Another Look at The Imad Elawar Case - A Review of Leonard Angel's Critique of This "Past Life Memory Case Study"

Author: Julio Cesar de Siqueira Barros - Biologist.
Date: January 10, 2004.
Email: juliocbsiqueira2012 followed by @ and then gmail.com

Copyright ©  Julio Cesar de Siqueira Barros.

Note: Some special comments in the text appear in this color

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Mr. Leonard Angel for his kind attention in providing me his full critique of the Imad Elawar Case as presented in his book Enlightenment East & West (1994). I would also like to thank Mr. Ian Stevenson, Ms. Martha Mercier, and all the people of the Department of Personality Studies, University of Virginia, for providing me Stevenson's Full Reply to Leonard Angel (1994), that unfortunatelly was only partially published in the Skeptical Inquirer (May/June 1995). 

Table of Contents:

    1- Introduction
    2- Review of Leonard Angel's Critique
    3- Re-analysis of the Imad Elawar Case
    4- Stevenson's Original Tabulations of the case
    5- Bibliography

Introduction:

In the Fall 1994 issue of the world leading skeptic publication, the Skeptical Inquirer magazine (Skeptical Inquirer - vol 18, Fall 1994, pp. 481-487), phylosopher Leonard Angel (Arts & Humanities Department, Douglas College, New Westminster, B.C., Canada.) presented a critical review of the Imad Elawar Case, as reported in Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (Stevenson, Ian. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. 2nd edition, 1974. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. - the 1st edition is from 1966). This review was also presented in Angel's book, Enlightenment East and West (1994), basically with some additional minor points, and a better explanation of the items presented in Skeptical Inquirer. Leonard Angel attempted to show that the case could be easily explained on "naturalistic" grounds (that is, not resorting to paranormal hypotheses, like ESP or afterlife survival and reincarnation).

It must be stressed that, just as Leonard Angel himself pointed out in his Skeptical Inquirer 1994 article, his analysis of the empirical content of this case was probably the only one that had ever been undertaken by any skeptic so far. And from then until now (September, 2003), the situation has most probably not changed much, except for Angel's own critique of Ian Stevenson's book about birthmarks in children claiming to remember previous lives, (Reincarnation and Biology, a Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects - 1997). This most recent review by Leonard Angel was published in the Skeptic Magazine (vol. 9, No.3, 2002 - Reincarnation all over again: evidence for reincarnation rests on backward reasoning). In Angel's own words (in his 1994 article): "Oddly enough, despite the length of time since publication of Twenty Cases, it is hard to come by detailed examinations of it. Those who endorse Stevenson's work state that they have been persuaded, but do not say more than that. And skeptics tend to dismiss the work without detailed explanation." (Skeptical Inquirer Fall 1994, p.482). Also, anthropologist James G. Matlock says almost the same, in his comprehensive review of Past Life Memory Case Studies: "In fact, readers may have been surprised to learn how weak specific methodological criticisms of Stevenson's work have been." (Past life memory case studies. In S. Krippner {editors}, Advances in Parapsychological Research. S. Krippner Jefferson, N.C. Mcfarland, 1990. Page 253).

Brief description of the Imad Elawar case: Stevenson went to Lebanon, in March 1964, hoping to find cases of children claiming to remember previous lives. On his very first day there, he happened to find a family that had a boy who claimed to remember a previous life. This was the Elawar family, and the boy was named Imad (Imad Elawar), born in December 1958. Stevenson noted some 57 statements (that Imad's parents claimed Imad had said, concerning his previous life) and then set out himself to try to find a previous personality (i.e. a deceased person) that might fit these statements, in the village and family indicated "by Imad" (the village of Khriby; the family Bouhamzy). He ended up finding someone that could fit considerably well the statements, a Ibrahim Bouhamzy, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, in September 1949. Two paragraphs in Stevenson's account of the case (page 277 of Twenty Cases) are especially informative:

The case was not, however, free from some "baffling complexities", as Stevenson himself pointed out. In his own words: "Here I may say, however, that the investigation of the case of Imad encountered at first baffling complexities and on two occasions it seemed to dissolve into unrelated and irrelevant fragments: once when I learned that Mahmoud Bouhamzy had not been killed by a truck, and again when I learned that the life of Said Bouhamzy, who had been killed by a truck, did not match in other details the statements made by Imad. Moreover, someone else had already come forward as a claimant to be Said Bouhamzy reborn." (Twenty Cases, page 280). So, in order to fit Imad's statements to the previous personality, a certain amount of "reinterpretation" was necessary.

This created a rather odd scenario, where a "prior-to-verification" statement that was probably "Imad said he was named Mahmoud Bouhamzy in his previous life" (which was found to be wrong in the course of the investigation, for Mahmoud Bouhamzy was still alive) was in the end reinterpreted as "correct" and inserted in the tabulation as "Mahmoud; name mentioned by Imad: Mahmoud Bouhamzy was an uncle of Ibrahim Bouhamzy". And, the "prior-to-verification" statement that was probably "Imad said he had a son called Adil" (which was a statement that could not fit Ibrahim Bouhamzy) was in the end reinterpreted as "correct" and inserted in the tabulation as "He had a 'son' called Adil: Ibrahim had a cousin called Adil. Another error of inference on the part of Imad's parents. Imad, they later said, had mentioned 'Adil' and 'Talal' or 'Talil' and they had assumed these were the sons of the previous life.".

It is, therefore, no wonder that these "reinterpretations" have led to some suspicions of misconduct on the part of Stevenson. As Leonard Angel put it: "Amazingly enough, the boy's memories are in the end held to be good evidence for reincarnation in spite of the fact that the best past-life candidate Stevenson found was not named Mahmoud Bouhamzy, did not have a wife named Jamilah, and did not die as a result of an accident at all, let alone one that followed a quarrel with the driver." (Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1994, p.483).

Angel pointed out in 1994 that Stevenson failed in the investigation of the case on six fundamental points:

I have attempted, therefore, to take a closer look at the Imad Elawar case using as a guiding yardstick Leonard Angel's criticism, seeking to find if the case might still seem "interesting" (that is, indicative of paranormality) after a "correction" of it, that is, after trying to remove Stevenson's reinterpretations. All this to see if what remains of the case can really be easily accounted for on "naturalistic" (i.e. non-paranormal) grounds, as Leonard Angle has claimed almost ten years ago.

What follows in the work below is, first, a critical review of Angel's critique to the Imad Elawar case, almost with the same content of a letter that I have sent to him by email; and, second, a "reorganization" or "retabulation" of the case to see if its apparent "paranormal aspects" stand Angel's naturalistic explanatory attempts. 

Critical Review of Leonard Angel's Critique to the Imad Elawar Case Study

Since I told Mr. Leonard Angel that "even taking into consideration your methodological criticism to the Imad Elawar case, I still find this case interesting", I have sent him (as presented below) my analysis and explanation as to why I have come to this standpoint. At the end of this text, I have included a retabulation I made of Stevenson's original tabulation, taking into account Angel's comments regarding the case. Actually, it is this retabulation that is the basis for my present opinion. The text that precedes it is an evaluation of what seems to be weak points in Angel's analysis of the Imad Elawar case.

- First, I read Leonard Angel's analysis of the case (Skeptical Inquirer Fall 1994).

- Second, I read the "Follow-up" with Stevenson's reply and Angel's rejoinder (Skeptical Inquirer May/June 1995).

- Third, I read the case as reported in Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (second edition, 1974 - sixth paperback printing, 2002).

- Fourth, all these materials were carefully read four times, and I did a retabulation of Stevenson's original tabulation.

- Fifth, I got two additional papers on the subject. The papers were two of those that Stevenson indicated:

- Finally, I got Angel's full analysis of the case, and I also got Stevenson's full reply.

The first thing that struck me was that Angel was analyzing a case that had been investigated in 1964, that is, thirty years before his analysis of it (in 1994). It is surely the most important one in the Twenty Cases materials, but a lot of research had been done since then. It just makes us wonder what is the quality of the research that followed Twenty Cases. Even though Angel's work is priceless in methodological guidelines, it leaves us with no idea as to the quality of the research in the area. I have acquired and carefully read the two articles mentioned just above, and they seem to be of fairly good scientific quality.

The second thing that struck me was that in Angel's article much criticism was directed at Stevenson's reinterpretation of "Imad's" statements, questioning the very legitimacy, motivations, and intentions for these reinterpretations. Angel said, for example:

And also:

There was surely heavy reinterpretation from the part of Stevenson. I can even say that sometimes he went to unacceptable extremes in doing that. But actually, the "reasons" for Stevenson doing so are all clearly indicated in his report of the case (that is, except for the unacceptable extremes of reinterpretation). And also, all the weaknesses of the case seem (seem, at least!) to have been openly presented, except for details of his interviewing procedures with the "verifiers" (that is item 5 of the six fundamental grounds in which, according to Angel's view, Stevenson failed). That is, what kind of questions did he use? Were they mostly leading ones and open ones? Or, instead, could some of them, or maybe even most of them, be qualified under modern definitions as "single-blind"? Anyway, we all know that they surely were not double-blind, which, by itself, is a serious weakness.

A third thing that surprised me was the limited space Skeptical Inquirer (S.I) gave to the subject. Stevenson's full reply is very interesting and informative (just as Angel's full analysis of the case has additional strengths which the readers would have profited from reading), and it was a great loss that S.I. couldn't (or wouldn't) publish it fully. It would have taken just 5 pages to publish Stevenson's full reply (I had Microsoft Word count the words in the articles to make this estimation), whereas Angel's article had 7, and Big Foot (also in S.I. 1994, Fall) had 11!

Further, I have spotted some factual mistakes in Leonard Angel's analysis. Angel made a list of the "Sum total of the correspondences remaining from the original prior-to-verification memories.". It included the following items:

01- There was an important person (his wife or something like it) named Jamilah
02- Jamilah was beautiful
03- Jamilah wore red
04- Jamilah dressed well
05- Ibrahim was a "friend" of the famous Druse politician Kemal Joumblatt
06- Ibrahim had a farm
07- There was a sort of entrance with a round opening
08- Ibrahim was fond of hunting
09- Ibrahim had hidden his gun
10- Ibrahim once beat a dog
11- There was a slope near Ibrahim's house
12- Ibrahim had been rebuilding his garden
13- Ibrahim had a small yellow automobile
14- Ibrahim had a bus
15- Ibrahim had a truck

At first, I found six mistakes in this list. Actually seven, but the mispelling of Jamileh (which, by the way, is just a pseudonym) is methodologically unimportant. The mistakes are these:

Items Jamileh wore red, Ibahim had hidden his gun, and Ibrahim had a bus should not be in this list. They were not written down prior to verification.

Items Ibrahim had a double-barreled shotgun, Ibrahim kept the car tools in the place with the round opening, and Ibrahim had an oil stove at his house should be included, for they were written down prior to verification.

And then again, in Angel's full analysis of the case, he list 5 items that remained after he made an attempt to account naturalistically for the statements:

1- Fondness for hunting
2- Having hidden his gun
3- Improving garden
4- Having access to some vehicles
5- Entrance with sort of round opening

In these, I still found two mistakes: first the "hidden gun", which was not written down prior to verification. Second, the entrance with sort of round opening, which in fact, if we take in consideration what Stevenson himself had reported, could easily be accounted for naturalistically. Actually, Stevenson himself de-emphasized its potential importance, by stating in the tabulations (item 47, comments): "Although correct, attic openings of this kind also occur on other houses of the area.". Remember that, concerning the "slope near the house", Angel explained it naturalistically saying: "As for the slope near the house, could it be that most of the houses in Druse villages have a slope somewhere near them?". So, the round opening should also be excluded.

As a matter of fact, there seems to be little or no reason for excluding these additional thirteen (13) items: the new garden had cherry trees; the new garden had apple trees; there were two garages at the house; Jamileh wore high heels; there was someone called Amin; Amin lived in Tripoli; Amin worked in the courthouse building in Tripoli; the tools for the car were at the place with the round opening; he had a goat when he was young; he had a sheep when he was young; when asked "who are your brothers?", he correctly replied "Fuad and Ali" (leaving out Sami, the youngest); he had a brown dog; when asked how the dog had been held, he correctly replied "by cord", instead of by chains as many dogs in the area are.

It seemed to me, after reading Angel's critique and Stevenson's report many times, that the Imad Elawar case was probably the very first case where Stevenson had the opportunity to make written records of the statements before any attempt to verify them and then set out to try and find (maybe successfully) a person fitting a child's statements. Stevenson was perhaps unprepared for the "baffling complexities" that he found, possibly because he expected things to appear in a more clear-cut manner. He made a very risky (and utterly naive) proposal when he suggested at his very first interview with Imad's family that they could go to Khriby on the next day to try to see if they could discover something interesting, which of course must have raised high expectations in Imad and in his father. And these high expectations, if they had been later frustrated because of Stevenson, might have had disastrous consequences for the investigation of the case. By then, all Stevenson had was a report that came through a very unreliable interpreter, and Stevenson had no guarantee that he would find someone much better on the following day to do this job. It seems to me that he had not grasped then how much a child's statements may get entangled with its parents' interpretations of it, and how much many further distortions might operate in "memories" like these (And we must add: of course, weakening the case! If reinterpretations are to be allowed, there is a price to pay. And the price is: The weakening of the statement's evidential strength!).

I must say that, being myself a father (I have a daughter, 14 years old, and a son, 8 years old), I do not believe the possibility that a researcher can safely identify what is (or was) the child's statements and what is (or was) the "entangling of it" with its immediate surrounding (mainly, but not only, with parents' interpretations, positive or negative feedbacks, etc).(comment: as a matter of fact, I must say that researchers Erlandur Haraldsson and Majd Abu-Izzeddin seem to have done an excellent work in attempting to do exactly that in a recent case report: Development of Certainty About the Correct Deceased Person in a Case of the Reincarnation Type in Lebanon: The Case of Nazih Al-Danaf. Erlendur Haraldsson and Majd Abu-Izzeddin. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol.16, No.3, pp.363-380. 2002. This case, however, did not have written records made prior to verification).

An interesting issue is the "vats-sheds" issue. "Does a five-year-old Druse village boy not know the difference between a vat and a well?" (comment: Angel asked this question in his 1994 Skeptical Inquirer article, because Imad had said that in his previous life there were two wells in his house, one full and one empty. Stevenson found two concrete vats there, and counted that statement as "correct" in the tabulation). We may also ask, "Do grown-up skeptics from Skeptical Inquirer (or the people responsible for the drawings on it) not know the difference between a vat made out of wood and a vat made out of concrete?" (in S.I. Fall 1994 issue, they drew an archetypic brick well by the side of a typical wooden vat - this drawing appears on the cover page and on one page of the article too). The problem of the range of word meanings in different languages is a hard one to deal with, even without having in mind the reincarnation hypothesis. In Brazilian Portuguese, I would never describe a "spring well" using the same word that I use for a "concrete vat" (nor would I describe a "concrete vat" using the same word that I use for a "wooden vat"...). But a shed like that one in Ibrahim Bouhamzy's house, I would surely describe as a garage (in Brazilian Portuguese), the same word I would use for any other ordinary garage. If someone is using the "reincarnation working hypothesis", no matter how weird it is, it has to be taken in consideration the possible distortion of memories through these hypothetical (and weird) soul transmissions, along with all else that could influence these memories (even the fact that the boy cited the "two wells" item during the car trip, that is, possibly rather quickly; whereas "Mahmoud" was most probably cited by the boy many many times, and so it may be more deserving of heavy criticism).

It seems to be true that Stevenson did not try to know when exactly Imad started mentioning Khriby and Bouhamzy (as Angel pointed out in his critique to this case report). But aren't these actually statements of a limiting nature? Don't they limit the possibility of reinterpretation?

Angel asked the question, "What would happen if the boy were taken to another village?". Could there be a reinterpretation that would allow a fake identification (just as Ibrahim might have been a fake identification too)? One way of looking at this question might be if we look at the "unsolved cases", especially cases with written records made prior to verification which have remained unsolved. In Mills et al (Mills, Antonia; Haraldsson, Erlendur, and Keil; H. H. Jürgen. 1994. Replication studies of cases suggestive of reincarnation by three independent investigators. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 88:207-219), they report that out of 19 cases with written records made prior to verification (in Sri Lanka, studied by Haraldsson), four cases had been solved, and 15 had not.

This means 78% of unsolved cases.

Also, anthropologist Matlock (Matlock, J. G. 1990. Past life memory case studies. In S. Krippner - Ed. - Advances in Parapsychological Research. McFarland: Jefferson, NC, Vol. 6, p. 231) says:

This means 33% of unsolved cases. Actually, almost all of the cases above must be cases without written records made prior to verification. So the identification of the "previous personality" was carried out by the families themselves.

In general, it seems that these cases do not get solved so easily as one might expect. But I must say that this is only a very introductory look at this issue anyway. Another way of estimating the likelihood of finding a person that matches these children's statements would be the experimental approach that Leonard Angel used at the Vancouver BC Skeptic society (comment: Mr. Leonard Angel told me this in a personal communication on May 20, 2003: "Another factor is worth mentioning that isn't written up anywhere. When I presented this material to the Vancouver BC Skeptic society, I devised a substitute list of factors similar to the table in the 20 Cases Collection for Imad Elawar. I don't recall the details, but what would have been common for the Elawar context but not common in Vancouver got something that seemed equally common in Vancouver. And what was uncommon in Elawar's context would have been replaced by something equally uncommon in Vancouver. I presented the list to the group of about forty or fifty people, and had them fill out which of the elements applied to them personally. We then found some truly remarkable sounding results--there were several people in the audience who fit as many indicators as the supposed past life of Imad Elawar did for that list. The experiment was not rigorously drawn, it was more to demonstrate the nature of the informational web, how powerful it is, and how easy it is to generate connections that are not causally significant."). So far, I have not come across any article where a researcher on past life memory cases has attempted to undertake this.

A further intriguing issue is Jamileh herself. When Imad went to Khriby, he did not mention Jamileh while he was with the female members of the Bouhamzy family. I believe his mother, or his father, instructed him not to do so, for the relationship of Ibrahim and Jamileh had been a scandal for the family. Anyway, I wonder if Jamileh really ever existed! I think it is kind of likely that she did exist, but it would not surprise me if she actually did not.

The two articles that I further read, suggested by Stevenson in his reply, have many good points.

In Stevenson-Samararatne (1988), many of the problems identified by Angel in the Imad Elawar case seem to have been much better dealt with. The cases seem to have been more deeply and better studied (there were more days of interviews; the researchers spoke the local languages and knew the local culture). There was far less reinterpretation and the tabulations seemed much more clean, that is, they were less confusing and the statements seemed less entangled (i.e. they were better unraveled; actually, there was no tabulation: I had to extract, one by one, the "prior-to-verification statements" from the article, and compare the result with the Table 1 "sum total", which only indicated the total number of statements, the number of correct ones, wrong ones, and unverified). There seemed also to have been less possibility of "sensory leakage" (i.e. less possibilities of contact between the families involved).

In Mills et al (Mills, Antonia; Haraldsson, Erlendur, and Keil; H. H. Jürgen. 1994. Replication studies of cases suggestive of reincarnation by three independent investigators. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 88:207-219), the authors don't really have much material supporting paranormal claims. The only case with records made prior to verification had (from my point of view) a serious weakpoint: all items were "out-door items", which increases the chance that they might have been known to strangers and other non family members. But the authors do make very interesting methodological comments on the possible pitfalls regarding research in this area:

As far as I could understand it, this item 4 above is precisely a reference to what Angel mentioned as "the statistics of the informational nexus surrounding any 'psychically' delivered material" (as Angel put it in his 1994 article in the Skeptical Inquirer: "Most deeply problematic is the fact that the most challenging rival account of the data to the reincarnation hypothesis has not even been raised, let alone assessed. The appropriate rival account has to do with the statistics of the informational nexus surrounding any 'psychically' delivered material."). This 1994 article (Mills et al) of course could not have been used by Angel in his book and article, for it appeared at the very same time that these writings of Angel did.

It seems to me that in terms of methodological criticism Angel's article has stressed the importance of two crucial items: first, how much cases like these could be explained by the workings of sheer chance. And second, how much the researcher could pass to the "verifiers" the very information he or she is attempting to verify. In sum: the chance issue, that has for so long plagued parapsychology; and the sensory leakage issue (either leaking from the researcher to the verifiers, or from the sorrounding environment - newspapers, people, etc - to the subject or to the informants), that, too, has had a devastating impact on the acceptability of the claims of the paranormal.

Presently, I think that only cases with written records made by the researcher prior to verification should be considered as possible source of empirical evidence for the reincarnation hypothesis (comment: there is an interesting 1998 article by Shouten and Stevenson addressing precisely this issue, comparing these "stronger" type of cases with the other "weaker" type, that is, cases without written records made prior to verification. They conclude that the Socio-Psychological Hypothesis cannot adequately explain these "weaker" cases of the reincarnation type, which seems to bring these "weaker" type of cases closer to the "stronger" ones in their possible evidential value to support the reincarnation hypothesis - Does the Socio-Psychological Hypothesis Explain Cases of the Reincarnation Type? Schouten, SA & Stevenson, I. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Vol.186. No.8, pp.504-506. - However, it seems that in this article the "stronger cases" include both the ones with written records made by the researcher and the ones where the written records were made by someone else, sometimes a relative of the child, like in the Swarnlata case. Also, at least in the Imad Elawar case, Stevenson's quantitative evaluation of the correct, incorrect, and doubtful items does not seem much reliable. For example, he considered, even after Leonard Angel's critique in 1994, that the correct statements amounted to 80%, whereas I myself see his data as having actually 69% of correct statements at most, and perhaps even only 63% if we take a more stringent stand. - see details below - So, the statistics in this 1998 article may be flawed. There seems also to be a curious statistical mistake in Stevenson's 1993 introductory article on birthmarks and birth defects: Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons. Ian Stevenson. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol 7, No.4, pp403-410, 1993. It has to do with the probability that a death wound on the previous incarnation would match the location of a birthmark in the next incarnation. If there is one birthmark, Stevenson's numbers indicated a 1/160 probability, but the correct statistical figure should be 1/25. And if there are two birthmarks, Stevenson found a 1/25600 probability, but the correct number is 1/625. This mistake was repeated in both his books on the same subject in 1997, and were criticized by Leonard Angel in a 2001 article: Reincarnation All Over Again: Evidence for Reincarnation Rests on Backward Reasoning. A review of Ian Stevenson's "Reincarnation and Biology", Praeger Publishers, 1997. Vol 1 and 2, 2,228 pp. Author of the book review: Leonard Angel. Skeptic Magazine. vol. 9, No.3, 2002). Further, even if you add to that true double-blind verification methods, these cases will never satisfy the strictures that are being demanded from paranormal claims, especially the survivalist ones, for there is no way to have them happen under sensory shielding conditions, which is a tricky weakness. For a hypothesis like the reincarnation one, these demands for strictures come not only from the need to reconcile it with the rest of the scientific body of knowledge: they come top-most from its deep potential social impact. This is an issue where, I think, we cannot allow "temporary scientific truths". We need something stronger.

That is why my viewpoint is that these cases should never be regarded as "proof" of reincarnation. But I do think they already furnish some empirical evidence for it. Weak evidence. But true.

In Angel's more recent article, in Skeptic Magazine (Reincarnation all over again: evidence for reincarnation rests on backward reasoning. A review of Ian Stevenson's "Reincarnation and Biology", Praeger Publishers, 1997. Vol 1 and 2, 2,228 pp.. Reviewed by Leonard Angel. Skeptic Magazine vol. 9, No.3, 2002), he says:

It seems to me that this 2,000-page book of Stevenson may indeed have many flaws. I have read some parts of the smaller one, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (1997), and even though Stevenson said at its introduction that it was meant to serve almost as a "series of abstracts" to give some background and prepare the reader for the bigger volume (that is, to raise our curiosity and interest on the subjet), this smaller book lacks the details that are necessary even for a preliminary analysis (at least as far as I am concerned). But Angel says: "Part of the problem is...".

I do not necessarily see a "problem" in the fact that even scientists with solid academic credentials get impressed by Stevenson's work. What really worries me is why they get impressed. If you read, even if you read carefully, a case report like Imad Elawar's or those six ones that appear in the two articles that I mentioned above (Stevenson et al, 1988; and Mills et al, 1994), you may very well come out of the reading feeling that there is strong evidence, or felling that there is weak evidence or no evidence at all. I do not believe that anyone can get a good idea of what these case reports really are (that is, their strengths and weaknesses) without carefully reading them many times, and, what is worse, without making retabulations and extractions of the statements to try and weigh the value of the cases.

I very much believe that these case reports are being very poorly read, even by good scientists (and by those who claim that "the belief in reincarnation is as well justified by scientific investigations 'as...say, the belief in the past existence of dinosaurs'.". Either philosopher Robert Almeder did not read the reports carefully and deeply enough, or he does not know much about dinosaurs. Anyway, his reply to Paul Edwards in "Critique of Arguments Offered Against Reincarnation", is fairly good - Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 499-526, 1997. - this is a reply to Edwards' book Reincarnation: a Critical Examination - 1996). And I know for sure that these case reports (at least sometimes) are being very poorly written, in many ways, especially (but not only) in their tabulations. It is my point of view that a carefull and deep analysis of these case reports will lead neither to quick dismissal nor to ready acceptance. Further, as far as I can tell, the objections to "weird things" like the reincarnation hypothesis coming from the supposedly brain-mind "perfect coupling", and from hypothetical "violations of physical laws", are far less grounded than most people seem to be aware of (including both Michael Shermer and Barry L. Beyerstein. Shermer says, in Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other Confusions of Our Time, "Shouldn't we know by now that the laws of science prove that ghosts cannot exist?" (p. 27), quoted in a review of this book by Henry H. Bauer in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. And Beyerstein says, in A Cogent Consideration of the Case for Karma and Reincarnation, a review of Paul Edwards book Reincarnation: a Critical Examination published in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine : January/February 1999: "While modern neuroscience cannot conclusively rule out the possibility that disembodied consciousness could exist, the staggering amount of evidence suggesting that thinking, remembering, and feeling require an intact, functioning brain serves to make the brain-mind link one of the most well-supported postulates to be found anywhere in science.". To me, both Shermer and Beyerstein are misinformative in their statements). 

In that way, I must say that I felt that instead of presenting us with an "unwarranted inflation of the significance of the data", Leonard Angel provided us with an "unmerited deflation of it".

Anyway, I must stress that his analysis (in both of his articles) is priceless in many respects, and I am very much aware that Angel may really be a hundred percent right in his intuition that all this research program has little or nothing of paranormal in it.

Leonard Angel asked, commenting on the Imad Elawar case, "How difficult is it, then, to account for the specific content of the best of the Twenty Cases material on purely naturalistic hypotheses?"

Having studied it deeply, the answer, as far as I am concerned, is: "Certainly not impossible. But very difficult indeed..."

Explanation: This "retabulation" is an attempt to see if the Imad Elawar case still seems "interesting" (i.e. indicative of paranormality) after a "correction" of Ian Stevenson's original tabulation of it, trying to take as a guiding yardstick the methodological criticism to this case (and to Stevenson's tabulation of it) that was presented by Leonard Angel both in his book (Enlightenment East and West, 1994) and in his article published in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer (Empirical Evidence for Reincarnation? Examining Stevenson's "Most Impressive" Case. Skeptical Inquirer, vol.18, Fall 1994).

In the tabulation below, only the statements that were recorded prior to verification were included. Some further statements were made by Imad Elawar during the visit to the "previous personality's" house (Imad Elawar is the boy who was said to remember a previous incarnation, and he was five years old in 1964; Ibrahim Bouhamzy is the supposedly "previous personality", who died of tuberculosis in September 1949, having died when he was about twenty five years old). Of these further statements, only the ones that were witnessed directly by the interpreter were included. The items that I left out (that is, those not written down prior to verification) would actually strenghten the case. So, leaving them out does not bias this reanalysis towards a paranormal explanation (quite on the contrary).

Each item has its previous number (i.e. its number in the original tabulation made by Stevenson) indicated in parenthesis. For example: 4- (St: 03) means that the original number of this item is 3, whereas I am refering to it in a "retabulated" form as item 4. St stands for Stevenson.

Comments on possible weaknesses of the case: While verifying if Imad Elawar's statements were correct or not, the questions could have been presented to the "verifiers" in a "double-blind", "single-blind", or "open" manner (this last category includes the often criticized "leading questions"). We may assume that Stevenson's questions were a mix of "open" and "single-blind" ones, possibly tending to be "open", sometimes (perhaps) even "leading" ones.

* Imad Elawar was born in December 1958.

* An event that happened possibly in December 1960: Salim el Aschkar, a native of Khriby, had married a girl from Kornayel and sometimes visited the latter village. When Imad was about two years old he was on the street with his paternal grandmother when Salim el Aschkar came along. Imad ran to him and threw his arms around him. "Do you know me?" asked Salim, to which Imad answered: "Yes, you were my neighbor." This man had been a neighbor of Ibrahim Bouhamzy's family, but was not then living close to their house. He was slightly acquainted with Elawar family, and he had been to the Elawar house once before Imad's birth.

* In the Autumn of 1962, a woman from the village of Maaser el Shouf came to Kornayel for a visit, and met Imad's parents. She confirmed that some people with the names indicated by Imad did in fact live (or had lived) in the area around Khriby, including Jamileh.

* Mr. Faris Amin Elawar, a third cousin of Imad's paternal grandfather, had an acquaintance, but not an intimate one, with the Bouhamzy family. His son, Saleem, went to the funeral of Said Bouhamzy (the one that was run over by the truck in June 1943, six years before Ibrahim Bouhamzy's death in September 1949) with some relatives. Mr. Faris visited the Elawar family frequently. (Stevenson said on pages 315-316: "These last two interviews left me with the impression that there had been rather more visiting between Kornayel and Khriby than I had previously thought. At the same time they reinforced my conclusion that persons known to Imad's family did not have knowledge of the details of the intimate life of the Bouhamzy family.").

* December 1963, Imad's father went to Khriby to the funeral of the other Said Bouhamzy.

* Stevenson started the research of the case in March 1964.

* The cities of Kornayel and Khriby are 40 km (25 miles) away from each other. No direct regular traffic links them, but they have moderately good, hard-surface roads. In this area, the people from different cities usually get together mainly in funerals and marriages.

* It is important to have in mind that the informants in this case were, mostly, Imad's parents. Stevenson says on page 277 (in Twenty Cases): "Although I tried to learn exactly what Imad had himself said, his parents passed on to me as having been said by Imad some of these inferences which they themselves had made in their effort to find some coherent pattern in his statements. As it turned out, however, the errors of inference made by Imad's family add considerably to the evidence of their honesty and also to the improbability that they themselves could have provided a source or a channel for the information given by Imad.". So a question that we should bear in mind, while trying to account for this case on "naturalistic" grounds, is to what extent Imad's parents could have gained access naturalistically to the information that they presented as being the memories of the boy. The "naturalistic" options are: confabulation (collective fraude, involving two or more persons); cryptomnesia (source amnesia); and chance plus data-significance inflation.

Objective items: O. This kind of item is of special value. It refers to items that could be objectively verified by Stevenson, like, for example, "Just before his house, there was a slope".

High probability items: H. This refers to an item that is not specific. I included all names under this category, for want of information as to their relative frequencies in that population. It must be stressed that my criteria for classifying items as "high probability" or not is certainly only tentative.

Items that might have been affected by sensory cues: C. This affects mostly the "recognitions".

In the "retabulation below", the items were arranged so that the ones having possibly more evidential value appear first. All comments are mine, even though I sometimes "borrowed phrases" from Stevenson.

One bad point in case studies like these is that we must heavily trust the researcher. It is a good thing that other researchers have undertaken "replications" of Stevenson's research (among other works: Mills, Antonia; Haraldsson, Erlendur, and Keil; H. H. Jürgen. 1994. Replication studies of cases suggestive of reincarnation by three independent investigators. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 88:207-219).

Another bad point is the fact that we have to trust also the verifiers. This might be avoided if "double-blind" questioning is implemented. Instead, Stevenson's questioning procedures seem to have been at best "single-blind", and very possibly "non-blind" (that is, using "open" questions) many times, perhaps even most of the times. Also, by their very nature, these cases cannot develop under "sensory shielding conditions", and this is surely another pitfall for paranormal hypotheses, especially the reincarnation one.

Some "flaws" and "weaknesses" in this specific case study should be pointed out. It seems that Stevenson was unprepared for what he found in this case, the so called "baffling complexities" as he put it, and I think it was so because this was possibly the very first case where he found the opportunity of writing down prior to verification what a subject was stating. So, it might be that he lacked experience to deal with what he was facing, therefore adding weakness to the investigation and to the analysis of it. Another weak point is the need to use interpreters unknown to him and that were not themselves researchers. A further and serious flaw is the drastic reinterpretations that he used, sometimes (at least) clearly unacceptable. Also, in his "Reply to Leonard Angel" in 1994, he stuck to his original tabulation of the case (presenting the sum total displayed just above, that is: Statements: 61 Correct: 49 Unverified: 05 Incorrect: 06 Doubtful: 01), not acknowledging the mistakes in it, which to me seems to be very bad. Additionally, the case is weakened by five main "naturalistic" potential sources of information: the meeting of Imad with Ibrahim's neighbor; the meeting of Imad's parents with the woman from Maaser el Shouf; the frequent visits to Imad's house of Mr. Faris Elawar, who was acquainted with the Bouhamzy family of Khriby; the funeral of Said Bouhamzy in 1963, that Imad's father attended; and the fact that the two cities involved are not too far away from each other (even though they also are not too close). An important point to bear in mind is that (since Imad's parents were the main informants) when assessing the possibility of "paranormal" acquisition of information, we are actually analysing the possibility that Imad's parents could gain access to that information, and not Imad himself. One last possible weakness is that the "recognitions" and further "statements" that ocurred during Imad's visit to Ibrahim's house are liable to sensory cues.

In making the "retabulation" above, I did not use the statements that were not written down prior to verification, and I did not use the recognitions plus statements noted during the "recognition phase of the case" that were not directly witnessed by the interpreter. These were about twelve items altogether. Of these, only three at most were incorrect. So, this procedure that I used of leaving these items out of the analysis actually weakens the case. I must stress the extreme difficulty in breaking down the statements in cases like these, as previously stressed by Mills et al (1994). Sometimes, what Stevenson considered one statement I have retabulated as two or more statements. In at least one instance, I merged two statements into just one.

I must say that, despite the many pitfalls and possible failures, to me this case is surely not lost. Stevenson's description of the case gave us enough material to think about it and to analyze it (that is, to "re-analyze" it). Stevenson has said that the mistakes Imad's parents commited (in interpreting Imad's statements) ended up adding strength to the case. I agree with this to a certain extent, and I further think that Stevenson's mistakes did also add strength to the case in a certain way. Sometimes, at least, the reinterpretations seemed appropriate. And in these occasions, these reinterpretations (or better, the previous wrong interpretations or expectations) ended up adding a true "double-blind" effect to the investigation of the case. That is, Stevenson was looking for one thing, and he ended up finding something very different of it, but still consistent with the statements to a great deal.

In my tentative retabulation, I noticed that, of the total 55 items, 69% were correct, and 31% incorrect. Further, only in the "correct" statements column do we have "objective items", actually ten of them. In the "incorrect" statements column, most statements were classified as "non specific" items (that is, high probability ones). It must be stressed, though, that my criteria for classifying items as high probability or not (H) is certainly flawed and only tentative.

The tabulation below shows the differences in the "statements", as they appear in the "retabulation". Item 16 of the correct column was left out. It is a very complex "item", and its complexity is dealt with in the retabulation itself.

O stands for "objective item"; H stands for "high probability" (or non-specific) item; C stands for "item subject to possible sensory cues".

In my retabulation, four items were considered correct through reinterpretation. One of these, was considered unverified by Stevenson himself ("Ibrahim had a friend called Yousef el Halibi"); and another was actually considered incorrect by him ("There were two garages at the house"). If we take out this "unverified statement", and relocate the 3 remaining items that I considered "correct through reinterpretation" to the "Incorrect Column", then we would have the following sum total:

Conclusion: It seems that the case suffered from lack of experience from the part of the researcher (Stevenson). Heavy reinterpretations were used, and this has raised some criticism and also suspicions. Methodological flaws did occur. At least a certain amount of "data-significance inflation" affected the analysis of the case (Stevenson claims on page 2 of Twenty Cases that: "In my discussion at the end I argue that some of the cases do much more than suggest reincarnation; they seem to me to furnish considerable evidence for it."). This case, just like all those in this category, is most certainly rather open to sensory leakages of many sorts.

Yet, the case seems worthy of looking seriously at. All the weaknesses of the case seem to have been openly and fully presented by Stevenson himself. It may be that some of the "weaknesses" ended up adding strength to the case, even furnishing some fortuitous "double-blind" procedures. The naturalistic hypothesis of fraud from the part of the Imad Elawar family seems untenable. Cryptomnesia (i.e. source amnesia), seems unlikely (but perhaps not impossible). Chance alone, in light of the retabulation, seems to me very unlikely. Items 11, 12, and 13 ("Jamileh was beautiful", "dressed well", and "wore high heels") might have been subject to a combination of "leading questions" plus fuzzy memories from the part of the verifier (Mr. Haffez Bouhamzy). For the other items to end up being misreported as "correct" by the verifiers, it seems that it would have been necessary more straight forward lying. The only three hypotheses that seem to remain, then, are: deliberate lying from the part of the verifiers; fraud from the part of the researcher; and, some paranormal process.

Having thought lengthily on this case, and having read and deeply analyzed both the arguments for and against paranormal interpretations of it, I can't help but say that I do not think that it is impossible to account for this case on naturalistic grounds. Nonetheless, it seems very difficult indeed to do so. To me, this case seems to furnish some evidence for reincarnation, especially in light of further studies undertaken both by Stevenson and by other researchers in this area.

If I were to answer to the question "Is there empirical evidence for reincarnation?", presently my answer would be: "The evidence is weak. But it is certainly there."

comment: It is important to stress that even though Stevenson said in his book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation that he considers that some of the cases furnish considerable evidence for the reincarnation hypothesis (in the introduction to the 1966 edition), he also has some more cautious statements, saying for example that "I would only here reiterate that I consider theses cases suggestive of reincarnation and nothing more. All the cases have deficiencies as have all their reports. Neither any case individually nor all of them collectively offers anything like a proof of reincarnation." (preface to the second edition, 1974). Also, in his 2000 article (The Phenomenon of Claimed Memories of Previous Lives: Possible Interpretations and Importance. Medical Hypotheses. Vol 54. No. 4. pp.652-659, 2000), Stevenson said: "Even after almost 40 years of investigations, research on children who claim to remember previous lives has barely begun." (page 658). Anthropologist James G. Matlock, in his comprehensive review of this research program (Past Life Memory Case Studies. In S. Krippner, editors: Advances in Parapsychological Research. pp. 184-267. Mcfarland. Jefferson, N.C. 1990.), also has a very cautious remark in mentioning the combined empirical strength that had been gathered thus far: ..."it would be rash to declare that reincarnation has been shown to occur. Until the data and concepts discussed in this chapter can be assimilated to the rest of scientific knowledge, the data, at their best, will remain no more than suggestive of reincarnation." (page 255).

Therefore, even though sometimes researchers in the "cases of the reincarnation type" have made some extreme claims, they also have made more cautious remarks, very much compatible with the strengths and weaknesses of the empirical data that has been gathered so far.

As a matter of fact, it seems that much of the skeptics' criticism looks less like original outlook, and more like plagiarism...

These are the original tabulations (1 and 2) that Ian Stevenson did for the Imad Elawar case, as printed in his book Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1974). Stevenson said in his reply to Leonard Angel (Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1994) that this case had 61 statements altogether, of which 49 were correct, 5 unverified, 6 incorrect, and 1 doubtful. In the original tabulations, Stevenson did not consistently apply these ratings, so I had to do my best in guessing which ratings should apply to each item. I have, therefore, included in bold blue type these ratings (as guessed by me) directly in the tabulations, for a clearer view.

In tabulation 2, four items were considered as "statements" in the sum total made by Stevenson in his reply to Angel (which indicated a total of 61 statements). The items were numbers 63, 64, 70, and 72 of the tabulation below. For these, I have also included the ratings, in bold blue type.

Bibliography:

15- Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. Ian Stevenson. Praeger Publishers. Westport, Connecticut. 1997.