A number of Dr Rousseau’s long-awaited
papers were finally deposited in the SPR library in early 2023, and I listed
and analysed them in a March 2023 update to my August 2022 update, concluding
that Dr Rousseau was being coy about his association with the SPR despite its
generous funding, and it was hard to see what relevance the bulk of them had
for psychical research. Of the handbook there
was still no sign.
It has become standard for the Buckmaster
Oversight Committee report contained in the SPR’s Annual Report to refer to
difficulties that have delayed completion of Dr Rousseau’s work, while
remaining optimistic about its imminent conclusion. The latest by its chair Dr Richard Broughton,
in the 2023/24 SPR Annual Report (published in April 2025), is no different:
“Dr David Rousseau has reported that the
Systems Methodology for Exploratory Science project is again on track after an
unavoidable pause due to family matters. He expects to complete the remaining
product of this project. the practical handbook for applying Systems
Methodology to the problems of psychical research by [the] summer of 2025. In
the interim he has added an important paper to his collection of published
papers arising from this project that is available in the SPR Library.”
It’s good to hear the family matters have
finally been resolved, but the claim that the handbook is going to be ready in
the near future has been the case for years: Dr Rousseau’s progress has been
repeatedly said to be nearly there in a manner that would do Zeno of Elea proud. In the meantime, though, there is an addition
to the set of articles considered to be part of the Buckmaster submission. Naturally I was keen to see it and requested
a copy.
I was kindly emailed one by Dr
Broughton. It is ‘Response to Editorial
“Should IANDS Endorse a Post-Physicalist Worldview?”: NDE Research Needs Firm
Guiderails but Soft Boundaries’, which appeared in the Journal of Near-Death Studies, 41(2), Summer 2023, pp. 134-44.
At least the subject matter is more
relevant to psychical research than many of Dr Rousseau’s other Buckmaster
articles appear to be, but the only time the SPR’s name appears is in a passing
reference to the 1894 ‘Report on the Census of Hallucinations’. As with the previous articles, despite the
standard “SPR Library Copy: Buckmaster Fund Project Systems Methodology for
Spontaneous Case Analysis” stamp applied to the first page, the SPR’s financial
support is not acknowledged. IANDS, not
the SPR, holds the copyright.
I noticed Dr Rousseau describes himself as
an “associate research professor at Oregon State University in Corvallis,
OR.” The Oregon State University website
notes that this is a “courtesy appointment”, meaning he is neither employed nor
paid by OSU (though an earlier, unpublished, Buckmaster paper received support
of some kind from OSU to produce it).
The extent of his academic responsibilities there is unclear. The other affiliation listed, the Centre for
Systems Philosophy, of which he is “Director of Research”, is his own
organisation. As in the other papers
submitted to fulfil his Buckmaster obligations he does not mention he is a
Council member of the SPR.
Judging by Google Scholar I should say
that Dr Rousseau’s claim to have had “more than 50 publications in
peer-reviewed academic literature” seems right, making him fairly productive,
though little cited. I am not faulting
his work, merely the wisdom of awarding him the astonishingly large sum of
£78,000 for a miscellaneous handful of papers, the bulk of which appear
tangential to psychical research, and a book he has failed to submit over a
decade after he began the undertaking.
A sceptic would by now be forgiven for
wondering whether the promised date of delivery will be continually pushed
back, forever in motion but never arriving, until the Buckmaster Oversight Committee
is wound up and the matter is no longer mentioned. A possible scenario is that eventually it
will waive the handbook in exchange for a few extra articles. This would be unfortunate, as those of us who
take an interest in the matter are hoping the handbook will explain in what way
Dr Rousseau’s articles sent to the SPR have a bearing on psychical
research. It may well be that his
systems approach will represent a significant advance, but it would be helpful
if he could demonstrate to us non-specialists how this might be achieved. According to the latest estimate, the fabled
handbook should at last be available by the end of August this year. We shall see.
The SPR’s Annual Report going back to
2016/17 can be found on the SPR website.
Acknowledgement: The image was generated by Crayion AI, using the prompt “the application of systems methodology to psychical research.” I don’t think it tried very hard.
