Open Questions

Open The Global Consciousness Project

Why It Is Open The network and its archive are not in dispute, but three analytic decisions are made by people with access to the data: which events count as globally attended, where each analysis window begins and ends, and which statistic to compute. The central criticism is that this freedom is sufficient to generate the reported result from structureless data, and it cannot be tested from the published analyses alone.

What Would Settle It An outside party defining a list of events and window boundaries in advance, lodging it, and the project running the analysis once against that list without modification.

Expertise Needed Statistics; pre-registration methodology

Question posed in The Global Consciousness Project, Roger D. Nelson (Global Consciousness Project).

Open The Maimonides Dream Telepathy Studies

Why It Is Open The original series ran on early electroencephalography and ended when the laboratory's funding did. Attempts elsewhere were smaller and did not reproduce the effect. This atlas could not establish whether any well-powered modern attempt exists, and the literature it consulted names none.

What Would Settle It A systematic search of sleep-research and parapsychology journals from 1975 onward for free-response dream studies using polysomnography and blind judging, and a count of their sample sizes.

Expertise Needed Sleep research; systematic review

Question posed in Psychology and Anomalous Observations: The Question of ESP in Dreams, Irvin L. Child.

Open Feeling the Future

Why It Is Open Bem, Tressoldi, Rabeyron and Duggan report a small overall effect across ninety experiments and argue that bias-correction methods do not remove it. Critics answer that the correction methods available cannot distinguish a genuine small effect from a literature filtered by what got written up, particularly where many of the constituent studies were not pre-registered. The dispute is about the adequacy of the statistical tools, and it is live in the wider methodology literature and not only in parapsychology.

What Would Settle It A registered-report replication series of adequate power, with the analysis plan lodged in advance and a commitment to publish, run by laboratories on both sides.

Expertise Needed Meta-analytic methodology; statistics; experimental psychology

Question posed in Feeling the Future: A Meta-Analysis of 90 Experiments on the Anomalous Anticipation of Random Future Events, Daryl J. Bem, Patrizio Tressoldi, Thomas Rabeyron and Michael Duggan.

Open Thulium

Why It Is Open Published crustal abundance estimates put both at roughly half a part per million, and the two sit within the uncertainty of each other. Sources disagree about which is lower, and several simply assert one without stating a figure.

What Would Settle It A modern determination of both abundances by the same method with stated uncertainties, so the comparison is like for like.

Expertise Needed Geochemistry, specifically crustal abundance measurement.

Question posed in Rare Earth Elements: Critical Resources for High Technology, Gordon B. Haxel, James B. Hedrick and Greta J. Orris, Pages 2 and 4.

Open Iboga

Why It Is Open Reported since 1962 and repeated many times in unregulated clinics, but the evidence base is weak. Rigorous trials have been slow, partly because the compound is controlled in many jurisdictions and partly because a treatment given once does not fit the commercial model that funds drug development. Meanwhile ibogaine is cardiotoxic, prolongs the QT interval, and deaths have occurred where screening was absent.

What Would Settle It Adequately powered controlled trials with cardiac monitoring. The question is included here rather than left to medicine because the answer bears on the plant: demand from outside Gabon is already driving overharvesting of wild stands of a slow growing species that a religion depends on.

Expertise Needed Pharmacology, addiction medicine, cardiology, conservation biology

Question posed in Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa, James W. Fernandez.

Open Expiation and Propitiation

Why It Is Open The group carries two histories. In Greek outside the Bible it means placating a person; in the Septuagint it renders the Hebrew kipper, whose objects are sins, persons and holy places rather than God. C. H. Dodd argued from the second, Leon Morris from the presence of wrath in the argument of Romans, and neither case has displaced the other. English versions have chosen differently in each generation, and the choice usually follows the doctrine already held.

What Would Settle It A lexical study covering the whole hilask- group across the Septuagint, the Jewish Greek literature outside it and the papyri, treating the New Testament occurrences last rather than first. The question is whether the Septuagint usage displaced the ordinary Greek sense for these writers or merely sat beside it.

Expertise Needed Septuagint studies; New Testament lexicography; Hellenistic Greek philology

Question posed in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.).

Open Vidhatri

Why It Is Open Vidhatri has no myth, no iconography and no cult, and outside the formulaic pairing with Dhatri he barely occurs in Sanskrit. Yet the disposer becomes an ordinary way of naming destiny in later devotional and vernacular speech. Nothing in the surviving Sanskrit sources sets out how the one became the other.

What Would Settle It A philological trace of the Dhatri and Vidhatri pairing through Puranic, epic and regional devotional literature, showing where the formula stops naming an act of divine arrangement and starts naming an agent who fixes a person's lot.

Expertise Needed Sanskrit philology, and the study of regional devotional and vernacular literatures

Question posed in Vedic Mythology, Arthur Anthony Macdonell.

Open Aries 26

Why It Is Open Charubel gave a picture to every other degree of Aries. Here the entry opens straight into the reading and no image is set at all. Two independent transcriptions of the book agree, and the second of them does preserve his picture-less lines elsewhere, such as "This is a blank degree." and "Too revolting to be given.", so this is an absence in the printing rather than a loss in a scan. Whether the degree was ever set with an image, and whether Charubel withheld one deliberately, is not settled by the copies consulted.

What Would Settle It Collation of this degree against a copy of the 1898 first printing, and against the serialisation Charubel published in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, either of which would show whether an image line was ever set and later dropped.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Aries 26.

Open Khipu

Why It Is Open That khipu record numbers in a decimal positional system is settled and readable. Beyond that the field divides. Gary Urton argues that the binary structural choices available in the medium, in colour, spin, ply and attachment, give it an information capacity well beyond accounting. Others hold the cords numerical, with any narrative held in the specialist's memory and the khipu serving as a mnemonic prompt. Colonial testimony describing khipu specialists reading out histories and confessional records is compatible with both, because a skilled performance from a numerical prompt looks identical to a reading.

What Would Settle It A matched pair: one khipu and an independent Spanish document recording the same content, aligned closely enough that the correspondence cannot be coincidence. A small number of candidate matches have been proposed and none is yet accepted as conclusive. Progress requires archival paleography alongside statistical analysis of the surviving corpus of roughly a thousand khipu.

Expertise Needed Andean archaeology, colonial paleography and quantitative analysis of the khipu corpus

Question posed in Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records, Gary Urton.

Open Scorpio 27

Why It Is Open The neighbouring degrees carry pictures, a mole at Scorpio 26 and a crouching tiger at Scorpio 28, but this entry opens straight into the reading with no image set. Two independent transcriptions agree, and the second preserves Charubel's picture-less lines elsewhere, so the gap belongs to the printing rather than to a damaged scan. Whether an image was ever set for the degree is not settled by the copies consulted.

What Would Settle It Collation of this degree against a copy of the 1898 first printing, and against the serialisation Charubel published in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, either of which would show whether an image line was ever set and later dropped.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Scorpio 27.

Open Pisces 24

Why It Is Open Where every neighbouring degree carries a picture, this one carries a row of stars in the printed source, and the reading that follows opens by saying the degree is not capable of being described in words. Whether the stars are Charubel's own mark for something he would not put into a picture, or a compositor's rule standing in for matter that never reached the page, is not decided by the printing itself, and the two transcriptions consulted here render the mark differently from each other.

What Would Settle It Collation against a copy of the 1898 first printing and against the serialisation in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, together with any surviving correspondence or editorial note that explains the mark.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Pisces 24.

Open Seraphim of Sarov

Why It Is Open Nilus published the text in 1903 from papers he said reached him from Motovilov's widow, roughly seventy years after the conversation it describes. The manuscript he worked from has not been available for examination. Nobody holds a position on the proportions, because there is nothing to hold one against: this is an absence of evidence rather than a disagreement between readings.

What Would Settle It The recovery of Motovilov's original papers, or of any independent copy predating Nilus, and a textual comparison against the printed version. Failing that, a stylometric study of the printed text against Nilus's other known writing would narrow the question without closing it.

Expertise Needed Russian church history; textual criticism

Question posed in Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy, Irina Paert, On the Motovilov material.

Open Dammar

Why It Is Open No specific dated textual or archaeological reference for dammar's early use has been confirmed against available scholarship.

What Would Settle It A study of Southeast Asian trade records or an archaeobotanical residue analysis naming dammar specifically, rather than resin generally.

Expertise Needed Trade history, archaeobotany

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Sage

Why It Is Open Sage's ceremonial use among Indigenous peoples of western North America is a living tradition, and no specific, dated, non-intrusive documentary or archaeological source establishing its earliest attested use has been located.

What Would Settle It An archaeobotanical study identifying Salvia residue from a securely dated site, or a documented early written account naming the practice without describing closed ceremonial content.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany, ethnohistory

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Sweetgrass

Why It Is Open Sweetgrass's ceremonial use is a living Indigenous North American tradition, and no specific, dated, non-intrusive documentary or archaeological source establishing its earliest attested use has been located.

What Would Settle It An archaeobotanical study identifying Hierochloe residue from a securely dated site, or a documented early written account naming the practice without describing closed ceremonial content.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany, ethnohistory

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Mithraism

Why It Is Open The cult left no scripture, no liturgy and no doctrinal statement. The single line usually cited is a damaged painted inscription in the mithraeum under Santa Prisca in Rome, restored by its excavators to read as thanks for having been saved by shed blood; the restoration supplies missing letters, and even as restored it does not say what an initiate was saved from or for. Mithraists left no funerary formulae of the kind other cults of the period left in quantity, so there is nothing independent to test the reading against, and scholars working from the iconography alone have not settled it.

What Would Settle It A Mithraic text of any length: a liturgical papyrus, a doctrinal fragment, or a securely legible inscription stating the cult's teaching, recovered from an excavated mithraeum or from a papyrus collection. A body of Mithraic grave inscriptions would settle it indirectly, by showing what members expected of their own deaths.

Expertise Needed Roman archaeology, Latin and Greek epigraphy, papyrology

Question posed in The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and His Mysteries, Manfred Clauss.

Open The Eleusinian Mysteries

Why It Is Open The prohibition on disclosure held for the whole life of the cult and no initiate left an account in any surviving text. Ancient writers describe the effect of the rite rather than its content. The only reports that claim to give content are by Christian polemicists writing centuries later from outside the cult, with an interest in making it appear either trivial or obscene, and there is nothing independent against which to test them. Excavation gives the hall and the small closed structure at its centre and nothing of what was done there.

What Would Settle It An ancient text by an initiate, or a document from the sanctuary's own administration describing the conduct of the rite, recovered by excavation at Eleusis or identified in a papyrus collection. Inscriptions from the sanctuary already record its finances and its officials, so a procedural record is not an impossible find.

Expertise Needed Classical archaeology, Greek epigraphy, papyrology

Question posed in Greek Religion, Walter Burkert.

Open The Ergot Hypothesis of the Eleusinian Kykeon

Why It Is Open The proposal was made in 1978 and has been argued over since without anything being settled, because the argument runs from the reported effect back to a cause that would produce it rather than from evidence of the cause. Nothing ancient describes the drink as intoxicating, and the delicate preparation the chemistry requires is nowhere recorded. The initiates kept the oath for roughly two thousand years, so the documentary route may simply be closed.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis for ergot alkaloids on a vessel securely associated with the rite, from the sanctuary itself rather than from the wider site. Failing that, a text describing the preparation. If neither is ever available the honest answer is that the question is undecidable, and saying so is a real finding rather than a failure.

Expertise Needed Classics; ancient history; archaeochemistry; mycology

Question posed in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck.

Open Ransom Theory of the Atonement

Why It Is Open Patristic writers who named the devil were answered inside their own century by Gregory of Nazianzus, who held that paying the devil was an outrage and that paying the Father was scarcely better. Anselm denied that any claim existed to be bought out. No formulation of the recipient has ever obtained general assent, and the ransom vocabulary is used today by Christians who reject every mechanism proposed for it.

What Would Settle It Exegetical work establishing whether the ransom sayings were ever intended to carry a recipient at all, or whether the metaphor names a condition of captivity without implying a transaction. A finding either way would decide whether the recipient question is a real gap or a question the sources never posed.

Expertise Needed New Testament exegesis; patristics; the study of biblical metaphor

Question posed in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.).

Open Kapparah

Why It Is Open Scholars of the Hebrew Bible hold opposing readings of the same texts. A strong modern position takes the chatat as purging the sanctuary of accumulated impurity, with the animal never described as punished; older readings take covering as the governing sense of kipper and read a transfer. The answer bears directly on whether the Christian atonement theories may argue from these rites the way several of them do.

What Would Settle It Close philological work on the objects and prepositions the verb kipper takes across the whole priestly corpus, read alongside comparative material from neighbouring ritual systems, rather than through the categories of later theology.

Expertise Needed Hebrew Bible philology; the study of priestly ritual; comparative ancient Near Eastern religion

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).