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Do Realistic Interpretations of NDEs Imply Violation of the Laws of Physics?

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
Obviously your 1 and a half degrees in statistics have not enabled you to discern and point out any error in the statistical methods used in the van Lommel et al. paper and which the Lancet reviewers completely missed.

And apparently your 1 and a half degrees in statistics have not enabled to answer my question as to what statistical method van Lommel et al. should have used instead of the chi-squared and t tests in order to test the associations between having an NDE and length of cardiac arrest and consciousness, drugs, religion, education, etc. Correct?

And evidently your 1 and a half degrees in statistics have not enabled you to point out any errors in assessment of validity conditions or assumptions in the van Lommel et al. paper, which the Lancet reviewers supposedly missed completely.

I "augured" against random assignment? Quote where I "augured" against random assignment.

Perhaps Montana State has an introductory course in logic that you could take, so that you can understand what arguments and inferences are.

You "dismissed" the whole van Lommel study and all of the findings because of one error that you can't actually identify?

That isn't the reason you have dismissed all of the facts presented in the OPs. You have dismissed the facts because the evidence presented in the OPs conflicts with your religion. You are a Young Earth Creationist being presented with the carbon-14 isotope evidence.

"Perhaps Montana State has an introductory course in logic that you could take, so that you can understand what arguments and inferences are. "

You whole argument is nothing but an appeal for authority and ad-hominem attacks. Maybe you should sign up for that course in logic.

Can you actually do a Chi-Squared hypothesis test? Do you even know why random assignment is important? I told you my credentials, how about you tell me yours? What is your formal education in statistics?

Until you can stop with the ad-hominem assault and the appeals for authority, you have a big pile of poo. You want me to a data analysis for you? To what? Proved a point to you? Who are you? Really, who are you, to think you can boss me around? You think you can just snap your fingers and I am gonna jump and start doing math for you? That is some ego you have.

I am not going to do that extra work unless there is a valid reason to do so. I don't need to start crunching a bunch of numbers to know they don't have random assignment. The math does not mean anything if your methods are not sound.

You knocked on me for not looking at your thread, I came in here and shared my views, and you started to treat me like crap. And you want me to start crunching numbers for you? Get real, I don't care about NDEs or some vain notion of pride to jump circles for some random yahoo on the web. Unless you want to pay me money, but if you are not paying me money I don't work for you.

This pseudoscience is your religion; that is clear as day now.
 
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Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
You whole argument is nothing but an appeal for authority and ad-hominem attacks.
False. My arguments are: (a) that the Pearson chi-squared and t tests are precisely appropriate for the purposes that van Lommel et al. used them, i.e., for testing the associations between having an NDE and duration of cardiac arrest and unconsciousness, drugs, fear of death, religion, etc.; (b) that you haven't answered my repeated question as to what statistical method the authors should have used instead of the chi-squared and t tests for determining these associations; and (c) that you haven't identified any error whatsoever in the authors' methodology. All you have done so far is demonstrate your inability to identify what an argument and inference is.

I challenge you once again to answer my question as to what method the authors should have used for determining the associations for which the authors used the Pearson tests.

And I challenge you to quote and demonstrate all errors in statistical methods used in the van Lommel study, so that I can send your critique to Lancet, van Lommel and Ruud van Wees, who performed the statistical analyses for the results of the first and second interviews.
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Nor have you demonstrated any error in anyone's memory, and accounted for the well documented fact that people engage in logical thought processes and have and retain in memory complex, coherent experiences when their brains are non-functional due to anoxia.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
It is difficult to avoid the issues of metaphysics when discussing NDEs. Nevertheless, I'm certain you agree that one cannot assess the reality or unreality of NDEs or anything about NDEs by beginning with what one believes about the nature of reality. If I begin with the assumption that Yoko Ono is the Great Mother of the Universe, then I can easily deduce that she would be telling the truth about any NDE she might have had. I thought both sides were guilty of this. I was hungry for facts about NDEs.
I try to be very careful to differentiate between my beliefs and actual evidence. The world is full of liars and even people trying to be honest can be mistaken.
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I try to be very careful to differentiate between my beliefs and actual evidence.
In what ways, if any, are your beliefs relating to NDEs distinct from the actual evidence?

My primary question in the OP concerns Carroll's repeated suggestion that realistic interpretations of NDEs imply that the laws of physics are violated. Do you agree with his idea?

Is there any other a priori reason that NDEs cannot be realistically interpreted?

The world is full of liars and even people trying to be honest can be mistaken.
Do you detect any mistakes or errors in my interpretation of the findings on NDEs in the 3 OPs?
 

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
Nor have you demonstrated any error in anyone's memory, and accounted for the well documented fact that people engage in logical thought processes and have and retain in memory complex, coherent experiences when their brains are non-functional due to anoxia.

I left that there for people to draw their own conclusion; I never suggested it proved anything. We had our go around, and that was enough. I have no intention to go around the same issues with you over and over.

I just have a few last questions:

Now. . . .

Can you actually do a Chi-Squared hypothesis test? Do you even know why random assignment is important? I told you my credentials, how about you tell me yours? What is your formal education in statistics?

If you don't answer these questions you are a hypocrite. It is very hypocritical to demand this type of information from me, and then fail to address the questions when they are directed at you.
 

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
The one thing this thread did show me, is how deeply people can develop a religious conviction for pseudoscience.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
In what ways, if any, are your beliefs relating to NDEs distinct from the actual evidence?

To me it makes sense to tie NDEs into reincarnation and reference the studies of Ian Stevenson Ian Stevenson’s Case for the Afterlife: Are We ‘Skeptics’ Really Just Cynics? as a decent starting point.

The point where I leave the realm of science concerns whether or not that which experiences an NDE or is reincarnated exists in the ordinary material sphere. My belief is that there are non-physical domains in which the laws of the material universe don't apply. I accept that this belief is not scientific.

My primary question in the OP concerns Carroll's repeated suggestion that realistic interpretations of NDEs imply that the laws of physics are violated. Do you agree with his idea?
If you want to interpret NDEs in a strictly material basis, then the material laws are broken. But if you accept, as I do, that there are realms outside the physical, then the laws of physics don't apply and are thus not broken.

Is there any other a priori reason that NDEs cannot be realistically interpreted?

Do you detect any mistakes or errors in my interpretation of the findings on NDEs in the 3 OPs?
I don't see any errors in the findings themselves. And to restate my earlier comment in another way, the laws of physics, per se, are not violated because they apply to the material realm. There are other realms with their own laws.
 
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Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I left that there for people to draw their own conclusion; I never suggested it proved anything. We had our go around, and that was enough. I have no intention to go around the same issues with you over and over.

I just have a few last questions:

Now. . . .

Can you actually do a Chi-Squared hypothesis test?
The topic here is not about me, and it isn't about you. You haven't identified any error in the van Lommel et al. study (that the Lancet reviewers somehow missed). You haven't articulated any reason to doubt the authors' findings that having an NDE was not associated with duration of of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, drugs, religion, education, etc.

It's informative that your "credentials" have not enabled you identify when the authors have made an error in a scientific study.
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
To me it makes sense to tie NDEs into reincarnation and reference the studies of Ian Stevenson Ian Stevenson’s Case for the Afterlife: Are We ‘Skeptics’ Really Just Cynics? as a decent starting point.
I haven't investigated Stevenson's studies. Will do so.

The point where I leave the realm of science concerns whether or not that which experiences an NDE or is reincarnated exists in the ordinary material sphere. My belief is that there are non-physical domains in which the laws of the material universe don't apply. I accept that this belief is not scientific.

If you want to interpret NDEs in a strictly material basis, then the material laws are broken. But if you accept, as I do, that there are realms outside the physical, then the laws of physics don't apply and are thus not broken.
Which "material laws" in the "physical realm" do you say are violated by realistic interpretations of NDEs?

(I'm not sure what you mean by "material laws" or "physical realms". Matter is any object that has mass and volume. Physics reveals that lots of phenomena exist that are not matter. "Physical" is not a scientific term. No science defines it or depends on whatever the concept is.)
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
Interestingly, the issue of veridical perception during NDEs is not mentioned (as far as I recall) in the nearly 2-hour Intelligence Squared debate. As already noted, the arguments in the debate by and large seem to hinge on assumptions about metaphysics. To this end, professor Carroll begins by asserting a number of claims that are shocking to my eyeballs: “The existence of souls persisting in the afterlife should be perfectly obvious. It should be just as clear that heaven exists as it is that Canada exists.”

What does this even mean? Scientists and most other people acknowledge the existence of lots of phenomena that do not exist like a land mass exists. No one has ever seen or touched energy--it is an abstract quantity. Dark matter, if it exists, is far from “perfectly obvious”. Time and gravity are not even vaguely like a parcel of real estate. There is no logical reason to impose such requirements on “the existence of souls persisting in the afterlife” or “heaven” that all this ordinary stuff of modern science doesn't abide by.

Professor Carroll refers to the famous correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Descartes, in which she poses a question about causation and volitional acts: “Given that the soul of a human being is only a thinking substance, how can it affect the bodily spirits [espirit, mind], in order to bring about voluntary actions?” Carroll says that Descartes was never able to answer her question. But it seems to me that Descartes' answer is somewhat sophisticated--at least for that pre-Newtonian, even pre-scientific, era. He affirms that “soul” is “united” with the body and can therefore act upon and be acted upon by the body. Then he proceeds to disavow the conundrum created by substance metaphysics for his thesis, namely that soul and body are distinct substances. He analogizes the relationship of the soul and the body to that of the weight of a rock and the rock, noting that the weight of the rock moves the rock downward, even though this does not involve “a real contact of one surface against another, as though the weight was a hand pushing the rock downwards!” He compares the ability of the rock's weight to move the rock with the ability of the soul to move the body. (It's interesting that Descartes' analogy is vaguely similar to the concept of downward causation, which many people today argue is at least an essential component of volition or free will--i.e., that mental causation is a form of downward causation, which is a prerequisite for a volitional act.)

Carroll rephrases Princess Elisabeth's question as: “How can something immaterial like the soul affect something material like the brain or body?” Of course, modern physics provides a number of examples of phenomena that are not objects having mass and volume (i.e., matter) and which cause effects. The conserved quantity known as momentum produces effects on objects: the momentum of a rolling billiard ball causes an observable effect upon another billiard ball that it hits. Collapse of the wave function of a single particle is nonlocal, therefore is not an effect caused by a material object impacting another material object. Virtual particles can cause real effects. Any physicist should be quite familiar with such facts, and one might suspect Carroll's comment as being disingenuous under the circumstances, made to an audience who might be not well acquainted with especially the incomprehensible strangeness that modern physics reveals about empirical reality. If the only way one can deny realist interpretations of NDEs is to resort to the schemata of 19th (or 17th) century materialism, then there is no rational obstacle to realist interpretations. I would not hesitate to assert that, given the findings and theories of physics and other scientific disciplines, a person today is much more justified in concluding that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the world, not an inexplicable epiphenomenal by-product of electricity among brain cells, than was a person a hundred years ago.

Yet Carroll repeatedly proposes the false dilemma that NDEs are either hallucinations of stressed-out persons or the whole of science is wrong. He doesn't cite a single occasion where any such hypothesis has been tested. He repeatedly claims that realistic interpretations of NDEs (or to use his cartoonish term, “blobs of spirit energy”) somehow violate “the laws of physics”. What laws of physics are violated by realistic interpretations of NDEs?

Carroll ponders the question of how “the memories get from the brain to the soul,” indicating that this is a necessary occurrence for a realistic interpretation of NDEs but is somehow impossible. However, especially as it relates to memory, there is a great deal of evidence contrary to the “mind-brain identity” concept that Carroll advocates. Carroll doesn't substantiate his claim of being able to “literally see memories being formed” in neurons, but one can easily discover information affirming Karl Lashley's “famously unsuccessful search for the 'engram' -- the localized trace of the memory for a maze in a trained rat’s brain,” and, further, that “the principle that memories are not localized to a single spot in the brain is now well accepted.” Karl Pribram formulated a holonomic brain theory in an attempt to account for such findings. Moreover, as Carroll would have known were he familiar with van Lommel's papers on his study:

. . . Simon Berkovitch, a professor in Computer Science of the George Washington University, has calculated that the brain has an absolutely inadequate capacity to produce and store all the informational processes of all our memories with associative thoughts. We would need 10^24 operations per second, which is absolutely impossible for our neurons.[37] Herms Romijn, a Dutch neurobiologist, comes to the same conclusion.[30] “One should conclude that the brain has not enough computing capacity to store all the memories with associative thoughts from one’s life, has not enough retrieval abilities, and seems not to be able to elicit consciousness.”​

http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/files/publicaties/Near-Death Experience_Consciousness and the Brain.pdf

In a series of more recent articles (2009, 2014 and 2015), professor Donald Forsdyke has expounded upon the corresponding fact that “the size of a human brain scales neither with its information content -- specifically, with what the experts call 'long-term memory' -- nor with intelligence.” Professor Forsdyke's conclusion is derived from various different findings than Berkovitch's, namely (a) that recovered hydrocephalics often have only a minuscule portion of the average person's brain matter while exhibiting no intellectual deficits (in Dr. John Lorber's studies, half of the 60 hydrocephalics whose cranial capacity was 95% ventricular fluid had above-average scores on standard IQ tests); (b) that savants who have extraordinary memory have normal-size heads; (c) that microcephalics are sometimes not intellectually impaired; and (d) that women on average have smaller brains than men (by 8-13%, and fewer neurons by the same proportion) yet show no intellectual inferiority and even consistently outperform men in some areas (during the past century, women's IQ scores have risen faster than men's, and in recent years women have averaged higher scores than men).

Forsdyke delineates 3 possible hypotheses to account for these data: (1) the “standard model” in which “information relating to long-term memory is held within the brain in some chemical or physical form consistent with current knowledge of brain chemistry and physiology”; (2) information relating to long-term memory is held within the brain in some subatomic form; and (3) such information is held outside of the brain--which, with non-neural tissue evidently not performing this task, implies extra-corporeal information storage. Forsdyke notes that hypothesis (1) doesn't “really confront the dilemma posed by the brain scans of hydrocephalics.” In more than one way it is implausible that the human brain--the most metabolically expensive tissue in the body--evolved so that 95% of it is redundant. He asks: “How much brain must be absent before we abandon these explanations and admit that the standard model, however incarnated, will not work?”

Given the facts of quantum mechanics, hypotheses (2) and (3) can be seen as shading into each other in some sense. Forsdyke summarizes the proposals for hypothesis (2): “The brain is seen as a receptor/transmitter of some form of electromagnetic wave/particle for which no obvious external structure (e.g., an eye) would be needed. Considering the universe as a holographic information storage device, and invoking the spooky physical principle of non-locality (Rudolph 2008), a possible hardware implementation has been described (Berkovich 1993)” (internal quotation marks omitted). In conclusion, Forsdyke advises that “the scope of possible explanations [for the fact that 'human brain size does not scale to its information content'] should not exclude extracorporeal information storage.”

Thus, what Carroll ridicules as impossible in regard to consciousness and memory is taken seriously by a number of well-informed scientists on grounds unrelated to NDEs.

To the extent that Carroll and Novella attempt to argue that there is an a priori reason or some fact that demands the rejection of realistic interpretations of NDEs, it seems their premises are dubious at best, or outright contradicted by well-established scientific facts. But if anyone is able to substantiate and defend their claims or otherwise argue that NDEs cannot be realistically interpreted, please do.

Since clinical death is described as the cessation of blood circulation and breathing, it should not be confused with complete death. It takes some time for death to be complete. In fact, some cellular activity may continue for quite some time after clinical death. What a person experiences while their brains is starved for oxygen and their body under the stress of the dying process should not be taken as factual.
 

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
The topic here is not about me, and it isn't about you. You haven't identified any error in the van Lommel et al. study (that the Lancet reviewers somehow missed). You haven't articulated any reason to doubt the authors' findings that having an NDE was not associated with duration of of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, drugs, religion, education, etc.

It's informative that your "credentials" have not enabled you identify when the authors have made an error in a scientific study.

Actually I pointed out a very serious oversight, but it is because of your unfamiliarity with statistical methods that you fail to understand its significance.

It is an observational study, without random sampling (that much they admit to), which means there is no experiment or random assignment in which to statistically evaluate cause. So that means their statistical assessment of cause (or lack of cause) is fictitious.

There is not some grand conspiracy as to why these types of studies are rejected by the scientific community; they are rejected because they bend too many rules to get the results they want to see.
 
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Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Since clinical death is described as the cessation of blood circulation and breathing, it should not be confused with complete death. It takes some time for death to be complete. In fact, some cellular activity may continue for quite some time after clinical death.
Did I not address this issue adequately in the OP, here:

In NDE accounts, people often indicate that their awareness of being dead was arrived at by an inference based on factors such as the perception of leaving their bodies, or seeing, from an elevated position, a lifeless body below them that they subsequently recognized as their own.

Even disregarding other aspects of NDEs, such logical thought processes and the having and retention in memory of complex, coherent experiences during the severely compromised neurological states in which NDEs commonly occur confound explanation of these experiences as a mere physiological artifact. In a 2006 article, Dr. van Lommel, after explaining that “[m]onitoring of the electrical activity of the cortex (EEG) has shown that the first ischemic changes in the EEG are detected an average of 6.5 seconds from the onset of circulatory arrest, and with prolongation of the cerebral ischemia always progression to isoelectricity occurs within 10 to 20 (mean 15) seconds,” elaborates this issue:

The paradoxical occurrence of heightened, lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a period of impaired cerebral perfusion raises particular perplexing questions for our current understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function. A clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain. Parnia et al. (2001) and Parnia and Fenwick (2002) write that the data from several NDE studies suggest that the NDE arises during unconsciousness, and this is a surprising conclusion, because when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is deeply comatose, the cerebral structures, which underpin subjective experience and memory, must be severely impaired. Complex experiences such as are reported in the NDE should not arise or be retained in memory. Such patients would be expected to have no subjective experience, as was the case in the vast majority of patients who survive cardiac arrest, or at best a confusional state if some brain function is retained. The fact that in a cardiac arrest loss of cortical function precedes the rapid loss of brainstem activity lends further support to this view. An alternative explanation would be that the observed experiences arise during the loss of, or on regaining consciousness. The transition from consciousness to unconsciousness is rapid, and appearing immediate to the subject. Experiences that occur during the recovery of consciousness are confusional, which these were not. In fact, memory is a very sensitive indicator of brain injury and the length of amnesia before and after unconsciousness is an indicator of the severity of the injury. Therefore, one should not expect that events that occur just prior to or just after loss of consciousness should be clearly recalled.​

http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/files/publicaties/Near-Death Experience_Consciousness and the Brain.pdf

?

How do you account for the reports of Dr. Rudy's patient, confirmed by his assistant surgeon Dr. Amado-Cattaneo? Here:

And here: A Near-Death Experience with Veridical Perception Described by a Famous Heart Surgeon and Confirmed by his Assistant Surgeon

The patient had been declared dead because he was without any heartbeat or blood pressure for more then 20 minutes. The patient reported seeing the two doctors standing in the doorway with their arms folded. Obviously that was after they had given up on trying to resuscitate him.

How do you account for Pam Reynolds describing the saw used on her skull?

How do you account for the patient in Parnia 2014 who reported hearing the automated voice of the AED?http://www.horizonresearch.org/Uploads/Journal_Resuscitation__2_.pdf
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
It is an observational study, without random sampling (that much they admit to), which means there is no experiment or random assignment in which to statistically evaluate cause. So that means their statistical assessment of cause (or lack of cause) is fictitious.
Quote where the authors made an erroneous "statistical assessment of cause (or lack of cause)".

Exactly what statistical methods should the authors have used to determine whether there was an association between a patient having an NDE and his/her duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, drugs, religion, education, etc.? The authors explain that they used the chi-squared and t tests to test for these associations.

Be sure to be specific and adequately clear about all of the errors you are claiming the authors made so that the editors at Lancet will understand what you are talking about. Are you willing to put your name on your critique of the van Lommel et al. paper? How do you account for this alleged "serious oversight" by the Lancet reviewers?

By the way, while you're at it, how do you account for the patients' reports of correct perceptions that I have just asked Milton Platt about--Dr. Rudy's patient, Pam Reynolds and the Parnia 2014 patient?
 

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
Quote where the authors m
ade an erroneous "statistical assessment of cause (or lack of cause)".

Exactly what statistical methods should the authors have used to determine whether there was an association between a patient having an NDE and his/her duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, drugs, religion, education, etc.? The authors explain that they used the chi-squared and t tests to test for these associations.

Be sure to be specific and adequately clear about all of the errors you are claiming the authors made so that the editors at Lancet will understand what you are talking about. Are you willing to put your name on your critique of the van Lommel et al. paper? How do you account for this alleged "serious oversight" by the Lancet reviewers?

By the way, while you're at it, how do you account for the patients' reports of correct perceptions that I have just asked Milton Platt about--Dr. Rudy's patient, Pam Reynolds and the Parnia 2014 patient?

"Quote where the authors made an erroneous "statistical assessment of cause (or lack of cause)"."

Did that, like very first post.

"Exactly what statistical methods should the authors have used to determine whether there was an association between a patient having an NDE and his/her duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, drugs, religion, education, etc.? The authors explain that they used the chi-squared and t tests to test for these associations. "

None, as I have been saying. Not only that, but statistics does not actually prove the null is untrue or true; it never proves the null. That is not how it works. Yet, the null hypothesis is almost always untrue, because it is a straw man argument. The alternative hypothesis is what we are really interested in and the null is meant to be the devil's advocate argument we have to over come to show there is evidence to support the alternative. And if you fail to reject, you do not prove the null is true, all that you prove is you don't have significant evidence to support the alternative. Statistics is not used to prove truths or untruths, it is meant to be considered along with other evidence.

"Be sure to be specific and adequately clear"

I have been more than perfectly clear.

Your bulldog tactics won't work on me, and they are a sign you don't have a reasonable counter-argument.
 
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Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
"Quote where the authors made an erroneous "statistical assessment of cause (or lack of cause)"."

Did that, like very first post.
False. You quoted the paper's Statistical Analysis section. You haven't quoted where the authors drew any erroneous conclusions about a cause or effect, and you haven't shown where the authors made any error in their statistical analysis.

"Exactly what statistical methods should the authors have used to determine whether there was an association between a patient having an NDE and his/her duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, drugs, religion, education, etc.? The authors explain that they used the chi-squared and t tests to test for these associations. "

None,
So you claim that the chi-squared and t tests cannot be used in cohort studies to determine associations? So that's what you want to state in the email to Lancet?

BTW, you didn't say whether you would be willing to put your name on your critique of this study. You will surely be lauded for finding this glaring error in this important paper that the Lancet reviewers somehow missed and that no one else has ever noticed. Perhaps one of your professors will even give you extra credit for finding such a "serious oversight" that no one else has ever noticed. Eh?

BTW, also:

By the way, while you're at it, how do you account for the patients' reports of correct perceptions that I have just asked Milton Platt about--Dr. Rudy's patient, Pam Reynolds and the Parnia 2014 patient?
No answers?

Really, what good is your puny little critique, even if it were valid, when you can't provide some alternative account for these facts?
 

Koldo

Outstanding Member
Owing to a discussion with a friend, I recently had occasion to reread the van Lommel et al. paper published in 2001 in Lancet detailing their prospective study of cardiac patients who had suffered cardiac arrest and were successfully resuscitated from clinical death. I had read that paper probably 10-12 years ago, and it seems to have been about the last thing I had read on the topic of NDEs. There have been several noteworthy studies and books published on NDEs in the interim, and I recently perused some of these.

In the process I came across a video of the 2014 Intelligence Squared debate on the topic. Team 1, arguing for the motion “Death is not final,” consisted of neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, whose academic appointments include Duke University Medical Center, UMass Medical School, Harvard Medical School and University of Virginia Medical School, and who had an extensive NDE in 2008 during a 7-day coma due to a severe case of case of bacterial meningitis, and Dr. Raymond Moody who coined the term “near-death experience” in 1975 in Life After Life, which included the earliest qualitative study of this phenomenon. Arguing against the motion were CIT physics professor Sean Carroll and Yale neurology professor Steven Novella, apparently neither of whom seem to have any professional or personal connection to NDEs.

Although oozing civility, I found the debate disappointing. I thought both teams advanced certain poor or otherwise dubious arguments, oftentimes premised on assertions about metaphysics--despite the chairman Robert Rosenkranz and moderator John Donvan assuring us at the beginning that it would not be a “religious debate” but would rise to the level of science.

Dr. Alexander was first up, mostly using his opening statement to tell about his own NDE and the subsequent change in his beliefs. He got around to noting a few general facts about NDEs just before his time ran out.

So, before getting to my questions, I wish to review some of the easily discoverable information on NDEs.

An NDE is an event consisting of awareness or perception of various unusual phenomena, occurring most often (but not always) in the context of clinical death or life-threatening circumstances or injury, and for research purposes the elements of which are often identified and measured by the Greyson NDE Scale. Of course, this fact itself raises the question as to why the basic elements of NDEs are so similar from person to person, regardless of culture. In contrast, people have an endless variety of dreams and hallucinations.

In the van Lommel et al. study of 344 consecutive patients who were resuscitated from clinical death, 62 (18%) subsequently reported some memory during the episode, with 41 of these describing elements commonly associated with NDEs, such as awareness of being dead, positive emotions, moving through a tunnel, meeting with deceased relatives, involvement in a life review, interacting with a bright light. The authors found that whether or not a patient had an NDE was not associated with the duration of cardiac arrest (presumably a proxy measure of degree of hypoxia) or unconsciousness, medications, fear of death before cardiac arrest, religious beliefs (or lack thereof) or education.

NDEs were transformative for those who had them. In follow-up questionnaires at 2 and 8 years, these people were more likely to report positive changes in beliefs and outlook such as an increased acceptance of others, being more empathetic and loving, having a sense of inner meaning of life, appreciation of ordinary things. As van Lommel and many others have pointed out, it's basically unheard-of for people to undergo a radical transformation in their outlook and beliefs about reality in response to a single hallucination or dream lasting a few minutes at most.

Dr. van Lommel et al. comment on the well-known fact that experiences that are superficially similar to NDEs can sometimes be induced by methods such as electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe, high blood levels of CO2 (hypercapnia or hypercarbia), cerebral hypoxia such as fighter pilots sometimes experience resulting in G-LOC, and certain hallucinogenic substances. Yet the authors also point out some of the ways that these experiences are distinct from NDEs:

These induced experiences can consist of unconsciousness, out-of-body experiences, and perception of light or flashes of recollection from the past. These recollections, however, consist of fragmented and random memories unlike the panoramic life-review that can occur in NDE. Further, transformational processes with changing life-insight and disappearance of fear of death are rarely reported after induced experiences.​

http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/files/publicaties/Lancet artikel Pim van Lommel.pdf

In her study Sartori found that patients who had hallucinations (which were clearly distinguishable from NDEs in various ways) due to large doses of sedatives or painkillers eventually acknowledged that their experience was an hallucination, whereas those who had NDEs remained adamant that their experience was real.

Likewise, the induced experiences, in the absence of life-threatening circumstances, do not consistently entail the awareness of being dead, which, except for “positive emotions,” was the most prevalent NDE element described by those in the van Lommel study. In NDE accounts, people often indicate that their awareness of being dead was arrived at by an inference based on factors such as the perception of leaving their bodies, or seeing, from an elevated position, a lifeless body below them that they subsequently recognized as their own.

Even disregarding other aspects of NDEs, such logical thought processes and the having and retention in memory of complex, coherent experiences during the severely compromised neurological states in which NDEs commonly occur confound explanation of these experiences as a mere physiological artifact. In a 2006 article, Dr. van Lommel, after explaining that “[m]onitoring of the electrical activity of the cortex (EEG) has shown that the first ischemic changes in the EEG are detected an average of 6.5 seconds from the onset of circulatory arrest, and with prolongation of the cerebral ischemia always progression to isoelectricity occurs within 10 to 20 (mean 15) seconds,” elaborates this issue:

The paradoxical occurrence of heightened, lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a period of impaired cerebral perfusion raises particular perplexing questions for our current understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function. A clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain. Parnia et al. (2001) and Parnia and Fenwick (2002) write that the data from several NDE studies suggest that the NDE arises during unconsciousness, and this is a surprising conclusion, because when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is deeply comatose, the cerebral structures, which underpin subjective experience and memory, must be severely impaired. Complex experiences such as are reported in the NDE should not arise or be retained in memory. Such patients would be expected to have no subjective experience, as was the case in the vast majority of patients who survive cardiac arrest, or at best a confusional state if some brain function is retained. The fact that in a cardiac arrest loss of cortical function precedes the rapid loss of brainstem activity lends further support to this view. An alternative explanation would be that the observed experiences arise during the loss of, or on regaining consciousness. The transition from consciousness to unconsciousness is rapid, and appearing immediate to the subject. Experiences that occur during the recovery of consciousness are confusional, which these were not. In fact, memory is a very sensitive indicator of brain injury and the length of amnesia before and after unconsciousness is an indicator of the severity of the injury. Therefore, one should not expect that events that occur just prior to or just after loss of consciousness should be clearly recalled.​

http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/files/publicaties/Near-Death Experience_Consciousness and the Brain.pdf

The 2001 Parnia et al. prospective study that van Lommel cites yielded too few people reporting NDEs for statistical comparison, but the authors note that there was little difference between the NDErs and control group in partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and that arterial partial pressure of oxygen was double in the NDE group than in the control. The fact that NDEs cannot be attributed to hypoxia, anoxia or hypercarbia is further demonstrated by the fact that NDEs occasionally occur in the context of non-life-threatening illnesses and near-accidents.

What do you mean by "realistic interpretations of NDEs" ?
 

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
False. You quoted the paper's Statistical Analysis section. You haven't quoted where the authors drew any erroneous conclusions about a cause or effect, and you haven't shown where the authors made any error in their statistical analysis.

So you claim that the chi-squared and t tests cannot be used in cohort studies to determine associations? So that's what you want to state in the email to Lancet?

BTW, you didn't say whether you would be willing to put your name on your critique of this study. You will surely be lauded for finding this glaring error in this important paper that the Lancet reviewers somehow missed and that no one else has ever noticed. Perhaps one of your professors will even give you extra credit for finding such a "serious oversight" that no one else has ever noticed. Eh?

BTW, also:

No answers?

Really, what good is your puny little critique, even if it were valid, when you can't provide some alternative account for these facts?

"You quoted the paper's Statistical Analysis section"

I quoted the error.

"haven't shown where the authors made any error in their statistical analysis."

Oh yes I did, but I can see how pointless it is to try to convince you of that.

"So you claim that the chi-squared and t tests cannot be used in cohort studies to determine associations? "

I claimed that they can not make valid causal inferences with an observational study; a study that has no random assignment. To which I provided appropriate citation to validate my statement.

Statistical inferences of cause-and-effect relationships can be drawn from randomized experiments, but not from observational studies. [...] Inferences to the populations can be drawn from random sampling studies, but not otherwise.

Ramsey, F. L., & Schafer, D. W. (2002). The statistical sleuth: a course in methods of data analysis. Australia: Duxbury/Thomson Learning.


"BTW, you didn't say whether you would be willing to put your name on your critique of this study. You will surely be lauded for finding this glaring error in this important paper that the Lancet reviewers somehow missed and that no one else has ever noticed. Perhaps one of your professors will even give you extra credit for finding such a "serious oversight" that no one else has ever noticed. Eh?"

Ah yes, your bulldog tactics.

As part of my homework very often I have to examine scientific studies and determine what the scope of inference is (can they make generalized inferences about the population, or can they make causal inferences). This is a very typical type of problem that I have been repeatedly tested on. I would turn my conclusion in for grading, and I would get it right. Determining scope of inferences is day one in stats, it is reviewed in every class after that, and it is always on the final exams, because it is such an essential parts of stats.
 
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Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
This is on Pim van Lommel's Wiki page:

Neurobiologist Dick Swaab praised Lommel's research for mapping patients experiences and opening up the subject of near-death experiences (NDE's) to the medical world. But he also claimed that Lommel's book ignores scientific knowledge, including some conclusions from his own research. He further argued that Lommel does not refute neurobiological explanations, gives no scientific basis for his statements and borrows concepts from quantum physics without ground (Quantum mysticism). According to Swaab, Van Lommel deviates from the scientific approach and his book can only be categorized as pseudoscientific.[1]

Dutch physician and anesthesiologist G. M. Woerlee wrote a chapter by chapter examination of Lommel's Consciousness Beyond Life. According to Woerlee the book is full of "tendentious and suggestive pseudoscientific nonsense", and the picture of the functioning of the body as proposed by Lommel is not consistent with medical knowledge. Woerlee concluded that the book is a "masterly example of how tendentious and suggestive interpretation of international scientific literature, vague presentation of basic medical facts, together with ignorance of some basic statistical principles leads to incorrect conclusions."[2]

Jason Braithwaite, a Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience in the Behavioural Brain Sciences Centre, University of Birmingham, issued an in-depth analysis and critique of Lommel's prospective study published in the medical journal The Lancet, concluding that while Lommel's et al. study makes a useful contribution, it contains several factual and logical errors. Among these errors are Lommel's misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the dying-brain hypothesis, misunderstandings over the role of anoxia, misplaced confidence in EEG measurements (a flat electroencephalogram (EEG) reading is not evidence of total brain inactivity), etc. Jason concluded with, "it is difficult to see what one could learn from the paranormal survivalist position which sets out assuming the truth of that which it seeks to establish, makes additional and unnecessary assumptions, misrepresents the current state of knowledge from mainstream science, and appears less than comprehensive in its analysis of the available facts."[3]

In his book Lommel also supported alleged psychic abilities of some NDErs. Skeptic Donna Harris in a review for the book wrote the research was unreliable as it was taken from self-reported surveys and interviews and "since any type of paranormal or intuitive power remains unproven, it is troubling that the author doesn’t question these abilities, and just includes them as accepted facts."[4]

Pim van Lommel - Wikipedia

This one is my favorite:

"ignorance of some basic statistical principles leads to incorrect conclusions." -- Dutch physician and anesthesiologist G. M. Woerlee

*** Again posting for reader's consideration.
 
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