Dr. David Acunzo: Reproducing anomalous phenomena in the lab

In this interview, Dr. David Acunzo, from the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, talks with Natalia Vorontsova about his experimental research on hypnosis and anomalous psi phenomena. Dr. Acunzo stresses the importance of the scientific study of anomalous phenomena, which are largely ignored by mainstream science. He exemplifies true open-mindedness in science, demonstrating that one need not be a psi “believer,” but rather a rigorous researcher searching for answers to difficult-to-explain psi cases.

Enjoyed that, a good example of how old, fractured and incompatible the various ideas about what common human anomalous experiences are.

Desperately in need of being generalised, and desperately in need of letting go of old simplistic models and assumptions... and concentrating only on what we really observe... for example...

Dispensing with the the naive materialistic assumption that something leaves the body during the typical veridical NDE OBE.
Dispensing with the naive materialistic assumption that repetitive apparitions are spirits, and that these apparitions/ghosts have been dropped into some separate objective reality.
Dispensing with the naive materialistic assumption that recalled anomalous experiences from the past, are from your past life.

But you look back over 100 years, and see there were already well formed written objections to these naive assumptions, that were written in the knowledge/language of the time... but they gained little traction... the old naive ideas continued to rumble on over the top of them. Look back thousands of years, and there were ideas that are fresher than anything we have today... like the Gospel of Thomas... which were also buried, literally... and some twisted version promoted in it's place.

The problem is that Dr. David Acunzo's talk seemed to be all future ideas for research.

I think many of us here could have made a case like that - he isn't really saying anything new.

He doesn't seem to have written a book.

David