The Weight of a Soul

Right after the turn of the 20th century, a scientist named Duncan McDougall believed he had discovered the weight of a soul. He did this by weighing six patients right before they died and right after. The difference in weight, across the patients, averaged out to twenty-one grams.

From this experiment, he decided the weight of a soul was twenty-one grams. Later studies intended to replicate McDougall’s findings were inconclusive and led to widespread agreement in the scientific community that the original study was flawed. Nevertheless, the popularity of the study was such that many…