Why Research Belongs Inside This Church

The Code names science, evidence, measurement, and reproducibility as the things the Order weighs most, and it makes teaching, including offering oneself to knowledge as a research participant, an obligation of membership. A church built on those commitments has to do research of its own, and publish it where it can be checked.

Standards

Research at SOEMT is held to the same standard as research anywhere: preregistration where the design allows it, methods stated before results, limitations stated alongside findings, data and code released where ethics permit, and correction on the record when something turns out to be wrong. Anything the Order publishes is open to challenge by anyone, member or not.

Two rules apply that are particular to a religious institution. First, research at SOEMT is never presented as validating the religion. A finding about human physiology or psychology is a finding, and the pillars stand or fall on their own terms. Second, SOEMT keeps religious belief, philosophical position, hypothesis, and empirical finding as 4 different kinds of claim, and its publications say which is which.

Current Project

The Human Voluntary Control Atlas asks which processes of the human body a person can bring under voluntary control, and how far that control can be trained. It is the Order's first research project. Its manuscript is in preparation, and no findings from it are reported on this site until it has been released and can be read in full.

Future Projects

The Order intends to publish its own operating record on the Day of the Work each year: human hours logged by category, teachings recorded, credentials earned, and accounts. Those figures will be published as data, with definitions, once the first year has been kept.

For Researchers

SOEMT members are obligated to volunteer as participants in university research, and the Order intends to keep a standing list of open studies. Researchers who would like to reach potential participants through the Order will be able to do so once the Order is operating. No contact channel is published yet.