One does not have to “internet” long to see the circular argument that no research into the afterlife should be done because there is no evidence for it. Logically, as anyone not constrained by the emotional rigidity which both creates and reinforces dogmatic world views–evidence happens AFTER research. There was no evidence for molecules until somebody looked for them. Democritus posited little bits that make up everything several thousand years ago, but he had no evidence for them.
Here, a well qualified researcher associated with a major university set up an experiment, using well tested scientific protocols, to see if the mediums could do significantly better than, say, the “Amazing” (no doubt that word is his own invention) Randi (who incidentally can’t do as well as even self admitted cold readers, who in turn cannot replicate what Schwarz found). Using a formal scientific scoring system, they did extremely well, and no alternative explanations other than that they were doing what they said they were doing can be plausibly advanced.
Who is it that so passionately rejects the notion of survival, an idea which has filled human history, and which no doubt predates recorded history, the world over?
No one is asking for faith. No one is asking that “science”, as a method, be rejected. All reasonable people are asking is that people stop conflating “science” with whatever outdated notions they happen to consider important to their belief systems.
The point of both science and skepticism is not to make people stupid, but that is all too often the case. Having engaged in what I will overgenerously call “debates” with hardcore materialists–they are not skeptics, that term already being a lie–my own sense is that their deceased grandfather could literally walk into a room, slap them in the face and tell them to wake the fuck up, and that wouldn’t do it.
We are born with a truth-finder, and it is exactly the opposite of the point of true education to teach people to ignore their own instincts, intuitions, and most of all experience. Yes, of course, by all means reconcile them with formal evidentiary approaches, but if something is there, for God’s sake investigate it and treat the evidence as what it is.