The journal Explore (1) has recently published an article by Alexandre Caroli Rocha, Denise Paraná, Elizabeth Schmitt Freire, Francisco Lotufo Neto and Alexander Moreira-Almeida containing an interesting study about the mediumship of Chico Xavier.
Entitled "Investigating the Fit and Accuracy of Alleged Mediumistic Writing: A Case Study of Chico Xavier’s Letters", the work performed an analysis of 13 psychographic letters and searched for the degree of information accuracy in each of them against the chance of "normal" access by the medium to that information. The article abstract reads:
We identified 99 items of verifiable information conveyed in these 13 letters; 98% of these items were rated as “Clear and Precise Fit” and no item was rated as “no Fit.” We concluded that normal explanations for accuracy of the information (i.e., fraud, chance, information leakage, and cold reading) were only remotely plausible. These results seem to provide empirical support for non-reductionist theories of consciousness.
The complete article can be reached here: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(14)00108-6/abstract. The work was supported by FAPESP (see 2, process #2010/11047-0).
(1) http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(14)00108-6/abstract
(2) São Paulo Research Foundation: http://www.fapesp.br/en/
