Two kinds of critic
Critics of reincarnation research fall broadly into two groups. Materialist skeptics hold that the mind depends on the brain and cannot survive death, so the cases must have an ordinary explanation.1 Others accept that the cases contain information the child could not normally have known, but argue that psychic abilities of living people, rather than survival, account for it. Both groups have raised points that researchers take seriously, and some that they consider mistaken.2
Ordinary explanations
Fraud is possible, but very few cases have been shown to be fraudulent: Stevenson described only a handful of deceptions among well over a thousand cases.3 More often discussed are unconscious processes. Witnesses may misremember what a child said once they know the facts (paramnesia),4 or the child may have picked up information and forgotten where it came from (cryptomnesia). Parents may encourage talk that fits their beliefs, and in cultures that expect reincarnation, any odd remark may be read as a past-life memory. Some critics, such as Ian Wilson, suggested that children fantasize better lives;5 Stevenson replied that many remember poorer or lower-caste lives.6 Others, like Leonard Angel, accused researchers of reading too much into weak matches, especially for birthmarks.7
Researchers’ main answers are cases with records made before verification, which avoid paramnesia;8 cases in which the families lived far apart and had no contact; and the consistency of features across very different cultures.6
Psychic and logical objections
The philosopher Stephen Braude has argued that a child might acquire information through extrasensory perception and adopt a dead person’s identity for psychological reasons, so-called ‘super-psi’.3 Supporters of survival reply that this would need psychic ability far beyond anything shown experimentally, and that it struggles to explain birthmarks and lasting behaviour.9
Philosophical objections include Paul Edwards’s argument that there is no conceivable way for a mind to pass into a new body, and the ‘population problem’: there are more people now than ever lived.10 Researchers answer the first by pointing to the unresolved state of the mind–body question,11 and the second by noting that reincarnation need not apply to everyone, or might involve other forms of life.12 The debate continues, and the Compendium covers both the cases and the criticisms.