2017-09-17, 03:14 AM
(2017-09-15, 03:40 AM)Arouet Wrote: [ -> ]It's been awhile since I've looked into the Stevenson/Tucker work in detail. (I lost my Kobo Glo which had the notes I took on the Tucker book! Cry). I should give it another read if we're going to be talking about it a lot. And I don't think they did a terrible job. In many cases they probably did the best they could in the circumstances.
But I'll give you one general example of a reliability risk that affects many of the accounts. In those accounts, the researchers only get to the case a long time after it began. Interviewing people about events that took place long ago are fraught with risk. This is not the fault of the researchers, it is an inherent risk of bias when dealing with these kinds of cases.
I recall questioning their use of stats with regard to birthmarks but I want to relook at the material before commenting on this.
Another question that came to mind when I was reading the book, is that when the children refer to themselves in the first person referring to their potential ancestors, I couldn't help but think of my own son who around the age of these kids (he's 7 now but I'm talking 2-5) he regularly identified with certain characters and referred to himself in the first person regarding them. In my son's case most notably Batman at one time and Mario at another time. When he saw these characters in on tv or in a video game, or heard us mention them he would say "that's me!, that's my _____, etc." Now, I am not making the claim that I have concluded this is part of what may be going on in these accounts but its an issue I can't recall being covered in this research (though I may have missed it so if anyone has a reference please let me know).
Another issue I have with regard to risk of bias is that interviewing children is also fraught with risk. It is no easy task to interview a child in a non-leading manner, especially when the early conversations would have been with family members and friends who have no training in the matter. Even when someone is properly trained it is a very difficult task. This is a risk that is inherent in the task. In many cases there would have been little the researchers could have done to have avoided this risk.
So don't mistake my saying there are risks of bias as my saying the work was shoddy. From what I recall I didn't find it shoddy, but I did find risk of bias/error.
There's more to say but I think this is good to get the discussion started.
Getting tired so will have to respond to the rest of your post tomorrow.
I understand the risk that comes with not getting to the cases as soon as the child initially says something, as do Tucker and as did Stevenson.
As far as the birthmarks go, I'm not particularly familiar with that part of the research - but nonetheless, the few cases I've read involving them have been a mix of what I found to be impressive and not so impressive, or more likely to be due to coincidence.
For the "children refer to themselves in the first person" thing, I just don't see how that would explain the research, and I know you noted that... but I think it's self explanatory enough that it wouldn't shock me if the researchers hadn't touched on it (and they may have, I don't recall but I haven't read nearly all the books the two of them have published - only a couple among other articles and interviews). It's one thing for a kid to say, "Look! That's me! I'm batman!" or something of that ilk, like a famous character, super hero, or video game character, and of course an entirely different thing when a child says something about being a random person from another location while simultaneously listing a number of facts about that person that they should or would have no access to, if they even had the capacity to remember the information if it was ever told to them. And I know you said that you're not making the claim that this is part of what may be going on in these cases, but I would think these reasons are obvious enough that maybe the researchers devoted time to other possible explanations or reasoning first. Again, I'm also not certain that they've never addressed it, though off the top of my head I can't recall that I've personally read such a thing.
Interviewing children is, of course, going to be "risky" - but this is, as with most things, best addressed specifically with regards to an actual case rather than broadly. This doesn't really hold a lot of water for me when there are thousands of cases and I don't think that the method of questioning by scientifically cautious and methodologically careful researchers who have been at this for awhile is especially likely to be suspect. They are aware of the difficulties of doing the research, and I believe do their best to conduct the research in as unbiased a way as possible.
Of course there is risk of bias/error, as there is with everything that any human is directly involved in. I wouldn't say it is extra fraught with that risk - of course, because the subjects are also human beings, there is more subjectivity and risk, but I don't think "fraught with" is accurate, and I think that because the researchers appreciate the importance of their work and know how important their methodology is, they try their best to control for it, which it seems you've acknowledged.
In spite of what you said, I think that an actual reading case by case makes it fairly difficult to assign some form of bias, coincidence, luck, or fraud to the majority of the cases, especially the stronger ones, which aren't lacking in number. Speaking generally has its place but won't move the needle much for me or others who are familiar with a large number of cases and the researchers' works and noted caveats.