Debate: That veridical NDEs are a myth [split: A splendid video about evolution]

[Laird]

@sbu, given that you accept a non-zero rate of veridical NDEs, verified according to what you refer to as a "loose" definition, you must then accept that they are a fact, and not a myth. That, then, concludes the debate proper.

We're now, it seems, moving on to the rate at which they occur and how common they are. In the first respect, you ignored the most important question, which was why you chose the denominator you chose. Your implicit answer to what that denominator actually was was the number of interviewed survivors of cardiac arrest.

It remains unanswered why you chose it, versus the several other candidates available, including (in order of increasing specificity):

• Number of interviewed survivors of cardiac arrest who underwent an NDE.
  
• Ditto who underwent a material NDE.
  
• Ditto whose material NDE contained potentially veridical perceptions.
  

Perhaps the answer is that you prefer that denominator because it leads to a very small rate, which is useful for rhetorical purposes, even though semi-arbitrary.

Obviously the number of verified 'hits' under the highest standard, which is double-blinded targets, is zero. So let's go with the more loose definition of a 'verified' hit, which is by some verbal agreement of accounts and let's even include the audit hits even though I have been speaking about the 'visual hits' in the discussion previously. These are the prospective studies I could find:
• Pim Van Lommel – Lancet 2001: 15 out of 344 interviewed had an OBE but zero mention of anyone being able to detail any veridical information, so I will count this one as 0.
• AWARE 1: 140 interviewed – 1 'verified' OBE
• AWARE 2: 28 interviewed – zero verified OBEs
• Penny Sartori et al.: I couldn't find the article – I will count 1 OBE
• Parnia & Fenwick 2001: 63 interviewed – zero verified OBEs
• Anne-Françoise Rousseau et al.: 126 interviewed – zero verified OBEs
Denominator = 344 + 140 + 28 + 63 + 126 = 701
Verified OBE frequency: 2 / 701 = 0.28%
Sure I underestimated the number of 'verified' OBEs a little bit. Satisfied?

The figures seem correct except that you missed that the Pim van Lommel study did contain a veridical NDE, albeit in the pilot phase, not the study proper (I think it's fair to count it anyway): the famous so-called denture man. [Edit: based on a subsequent post in this thread, it seems that this NDE did not occur during the pilot phase of that study, but rather occurred years earlier, and was merely reported during the pilot phase. It thus should not, after all, be counted. I have updated the spreadsheet to remove it, but not the calculations below, given how tedious that would be. For those interested, simply reduce the relevant numbers/percentages by 33.3%.] There are a few other studies that you missed, but none of them included any verified veridical NDEs. I've put together a spreadsheet tabulating them all:

Prospective NDE studies, from the perspective of veridical NDEs

We have a total, then, of three verified veridical NDEs across eight prospective studies. Note, though, that the number of potentially veridical NDEs across those eight studies is anywhere up to 61 (column O). These are NDEs in which potentially accurate information was perceived, but that couldn't be counted as veridical for some reason, such as because nobody was in the vicinity of the perceived details to verify them, or because the patient could not be followed up further, or because the details could have been perceived from the patient's position in bed via normal perception too.

Note also that given the low survival rate of cardiac arrest patients, the number of actual veridical NDEs that occurred but couldn't be reported due to death is potentially an order of magnitude greater.

Not all studies contain all of the figures I was tracking, however, we can calculate the candidate rates I listed above:

Rate of verified veridical NDEs versus interviewed cardiac arrest survivors who underwent:

• An NDE (column M in the spreadsheet): ~2.19% (= 3÷147), with the rate of potentially veridical NDEs of up to ~41.5% (= 61÷147).
  
• A material NDE (column N): somewhere between 17.6% (= 3÷17) and 2.54% (= 3÷118).
  
• ...containing potentially veridical perceptions (column O): ≤ 4.92% (= 3÷61).
  

As I pointed out above though, the choice of denominator is semi-arbitrary, so these rates are of limited value. Let's try instead then to work out some absolute numbers:

Based on the studies for which we have the data (rows 6, 9, and 11), 2,801 (= 174 + 2,060 + 567) in-hospital cardiac arrests result in 198 (= 30 + 140 + 28) survivors who can be interviewed. That's a rate of ~7.07% (= 198÷2,801).

If we now recalculate the denominator you used given the additional studies in the spreadsheet that you missed (assuming that sample three in Penny Sartori's study was the same size as the sum of samples one and two), we arrive at 2,890. That gives a rate of about 0.104% (= 3÷2,890) verified veridical NDEs out of all interviewed survivors of cardiac arrest, and of up to about 2.11% (= 61÷2890) potentially veridical NDEs.

Combining these rates, we expect that about 0.00734% (= 3÷2,890 × 198÷2,801) of in-hospital cardiac arrests (including those who died from them) would, if followed up with interviews, yield veridical NDEs, or up to ~0.149% potentially veridical NDEs.

Not all survivors are able to be interviewed though, so the rate is actually a little higher: based on columns I and J, #CAs÷#interviews = ~1.67 (= 63 + 509 + 55 + 330 + 53) ÷ (63 + 344 + 30 + 140 + 28), so our final rate is ~0.012% (= 1.67 × 0.00734) or up to ~0.249% potentially veridical NDEs..

Now, according to Wikipedia, there are 209,000 in-hospital cardiac arrests in the USA alone. There are another 326,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the USA. Given that care and survival are likely to be of lesser quality, we might expect that fewer of the latter would have NDEs and survive, but let's ignore that for working purposes and assume that the rate is the same.

That's a total of 535,000 cardiac arrests in the US per year, from which we'd expect a yield, if all survivors were interviewed afterwards, of ~64 (= 0.012% × 535,000) verified veridical NDEs per year, and up to 1,333 potentially veridical NDEs.

Assuming for working purposes that the rate is the same globally, we'd have 1,512 verified veridical NDEs worldwide per year (= 8.2 billion global population ÷ 347 million US population × 64), and up to 31,500 potentially veridical NDEs.

That means that in the twenty-first century alone, there'd have been about 37,800 (= 1,512 × 25) verified veridical NDEs globally had all cardiac arrest survivors been interviewed, and up to 787,500 potentially veridical NDEs.

Of course, these are very rough numbers, especially because even the compendium of studies we're working with has still got a pretty small sample size given the very few veridical NDEs recorded.

They also don't take into account the other contexts in which NDEs occur, outside of cardiac arrest, nor, as pointed out above, the veridical NDEs which presumably occur in cardiac arrest patients who don't end up surviving.

I'm sorry to be the one to break your illusions, but I have consistently spoken about the highest standard of evidence here, you know, stuff not open for interpretations and bias. There were zero hits. The hidden target was not described.

The problems with this are that:

• Evidence other than the highest standard is nevertheless of high enough quality to count. Simply throwing out a generic, unsubstantiated claim of "open for interpretations and bias" is insufficient to dismiss it, especially given that it occurred in prospective studies.
  
• The hidden target could not have been described in any of these studies anyway because no OBEs occurred in the vicinity of the target in any of them. In this sense, the studies haven't even yet tested the accuracy of potentially veridical NDEs via hidden targets.
  

Show me the evidence.

You've shown it yourself, and I've just compiled a spreadsheet of it.

https://awareofaware.co/2023/01/16/aware...-analysis/ – in particular: "Near-normal EEG patterns were observed throughout CPR, however, their relative frequency declined over time, especially after 50 minutes of CPR."

OK, but that's with CPR. Without CPR, I don't think that the brain's flatlining within seconds would be a "myth". It's also a single study, and hasn't yet, as far as I know, been replicated. Criticisms (see under "The Possibility of Lucid Consciousness During CPR") have also been made of the claim that these EEG patterns really could support consciousness.

Exactly – there were zero hits. If you disagree, please let me know which of the targets were observed: was it apple or banana, or what do you think?

Again, this ignores the confirmed veridical NDE that occurred in the AWARE I study despite it not occurring in a room with a target.

Apparently you ignored looking into the superior-powered reproduction of the "feeling the future" study which provided overwhelming evidence for the "not feeling the future" phenomenon.

You complain about cherry-picking when it's not applicable, yet here you are doing exactly that - cherry-picking - when it is applicable, as @InterestedinPsi has pointed out already.

In any case, the result of that Feeling the Future replication was anomalous, just in an unexpected direction, so it's nevertheless evidence of some sort of psi. It might be explicable as a case of the experimenter effect (link provided just for reference; I haven't read the full page myself).

The figures seem correct except that you missed that the Pim van Lommel study did contain a veridical NDE, albeit in the pilot phase, not the study proper (I think it's fair to count it anyway): the famous so-called denture man.

The denture man case shouldn’t be counted when applying the highest methodological standard. It was reported during the pilot phase of van Lommel’s research, not the actual prospective study where controls and standardized procedures were in place. Van Lommel himself was never involved in interviewing the patient, and there is no evidence the patient was ever interviewed as part of the main or even the pilot study. In fact, critics have pointed out that the patient died before a direct interview could be conducted (In other words, the case is based on secondhand reports, not firsthand data.) As a retrospective account, it doesn’t meet the evidential criteria of the main study. If you include that, you’d also have to include many other anecdotal reports, which undermines the consistency of restricting the count to prospectively documented cases.

It’s not me who are cherry picking. The problem is that you’re often mixing low-quality and high-quality evidence together in your argumentation (Denture man probably never existed - it was just the nurse who made the entire history up to bring attention to himself like another David Grusch) whereas I’ve consistently referred only to studies that meet higher methodological standards. If you’re going to count something like Jeffrey Long’s NDERF site, how exactly are you filtering out the fake or frivolous accounts that people (myself included) have submitted just for fun? Without that separation, the evidential standard collapses.

In any case, the result of that Feeling the Future replication was anomalous, just in an unexpected direction, so it's nevertheless evidence of some sort of psi. It might be explicable as a case of the experimenter effect (link provided just for reference; I haven't read the full page myself).

That replication isn’t evidence for psi. The small effect in the opposite direction is far more plausibly explained by methodological issues, such as the randomization equipment not being truly random. Treating a methodological artifact as “anomalous evidence” just lowers the standard of what counts as data (and highlights the entire problem with this whole conversation).

The denture man case shouldn’t be counted when applying the highest methodological standard. It was reported during the pilot phase of van Lommel’s research, not the actual prospective study where controls and standardized procedures were in place. Van Lommel himself was never involved in interviewing the patient, and there is no evidence the patient was ever interviewed as part of the main or even the pilot study. In fact, critics have pointed out that the patient died before a direct interview could be conducted (In other words, the case is based on secondhand reports, not firsthand data.) As a retrospective account, it doesn’t meet the evidential criteria of the main study. If you include that, you’d also have to include many other anecdotal reports, which undermines the consistency of restricting the count to prospectively documented cases.

It’s not me who are cherry picking. The problem is that you’re often mixing low-quality and high-quality evidence together in your argumentation (Denture man probably never existed - it was just the nurse who made the entire history up to bring attention to himself like another David Grusch) whereas I’ve consistently referred only to studies that meet higher methodological standards. If you’re going to count something like Jeffrey Long’s NDERF site, how exactly are you filtering out the fake or frivolous accounts that people (myself included) have submitted just for fun? Without that separation, the evidential standard collapses.

That replication isn’t evidence for psi. The small effect in the opposite direction is far more plausibly explained by methodological issues, such as the randomization equipment not being truly random. Treating a methodological artifact as “anomalous evidence” just lowers the standard of what counts as data (and highlights the entire problem with this whole conversation).

"such as the randomization equipment not being truly random"

At this point I've got to conclude that you cannot possibly be reading what is being presented to you, the posts or the papers. Without that assumption, I'd have to infer something far more unflattering about you.

As I already observed, the replication you claim "isn't evidence for psi" very carefully vetted the procedure used before and, critically, after the initial exploratory anomalous effect served as the basis for the pre-registration of a hypothesis and was found again (with substantially higher statistical significance) in a robust confirmatory design. The authors completely failed to find any evidence of a methodological artifact, including inadequate randomization, in the very thorough checking that they performed, and it couldn't be clearer that they desperately wanted to find such an artifact, as their whole purpose was to vindicate the original Transparent Psi Project study to which you linked a while ago. This is why they--in an ironic example of a questionable research practice--kept pre-registering and conducting studies until they got the result they wanted, and then immediately stopped the experiments. This is exactly the sort of flexibility about when to discontinue an experimental series that pre-registration is supposed to avoid.

"such as the randomization equipment not being truly random"

At this point I've got to conclude that you cannot possibly be reading what is being presented to you, the posts or the papers. Without that assumption, I'd have to infer something far more unflattering about you.

As I already observed, the replication you claim "isn't evidence for psi" very carefully vetted the procedure used before and, critically, after the initial exploratory anomalous effect was pre-registered and found again (with substantially higher statistical significance) in a robust confirmatory design. The authors completely failed to find any evidence of a methodological artifact, including inadequate randomization, in the very thorough checking that they performed, and it couldn't be clearer that they desperately wanted to find such an artifact, as their whole purpose was to vindicate the original Transparent Psi Project study to which you linked a while ago. This is why they--in an ironic example of a questionable research practice--kept pre-registering and conducting studies until they got the result they wanted, and then immediately stopped the experiments. This is exactly the sort of flexibility about when to discontinue an experimental series that pre-registration is supposed to avoid.

I got the point previously about the research practice. I'm not defending that - still I believe the extremely small effect size measuring the 'NOT feeling the future' effect is better explained by methodological issues rather than inventing a whole new category of phenomena (psi). I agree that a statistically significant effect was measured and documented. So it's only in the interpretation we differ (as opposed to the discussion about denture man, which was only documented by second-hand accounts, had no controls in place, and the account changed details over time).

rather than inventing a whole new category of phenomena (psi). 

This would imply there's a deep understanding of how normal communication works, with Psi being outside of that.

Personally I don't think that's accurate - normal communication between conscious entities involves enough mysteries in and of itself.

This would imply there's a deep understanding of how normal communication works, with Psi being outside of that.

Personally I don't think that's accurate - normal communication between conscious entities involves enough mysteries in and of itself.

There's a massive difference between 'we don't fully understand consciousness' and 'information can travel backwards in time.' Normal communication - whether verbal, written, or digital - operates through well-understood physical mechanisms: sound waves, light, electromagnetic signals. We can measure, block, amplify, and manipulate these signals reliably.
The mysteries around consciousness and subjective experience don't change the fact that information transfer follows known physical laws.

There's a massive difference between 'we don't fully understand consciousness' and 'information can travel backwards in time.' Normal communication - whether verbal, written, or digital - operates through well-understood physical mechanisms: sound waves, light, electromagnetic signals. We can measure, block, amplify, and manipulate these signals reliably.
The mysteries around consciousness and subjective experience don't change the fact that information transfer follows known physical laws.

Well I don't believe in retro-causation at all. The data can still show some kind of Psi effect.

Also, it seems to me there are mysteries about what "information" is, as well as what "laws" are.

Don't even get me started on asking what "physical mechanisms" are supposed to be...

All to say it isn't clear to me that Psi is some category wholly divorced from what STEM academia accepts. This is why I think it's important to see what people's a priori metaphysical assumptions are, because otherwise deciding the "best" or "most rational" way to look at the data is done under hidden biases.

There's a massive difference between 'we don't fully understand consciousness' and 'information can travel backwards in time.' Normal communication - whether verbal, written, or digital - operates through well-understood physical mechanisms: sound waves, light, electromagnetic signals. We can measure, block, amplify, and manipulate these signals reliably.
The mysteries around consciousness and subjective experience don't change the fact that information transfer follows known physical laws.

Signal transfer is as you say, well understood, especially through the equations of communication theory.  A physical signal is moved via a channel to another location and the signal's patterns can be decoded at the recipient.  Pretty standard stuff. 

I personally don't think that there is much that is mysterious about consciousness, knowing I am an outlier with this strong opinion.  Consciousness can be easily defined as a sum total of detection/perception received by a biological agent.  Bacteria have limited detection of environment signals and primates much more.  Information processing of signals are pretty well delineated and the channels for bio-detection systems can be physically examined.

However, when you say "information transfer follows known physical laws" that is an very naïve claim.  The "mystery of mind" has been left in place for thousands of years and just accepted  You must either say that the most claimed capability of mind - understanding - comes from signal transfer.  Which is surely not not well-modelled by neuro- science. 

Or the ability to think about the past or future and obtain new information from thinking is achieved by some magic material system in the brain!  There are no signals coming from the past or the future in the brain.  How is the information and meanings available to our understanding other than "it just is" kinda talk?

Everyday minds have access to the logical probabilities in all times and in all spaces and clearly interacts with them.  Where are the physical signals?  Photonics in the dark of the skull, copper twisted pairs in another dimension, bio-chemicals with magical relations with space and time, or sounds coming from the ether - I think not.

I got the point previously about the research practice. I'm not defending that - still I believe the extremely small effect size measuring the 'NOT feeling the future' effect is better explained by methodological issues rather than inventing a whole new category of phenomena (psi). I agree that a statistically significant effect was measured and documented. So it's only in the interpretation we differ (as opposed to the discussion about denture man, which was only documented by second-hand accounts, had no controls in place, and the account changed details over time).

I'm glad we've come to more of an agreement. Sorry for being rude in my last post.

A couple additional points:

"inventing a whole new category of phenomena"

You act as if this all hangs on one series of experiments. It certainly doesn't. There have been tons of these studies, which have been subjected to massive criticism, leading to progressive improvement of the rigor of the methods used to research these apparent effects. As it stands, psi effects still are found even using the most advanced methods available and when skeptical or neutral people run the studies. It's long been observed that there's a strange inconsistency in replication of psi effects, but the pattern of this inconsistency is not the kind expected when the effects simply don't exist and all findings of them can be accounted for in terms of fraud, optional stopping, selective reporting, and so on. These effects turn up at a high enough rate in studies of very high rigor that it's really hard to believe they're due to chance alone and involve no real anomaly.

"as opposed to the discussion about denture man"

Here I have to hand it to you. Having now looked into the dentures man case, I'd say it's essentially devoid of evidential value. Indeed, the name of the patient isn't even known, and going off of the summary of Rivas et al. (Self does not die, second edition), the NDE supposedly happened in 1979.

I'm sad to say that the manner in which van Lommel et al. (2001) introduce the case is extremely misleading:

"During the pilot phase in one of the hospitals, a coronary-care-unit nurse reported a veridical out-of-body experience of a resuscitated patient"

Nothing in van Lommel et al.'s (2001) statement is strictly speaking inaccurate. The problem is the natural reading of this sentence leads one to believe that the NDE occurred during the pilot phase of van Lommel et al.'s (2001) study. It was, in fact, merely "reported" while the pilot phase was underway, but had occurred years earlier (if Rivas et al.'s information is accurate). van Lommel et al. should've made clear that it was reported only, and had happened before their research began.

On the other hand, the fact that the nurse seems to have remained anonymous (Rivas et al. only refer to him as "TG") is prima facie at odds with the idea he made it all up for attention as you contend. The dentures man story may well have really happened as TG gave it. But it simply has virtually no evidential substance because there's nothing that would allow us to meaningfully verify his account, as the case is lacking so badly in what would be expected even of a good retrospectively discovered NDE.

I'm glad we've come to more of an agreement. Sorry for being rude in my last post.

A couple additional points:

"inventing a whole new category of phenomena"

You act as if this all hangs on one series of experiments. It certainly doesn't. There have been tons of these studies, which have been subjected to massive criticism, leading to progressive improvement of the rigor of the methods used to research these apparent effects. As it stands, psi effects still are found even using the most advanced methods available and when skeptical or neutral people run the studies. It's long been observed that there's a strange inconsistency in replication of psi effects, but the pattern of this inconsistency is not the kind expected when the effects simply don't exist and all findings of them can be accounted for in terms of fraud, optional stopping, selective reporting, and so on. These effects turn up at a high enough rate in studies of very high rigor that it's really hard to believe they're due to chance alone and involve no real anomaly.

"as opposed to the discussion about denture man"

Here I have to hand it to you. Having now looked into the dentures man case, I'd say it's essentially devoid of evidential value. Indeed, the name of the patient isn't even known, and going off of the summary of Rivas et al. (Self does not die, second edition), the NDE supposedly happened in 1979.

I'm sad to say that the manner in which van Lommel et al. (2001) introduce the case is extremely misleading:

"During the pilot phase in one of the hospitals, a coronary-care-unit nurse reported a veridical out-of-body experience of a resuscitated patient"

Nothing in van Lommel et al.'s (2001) statement is strictly speaking inaccurate. The problem is the natural reading of this sentence leads one to believe that the NDE occurred during the pilot phase of van Lommel et al.'s (2001) study. It was, in fact, merely "reported" while the pilot phase was underway, but had occurred years earlier (if Rivas et al.'s information is accurate). van Lommel et al. should've made clear that it was reported only, and had happened before their research began.

On the other hand, the fact that the nurse seems to have remained anonymous (Rivas et al. only refer to him as "TG") is prima facie at odds with the idea he made it all up for attention as you contend. The dentures man story may well have really happened as TG gave it. But it simply has virtually no evidential substance because there's nothing that would allow us to meaningfully verify his account, as the case is lacking so badly in what would be expected even of a good retrospectively discovered NDE.

We are in agreement. I'm not well-versed in psi. The only part of that debate I ever took an interest in is Daryl Bem's original study and the subsequent replication attempts. I only brought it up in this thread to make an analogy for how more data can lead to revised conclusions. The 'feeling the future' line of research no longer supports the conclusion that precognitive abilities exist. What we observe are tiny deviations from expected values in both directions across different experiments - some above chance, some below chance - without any good explanation for the inconsistent pattern.

Regarding the “Denture man” that case should never have been mentioned in “ Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands”. It’s only contribution to that article was to support how highly biased Van Lommel was from the outset. He could have mentioned it in a follow-up book.