Some interesting questions here, Mordred.

Anecdotal evidence . . . it's developed a bad name. It is, of course, fraught with difficulties. People might be hallucinating, they might be mistaken, they might remember incorrectly what they actually saw or heard. And even an entire group of people who insist they all saw, e.g. a statue of Mary weep blood, could be hallucinating or wrong about what it was they saw.

However -- that is not good enough reason to dismiss it out of hand, as many people do. This is because anecdotal evidence can also contain the truth. And if you dismiss all of it, you could be ignoring the truth as well. As tricky a business as it might be, I think it could well be worthwhile sometimes go to through that sifting process and try to find what might be the actual facts in the case. And indeed we do this in other areas. Witness testimony is accepted in court. The "soft" sciences such as sociology and psychology must also accept a degree of anecdotal evidence or else they would not be learning about the people they're supposed to be studying. It certainly has the potential to be worthwhile.

What's more, when the anecdotal evidence grows over a large period of time into a sizeable body with a great deal of internal consistency, that is potentially some very useful evidence. There's a website I like to refer to which refutes some of the usual claims of uber-skeptics and it contains a list of criteria you can use to judge whether anecdotal data might be valid. I can link if you like, or paste the list here. There's also a really good podcast on the subect, and they interview paranormal researchers and people from CSICOP. Fair warning, the host shares my opinions.

People also tend to claim that anecdotal evidence is the only evidence we have for certain "paranormal" phenomena, which is not true. There have been many studies done on the topic of human consciousness, ESP, telekinesis, that kind of thing. The Ganzfeld experiments are a good example. The usual CSICOP crowd have tried very hard to debunk these and like to fall back on their favourite card, not randomized well enough. However, if you look at the claims and counter-claims, you will see that no one has been able to poke a big hole in the findings of the experiments (that human telepathy exists).

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One question to consider might be: in the pursuit of studying the phenomenon of ghosts and NDEs, based on what does a person decide to either research it as factual events or mere psychological delusions? (Arguably one could do both but they're two very different branches of science.)


If all you have to go on is anecdotal evidence, then the reliability of the witnesses is something you have to take into consideration. One reason why I believe my husband and his family when they tell me about what happened in this house years ago is because they are unassuming, down-to-earth, reasonable people. My sister-in-law is a geology professor. None of them tend to talk about these things unless you ask them, and then they will tell you that it was simply "odd."

The problem with not accepting the possibility of any "paranormal" phenomena until you experience them yourself is that many people do not experience them, and it does seem that it requires a degree of open-mindedness at the outset in order to do so -- maybe it helps a person have a receptive mental state. Is it then OK to ignore everyone else's experiences and say there's nothing worth studying because you personally have not had similar experiences yourself?