Subjective Doesn't Mean Unscientific
What counts as data when the evidence is a report
Two objections came up more than any others in my earlier series. "These reports are subjective", and "You can’t repeat them on demand." Both have some truth in them. Both are also regularly used to end the conversation rather than start it. So let me take them one at a time, and I’ll start by giving the sceptics their due.
Science runs on subjective reports
Think about pain. You can’t see it on a scan. Your doctor asks you to rate it from one to ten, and whole drug trials are built on your answer. Vision researchers ask people whether they can see a faint light. Consciousness research depends on people telling us what they experienced because there is no other way in. If subjective data were banned, large parts of medicine and psychology would shut down by lunchtime.
So “it’s subjective” isn’t a verdict. It’s where the questions begin. What kind of claim is this report making, and can it be checked?
I find it helps to split reports into three levels.
A report of an experience. “I felt a deep peace.” That is data about the experience. Nobody can check it from outside, and it doesn’t need checking to be a real fact about that person.
A report that matches something in the outside world. “I saw the nurse lift my arm.” That can be checked against records and witnesses.
A report of information the person shouldn’t have been able to get. “I saw a hidden number on a shelf I couldn’t reach.” That needs the toughest checking of all, because it is the biggest claim.
Most of the shouting happens because people slide from level one to level three without noticing. Believers do it when they treat a moving experience as proof of something external. Sceptics do it when they treat a level one report as if it were making a level three claim, and then dismiss it for failing a test it never entered.
Memory is not a recording
Here is where I have to be honest about my own side. The real weakness of a report isn’t that it’s subjective. It’s that memory rebuilds itself every time we tell the story.
In 1974, Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer showed people films of car crashes. When they asked how fast the cars were going when they “smashed” into each other, people guessed higher speeds than when the question said “hit” (instead of "smashed"). A week later, the people who had heard “smashed” were more likely to remember broken glass that was never there. One word in a question, and people remembered glass that didn’t exist.
That should worry all of us, me included. It means when a report was written down matters enormously. A note made within hours is worth far more than a story told for thirty years, polished by retelling, books, workshops and kind conversations. If you only have the polished version, you have a story. It might be a true story, but it isn’t yet evidence.
“You can’t repeat it at will”
This objection gets muddled, so let’s untangle it. There is a difference between repeating something on demand and repeating it by protocol.
Nobody can switch on a supernova. In 1987, a star exploded in a neighbouring galaxy, and detectors built for other purposes picked up a burst of neutrinos about three hours before the light arrived. Nobody could repeat that event. Everybody could check the recordings. Science deals with rare events by setting up a method in advance and waiting.
That is the right model here. A hospital can place hidden targets in resuscitation rooms and wait. A lab can ask practitioners to describe what they perceive in a trance, then compare the descriptions across many people who have never spoken to each other. Neither needs anything to happen on cue. Both can fail, and that is exactly why they’re worth doing.
What I’m not saying
I am not saying that consistent reports prove the experiences are real in the way people hope. Descriptions of tunnels, lights and small figures could come from the way brains work, in which case they’d turn up consistently either way. Consistency tells us the experiences have a pattern worth studying. It doesn’t tell us where the pattern comes from.
And if you keep a record of your own experiences, here is the simplest habit I know for turning a story into evidence. Write it down before you check anything. Note the date. Check it later, and write that down too, whether it matched or not. Especially if it didn’t.
Kathy Postelle Rixon is Chair of The Philosophical Society: Oxford, an independent researcher in consciousness studies, and a shamanic practitioner of more than forty years, working in Q’ero, Norse and Celtic traditions. You can contact her at kathy@magicinharmony.com or visit her website at www.magicinharmony.com.
Comments