Near-death experiences and consciousness

I'm not sure that fMRI would work, after all there isn't supposed to be any blood flowing through the patients brains.TTFN,WK

Perhaps rather than simply disagreeing you should come up with some evidence to support your position.Some evidence that it EEGs are consistently flat while CPR and ventilation are administered might be nice or something suggesting that the account from the Sabom book actually recounts veridical observations during the period when the EEG was flat.TTFN,WK

Are you sure? Because when he writes... it sounds an awful lot like it to me.This account is in fact flatly contradicted by the extracts of the book I referenced earlier.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 01-Dec-2005 08:15 PM

I'm not sure why you are focusing on the anecdotal nature of the evidence in your reply to me. I've never contended it was anything other than anecdotal. It is not impossible that there could be some properly documented record of the patients account of her NDE consistent with some independently made account of the procedure. The standstill procedure is still infrequent enough to be quite a big thing, and would presumably have been even more so in 1991. But any such evidence is clearly not readily available for consultation.I wasn't arguing for the quality of the evidence, I was simply questioning your claim that van Lommel's paper... ... It certainly didn't give any evidence to support the claim but it did say exactly that and provided a reference. I have linked to extracts from the book referenced and they pretty much flatly contradict von Lommels claim.There is as much scope to corroborate this claim as there is any other referenced claim in a paper, you look up the reference and judge for yourself whether it agrees with what the citing author says, in this case it clearly doesn't, assuming that is that the extracts I found online are reliable.TTFN,WK

The Sabom reference isn't a paper, its a book called 'Light and Death'. I have already provided a link to a post from the old JREF boards with extracts from the book, search for 'page 37' to find the relevant post in that thread.As well as these the book is available as part of the google book project, you will need ti sign up for google's services to access this. The relevant section is chapter three, beginning at page 37. The account makes it quite clear that anything that might be considered a veridical observation occurred before Miss Reynolds body temperature was lowered and the blood drained. The only experiences which miss Reynolds' account places during the periof her EEG was flat are the traditional NDE ones of a tunnel of light and encountering dead relatives, experiences one would be hard put to verify.TTFN,WK

Which link? Do you seriously think the reviewers of a paper, let alone the editors of a journal, read through the source of every single reference to make sure that it supports the usage made of it?TTFN,WK

Did the google book project link work for you Arachnophilia?TTFN,WK

Then your ideas about how journals work are severely out of kilter with reality. Any luck finding the reference yet, Modulous has given you step by step instructions should you not be able to get the link to work.TTFN,WK

Don't let Randman lead you into bad habits, the author's name is van Lommel. This is just one more fact that Randman can't be bothered to get straight, along with the name of the journal.TTFN,WK

Come on Randman, you've had time to post a couple of pages about pakicetus, can't you even take a little time out to provide evidence for consciousness potentially seperate from a physical body?TTFN,WK

So you refuse to actually look at the reference to see if Van Lommel is right, you prefer to put your faith in him and believe he is correct regardless of the evidence, as long as we all know where we stand. Your regard for wishful thinking over facts is hereby noted.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 04-Dec-2005 12:27 PM

I agree with Randman. It seems to be fairly hypocritical to always be bemoaning the fact that ID, creation scientists, UFO abductess, etc... are always wanting their claims to be treated scientifically without making it into peer reviewed journals and then turning around and saying when they finally do, 'Well I don't see any peer review, where is it?'.It is far better to do your own peer review. If the science is poor then explain why it is. If the references are deficient then explain in what way they are deficient.Clearly a newly published papaer is going to have little peer review outside of the in camera ones for the publishing journal. Even the most solid research may be barely cited, certainly not making it into many reviews, simply because it is in a highly specific field. What peer review other than ones own can you use in such cases.If there are scientific problems with a paper such as van Lommel's then rather than demand peer reviews to substantiate it we can make our own scientific case against it, as many of us have been doing on this thread.The other side of this of course is that it behoves Randman to do the same. When a scientific rationale, or a particular critique based on discrepancis between claims and the citations given to substatiate them, has been put forward to challenge a particular claim it is not enough to merely hide behind the authority of the publishing journal or the peer review process. The simple fact that a citation is given is by no means proof positive that that citation actually supports the claim with which it is associated.As we skeptics must perform our own peer review of the paper to convince ourselves of its accuracy so should Randman be prepared to provide evidence beyond the original paper if he wishes to convince us of the scientific value of its claims.A point in fact would the PBSW incident. The whole issue of how rigorous the peer review process was was something of a sideshow, and an irrelevant one compared to the absolute paucity of original or worthwhile science presented in the paper itself.TTFN,WK