Mega-Thread: Contrary and Confusing Claims about Parnia, Greyson and more?

I do apologise for making yet another thread, but I felt this deserved one of it's own because I am getting extremely confused about the research, validity of cases, skeptical rebuttals and even the implications of Parnia's work-and no, this time it's not that he's a fraud or biased or whatever, it's that his work is being 'misrepresented'. It's all very bewildering to me as I just need clarification. I was originally unaware they had mentioned the likes of Greyson, and others, before, but they have, even if it was in passing and without actually looking into ANY his work or publications. 

This is because I have (unwisely) revisited another forum I have referenced on here before that I will not name specifically, but does deal with similar topics to this one on a larger scale. This thread is designed to address specifically the claims made by the skeptics on said forum regarding NDE and Past Life research, brain death, cardiac arrest etc. For the record, I am NOT a member of this forum. 

The main skeptic in question is still active and his claims can still be found on the forum in question. One of his main claims is that afterlife proponents 'distort Parnia's research' from the first AWARE study and that Parnia's work has 'rendered veridical NDEs moot'. This obviously contradicts most of what I myself have found about Parnia and have been told, so it could be misinformation, but again I'm not certain. He is not open to the possibility of an afterlife, but I still would like help examining his claims:

What I will first point out however is some facts about this (pseudo?)skeptic I have gathered from reading his comments:

• He does not seem know much about anything Parnia has said beyond the first AWARE study and the articles sensationalising his work on how the brain is still 'active' up to 10 minutes after you die, or something...He certainly isn't aware of the details from the AwareofAWARE blog. 
  
• He is a fan of Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, and thinks that the laws of physics do not allow for an afterlife. He considers Sean Carroll to be 'one of the greatest physicists in the world'.
  
• He claims physicists are greater authorities on postulating an afterlife than medical experts because 'they focus on keeping people alive'
  
• He regularly cites sources and articles attempting to debunk NDEs by attributing them to anoxia/hypoxia, lucid dreams (Kevin Nelson) and/or other chemicals that are quite outdated and/or misleading, from many years ago even prior to his posts.
  
• When presented with cases, he doesn't always actually address them and falsely claims to have watched them (e.g. the TomTom festival video featuring the UVA).
  
• I have not seen him address any occasions where Parnia has actually criticised the claims that neuro-chemical 'drugs in the brain' cause NDEs. He seems to focus more on the AWARE study and what Parnia has said about that.
  
• He believes consciousness isn't much of a mystery and it is definitely produced by the brain. He is the one who cited Michael Graziano's theory as 'making excellent progress' in materialistically explaining consciousness, a theory which would imply that hand puppets are conscious apparently.
  
• He repeatedly (and I do mean repeatedly) recites his 'materialist mantra' of: "the mind is the brain, the brain is made of atoms, we know how atoms work, and that means there is no way for what is "you" to continue on after the point of death".
  
• According to a proponent on the forum, he was sent many examples of NDE studies in the past prior to the AWARE study that would have been taken into consideration...and yet the skeptic doesn't either a)remember them or b)have actually have read them. All he says is that he's 'familiar with Sam's project'.
  

There are other skeptics as well who criticise Parnia, or ones who claim Tucker 'accepts his work is pseudoscience'. That  very short thread you can find here. Of course, the skeptic of Tucker did not read into his work, just an article discussing it. As for the woman critiquing Parnia...I think she's underestimating him, and overestimating that Wikipedia article. She claims that Parnia didn't verify the actual hit in AWARE 1 because it wasn't the 'intended method of verification', but she admits she didn't read the verified hit in question. But she goes on to cite the criticisms found on Wikipedia at the time of 2017, and that he 'jumped to conclusions based on a single verified hit'. Of course, we know that isn't true based on what else he has said and how skeptical he has been at times. 

So, I wanted to make this because his claims about Parnia are quite assertive and confident, as though he knows him personally (obviously this isn't the case but still). These are all claims made by him in regards to Parnia:

• "Sam Parnia is part of a program that is trying to understand this aspect, the program is called AWARE, it might uncover some answers in that respect. Just be wary of the sources, a lot of after death hopefuls are misconstruing his findings, try to stick with the source where you can if looking into it further."-from 2016
  

• "I've explained to you before that's the point of Parnia's AWARE project, to find a new standard for clinical death. He is hoping to be able to revive people even hours after what we now consider the point of no return, moving that line further back. He is not suggesting there is an afterlife or other woo such as a the brain being separate from the body, that's just crackpots raping his work..." (According to Wikipedia itself regarding one hypothesis of Parnia's, this is untrue. He HAS postulated the mind being separated from the body.)-From 2018
  

• "It seems to me that consciousness without brain activity shows that we have more to learn about brain activity, if its still recording that I feel indicates that some areas are autonomous, and still work without the needs that higher functions require to operate." (Sounds like underestimating EEGs and pushing the goal post, and similar to the 'deep brain activity' argument)-From 2018
  

• "As I said earlier though, that's old information, the AWARE project has evidence to suggest that consciousness continues to record the outside world post mortem. As Parnia tells the Independent, death is scientifically defined by the heart no longer beating and blood flow being cut off from the brain. “Technically, that's how you get the time of death — it's all based on the moment when the heart stops,” Parnia states. “Once that happens, blood no longer circulates to the brain, which means brain function halts almost instantaneously.” Additionally, “you lose all your brain stem reflexes — your gag reflex, your pupil reflex, all that is gone,” the doctor adds. As this research suggests, there may, however, be additional brain energy that happens immediately post-mortem."-From 2018
  

• "Thing is Parnia is not a life after death advocate, as far as I can tell he doesn't give the idea much thought at all, but NDE proponents cite him as if he leads the field with proof of an afterlife." (Again, while not wrong, I do not think he has read Parnia's Wikipedia page or read/watched any interviews he's been in)
  

• "We have measured Consciousness up to 10 minutes after official death, and the models of consciousness via the connectome show a complex region that well might continue to record." (He's referring here to models of brain death I think, but I'm not sure about the first claim)-From 2018
  

• "There are 10,000 suspected connections to each neuron (in a connector model of the brain), and with that level of intracacy it seems logical that if hearing is the last sense to go, then that network is shutting down in a pattern, which would explain the NDE anecdotes very well IMHO and I feel would have massive implications for Parnias AWARE project. I suspect it is more likely the reason for Parnia's interest in NDE claims." (He's referring to this, and claims this explains why NDEs don't happen to everyone because 'not everyone's brain is different)-From 2018
  

• "I find him terribly frustrating myself, he is just too readily accepting of his views being interpreted by people like Eben Alexander and Moody, it would be refreshing to see his work presented as you have above, but in general, he is usually the darling of the NDE crowd, for instance, Moody cites his AWARE work as groundbreaking research into life after death, when the patients are often still very much alive. They have suffered cardiac arrest, and have no heartbeat, which does not equate to being dead, but I never hear a peep out of Parnia as to how is research is being bandied about by these people." (Oh the irony, and no, they were not 'very much alive')-From 2016
  

• "Sam Parnia who is referenced in the article released information last year that shows brain death takes much longer than we realised. One might even hear their own death announced, which effectively renders verdical perception ideas moot. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.indepen...html%3famp" (By far the most obviously dubious of this guy's claims. This article, presumably what he's referring to, is from 2017 and repeats the same information from the 2014 study. Parnia didn't make any such claims to my knowledge in 2019)-From 2020
  

As for other researchers and other NDE stuff, he regards them with contempt to say the least:

• Paraphrasing: "Peter Fenwick does not have a scientific background. He has a medical one. His speculations have no evidence other than anecdotes in books, not peer-reviewed studies." (This is demonstrably false given that Fenwick has worked with Parnia on articles and has published multiple papers. Fenwick also hasn't changed his mind after AWARE)-From 2020
  

• "I am not sure why these (medical) are the people who would be considered "experts" in life after death either, they deal with "life" and how to keep a person alive. The claims of life after death refer to a non physical entity which cannot have anything to do with life, and as some sort of energy, it seems to me the only people who would be qualified to look into "life after death" would have to be a physicist. They deal with energies and "things we cannot see" and can predict such forces with math, is there is a viable starting point, which does not seem to exist." (I find it hard to believe this guy's claim that he helps pharmaceutical companies when he's saying crap like this. It's just him trying to justify why Sean Carroll is a better authority)-From 2016
  

• "People get overly imaginative when death is a real possibility, or has occurred. Often when people pass away others might see a bird land on a window sill or a butterfly comes in the window and others surmise it's the soul of the person saying goodbye. Jumping to a conclusion based on superstition is just as illogical and pointless." (ADC research isn't that simple)-From 2019
  

I couldn't find much on their site about anyone else. I've already quoted some of their other skeptical arguments to NDEs and related phenomena in other threads recently. Stuff like this is only muddying the waters for me in regards to NDEs. Every time they get brought up, they'll insist brain activity or consciousness or whatever continues after clinical death, which debunks verified perceptions/acquiring knowledge. They routinely cite loads of articles claiming to have debunked NDEs, but I'll post those another time.

I was recently shown this conclusion by a friend also interested in this stuff as well in regards to one of Parnia's conclusions, taken directly from him:

"This is significant, since it has often been assumed that [these] experiences ... are likely hallucinations or illusions, occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been successfully restarted, but not an experience corresponding with 'real' events when the heart isn't beating. In this case, consciousness and awareness appeared to occur during a three-minute period when there was no heartbeat. This is paradoxical, since the brain typically ceases functioning within 20-30 seconds of the heart stopping and doesn’t resume again until the heart has been restarted. Furthermore, the detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events. “Thus, while it was not possible to absolutely prove the reality or meaning of patients’ experiences and claims of awareness, ... it was impossible to disclaim them either and more work is needed in this area. Clearly, the recalled experience surrounding death now merits further genuine investigation without prejudice."

There's also a bunch of other stuff Parnia has said that seems to contradict what this guy says, these include:

• His Wikipedia article, which mentions how Parnia has proposed consciousness not being a product of the brain.
  
• His interviews with the NourFoundation on YT.
  
• His glowing review of Bruce Greyson's book. This guy dismissed Greyson but endorses Parnia...even though Parnia approves of Greyson's work and states that Greyson is an authority on the matter.
  
• His videos and interviews criticising arguments that NDEs are hallucinations (despite that Skeptiko interview he did).
  

This is all just very overwhelming for me and contradicts so much that I've found or came to understand. I felt a new mega-thread would necessary because I don't want to clog up the other one. I don't want to spam excessively either on this thread so I'll space things out.

Omni, I've read through it and it's just rubbish. It's not even worth a paragraph in response. Whoever that guy is, the kindest thing I could say about him is that he's highly amusing. Please don't tell him to stop, tell him to write some more!

One of the funniest things I've seen for quite a while LOL

Omni, I've read through it and it's just rubbish. It's not even worth a paragraph in response. Whoever that guy is, the kindest thing I could say about him is that he's highly amusing. Please don't tell him to stop, tell him to write some more!

One of the funniest things I've seen for quite a while LOL

Thanks Tim, this saved me wasting my time even reading the claims.

There's only so much time in the day and don't want to waste it reading some crackpot Physicalist fundamentalist.

I just don't understand where he's coming from with these claims and I don't know how truthful they are, but they are hurtful. I can't believe behaviour like that is tolerated there.

Take Fenwick for example. This skeptic claims he's done no peer-reviewed studies, which is false. I found plenty on Google Scholar. He was literally involved in the AWARE project this guy clings to as supposed evidence against veridical NDEs. He also claims Fenwick is biased because of being 'inspired by Raymond Moody', but he expressed how like Greyson, he started out as a skeptic. These guys did nothing but look up his Wikipedia article and cherry-picked from it.

On van Lommel, he had these kind words:

The only thing Lommel is proving is he is a sellout. None of his colleagues find his work worthy,  all claim it pseudoscience and gross misinterpretation of fact. He is writing paperbacks, not papers, because his ideas are plain silly and entirely unsupported. Neurobiologists and anaesthesists have read the book and offered professional evaluations and they are more qualified to do so than you or I. That's why he is writing paperbacks, not papers. That's why there are no lectures on his work. That's why he hasn't practised since 2003. If you are serious about searching for evidence your going the wrong way about it every time. Lommel is as bad as Jonathan Wells or that silly old man Sheldrake. He's not reporting real evidence he is writing what he know readers like you want to hear.

No, Lommel has written papers, and not much in terms of books IIRC, 


Here's another quote from some skeptic there (who frankly I think may be his sock puppet account given how similarily they behave): 

Neuropsychiatrists treat mental and behavioural disorders. They typically have doctorates in psychology. In other words, Fenwick is totally out of his depth. He does, however, excel at misleading people with half-baked ideas that have totally been debunked by medical science. 

Except Fenwick is also a neurophysiologist according to Wikipedia. He studies the brain and has demonstrated this before. He is certainly not out of his depth.

On Pim van Lommel, who is also barely mentioned on there, he said this:

The only thing Lommel is proving is he is a sellout. None of his colleagues find his work worthy,  all claim it pseudoscience and gross misinterpretation of fact. He is writing paperbacks, not papers, because his ideas are plain silly and entirely unsupported. Neurobiologists and anesthesists have read the book and offered professional evaluations and they are more qualified to do so than you or I. That's why he is writing paperbacks, not papers. That's why there are no lectures on his work. That's why he hasn't practised since 2003. If you are serious about searching for evidence your going the wrong way about it every time. Lommel is as bad as Jonathan Wells or that silly old man Sheldrake. He's not reporting real evidence he is writing what he know readers like you want to hear.

Which colleagues? And hasn't Lommel written papers other than for the Lancet? And I'm also pretty sure Lommel has given lectures as well. 


He also constantly insists that Michael Graziano, the same guy who thinks puppets are conscious and told Alex Tsarkis that NDE research is comparable to astrology research, has already 'well on his way' to proving physicalism. 

It's so weird to me how this is the only thread where I've seen each of them get loads of likes, every other time this isn't necessarily the case. It's hurtful knowing the proponents get mocked, ridiculed and bullied on there for the most part...

There's another member there who claims he's conveniently had loads of experiences but remains a skeptic:

• He claims to have had '20 years experience in the occult and the practice of magick'.
  
• He claims to have had 2 NDEs, but AFAIK from the hours of research I did on this forum for their 'hot takes', he flat-out refuses to elaborate on any of these supposed experiences because he 'can't' for some reason.
  
• Additionally, what he experienced doesn't sound like an NDE, because he experienced and remembered 'nothing', meaning it's not technically an NDE. Another user said that: "It is in fact an NDE if the person was revived, whether they remember anything or not.  It’s just interesting that some do have a memorable and life changing experience with the afterlife and others do not."  I'm sorry but it just doesn't sound like these people understand what an NDE is. It's just the 'I died and didn't have one' argument. 
  
• He doesn't read his own articles and doesn't care if he's spreading misinformation, such as misrepresenting the rat DMT study and posting a link to an article on TL, claiming it debunked NDEs.
  
• He's incredibly rude, lazy and even aggressive at times to other members from what I've found.
  

I also read this: 

I know a young man, who as a child of 10 had a supposed NDE when his heart stopped during an operation. He too saw the light and his dead mother. Only a few years later he found out his mother hadn't died. It was a lie his father told him when his mother left, so his brain used that false information and concocted a dream which by all definitions would have been classified an NDE but wasn't.

And this:

When I was in my teens and in the military, my buddies and I would play a game in the dorms. Needless to say, it involved alcohol and hyperventillation amongst other things. The end result was that you passed out and experienced an event very similiar to what everyone who has a NDE has described. Everything collapses into a tunnel of light and then you are someplace else. The other guys saw dead relatives that they hadn't even thought about for years. Time was distorted too. It felt like you were there for a long time but when you woke up, only seconds had passed. Needless to say, one of my friends went into an epileptic siezure during this game so we decided not to do it anymore. Mind you, this was before I had read anything about NDEs. This experience has left me skeptical of NDE's as anything but a biological oddity. Btw- don't try this at home. I left out details on purpose, because basically we were almost killing each other for this "game".

 I am aware these are also just anecdotes from skeptics, and these are likely anomalies, but should they be considered? 

There are so many features of NDEs, and these anecdotes are from years and years ago so there's virtually no way of knowing to what extent they are accurate or truthful (insert-the ususal skeptical excuses that apply equally to these anecdotes as any other-here). 

Then there's their criticisms of reincarnation: 

Paraphrase: "Even though Tucker has found many western cases there are still loads more from Eastern countries where the belief is already dominant"

He didn't provide any evidence to back this statement up yet it got like 6 likes. 

Then there was this claim:

"The biggest problem I have with any concept of reincarnation is intelligence. You'd think that the world would be filled with super genius's. All those life times of knowledge stuffed in someone's head."

Seriously? Why would you expect the kids reporting these to remember absolutely everything? And why is it that pseudoskeptics think with reincarnation, it must apply to everyone?

I wish I was able to shrug these off so easily, but how does this stuff get so many likes? You can spot the bias and flawed logic from a mile away!?

Omni,

Just give up on the idea of an afterlife. If every random comment on Youtube or some forum is going to make you disbelieve then you just don't have the heart for believing in the afterlife.

Your time is better spent just working on accepting that after this life there's just Oblivion.

That or try to produce psi-effects yourself, maybe see if you can talk to the dead via magick or some such. Because as it stands there isn't going to be any unassailable research, if your standard is so low that every random skeptic needs to be taken seriously.

Pretty much yeah. Like the things you post are the same things as you post a few days earlier, the exact same points that you yourself know are wrong that we have disproved but just seeing them again makes your whole world crumble down. Need to find a way to deal with that otherwise your life isn't going to be anything other than stress. First advice is to stop looking for shit.

Edit: the fact that YOU with some basic researching of your own could disprove these and your entire post is talking about the things he gets wrong shows that you shouldn't be worried about posting big paragraph responses to it.

I just don't understand where he's coming from with these claims and I don't know how truthful they are, but they are hurtful. I can't believe behaviour like that is tolerated there.

Take Fenwick for example. This skeptic claims he's done no peer-reviewed studies, which is false. I found plenty on Google Scholar. He was literally involved in the AWARE project this guy clings to as supposed evidence against veridical NDEs. He also claims Fenwick is biased because of being 'inspired by Raymond Moody', but he expressed how like Greyson, he started out as a skeptic. These guys did nothing but look up his Wikipedia article and cherry-picked from it.
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He also constantly insists that Michael Graziano, the same guy who thinks puppets are conscious and told Alex Tsarkis that NDE research is comparable to astrology research, has already 'well on his way' to proving physicalism. 

It's so weird to me how this is the only thread where I've seen each of them get loads of likes, every other time this isn't necessarily the case. It's hurtful knowing the proponents get mocked, ridiculed and bullied on there for the most part...

There's another member there who claims he's conveniently had loads of experiences but remains a skeptic:

• He claims to have had '20 years experience in the occult and the practice of magick'.
  
• He claims to have had 2 NDEs, but AFAIK from the hours of research I did on this forum for their 'hot takes', he flat-out refuses to elaborate on any of these supposed experiences because he 'can't' for some reason.
  
• Additionally, what he experienced doesn't sound like an NDE, because he experienced and remembered 'nothing', meaning it's not technically an NDE. Another user said that: "It is in fact an NDE if the person was revived, whether they remember anything or not.  It’s just interesting that some do have a memorable and life changing experience with the afterlife and others do not."  I'm sorry but it just doesn't sound like these people understand what an NDE is. It's just the 'I died and didn't have one' argument. 
  
• He doesn't read his own articles and doesn't care if he's spreading misinformation, such as misrepresenting the rat DMT study and posting a link to an article on TL, claiming it debunked NDEs.
  
• He's incredibly rude, lazy and even aggressive at times to other members from what I've found.
  

-----

There are so many features of NDEs, and these anecdotes are from years and years ago so there's virtually no way of knowing to what extent they are accurate or truthful (insert-the ususal skeptical excuses that apply equally to these anecdotes as any other-here). 

Then there's their criticisms of reincarnation: 

He didn't provide any evidence to back this statement up yet it got like 6 likes. 

Then there was this claim:

Seriously? Why would you expect the kids reporting these to remember absolutely everything? And why is it that pseudoskeptics think with reincarnation, it must apply to everyone?

I wish I was able to shrug these off so easily, but how does this stuff get so many likes? You can spot the bias and flawed logic from a mile away!?

Out of respect for your plight I'll entertain a rebuttal.

First of, like how you said earlier, he's wrong about Fenwick. That's all there is to that.

For Lommel, he doesn't publish many articles nowdays and it's fine to admit there has potentially been flaws in his approach. Not enough to call him psuedoscientific and yknow that's why we have OTHER people working in the field too.

For Graziano, his theory of consciousness is as far on the way to proving it as any other theory of consciousness. Are they ALL true? No, and his theory has as much claim as any other. Note that Attention Schema Theory doesn't actually even address the hard problem either. It's a conscious theory of easy problems that says it solves consciousness by pretending it's not there.

For the user, from your own investigation you should know they are bullshit. Also HOURS of research? Fucking hell Omni. For the child of 10 who had an NDE, young children can sometimes see a person of authority or significance in their NDE that remains for a short time before leaving. Very young kids can see santa or a teacher. If they saw their mom' could be the same deal. Of course we don't knowand have to be skeptical because of the website. For the soldiers, it's hypoxia, something that has been proven for a long time to not be the cause of NDEs. I'm gonna say their broad generalization of experiences comes from them making up fake arguments rather than genuine experiences. Or, even if they are genuine, they suffocated themselves and had an NDE, which yknow is entirely expected.

For reincarnation, there IS more reincarnation cases reported in countries that believe in it. But there is also reincarnation in countries that DON'T, which is the big point that is important. As for intelligence, there's cases with reincarnation with kids being skilled at things they have no reason to be, but as far as we know it is reincarnation remember, not posession.

Also you weren't able to shrug these off easily cause you made giant posts about them. These things get likes because they are in echo chambers with people who all believe the same thing. If I go to a basketball game and say I like basketball you think I'm gonna get fuckin boo'd out of the stadium?

Again, you need to take a long hard look at yourself Omni and decide what you want to do. You said yourself that you went onto a website you shouldn't have and stayed there reading for hours. Why'd you do that? I'd say cause you're bloody scared you're wrong and want to somehow find reassurance with skeptics coming around to join your side of cave to accurate information but it's NOT going to happen. 

This is a forum to discuss PSI stuff, this is a place to talk about skeptical talking points. I made a post ages ago about migraine aura research and NDEs cause I thought it was new, interesting and worthy of discussion. This, all this stuff you post is exactly the same stuff everyone else has posted, picked apart and dismissed. Or it's just people who are blatantly wrong and in that case what are we mean't to say? Yes they're wrong okay time to go back to the rest of my day? You need to stop seeking out stuff that is only going to stress you out, if you can't not go on a skeptical forum for hours then what're we meant to do? I know how you feel I did the same thing and sometimes still entertain the same habits but instead of splurging here go read some stuff about NDEs, go read The Self Does Not Die, go read psi encyclopedia, read rebuttals against skeptics, remind yourself of why they're wrong and settle your mind because if you can't at least do that you might as well do what Sci said and become a skeptic yourself.

It's healthy to have doubt. We should never sit there and go this is reality fuck everyone else. But right now there is NO reason for doubt or concern. If Sam Parnia comes out and goes "Okay guys we mapped this super active brain waves if we jab you here with an electrode we recreate the entire NDE experience perfectly completely." then you can make a post and we can have a discussion on what that means (and it could mean a lot of different things) but until that happens it's just recycling old points that mean almost nothing.

I mean we don't even know if there will ever be an NDE exploration method which people can easily replicate anywhere.

We will probably have better and better methods to rescue people [from] near death, and thus more and more NDEs will be recorded with ideally a parallel uptick in the number of ones which have veridical components.

But that is probably a few decades away. So if that is the only thing that can satisfy someone they just have to wait or realize they'll find out if there's an afterlife.

The only alternative is to try one of those ways people say allows them to communicate with the dead - psychomanteums, spells, dream work, etc.

Pretty much yeah. Like the things you post are the same things as you post a few days earlier, the exact same points that you yourself know are wrong that we have disproved but just seeing them again makes your whole world crumble down. Need to find a way to deal with that otherwise your life isn't going to be anything other than stress. First advice is to stop looking for shit.

Edit: the fact that YOU with some basic researching of your own could disprove these and your entire post is talking about the things he gets wrong shows that you shouldn't be worried about posting big paragraph responses to it.

I don't get likes though. and they on their much larger forum. They do (thought they tend to follow each other around like a gang on some threads to ensure this, at least recently). It makes me feel less likely to be correct, I guess?

I do point out the issues yes, but I don't know whether some of my rebuttals are...correct. The more they make claims about cardiac arrest (usually without mentioning the brainstem mind you), the more the waters are muddied for me.

There's just so much contradictory stuff it's difficult coming to terms with it all. I'm a pain in the ass no doubt 

I'll probably deal with the 'skeptics claiming to have NDEs that remain skeptics' at some point in this thread as a focus because that's probably more of a skeptical talking point I'd imagine.

They have posted studies (usually articles) though, I have a feeling you all might be familiar with them or recognise these:

• Biosynthesis and Extracellular Concentrations of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in Mammalian Brain (I've always hated this paper's almost deliberately confusing wording about the actual results, but this was the DMT rat stuff that lead to claims it mind be found in humans)
  
• Waking up is hard to do: Prefrontal Cortex implicated in consciousness (From 2018. I did notice they use the term 'modulated' and that this involved rodents, not humans, but folks like Novella insist that our brains are similar to theirs)
  
• Electroencephalographic Recordings During Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy Until 30 Minutes After Declaration of Death (This seems to be claiming there's EEG activity 30 minutes after death?)
  
• Human single neuron activity precedes emergence of conscious perception (From 2018 and possibly exaggerated or already referenced on here, I found it a bit difficult to understand the conclusions but I'd advise checking it)
  
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien...20131.html (not sure whether Parnia was involved in this one)
  

The consciousness thirty minutes after death 'legend' is now 'doing the rounds' nicely (as I knew it would) and giving sceptics something to get off on. No matter that the author(s) (Sonny Dhanani) of the study, publicly retracted it all two years ago, now. 

I've posted this retraction several times on here. It was simply an artefact, end of story, but in the minds of sceptics, it's now actually a fact. 

How can you deal with people like that ? You can't, you just have to leave them to it.