Frankly, if anyone ever expects NDE’s (whatever it really is that they actually are) to get out of the woo-woo category, this is exactly the kind of research that needs to be continued, and that needs to be cited in discussions on the subject. For instance, I don’t think there’s any reasonable doubt that the neurophysiology of the sequelae of the NDE experience is quantifiable (in experiencers), and that this holds up under control conditions. And wow, that’s pretty cool! Lekatt, if you checked it out, I honestly think you’d find it interesting. The quantifiable, high-quality research that does exist is so much more interesting and intriguing than dragging in dead people talking and all the rest of it.
Near death experiences have been out of the so-called woo woo state for decades. The research is being done in universities here and abroad by qualified researchers and published in qualified scientific Journals. It is only the skeptics that have not kept up. The research is as high-quality as it gets. I have a summary of some of the research, I will leave a link to. We know what they are, at least those of us who experienced them.
I didn’t write the summary, but the author is working on updating it,
It’s interesting, and I appreciate your linking to it, but again, I’m talking about the kind of research that can be found on search engines like PubMed. A good example is a recent study in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, which found that there is no discernable sociocultural influence on the reporting of NDE’s. In other words, people aren’t any more likely to say now that they had Elements 1-15 in their NDE than they were before 1975, when there was virtually no public discussion of NDE’s. It doesn’t get any more mainstream than the JNMD. Whatever an NDE is, something interesting is going on in that field. But the irony is that while in some ways the evidence is more impressive than most supporters of NDE’s know, in other ways, I’m afraid it’s not the kind that most of them may like. It’s just not a collection of proof texts, because it proves nothing about what NDE’s may or may not be; that’s not what this kind of evidence is for.
However, the main problem I have is that I just don’t like NDE’s being linked to the paranormal. There’s no logical reason for this, and whenever it happens, it seems to me to imply guilt by association. I’m sorry to say this, but if you go to PubMed and type in “paranormal”, you’re basically going to see about 200 variations on the psychopathology of believers. That is absolutely not what you’ll find on the study of near-death experiences (and experiencers). And that’s why I do not like to see the two subjects painted with the same brush.
The mere fact that qualified researchers are looking at something and publishing their results doesn’t make it not “woo-woo.” Researchers may believe it, they may be trying to debunk it, they may be curious about it, they may be trying to explain something that happened to themselves or a friend.
After all, without researchers looking into things like astrology and dowsing, they wouldn’t have been so thoroughly debunked.
I haven’t personally read the research on NDEs, so I can’t comment on what they are. If (this is a big “if”) some of those qualified researchers found that there’s something other than commonality of dream sequences behind NDE’s, that could move them a step closer to being “non-woo-woo.”
(I’m going to be out of town and away from Internet access for a few days, so please don’t misinterpret my lack of response in the meantime. I’ll catch up when I return, but I’m rather hoping this thread will be dead by then, and not trying to contact the living)
The researchers I am talking about publish in the Lancet. The research you point out has no bearing on the validity of near death experiences, and is wrong. I had my NDE over 20 years ago and it is true they weren’t talked about much then. But today you can find NDEs and their references in movies, televidion, all over the internet, people are talking about their experiences now because there are thousands of them to be found on the internet alone.
All I can actually talk… (well, write) about is the researchers who actually do publish in peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet. For the most part, it’s not really about confirming, disproving, explaining, or interpreting the <i>meaning</i> of NDE’s at all, because that’s a matter of drawing conclusions from what the studies have found. (Not to say that doesn’t happen, of course.)
DocCathode, I’m not sure which article Lekatt might have meant, and I’m not sure you should hold your breath for cites from that quarter… but here are a couple. One was on the way in which NDE’sseem to share some features with dissociation, which can be a feature of either a disorder or a set of transient symptoms This study explored the frequency of dissociative symptoms in people who’d had NDE’s, using a control group and the DES (dissociative experiences scale), and it found that NDE experiencers do not suffer from pathological dissociation (Greyson, 2000). So that was interesting, because it does go towards debunking the idea that a particular type of psychological profile tends to “fit” NDE experiencers. There was one on cardiac arrest survivors in the Netherlands that did attempt to establish possible causes of NDE’s. They didn’t succeed in coming up with any specific causes, although they noted that they thought purely physiological explanations such as cerebral anoxia were not really supported by the study. Here’s one that was interesting… people who actually were the closest to death during their NDE’s were the most likely to report enhanced cognitive experiences (Owens et al, 1990). It’s possible that this fact could be significant in some way, because this group was the most likely to experience a genuine decline in cognitive functioning at that time. Anyway, all eight are on PubMed, although it’s certainly possible that there could be more.
Now, what do studies like this mean? I don’t know. What do they prove? They prove that the topic of NDE’s does merit further research. Experiments into parapsychology, on the other hand, prove that enough money has been spent to no purpose, and that it’s time to move on. I do have cites for that if anyone wants to see them… actually, I have one of the articles,and it’s fun to read. This whole thing has been fun, in fact, but it’s time for bed now. Nighty-night, and hopefully nobody will have dreams about the dead contacting the living!
+++
Greyson, B. (2000) Dissociation in people who have near-death experiences: out of their bodies or out of their minds? Lancet, 5;355(9202), 460-463.
Owens JE, Cook EW, Stevenson I. (1990). Features of “near-death experience” in relation to whether or not patients were near death. Lancet. 10;336(8724):1175-1177.
van Lommel P, van Wees R, Meyers V, Elfferich I. (2001). Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands.Lancet.
358(9298):2039-2045.
The only NDE that intrigues me was the case of a woman who was dead for about 5 hours. She had a brain tumor, and to operate on her, the surgeons had to lower her body temperature, stop her heart, and drain all of her blood. They then opened her skull, and excised the tumar. During this operation she was clinically dead-no brain activity, no heartbeat,no nerve function. I recall that she was revived, and spoke afterwards about her experiences. how could she have recalled anything, ith no brain function?
Anybody know more about this incident?
So, the overall majority of people come out of general anesthesia aware of absolutely nothing of what occurred, but this woman has had extensive surgery carried out whilst supposedly unconscious and remembered it in great detail, yet nothing strange is happening here?
IIRC she had the surgery explained to her and the instruments shown to her before she was ever given anasthesia. There is no proof she saw or experienced anything during the operation.
I’m fairly familiar with the Pam Reynolds case, and while I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss it out of hand, I do think that it has all the limitations inherent within case studies. There’s a “hierarchy of evidence” for researchers. Double-blind studies are the gold standard; those are used for studies on new drugs so that they can (or can’t) be approved by the FDA, for instance. There are a lot of situations where double-blinds simply aren’t feasible, however, which is why single-blind studies and retrospective studies can be very valuable too, and those are what peer-reviewed journals tend to publish when it comes to NDE’s. Case studies are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Now, does that mean they should be dismissed? I wouldn’t say that, but it certainly means that they aren’t as desirable as the others, and the considerable limitations must be kept in mind. I’m truly intrigued by many aspects of the results of the larger NDE studies, but I don’t think there’s a logical reason to be convinced one way or the other about the nature of NDE’s by an individual case study such as Pam Reynolds. Nothing is debunked as such simply by this case, but nothing is proven.
Look, I’m a skeptical person who believes there’s something really fascinating going on with NDE’s, but I will not twist evidence around in any way; it’s going to have to stand or fall on its own. I will say that on examining all available evidence, I do think that the idea that NDE’s have strictly psychological, social, cultural, and/or biological causes really can’t be supported at this time. So the cause of NDE’s cannot yet be pinpointed, and this is what the serious research backs up. While this is very significant, it still doesn’t say anything about what NDE’s really are. I don’t have any idea what they are or what they mean, and if anyone is ever going to get anywhere with the serious study of NDE’s, the same standard of evidence has to be used in this field as for anything else. Reason and logic cannot be suspended to serve an agenda, whatever the nature of that agenda may be. So basically, I don’t think this is going to please ANYBODY!
Surely no culture was more obesssed with death than the Egyptians. They had all kinds of elaborate rituals (mummification, etc.) associated with death. Did they have any tradition of the dead contacting the living?
As a practical matter, what could a dead person tell you anyway? Take my grandfather (deceased in 1977). presumably, he might be able to tell me about stuff that happened in 1950. But future events? how would he know anything at all about events after 1977?
Snerk! For their sake, I sincerely hope the same people aren’t being referenced in both examples. Although my brother told me yesterday about someone in the Guiness Book of World Records who’d been hit by lightning 64 times… At some point, everyone must have figured out that it just wasn’t a good idea to stand next to this person.
Near death experiences happen to large numbers of people all over the globe. The only common factor is being very, very near death or being clinically dead for a period of time. Everyone will get their experience in due time. Then they will understand.
There was an interesting segment in an episode of Radio Lab (last segment) in which pilots experiencing high g-forces repeatedly report out-of-body experiences and hallucinations. The suggestion is that the mind, starved of sensory input from the rest of the body for whatever reason, attempts to “create” a version of reality to explain what is going on. In extreme cases the test subjects reported seeing the much-vaunted “tunnel of light” - the mind is shutting down and fighting against it.
Our consciousness is an artifact of the way the brain interprets sensory input. When the brain is gone, “we” are no more.
The research you speak of is thirty years out of date. Modern research show a distinct separation of brain and body as in the Pam Reynolds video.
There are hundreds of accounts like this one, but with not as good documentation. Pam’s surgery is throughly documented. Even with the observations of the surgeon included.
Lekatt, if you checked it out, I honestly think you’d find it interesting. The quantifiable, high-quality research that does exist is so much more interesting and intriguing than dragging in dead people talking and all the rest of it.
Loved the last paragraph!