The Integrative Studies Historical Archive and Repository, ISHAR, has launched its crowdfunding campaign on Indigogo. (Here’s the link) The goal of this on line library is to provide one stop shopping for researchers, universities, doctors, journalists, libraries and uh, online encyclopedias (ok, Wikipedia.) for Mind/Body research. Even if you don’t donate, visiting the site will help increase its popularity and bump it up in the rankings. Plus, the site has samples of some of the research.
It really is a very necessary resource. Currently, there is no centralized repository for the resources of complementary medicine and related subjects. Did you know that there are a whole lot of medical studies that have been done on Reiki? No? Would you even know where to look? This is the kind of problem ISHAR is meant to address. You just go to ISHAR and look it up.
It’s easy to see how valuable this can be. Just look at what Dean Radin did on his site “Show me the Evidence.” There you can find, in one spot, many of the most significant parapsychology studies in recent years. Anyone can go find this information and decide for themeselves. It has had an impact because it makes it impossible to deny the reality of this legitimate scientific research. It doesn’t change the views of the ideologue skeptics, but it is convincing to people who can be convinced.
Making it easy to find resources is important in the world of science. The scientific/academic world pays close attention to what studies are cited in other studies. Research is deemed important if it has been cited a lot. But you can’t cite it if you don’t even know it exists or can’t find it even if you do. A lot of frontier science doesn’t show up on every mainstream database. Sometimes it’s “conveniently” left out. That’s why a small army of researchers and leading thinkers support this project including:
Deepak Chopra, MD
Paul Mills, Ph D : Professor in Residence, UCSD
Shiva Ayyadurai, PhD MIT, Systems Engineer
William Bushell, Ph.D. Director of Research at Tibet HouseUS/The Menla Center, Medical Anthropology, MIT
Robert Thurman, PhD: President and Founder, Tibet House
Dean Ornish, MD: President and Founder, Preventive Medicine Research Institute
Menas Kafatos, Phd Schmid College of Science and Technology. Physics, Computational Science and Engineering, School of Computational Sciences
Lisa Miller, Ph.D. Professor and Director of Clinical Psychology Director, Spirituality and Mind-Body Institute. Columbia University, Teachers College
Marilyn Schlitz, Fellow and President Emeritus, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Senior Scientist at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute.
Dr. Robert Schwarz, PhD Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology
Daniel Vicario, M.D., Medical Director, San Diego Cancer Center. Director, Integrative Oncology Program.
Julia Mossbridge, PhD Research Associate, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University and Inventor of Choice Compass.
Kate Noble, PhD Clinical and Counseling. Professor of Consciousness, University of Washington.
Dr. Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD Senior Researcher, NIMS, Adjunct Asst. Professor Michigan Technological University, Advanced Scanning Probe Microscopy group, Advanced Nano Characterisation Center (ANCC), Massachusetts Institute of Technology Institute of Medical and Engineering Science.
Subhash Kak. Regents Professor, Department of Computer Science Oklahoma State University
Dr Jack Sarfatti, PhD: Theoretical physicist
Neil D. Theise, MD Professor of Pathology and of Medicine at the Beth Israel Medical Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Allan Leslie Combs, Ph.D. Doshi Professor of Consciousness Studies. Director of The Center for Consciousness Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He is also the President of the Society for Consciousness Studies and Director of Consciousness Studies master’s degree program at the Graduate Institute of Connecticut. Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina-Asheville .
Dr. Jeffrey Martin, Center for the Study of Non Symbolic Consciousness
Shamini Jain, Phd. Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, UC San Diego; Chair, Research Development Committee, UC San Diego Center for Integrative Medicine
Meg Jordan, PhD, RN Clinical Medical Anthropologist, Chair and Professor, Integrative Health Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies
Francois Demange, MA Anthropology, Indigenous Medicine
James Fallon, PhD Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobiology, UC Irvine
Ester Konigsberg, MD, CCFP Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine
And many more. They recognize its importance to scientific progress.
ISHAR fixes a long standing problem. For this reason I support it and I encourage you to do the same.