Best NDE Case

The thread Hjortron posted on the Keith Augustine interview got me thinking about what the best NDE case was - one which can stand on its own in terms of whether or not the perceptions were essentially impossible - which can get the attention of the broader scientific community.

The best case would be one which was documented under blind conditions, and contains elements which are at least highly improbable, if not impossible. I don't know of any which satisfies those conditions. 

The closest one I know of would be the one Penny Sartori reported on here. The conditions weren't completely blind, as prior to Penny coming on the scene, the subject told the medical team (who were present during the event and therefore not blind) about his experience and that interaction is undocumented. And Penny also was not blind to the events, and she provides information to the patient throughout her recorded interviews (some of which she goes on to attribute to the patient in her published case report).
 
There aren't any documented "impossible or highly improbable" perceptions in that case either. The perceptions which were documented are interesting at best. The one perception which gets close is "The blonde lady therapist boss, she was panicking; she looked nervous because she was the one who got me out in the chair. She hid behind the curtains, but kept poking her head around to check on me," but was never mentioned by the patient in Penny's recorded interviews of the patient. Nor was Penny present or a record made when he reportedly first made this observation to the medical team.*

Despite that, if we go ahead and accept that he used those words, then it's at least "improbable" that he observed this with a reduced level of consciousness. So this case seems (as in I am unaware of any other) unique with respect to the amount which has been documented under somewhat blind conditions and still contains special elements.

Experiences like that of Pam Reynolds, where we don't have documentation under blind conditions, aren't particularly useful, as can be seen in the Keith Augustine thread. A copy of the operative report and the EEG/SSEP/BAEP readings are useful, whereas statements based on non-blinded recollection allow for endless bickering.

Does anyone know of any other documented cases that are as good or better than Sartori's?

Linda

*The medical team told Penny what the patient had said. She went to the patient's bedside after the medical team had moved on, and "while taking notes, I asked Patient 10 to repeat what he had communicated to the team..." (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/675...7969/m1/4/) Penny's notes have not been published and when asked about them a few years ago, she wasn't sure where they were. Although the subject repeats all the other details of his experience (and offers up new details) in the recorded interviews, he never mentions this, despite Penny's promptings. The recorded interviews have been published (https://www.amazon.com/Near-Death-Experi...077345103X) and the rest of the material which Penny presents as direct quotes in the paper can be found in the transcripts. For example, the original transcript reads "One doctor was saying, 'There's life in the eye.' I could also see Penny, who was a nurse,..."

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The thread Hjortron posted on the Keith Augustine interview got me thinking about what the best NDE case was - one which can stand on its own in terms of whether or not the perceptions were essentially impossible - which can get the attention of the broader scientific community.

The best case would be one which was documented under blind conditions, and contains elements which are at least highly improbable, if not impossible. I don't know of any which satisfies those conditions. 

The closest one I know of would be the one Penny Sartori reported on here. The conditions weren't completely blind, as prior to Penny coming on the scene, the subject told the medical team (who were present during the event and therefore not blind) about his experience and that interaction is undocumented. And Penny also was not blind to the events, and she provides information to the patient throughout her recorded interviews (some of which she goes on to attribute to the patient in her published case report).
 
There aren't any documented "impossible or highly improbable" perceptions in that case either. The perceptions which were documented are interesting at best. The one perception which gets close is "The blonde lady therapist boss, she was panicking; she looked nervous because she was the one who got me out in the chair. She hid behind the curtains, but kept poking her head around to check on me," but was never mentioned by the patient in Penny's recorded interviews of the patient. Nor was Penny present or a record made when he reportedly first made this observation to the medical team.*

Despite that, if we go ahead and accept that he used those words, then it's at least "improbable" that he observed this with a reduced level of consciousness. So this case seems (as in I am unaware of any other) unique with respect to the amount which has been documented under somewhat blind conditions and still contains special elements.

Experiences like that of Pam Reynolds, where we don't have documentation under blind conditions, aren't particularly useful, as can be seen in the Keith Augustine thread. A copy of the operative report and the EEG/SSEP/BAEP readings are useful, whereas statements based on non-blinded recollection allow for endless bickering.

Does anyone know of any other documented cases that are as good or better than Sartori's?

Linda

*The medical team told Penny what the patient had said. She went to the patient's bedside after the medical team had moved on, and "while taking notes, I asked Patient 10 to repeat what he had communicated to the team..." (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/675...7969/m1/4/) Penny's notes have not been published and when asked about them a few years ago, she wasn't sure where they were. Although the subject repeats all the other details of his experience (and offers up new details) in the recorded interviews, he never mentions this, despite Penny's promptings. The recorded interviews have been published (https://www.amazon.com/Near-Death-Experi...077345103X) and the rest of the material which Penny presents as direct quotes in the paper can be found in the transcripts. For example, the original transcript reads "One doctor was saying, 'There's life in the eye.' I could also see Penny, who was a nurse,..."

.................................................................

copied by me (tim) simply for future reference

The relevant parts of Patient 10's first interview transcript regarding the blond lady pacing up and down behind the curtains, and poking her head through the curtains, are included in her earlier published 2006 paper, (published separately before her monolith study because it was such an interesting event).

http://iands.es/bibliografia/Sartori_Fenwick.pdf

Agreed the first interview with patient 10 is missing from the appendix of her later published monolith study, but it got missed out. It doesn't matter though, because we have the relevant interview already published in her earlier 2006 paper. So it's fully available for reference.

Huh? That is the paper I was referring to, and linked to.

The statements which she presents as quotes don't represent her published notes, especially not "fully available for reference". Penny describes them as "excerpts" from her interviews. And if you go through them, they are a compilation of a few paragraphs, sentences and partial sentences taken from her transcribed interviews, and reconstructed to give an idea of what the patient said. The only part which seems to have come from her unpublished notes are these sentences:

"I could see everybody panicking around me. The blonde lady therapist boss, she was panicking; she looked nervous because she was the one who got me out in the chair. She hid behind the curtains, but kept poking her head around to check on me."

Those lines are missing from the published transcripts. This becomes important because once you have a chance to look at all of the published transcripts, you find that Penny attributes "the veridical features of his OBE" to the patient, when the veridical information she references came from her. You can't tell this from the paper, but she was the one who identified the doctor as the Consultant to the patient. She was the one who told the patient that she used a sponge stick to wash his mouth. In neither case, was it the patient who volunteered this information, when you get a look at the whole conversation. So it becomes important to know what the conversation was like around his supposed statements about the physiotherapist. Had she given him that information earlier in the conversation? We can't know without a full published account of all her notes.

However, like I said earlier, we can provisionally accept these statements for the purposes of attempting to find a "best case".

Linda

As I said, there is no problem with this, Penny already published the pertinent part of Patient 10's transcript containing the 'blonde lady' in her 2006 paper, so what's the point of you saying of Patient 10 "...he never mentioned this.", and now saying "...those lines are missing".

The point is, that is not all that is pertinent. If all we had of the pages and pages of transcripts for Patient 10 were the few paragraphs published in 2006, we wouldn’t know that the so-called “veridical features of his OBEs” were not information that the patient provided, but rather were provided by Penny to the patient. Without access to all of her notes and transcripts, we don’t know if the physiotherapist statement is an exception to this or not. 

That this first interview with patient 10 is missing from the raw *appendix* at the back of the monolith 5 year study she later published, is simply because it was missed out. That 5 year study contains an enormous volume of information, and we never get that amount of raw content published with most works, it's an unprecedented study from this point of view. It's frankly strange for you to keep bringing this up, as if readers should seriously consider whether Penny perhaps just made up the very long transcript quoted in her 2006 paper. I mean, what she published in 2006 is more than adequate, as it would be for any other study.

Huh? I specifically stated that everything else in the “very long” transcript in her 2006 paper could be found in the complete transcripts published in her book, so that hardly suggests it was “made up”. 

I agree that this was an unprecedented study and that we were given access to an unprecedented amount of raw content. It was the chance to read all of this raw content which dramatically altered my perception of NDEs and NDE research.

And I agree that the transcript composed of excerpts in her 2006 paper was more than adequate with respect to the usual standards. Unfortunately. Because what a comparison of the two shows is that the abbreviated and sanitized version of the story was misleading. The implication in the paper is that the patient was the source of the veridical information, yet access to the full transcripts reveals that Penny was the source of the veridical information - at least with respect to “the doctor shining the light in his eyes” and “the nurse cleaning his mouth”. I’ve become suspicious that the research in which we aren’t given this kind of access isn’t any better in this regard. After all, as you pointed out, I first raised this issue years ago, and keep bringing it up. Yet none of this seems to bug anybody on the proponent side of things.

Linda

Nah, don’t try and spin what you originally said about the “blond lady” statement, made by patient 10... you said of him "...he never mentioned this.", and then said "...those lines are missing". I mean that’s just inaccurate, totally inaccurate. If you can’t accept your wrong to mix those provocative statements up with that part of what patient 10 said you need your head examined. Other people reading, will pick up things like “... he never mentioned this”, and presume that to be the case.

Why would I spin anything now when what I said was accurate? Those lines are not present in any of the three transcripts from the three interviews published in Penny Sartori's book. The only other potential interview she mentions comes from her response to the critique of her paper, which I referenced earlier. In it she says, "while taking notes, I asked Patient 10 to repeat what he had communicated to the team..." A full copy of those notes has not been published. 

I get that you want to call her inclusion of three sentences, which presumably came from those notes, equivalent to her publishing those notes. But I would not do so, nor would anyone who is interested in a full accounting do so, since as we saw with the published interviews, her choice of snippets was misleading.

But I accept we don’t have a transcript of what she asked in the first interview. It’s missing from the back of the monolith 5 year studies appendix. Like you, Penny’s excellent raw data, seriously raises the bar. And raises questions about what cherry picked data is presented in such soft science papers.

Most definitely.

Linda

Patient 10 is quoted saying the “blond lady” line in Penny’s 2006 paper. So why on earth would you say something so inaccurate  as “...he never mentioned it” at the same time as talking about that line, unless you’re nothing but a cretin? Which I do think you are.

Worse than that, he also mentions the physiotherapist (the blond lady) in the transcripts of the interviews in Sartori's book. So I wonder what I was referring to?

Oh wait, I see that I specified what I was referring to. Never mind.

Linda