Are NDEs merely hallucinations?

IANDS has been taken over by the self-help billion-dollar industry and hasn’t produced anything serious for at least 15 years. I never visit their website anymore. I'm even a bit worried about Sam Parnia, to be honest, if his celebrity status is starting to cloud his conclusions. I would love to see one of his peers among the several thousand in the western world who have revived a patient from cardiac arrest come forward with similar profound conclusions.

I think IANDs does well in it's established goal of supporting NDErs and those close to them, but lags behind in the research department. 

As for one of his peers speaking up, NDEs and other associated phenomena are still very much a black hole in terms of academic opinion. Even amongst academics who seek a traditional explanation for NDEs the topic doesn't garner a lot of support for a number of reasons, a stand out being of course the potential implications and there's not really much point studying something regarding death. I don't doubt there's many professionals who have had experience with NDEs or other weird phenoma, the documentary I posted with Dr Chritopher Kerr regarding near death visions being a good example. But in the end it goes the way of people who have NDEs themselves: it's a weird thing that happens that sticks with you, but it's just one of those weird life things that you keep to yourself.

I think IANDs does well in it's established goal of supporting NDErs and those close to them, but lags behind in the research department. 

As for one of his peers speaking up, NDEs and other associated phenomena are still very much a black hole in terms of academic opinion. Even amongst academics who seek a traditional explanation for NDEs the topic doesn't garner a lot of support for a number of reasons, a stand out being of course the potential implications and there's not really much point studying something regarding death. I don't doubt there's many professionals who have had experience with NDEs or other weird phenoma, the documentary I posted with Dr Chritopher Kerr regarding near death visions being a good example. But in the end it goes the way of people who have NDEs themselves: it's a weird thing that happens that sticks with you, but it's just one of those weird life things that you keep to yourself.

I think it’s very important not to conflate deathbed visions and near-death experiences. They are very different. Deathbed visions are typically reported by caretakers and relatives, not the individuals themselves, and have their own distinct features. The evidence for the supernatural aspect of NDEs should be able to stand on its own merit.

On these forums, it’s popular to make claims without proper evidence, such as “there’s no evidence for Einstein’s theory of general relativity” and other ridiculous assertions. It’s fair to hypothesize that NDEs with a veridical component are common among healthcare professionals, but we don’t actually know this. It could be true, or it might not be.

First off, I’m impressed with how quickly you were able to dismantle these cases. I should, of course, double-check the information you have provided, but I will take your word for it since I consider all anecdotal evidence to be only hypothesis-generating. In other words, that book would never convince me of anything. Therefore, it’s not on my reading list.

IANDS has been taken over by the self-help billion-dollar industry and hasn’t produced anything serious for at least 15 years. I never visit their website anymore. I'm even a bit worried about Sam Parnia, to be honest, if his celebrity status is starting to cloud his conclusions. I would love to see one of his peers among the several thousand in the western world who have revived a patient from cardiac arrest come forward with similar profound conclusions.

There’s an enormous hype associated with NDEs, and one has to be very skeptical of any claimants in this space. Additionally, people often cannot relay NDE information in an objective manner and instead exaggerate it enormously, as we have seen in a number of threads here.

Thanks.

Just so there's no confusion, I haven't dealt with the whole Arnold case in my comments--not at all, in fact. It involves many different claims that amount to something of a mess (and seemingly most of it comes down to Arnold's own statements of what she had other witnesses confirm, rather than attempts to secure detailed information on the relevant points from the witnesses, directly interviewed independently of Arnold with credible techniques).

This is what I did: In reading through Rivas et al.'s writeup and looking into some of the sources, many apparent weaknesses that would give entirely legitimate grounds for skeptical doubt jumped out at me in no time, and I chose to highlight some of those here. I did this because @nbtruthman threw down the gauntlet with Arnold's NDE, treating it as "one of the best cases." I think the problems I've highlighted already show that if this case is "one of the best," NDE "research" is currently in very deep sh**, in particular the abysmal standards of evidence of the investigators themselves, reflected in what gets called "meticulous" documentation, &c.

Just so there's no confusion, I haven't dealt with the whole Arnold case in my comments--not at all, in fact. It involves many different claims that amount to something of a mess (and seemingly most of it comes down to Arnold's own statements of what she had other witnesses confirm, rather than attempts to secure detailed information on the relevant points from the witnesses, directly interviewed independently of Arnold with credible techniques).

I think I'm missing something here. Arnold had a past life regression, and then the witnesses watched the video and confirmed the details.

And your contention is they should have tried to interview the medical staff independently to see if there were any discrepancies?

Perhaps you're right, but this doesn't seem like such a big deal to me? At some point they'd have to be questioned about the details if it doesn't show up in their testimony. Are you thinking there would be enough discrepancies to invalidate the case?

I may have to get Arnold's actual book, because in Self Does Not Die the staff corroborate the events Arnold told. These are excerpts drawn from Arnold's book, but nonetheless the testimony of the staff seems to be that what she viewed during the NDE was accurate. For example:

Resident gynecologic oncologist Hyo Park: I can’t make anything of that because I don’t have an explanation for that. I don’t have an explanation for how she would know that. We were behind the drapes, there could’ve been a part of her subconscious that in the midst of all this chaos, maybe she heard voices, maybe seen images . . . but to really distinctly have almost clear visions of the situation in the position that she was in, I just don’t have an explanation. (Arnold, 2021, p. 37).

I assume this would mean the discussions of Arnold's premonitions prior to said NDE are also accurate, but I suppose it's possible the staff didn't read the book or maybe have posted subsequent commentary indicating parts were made up or embellished.

But the idea that, for example, Hyo Park had a completely different memory that was overwritten by watching Arnold's video and then confabulating things to the point Park now believes something extraordinary happened...I don't know if that's what you're worried about but this seems unlikely to me?

I do agree that given there is video evidence it should be made public.

I think I'm missing something here. Arnold had a past life regression, and then the witnesses watched the video and confirmed the details.

And your contention is they should have tried to interview the medical staff independently to see if there were any discrepancies?

Perhaps you're right, but this doesn't seem like such a big deal to me? At some point they'd have to be questioned about the details if it doesn't show up in their testimony. Are you thinking there would be enough discrepancies to invalidate the case?

I may have to get Arnold's actual book, because in Self Does Not Die the staff corroborate the events Arnold told. These are excerpts drawn from Arnold's book, but nonetheless the testimony of the staff seems to be that what she viewed during the NDE was accurate. For example:


I assume this would mean the discussions of Arnold's premonitions prior to said NDE are also accurate, but I suppose it's possible the staff didn't read the book or maybe have posted subsequent commentary indicating parts were made up or embellished.

But the idea that, for example, Hyo Park had a completely different memory that was overwritten by watching Arnold's video and then confabulating things to the point Park now believes something extraordinary happened...I don't know if that's what you're worried about but this seems unlikely to me?

I do agree that given there is video evidence it should be made public.

>Are you thinking there would be enough discrepancies to invalidate the case?

I really don't know. I think that's unlikely, but what would someone who isn't already convinced about the reality of paranormal phenomena think? The issue is the quality of the evidence--how much confidence can we expect critical observers to have in it, and, if this is one of the "best" cases, what does that say about how good investigations of paranormal perception in NDEs have been?

In this case, the problem is that there are studies of eyewitness reliability in forensic science indicating that exposing eyewitnesses to a narrative (or narratives) of the events before collecting testimony creates a serious risk of memory contamination, and in fact is probably the major way that eyewitness memory is made unreliable.

There's an article on one example of this from 2013, published in the journal Psychology, Crime & Law, "'I saw the man who killed Anna Lindh!' An archival study of witnesses' offender descriptions." The witnesses to the crime considered in this study did an unusually bad job of giving accurate information about what happened. One of the questions the researchers ultimately ended up with was why they performed so poorly. Part of the answer is that witnesses were able to discuss with each other what had occurred, which influenced their recall of events in a way that hurt accuracy when testimonial evidence was gathered.

Going from the Rivas et al. writeup, Arnold had a video-recorded hypnotic regression an unspecified (by Rivas et al.) amount of time after her surgery, then went and played the video for her doctors and questioned them. That is a situation posing considerable risk of memory contamination. Ideally, a neutral third party is doing the work of gathering the testimony and comparing the accounts, &c., and there isn't a serious delay in collecting the evidence.

Obviously someone can come back and tell me that this is a totally unrealistic standard for these spontaneous NDEs. To which I'd say: "that's exactly why retrospective evidence like this isn't getting us any progress on resolving the NDE debate, and why it shouldn't be put forward as some astonishing unanswerable 'proof' of the afterlife." All that aside, the NDEr is generally not the one assembling the case, doing the interviews, &c. even for these retrospectively studied spontaneous NDEs, which is clearly highly undesirable. That aspect of Arnold's case should've immediately disqualified it as worthy of any "best evidence" classification.

>Are you thinking there would be enough discrepancies to invalidate the case?

I really don't know. I think that's unlikely, but what would someone who isn't already convinced about the reality of paranormal phenomena think? The issue is the quality of the evidence--how much confidence can we expect critical observers to have in it, and, if this is one of the "best" cases, what does that say about how good investigations of paranormal perception in NDEs have been?

In this case, the problem is that there are studies of eyewitness reliability in forensic science indicating that exposing eyewitnesses to a narrative (or narratives) of the events before collecting testimony creates a serious risk of memory contamination, and in fact is probably the major way that eyewitness memory is made unreliable.

There's an article on one example of this from 2013, published in the journal Psychology, Crime & Law, "'I saw the man who killed Anna Lindh!' An archival study of witnesses' offender descriptions." The witnesses to the crime considered in this study did an unusually bad job of giving accurate information about what happened. One of the questions the researchers ultimately ended up with was why they performed so poorly. Part of the answer is that witnesses were able to discuss with each other what had occurred, which influenced their recall of events in a way that hurt accuracy when testimonial evidence was gathered.

Going from the Rivas et al. writeup, Arnold had a video-recorded hypnotic regression an unspecified (by Rivas et al.) amount of time after her surgery, then went and played the video for her doctors and questioned them. That is a situation posing considerable risk of memory contamination. Ideally, a neutral third party is doing the work of gathering the testimony and comparing the accounts, &c., and there isn't a serious delay in collecting the evidence.

Obviously someone can come back and tell me that this is a totally unrealistic standard for these spontaneous NDEs. To which I'd say: "that's exactly why retrospective evidence like this isn't getting us any progress on resolving the NDE debate, and why it shouldn't be put forward as some astonishing unanswerable 'proof' of the afterlife." All that aside, the NDEr is generally not the one assembling the case, doing the interviews, &c. even for these retrospectively studied spontaneous NDEs, which is clearly highly undesirable. That aspect of Arnold's case should've immediately disqualified it as worthy of any "best evidence" classification.

Arnold herself seems to be a credentialed figure working on women's health advocacy after her NDE and in media before that. Her cousin who helped write her book is an Emmy winning journalist.

The medical staff, AFAIK, continue to have their careers which apparently includes dealing with high risk births.

It's difficult for me to believe all these professionals purposefully got together to make this story up for inexplicable reasons. I guess Arnold has a motive, but everyone else? (And my guess is she made less money off her work than Shermer, Harris, Randi, Blackmore, etc have pushing their beliefs.)

Now could all their memories confabulate in just the right way to corroborate Arnold's NDE? It just doesn't seem very likely to me.

Could Arnold make up or at least embellish parts of the medical staff's testimony? Possible, but the case was covered by news outlets in the US. There seems to be plenty of opportunity for the medical staff to come out and say they are being used in a dishonest way by Arnold.

Is the case so strong that it will defeat all skeptics? Well one of the proverbs I think applies perfectly to pseudoskeptics is "The man who wants to beat a dog always finds his stick."

OTOH, could the review of the case be stronger? Definitely. Public video interviews of Arnold, her family, and the medical staff would help. Better follow up of the medical staff in itself would've been helpful, it isn't clear exactly what the Self Does Not Die team did there.

Really I think if the staff is telling the truth [and their testimony has not been embellished] the case is a good one but could perhaps use some more strict methodology. I can see the argument it doesn't advance the scientific debate, but I think there is value in collecting these cases to motivate the very work that might someday actually settle the matter of Survival for science.

@Titus Rivas used to post here, so perhaps if he sees this notification he can provide more details.

>Are you thinking there would be enough discrepancies to invalidate the case?

I really don't know. I think that's unlikely, but what would someone who isn't already convinced about the reality of paranormal phenomena think? The issue is the quality of the evidence--how much confidence can we expect critical observers to have in it, and, if this is one of the "best" cases, what does that say about how good investigations of paranormal perception in NDEs have been?

In this case, the problem is that there are studies of eyewitness reliability in forensic science indicating that exposing eyewitnesses to a narrative (or narratives) of the events before collecting testimony creates a serious risk of memory contamination, and in fact is probably the major way that eyewitness memory is made unreliable.

There's an article on one example of this from 2013, published in the journal Psychology, Crime & Law, "'I saw the man who killed Anna Lindh!' An archival study of witnesses' offender descriptions." The witnesses to the crime considered in this study did an unusually bad job of giving accurate information about what happened. One of the questions the researchers ultimately ended up with was why they performed so poorly. Part of the answer is that witnesses were able to discuss with each other what had occurred, which influenced their recall of events in a way that hurt accuracy when testimonial evidence was gathered.

Going from the Rivas et al. writeup, Arnold had a video-recorded hypnotic regression an unspecified (by Rivas et al.) amount of time after her surgery, then went and played the video for her doctors and questioned them. That is a situation posing considerable risk of memory contamination. Ideally, a neutral third party is doing the work of gathering the testimony and comparing the accounts, &c., and there isn't a serious delay in collecting the evidence.

Obviously someone can come back and tell me that this is a totally unrealistic standard for these spontaneous NDEs. To which I'd say: "that's exactly why retrospective evidence like this isn't getting us any progress on resolving the NDE debate, and why it shouldn't be put forward as some astonishing unanswerable 'proof' of the afterlife." All that aside, the NDEr is generally not the one assembling the case, doing the interviews, &c. even for these retrospectively studied spontaneous NDEs, which is clearly highly undesirable. That aspect of Arnold's case should've immediately disqualified it as worthy of any "best evidence" classification.

Let's look at some of the actual detailed data, to see what's really required for your "memory contamination" theory. The following (from the book) are the actual recorded accounts of the physicians attending Arnold during the experience. 

"Attending obstetric anesthesiologist Nicole Higgins: Well, it was shocking. There were some things that she said and did in that regression analysis, in the recording of that regression, that she really would not have been able to know just from watching a media show or reading what happens in a Caesarean delivery, because it was very specific to her situation. I don’t have an explanation for it. I do believe just because your heart stops beating, or you have no blood pressure does not mean that the brain has shut down completely. I think a person can still hear and probably still sense things that are happening for several minutes. So, I believe she had an awareness of that. Whether that was her being able to see as an out-of-body experience or a processing of all the information she was getting by hearing. I have no explanation for it. All I know is that she had knowledge of certain events and people and situations in that room that would’ve been impossible for her to know. (Arnold, 2021, p. 30).

Attending OB-GYN Julie Levitt: When I saw her regression therapy I was really blown away because there was no way that she would’ve been able to know what we were doing and see what we were doing in her condition. (Arnold, 2021, p. 32). Stephanie and I met to talk about what had happened that day. I almost couldn’t breathe. There was absolutely no way that she was aware of who was standing to her left, who was standing to her right, what I said, what other people said in the operating room. It makes me believe in more than just what we know as art and science. My medical mind turns more to a spiritual place which I don’t think I was ever really aware of in the past. It was a very real lesson that day. (Stern & Sweet, 2021, starting at 34:54).

Obstetric anesthesiology fellow Grace Lim: [The video is] powerful. Because I am reliving it myself and that activity that you did actually where your chest was coming off of the couch, is pretty much almost exactly what I saw. As I mentioned, it didn’t look like a seizure the way I had seen seizures. It’s difficult to describe it. I don’t know if there is a word for it. A heave or something. Pretty much exactly what you did. (Arnold, 2021, p. 32).

Resident gynecologic oncologist Hyo Park: I can’t make anything of that because I don’t have an explanation for that. I don’t have an explanation for how she would know that. We were behind the drapes, there could’ve been a part of her subconscious that in the midst of all this chaos, maybe she heard voices, maybe seen images . . . but to really distinctly have almost clear visions of the situation in the position that she was in, I just don’t have an explanation. (Arnold, 2021, p. 37)."

I guess that you are contending that all four of these corroborating accounts are probably attributable to "memory contamination". In every detail? I find this unbelievable, that professionals like this trained in clear thinking and accurate observation and recall of patient details would be so influenced by such memory distortions that they would unconsciously and falsely "remember" all these details because they were suggested to their unconscious minds by the playback of Arnold's regression video. Each of these 4 different doctors would have to have been similarly influenced to unconsciously confabulate, vivid lifelike and convincing confabulations greatly different than what they actually observed. Really?

In this claim, it seems to me that you must be driven mostly by skeptic faith. Of course you can then claim that Arnold was lying in her book by falsely quoting the doctors' accounts, or maybe even that Smit et. al. concocted the whole thing out of whole cloth for The Self Does Not Die. There's no end to the possibilities, if it's no matter how farfetched.

Let's look at some of the actual detailed data, to see what's really required for your "memory contamination" theory. The following (from the book) are the actual recorded accounts of the physicians attending Arnold during the experience. 


I guess that you are contending that all four of these corroborating accounts are probably attributable to "memory contamination". In every detail? I find this unbelievable, that professionals like this trained in clear thinking and accurate observation and recall of patient details would be so influenced by such memory distortions that they would unconsciously and falsely remember all these details because they were suggested to their unconscious minds by the playback of Arnold's regression video. Each of these 4 different doctors would have to have been similarly influenced to unconsciously confabulate, confabulations greatly different than what they actually observed. 

In this claim, it seems to me that you must be driven mostly by skeptic faith. Of course you can then claim that Arnold was lying in her book by falsely quoting the doctors' accounts, or maybe even that Smit et. al. concocted the whole thing out of whole cloth for The Self Does Not Die. There's no end to the possibilities, if it's no matter how farfetched.

There's also the series of premonitions that lead to the "Plan B" for her birth in case things go wrong.

My sister had a high risk pregnancy, over a day of labor followed by a C-section and discovery of a torn & bleeding uterus. I'm not ashamed to say tears fell from my eyes when her husband sent me the photo of her being okay after all this. 

The dedication and expertise of staff in these situations is paramount, and from what an aspiring [premed] intern, now doctor, once told me the field is arguably only for the most dedicated due to the potential for malpractice suits.

Aware of Aware seems to think Health Care Professionals are the only good witnesses, but are we now to believe these HCP have easily alterable memories?

The case isn't perfect, and I can see arguments on how a stricter methodology might've made it tighter. But unless I am missing something of grave importance it's hard for me to see how this is a terrible case.

Arnold herself seems to be a credentialed figure working on women's health advocacy after her NDE and in media before that. Her cousin who helped write her book is an Emmy winning journalist.

The medical staff, AFAIK, continue to have their careers which apparently includes dealing with high risk births.

It's difficult for me to believe all these professionals purposefully got together to make this story up for inexplicable reasons. I guess Arnold has a motive, but everyone else? (And my guess is she made less money off her work than Shermer, Harris, Randi, Blackmore, etc have pushing their beliefs.)

Now could all their memories confabulate in just the right way to corroborate Arnold's NDE? It just doesn't seem very likely to me.

Could Arnold make up or at least embellish parts of the medical staff's testimony? Possible, but the case was covered by news outlets in the US. There seems to be plenty of opportunity for the medical staff to come out and say they are being used in a dishonest way by Arnold.

Is the case so strong that it will defeat all skeptics? Well one of the proverbs I think applies perfectly to pseudoskeptics is "The man who wants to beat a dog always finds his stick."

OTOH, could the review of the case be stronger? Definitely. Public video interviews of Arnold, her family, and the medical staff would help. Better follow up of the medical staff in itself would've been helpful, it isn't clear exactly what the Self Does Not Die team did there.

Really I think if the staff is telling the truth [and their testimony has not been embellished] the case is a good one but could perhaps use some more strict methodology. I can see the argument it doesn't advance the scientific debate, but I think there is value in collecting these cases to motivate the very work that might someday actually settle the matter of Survival for science.

@Titus Rivas used to post here, so perhaps if he sees this notification he can provide more details.

>Arnold herself seems to be a credentialed figure working on women's health advocacy after her NDE and in media before that.

She was a producer. "After graduation, Arnold worked for Higher Authority Productions in Miami, producing Jewish educational documentaries. She then formed her own production company called Fisch Food Productions, Inc., where she held many roles including an executive producer for 14 years." This means she has expertise in handling eyewitness testimony?

>Her cousin who helped write her book is an Emmy winning journalist.

Was that cousin involved in the investigation itself, especially the interviews? If so, who cares? The argument here is ... credibility by association?

>The medical staff, AFAIK, continue to have their careers which apparently includes dealing with high risk births.

Their careers don't depend on carefully determining the accuracy of a woman's hypnotic regression.

>It's difficult for me to believe all these professionals purposefully got together to make this story up for inexplicable reasons.

It's difficult for me to believe that too. Does anything I wrote suggest that this is a potential scenario I had in mind?

>Now could all their memories confabulate in just the right way to corroborate Arnold's NDE? It just doesn't seem very likely to me.

Happening spontaneously, that would be an absurd idea, certainly. But that's not the concern. Motivated investigators, or co-witnesses, contaminating eyewitness testimony in such a way as to produce spurious evidence of something that didn't happen is a known and serious problem in forensic science and criminal law. Testimony that wrongfully convicted people later exonerated by DNA evidence pretty much always turns out to have been erroneous because of mishandling of the eyewitnesses in the investigation, fouling up their memories. It's NOT the eyewitnesses' memory that's just "useless," as debunker buffoons allege. It's other people messing up the eyewitnesses' memories who are to blame.

>Well one of the proverbs I think applies perfectly to pseudoskeptics is

I find disheartening your possible implication that only "pseudoskeptics" would be unpersuaded by this case.

Let's look at some of the actual detailed data, to see what's really required for your "memory contamination" theory. The following (from the book) are the actual recorded accounts of the physicians attending Arnold during the experience. 


I guess that you are contending that all four of these corroborating accounts are probably attributable to "memory contamination". In every detail? I find this unbelievable, that professionals like this trained in clear thinking and accurate observation and recall of patient details would be so influenced by such memory distortions that they would unconsciously and falsely "remember" all these details because they were suggested to their unconscious minds by the playback of Arnold's regression video. Each of these 4 different doctors would have to have been similarly influenced to unconsciously confabulate, vivid lifelike and convincing confabulations greatly different than what they actually observed. Really?

In this claim, it seems to me that you must be driven mostly by skeptic faith. Of course you can then claim that Arnold was lying in her book by falsely quoting the doctors' accounts, or maybe even that Smit et. al. concocted the whole thing out of whole cloth for The Self Does Not Die. There's no end to the possibilities, if it's no matter how farfetched.

>actual recorded accounts of the physicians

After they were exposed to Arnold's video testimony and questioning. But let's all pretend this is wonderful "scientific" evidence and that none of that matters.

>In every detail? I find this unbelievable

The problem is that you mistake your own feelings of incredulity for evidence that any reasonable person should consider to be scientifically respectable. Debunkers find psi "unbelievable." So what? You want to force this debate into the same old true-believer/debunker dialectic. You don't want to accept that this worthless dialectic goes on without end because the evidence is fundamentally poor and ambiguous. Retrospective and inherently subjective arguments about "plausibility" and "trustworthiness" are the cornerstone of true-believer advocacy efforts in defense of evidence that ranks extremely low in the scientific arena.

>In this claim, it seems to me that you must be driven mostly by skeptic faith.

The "skeptic faith" of someone (me) who believes that paranormal phenomena are real? 

Do you understand the distinction between (1) taking a position on some matter and (2) taking a position on the quality of evidence pertaining to some matter?

>Of course you can then claim that Arnold was lying in her book by falsely quoting the doctors' accounts, or maybe even that Smit et. al. concocted the whole thing out of whole cloth for The Self Does Not Die

Or maybe we wouldn't have to hinge everything on the assumed integrity and competence of an NDE claimant doing "mesearch" if the evidence deemed "best" weren't so miserable. Maybe we'd have solid documentation assembled with proper investigative techniques, and open to full review by independent parties, that would massively diminish the room for reasonable doubt. Everyone knows, after all, that these topics are massively controversial. So shouldn't the researchers of NDEs and other paranormal topics strive to conduct the best work possible with maximum transparency, before calling a certain case top tier? Oh, but I'm sorry. This is IANDS we're talking about. How stupid of me to expect anything better. My mistake.

What's really funny is that you explicitly said to me "the devil is in the details." Now that I've brought out that devil, the response essentially is, "Who CARES about the details? Can't we just TRUST people, you black-hearted SKEPTIC!?"

There's also the series of premonitions that lead to the "Plan B" for her birth in case things go wrong.

My sister had a high risk pregnancy, over a day of labor followed by a C-section and discovery of a torn & bleeding uterus. I'm not ashamed to say tears fell from my eyes when her husband sent me the photo of her being okay after all this. 

The dedication and expertise of staff in these situations is paramount, and from what an aspiring [premed] intern, now doctor, once told me the field is arguably only for the most dedicated due to the potential for malpractice suits.

Aware of Aware seems to think Health Care Professionals are the only good witnesses, but are we now to believe these HCP have easily alterable memories?

The case isn't perfect, and I can see arguments on how a stricter methodology might've made it tighter. But unless I am missing something of grave importance it's hard for me to see how this is a terrible case.

>There's also the series of premonitions that lead to the "Plan B" for her birth in case things go wrong.

Do we have any direct statements on this from any of the medical professionals--that is, not mediated by Arnold's recounting of what those people told her?

It's a terribly investigated case, whatever its merits were before it was badly mishandled. Having a party to the case itself, with a particular angle on what happened, serve as the primary investigator and interviewer is clearly an awful idea. Then the IANDS crew arrives (Rivas et al.) and adds to the mess by telling us, for example, that this researcher has been "meticulous" in her documentation when she didn't even bother to record the name of one of the nurses whose involvement in the case is said by Rivas et al. to be one of the particular "verified" "veridical" perceptions we're supposed to be impressed with.

Happening spontaneously, that would be an absurd idea, certainly. But that's not the concern. Motivated investigators, or co-witnesses, contaminating eyewitness testimony in such a way as to produce spurious evidence of something that didn't happen is a known and serious problem in forensic science and criminal law. Testimony that wrongfully convicted people later exonerated by DNA evidence pretty much always turns out to have been erroneous because of mishandling of the eyewitnesses in the investigation, fouling up their memories. It's NOT the eyewitnesses' memory that's just "useless," as debunker buffoons allege. It's other people messing up the eyewitnesses' memories who are to blame.

>Well one of the proverbs I think applies perfectly to pseudoskeptics is

I find disheartening your possible implication that only "pseudoskeptics" would be unpersuaded by this case.

It's not that the case is so good only pseudoskeptics would deny it, my issue is with the idea that we should only focus on cases that would convince a group that is full in for the materialist faith.

My point is that fanatics totally against anything "supernatural" aren't going to be convinced by even the best cases. Everyone in Aware could see the stickers and people will find some way to excuse it. They'll run their own studies and show they got minimal results.

As I've said a few times before, this case or even the collective of cases is not the same as scientific replication. Why I distinguish between a legal vs scientific standard.

Nevertheless, recording these events retrospectively still has merit for the sake of public awareness + keeping the very conversation that pseudoskeptics want to kill off alive.

Should more be done to try and get good results in studies? Definitely, there has to be work done to move the needle beyond the usual conversations. But that, IMO, is going to take years of work in multiple fields to shift things and as such there's still a place for retrospective case studies.

As for the confabulation of memories...we have to believe that upon seeing the video all the HCP had their memories altered to such a significant degree their own feelings of surprise are part of that alteration. That's a very large assumption IMO. I could better understand the claim Arnold is lying or embellishing what they saw.

Regarding the nurse. I'm a bit unclear here on what the complaint is. Arnold notes that there was a nurse who was a brunette, and this is  confirmed later. Is there some issue with that?