Just adding my opinion about the scientific research of reincarnation here. I don’t think the kind of reincarnation studied by Ian Stevenson and other researchers in the field is the same with Buddhist kind of rebirth. The first reason is the birthmark which corresponds to wound of previous individual is unknown in the Buddhist concept of rebirth because there’s no rebirth case in the Buddhist texts which mention about the birthmark carried from previous life.
Second, the Buddhist texts never mentions about children spontaneously remembered his/her past life (and the past life memory is gradually lost after they grown up). The Buddhist notion of rebirth only says that beings born spontaneously (opapatika), for example, gods, hell beings, and hungry ghosts, can remember their past life without developing this ability with meditation training.
Third, the reincarnation cases studied by those researchers seems not involving karma (the cause and effect of action), whereas Buddhist rebirth is always tied with the notion of karma. Not mentioning that the reincarnation cases didn’t record past life memory as animal (and gods or other supernatural beings, but of course this cannot be verified scientifically).
While I accept Buddhist concept of rebirth in its literal sense, I don’t think it can be proved by those research. Neither it can be proved by past life regression. The Buddha teaching stresses on “to be realised by oneself” (paccattaṃ veditabbo) and it is our individual burden to prove the Buddhist rebirth with our meditation training (as mentioned in the suttas about how the Buddha and his disciples realised their past life memory).