I last wrote in August 2022 about the saga of Dr David Rousseau’s lacklustre effort (ongoing since March 2014) to complete a £78,000 contract with the Society for Psychical Research to supply a modest number of publications (‘Systems Methodology and theBuckmaster Bequest: An Update’). Drawing on the generous bequest made by Nigel Buckmaster to the Society, the agreement was to provide six academic papers and a handbook demonstrating the application of systems methodology to psychical research. However, progress has been slow, in recent years due to long-lasting family issues (which thankfully were not so severe as to prevent him co-authoring a prize-winning entry for the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies’ 2021 essay competition).
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. The International
Association for Near-Death Studies, 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.
Update 29 July 2026
So, another year, another SPR Annual
Report (for 2024/5, uploaded to the SPR website in April 2026). It contains the
latest publicly-available news on the Buckmaster bequest and on Dr Rousseau’s
contribution, which no doubt those anxious to apply the lessons of systems
methodology to psychical research – or actually find out what they might be –
are keen to know.
Significantly, the report refers to “the
Rousseaus” submitting the information, indicating that Julie Rousseau is now
collaborating with her husband. I’m sure she too, like everybody else with an
interest in the matter, would like the saga to end with some kind of useful
output. Without her participation the process would perhaps have been even
slower, difficult as that is to believe.
Sadly, the estimate in the 2023/4 Annual
Report that the handbook would be available by the end of the summer of 2025
proved incorrect, as it is still awaited. There is no mention in the 2024/5
Report of that deadline, but a reason, or rather excuse, for missing the target
is easily deduced.
As usual, we are told that “significant
progress has been made on the practical handbook for applying Systems
Methodology.” However, and here comes
the excuse, the report continues: “the amount of research needed to be done for
the project had been significantly underestimated.” What, Dr Rousseau found
this out now, after the summer 2025 completion date had been announced?
How could this issue have escaped his attention during the preceding decade?
Shouldn’t an expert, receiving tens of thousands of pounds, have worked this
out earlier?
By the end of the reporting year the
Rousseaux were “working on integrating and editing relevant materials into the
planned book format.” This all suggests that there had been a plan, but then Dr
Rousseau (or perhaps Mrs Rousseau had to point it out to him) realised there
was hitherto-unnoticed stuff that should be included in the handbook. They were
struggling to integrate it into a meaningful whole, hence having underestimated
the amount of research required. The alternative explanation, of course, is
that no extra research was undertaken; rather, some reason for missing yet
another deadline had to be found. But I hate to be cynical.
Thankfully, the report continues that the
extra work had been completed, but doing so had pushed completion back – no surprise
there. After the usual mention of “family challenges”, we are told that
“progress will accelerate,” though that is a relative term. Moving from
ultra-slow to very slow is still acceleration, just not meaningful movement,
even though the use of the word acceleration implies something
significant. Having provided hostages to fortune in the past, this time round
there is no indication of a completion date.
The report concludes: “A detailed outline
of the book structure and description of the contents of each section has been
shared with the BOC [Buckmaster Oversight Committee].” Really, after all these
years I would have expected a lot more than the sharing of an outline of
the structure and description of the contents. I suspect the BOC would like to
see the back of this business, as well as the other project which has gone on
seemingly for ever, two volumes of essays on the subject of Is There Life
After Death?. but they will have to soldier on for a while longer.
I wonder what the 2025/26 Annual Report will tell us. Judging by past experience it will say that there had been problems of some kind during the reporting year, but progress was now being made. Alternatively, Mrs Rousseau’s involvement could extract a finished product from her husband. At that point, after we’ve thrown our hats in the air, we can finally judge whether systems methodology has something worthwhile to say about psychical research, or merely furnishes a set of new clothing for the emperor.