Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Does some part of us survive death? That's one of the biggest questions humans have ever asked, and this paper by the IONS research team takes a remarkably systematic crack at evaluating the evidence. Borrowing a grading framework from medical research (think A through F, like a report card), they scored nine different categories of survival evidence. The top marks went to mental and physical mediumship, earning a B+. Reincarnation cases and the out-of-body aspects of near-death experiences scored a respectable B-minus. Electronic voice phenomena and deathbed visions landed at C+, while apparitions and after-death communications got a plain C. Notably, nothing earned an A — largely because there's a stubborn problem researchers can't yet crack: how do you tell whether a medium is genuinely communicating with the dead versus using some other form of psychic ability to pull information from living minds? The team also proposed ten new experiments and surveyed 422 academics about what evidence would actually change their minds. The winner? Verified, controlled out-of-body experiences during near-death episodes — scientists found that scenario the most potentially convincing. A worldwide survey of nearly 2,400 people also delivered a surprising finding: while 60-70% of people are often cited as believing in survival after death, the number drops to around 40-50% when you ask specifically about personal identity surviving — not just some vague cosmic energy, but you actually continuing as you.
Research Notes
IONS team's 2021 Bigelow essay contest entry applying a structured evidence-grading approach. The A–F framework adapted from medical research is the clearest attempt to operationalize evidential standards for survival research. The survey of 422 academics provides unique empirical data on scientific persuasion thresholds. Note: PDF filename incorrectly uses 2025; actual publication year is 2021.
Adapts a medical evidence-grading framework (A–F) to evaluate nine categories of survival-of-consciousness evidence. Mental and physical mediumship received the highest grades (B+); reincarnation and NDE OBE aspects received B−; EVP/ITC and deathbed visions received C+; apparitions, induced experiences, and ADCs received C. No category achieved grade A, primarily because the psi-vs-survival interpretive confound cannot be resolved with current methods. Proposes ten new experiments and surveys 422 academics: controlled veridical OBEs during NDEs ranked most persuasive (mean 14.4/50), followed by mediumship (9.6) and reincarnation (9.0). A worldwide belief survey (N=2,389) finds the commonly cited 60–70% survival belief rate overstates identity-preserving (Level 2+) belief, which is closer to 40–50%.
Related Papers
Cites
- Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands — van Lommel, Pim (2001)
- Incidence and Correlates of Near-Death Experiences in a Cardiac Care Unit — Greyson, Bruce (2003)
- Which Near-Death Experience Features Are Associated with Reduced Fear of Death? — Pehlivanova, Marieta (2022)
- Epistemological Implications of Near-Death Experiences and Other Non-Ordinary Mental Expressions: Moving Beyond the Concept of Altered State of Consciousness — Facco, Enrico (2015)
- The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review — Cardeña, Etzel (2018)
- Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Demonstrated Using a Novel Triple-Blind Protocol — Beischel, Julie (2007)
- Anomalous Information Reception by Research Mediums Under Blinded Conditions II: Replication and Extension — Beischel, Julie (2015)
- Survival or Super-psi? — Braude, Stephen E (1992)
- Some Directions for Mediumship Research — Kelly, Emily Williams (2010)
- Non-local Consciousness: A Concept Based on Scientific Research on Near-Death Experiences During Cardiac Arrest — van Lommel, Pim (2013)
Companion
- What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models — Wahbeh, Helané (2022)
- Electrocortical activity associated with subjective communication with the deceased — Delorme, Arnaud (2013)
- Intuitive Assessment of Mortality Based on Facial Characteristics: Behavioral, Electrocortical, and Machine Learning Analyses — Delorme, Arnaud (2018)
- Terminal lucidity: A review and a case collection — Nahm, Michael (2012)
Also by these authors
Experimental Investigation of Precognition in Yoga Practitioners
Observer Influence on Quantum Interference: Testing the von Neumann-Wigner Consciousness-Collapse Theory
Who's Calling? Evaluating the Accuracy of Guessing Who Is on the Phone
More in Nde
The Central Clinical Relevance of Near-Death Experiences in Acute Care Contexts
Explanation of Near-Death Experiences: A Systematic Analysis of Case Reports and Qualitative Research
Neuro-Functional Modeling of Near-Death Experiences in Contexts of Altered States of Consciousness
AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest
The Mystical Experience and Its Neural Correlates
📋 Cite this paper
Delorme, Arnaud, Radin, Dean, Wahbeh, Helané (2021). Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness. Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) Essay Contest.
@article{delorme_2021_survival_consciousness,
title = {Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness},
author = {Delorme, Arnaud and Radin, Dean and Wahbeh, Helané},
year = {2021},
journal = {Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) Essay Contest},
}