I just found this on Wikipedia:
In 1907 Dr Duncan MacDougall made weight measurements of patients as they died. He claimed that there was weight loss of varying amounts at the time of death.[80] His results have never been reproduced, and are generally regarded either as meaningless or considered to have had little if any scientific merit.[81] The 2003 film 21 Grams takes its title from the approximate weight loss measured in one of MacDougall’s tests.[82]
80. ^ MacDougall, Duncan (May 1907). “Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of The Existence of Such Substance”. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 1 (5): 237–244. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
81. ^ Park, Robert Ezra (2010). Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. p. 90. ISBN 0-691-14597-0.
82. ^ “Soul Man” – a summary of Duncan MacDougall’s research at Snopes.com
I must say I am pretty disappointed seeing the paper is from a “fringe science” literature, but being a scientific-skeptic (and a self-proclaimed debugging expert) I really want to see other attempts at reproducing the results.
P.S. Today during my work, I encountered a bug where one particular Wiimote always has wrong accelerometer readings (thus making the program sending voice to the Wiimote speaker all the time) lying on the desk. Do you believe that it has souls, or just that it malfunctioned? 🙂
Mieu Fire 