The evidence of after-death survival of human consciousness according to the winners of the Bigelow contest: a scientific examination
The aim of this study was to examine the strength of scientific evidence, reproducibility and replicability of the 29 essays of the winners of the Bigelow contest.Six essays (20.5%) were included in the category with the high strength of scientific evidence. Four essays (14%) were included in the category with medium strength of scientific evidence and the remaining 19 essays (65.5%) in the category with low strength of scientific evidence. The overall agreement between our strength of scientific evidence categories and the Bigelow ones, was only 48.8%, sufficient to demonstrate a clear difference between our scientific criteria and those adopted by the judges of the Bigelow contest.The essays that obtained the highest strength of scientific evidence level were related to near-death experiences and mental mediumship.For other phenomena, more studies with refined experimental designs are necessary to increase the evidence of the survival of human consciousness.