to Do Survival Research

“…Undoubtedly, he thought about the case of James Leininger as one such example. But this case is unsuited to support his claim (Matlock, 2022a(Matlock, , 2022b. Therefore, I reiterate: Sweeping generalizations without foundation do not qualify as scientific arguments.…”

“…Interestingly, Augustine's repudiation of these results by simply invoking the presence of conventional sources of information in before-cases implies that the before-cases Schouten and Stevenson considered contained at least as much misremembering, misreporting, and/or deceit as the after-cases they considered. This implication stands in contrast to common sense and the notion held by the majority of scientists who are in general agreement that for obvious reasons, misreporting and misremembering are more difficult and unlikely to occur in before-cases-hence their widely recognized importance and scientific desirability (e.g., Matlock, 2021Matlock, , 2022b. To date, nobody has even tried to demonstrate that many let alone all before-cases are flawed.…”

“…On page 379 of his article, Augustine claimed two times that I deemed the CORT of James Leininger to be the "second best" before-case in my essay (before-cases refer to cases in which a child's statements about a previous life were documented before a previous personality that matched these statement has been identified). 2 The rationale behind Augustine's particular emphasis on Leininger's case is obvious: He believes--mistakenly-that it has been debunked by Michael Sudduth (2021; but see Matlock, 2022aMatlock, , 2022b. Hence, stressing repeatedly that I considered the allegedly flawed Leininger case to be the "second best" will evidently cause correspondingly great damage to my arguments in favour of this case-and of CORT as a whole.…”