The F ine Art of Baloney Detection

Carl Sagan

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections;

whence proceed sciences which may be called “sci ences as one would .” Fo r what a man ha d rather

were true he more readily bel ieves. Therefore he re jects difficult things from impatience of research;

sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from sup erstition; the light

of experience, from arrogance and pride, lest hi s mind should seem to be occupied with things

mean and transitory; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar .

Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes im perceptible, in which the affections colour

and infect the understanding.

Fra nc i s Ba co n , Nov u m O r g a n o n ( 1620 )

My p ar ents died years ago. I was very close to them. I still miss them terribly . I know I always will. I long t o

believe that their essence, t heir personalities, what I loved so much about them, are—really and tr uly—still in

existence somewh ere. I wouldn ’ t ask ver y much, just ﬁve or ten m inutes a year , say , to tell them about th eir

grandchildren, to catch them up on the latest n ews, to remind them that I love them. There ’ s a part of me—no

matter how childish it sounds—that wonders how they are. “I s ever ything all right?” I want to as k. The last words

I found myself saying to my father , at the moment of his death, were “T ake care. ”

Sometimes I dream that I’ m talking to my parents, and sudd enly—still immer sed in the dreamwork—I’ m

seized by the overpo wering realization that the y didn ’ t really die, that it’ s all been some kind of horrible mista ke.

Why , here they are, alive and well, my father making wr y jokes, my mother e arnestly advising me to wear a

muﬄer because the weather is chilly . When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all o ver

again. Plainly , there ’ s so mething within me that’ s ready to believe in life after death. And it’ s not the l east bit

interested in whether there’ s any sober evidenc e for it.

So I don ’ t guﬀaw at the woman who visits her husban d’ s grave and chats him up ever y now and then, mayb e

on the anniversar y of his death. It’ s not hard to understand. And if I have diﬃculties with the ontologica l status

of who she’ s talking to, that’ s all right. That’ s not what this is about. This is about humans being human. More

than a third of American adults b elieve that on some l evel they’ ve made contact with the d ead. The number

seems to have jumped by 15 pe rcent between and 1988. A quarter of Americans belie ve in reincarnation.

But that doesn ’ t mean I’ d be willing to accept th e pretensions of a “ medium, ” who claims to channel the

spirits of the dear departed, when I’ m aware the practice is rife with fraud. I know how much I want to believe

that my parents have just abandoned the husks of thei r bodies, like in sects or snakes molting, and gone

somewhere else. I understan d that those ver y feelings might make me easy prey even for an unclever con, or for

normal people unfamiliar with their unconscious minds, or for those suﬀering from a dissociative psychiatric

disorder . Reluctantly , I rouse some reserves of skepticism.

Ho w is it, I ask myself, that channelers n ever give us veriﬁable information oth erwise una vailable? Why does

Alexander the Great never tell us about the exact location of h is tomb, F ermat about his Last Theorem, J ohn

Wilkes Booth about the Lincoln assassi nation conspiracy , Hermann Goring about the Reichstag ﬁre? Why don ’ t

Sophocles, Democritus, and Aristarchus dictate their lost books? Don ’ t they wish future generations to have

access to their masterpiec es?

I f s om e g o o d e v i d e nc e f o r li f e a f te r d e a th w e r e a nn o u n ce d , I ’ d be ea g er t o e x a mi n e i t; b u t i t w o u l d ha ve t o be

real scientiﬁc data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better th e hard truth, I say ,

than the comforting fan tasy . And in the ﬁnal tolling it o ften turns out that the facts are more comforting than the

fantasy .

The fundamental premise of “ channeling, ” spiritualism, and other forms of necromancy is that when we die

we d on ’ t. N o t e xa ct ly . S o me th in ki ng , f ee li ng , a nd r em em be ri ng pa rt of us co nt in ue s. Tha t w ha te ve r -i t- is —a so ul

or spirit, neither matter nor energ y , but somet hing else—can, we are told, re-enter the bodies of human and other

beings in the future, and so death loses much of its sting. What ’ s more, we have an opportunity , if the spiritualist

or channeling contentions are tr ue, to make contact with loved ones who have died.

J. Z. Knight of the State of W ashington claims to be in touch with a 35,000-year-old somebody called

“Ramtha. ” He speaks English very well, using Knight’ s to ngue, lips and vocal chords, producing what sounds to

me to be an accent from the Indian Ra j. Since most people know how to talk, and many—from children to