No Wonder Science Is Hopelessly Stuck

More shenanigans from Shermer

http://bigthink.com/big-think-books/mich...and-utopia

In their NDE accounts, experiencers will often emphasize that they were “dead” or “absolutely dead” or “clinically dead” in order to bias the interpretation toward the miraculous or supernatural. A Portland, Oregon Emergency Room doctor named Mark Crislip, however, reviewed the original EEG readings of a number of patients claimed by scientists as being flat-lined or “dead” and discovered that they weren’t dead at all. “What they showed was slowing, attenuation, and other changes, but only a minority of patients had a flat line, and it took longer than 10 seconds. The curious thing was that even a little blood flow in some patients was enough to keep EEG’s normal.”

 Crislip also analyzed the NDE study by Pim von Lommel and his colleagues published in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet, in which the authors “defined clinical death as a period of unconsciousness caused by insufficient blood supply to the brain because of inadequate blood circulation, breathing, or both. If, in this situation, CPR is not started within 5-10 min, irreparable damage is done to the brain and the patient will die.” As Crislip notes, however, most of these cardiac patients were given CPR, which by definition delivers oxygenated blood to the brain (that’s the whole point of doing it).

“By the definitions presented in the Lancet paper, nobody experienced clinical death,” Dr. Crislip concluded, adding that as a physician who has conducted CPR many times, “No doctor would ever declare a patient in the middle of a code 99 dead, much less brain dead. Having your heart stop for 2 to 10 minutes and being promptly resuscitated doesn’t make you ‘clinically dead’. It only means your heart isn’t beating and you may not be conscious.”

Where are the ‘shenanigans’? There would appear to be some merit in referring to these stories as ‘Sick Brain Experiences’ SBEs, rather than NDEs

Where are the ‘shenanigans’? There would appear to be some merit in referring to these stories as ‘Sick Brain Experiences’ SBEs, rather than NDEs

Well, first of all, Malf, Van Lommel's patients were NOT near death, they were clinically dead !

Shenanigans : >

 > A Portland, Oregon Emergency Room doctor named Mark Crislip, however, reviewed the original EEG readings of a number of patients claimed by scientists as being flat-lined or “dead” and discovered that they weren’t dead at all. “What they showed was slowing, attenuation, and other changes, but only a minority of patients had a flat line, and it took longer than 10 seconds. The curious thing was that even a little blood flow in some patients was enough to keep EEG’s normal.”

Which patients ? Not Van Lommel's ....so which ? Unfortunately we do need to know, to be precise... otherwise it might just be something that never actually happened the way Crislip (a materialist ? Science based Medicine origin)  said it did. Surely as the "thoroughly" scientific sceptic you are, you wouldn't just expect us to take his word for it now, would you ?

> Crislip also analyzed the NDE study by Pim von Lommel and his colleagues published in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet, in which the authors “defined clinical death as a period of unconsciousness caused by insufficient blood supply to the brain because of inadequate blood circulation, breathing, or both.

> If, in this situation, CPR is not started within 5-10 min, irreparable damage is done to the brain and the patient will die.” As Crislip notes, however, most of these cardiac patients were given CPR, which by definition delivers oxygenated blood to the brain (that’s the whole point of doing it).

I don't know how many of Van Lommel's patients were given CPR (certainly not off the top of my head). What has that got to do with anything in regard to whether or not a patient is dead ? They give CPR to patients who's hearts have stopped depending in what situation they are in, and that is the first of stage of death and if CPR and defibrillation doesn't work, it becomes permanent death ! Many of Van Lommel's patients will not have received CPR. rather they will only have been defibrillated.  

Most importantly, as Crislip ought to know, but obviously doesn't (I know and I'm only a layperson) CPR doesn't generate sufficient blood into the brain when the heart has stopped, nowhere near enough to restore consciousness (Parnia says around 10-20 per cent) In fact CPR is intended only to provide some oxygen to the brain to stop the cells being irreversibly damaged.

> “By the definitions presented in the Lancet paper, nobody experienced clinical death,” Dr. Crislip concluded, adding that as a physician who has conducted CPR many times, “No doctor would ever declare a patient in the middle of a code 99 dead, much less brain dead. Having your heart stop for 2 to 10 minutes and being promptly resuscitated doesn’t make you ‘clinically dead’. It only means your heart isn’t beating and you may not be conscious.”

That's just semantic nonsense ! They were clinically dead, Van Lommel's study was meticulous on this point. He writes in the recent book The Science of Near Death Experiences (Missouri Medicine)

"All of these patients would have died of a cardiac arrest within five to ten minutes....We always collected a record of the  ECG (heart rhythm or stoppage)  during the cardiac arrest of all patients included in our study."

Crislip said >"No doctor would ever declare a patient in the middle of a code 99 dead,"

So what's Crislip saying here ? Of course Van Lommel wouldn't have declared them dead until the process of resuscitation had been sufficiently applied. Does that mean they weren't dead? Of course not, they were in the first stage of death. If Van Lommel's patients weren't dead then why did he bother resuscitating them for goodness sake?

Crislip said > "Having your heart stop for 2 to 10 minutes and being promptly resuscitated doesn’t make you ‘clinically dead’. It only means your heart isn’t beating and you may not be conscious.”

So if a persons heart stops he's still alive ..is that right Malf ? So if he/she is still alive there's surely no need to bother resuscitating them. But if their heart isn't beating (cardiac arrest) they only... may...not be conscious ... ?   MAY ?  A very odd statement by any stretch.

While Crislip is better qualified that me to talk about medical matters, he is not (as an infectious disease specialist) better qualified than Van Lommel and Parnia to pronounce judgement on NDE's and his comments in addition to that, demonstrate it.

In summary, it's just another inaccurate and misleading piece of propaganda from a dyed in the wool materialist (and his accomplice), to try to discredit NDE research.

I'm not sure that it matters whether the patients were dead or near death. These experiences are known to happen under a variety of conditions anyway. Some in stressful moments when death seems inevitable but is somehow avoided. Then there are those who have out of body experiences which contain some of the typical NDE features without being close to death at that time.

Why does it matter whether some clinical threshold has been passed? Do we know what conditions can trigger the experience? I've read accounts of people in the last hours of life - close to death but not quite there yet - having experiences of seeing already dead loved ones or bright lights. My own step mother told of her experience of floating near the ceiling and watching doctors and nurses come and go yet this was days before she died and she was in no clinical emergency at the time of her OOBE.

These phenomena all suggest that consciousness can survive beyond the body. Whether the death threshold has been passed or not is beside the point, as far as I can see. It seems to be another opportunity to nit-pick at a particular class of evidence while other similar evidence abounds and is ignored by the nit-pickers.

[EDIT]: I've just noticed that similar points are being raised in the Terror Management Theory thread... http://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-te...l-evidence

Why does it matter whether some clinical threshold has been passed?

It's demanded (or it was demanded) by the "sceptics" to eliminate brain function as a explanation. But it no longer seems to matter as they now refuse to accept that anyone who comes back from death was ever really dead.

I'm not sure that it matters whether the patients were dead or near death. These experiences are known to happen under a variety of conditions anyway. Some in stressful moments when death seems inevitable but is somehow avoided. Then there are those who have out of body experiences which contain some of the typical NDE features without being close to death at that time.

Why does it matter whether some clinical threshold has been passed? Do we know what conditions can trigger the experience? I've read accounts of people in the last hours of life - close to death but not quite there yet - having experiences of seeing already dead loved ones or bright lights. My own step mother told of her experience of floating near the ceiling and watching doctors and nurses come and go yet this was days before she died and she was in no clinical emergency at the time of her OOBE.

These phenomena all suggest that consciousness can survive beyond the body. Whether the death threshold has been passed or not is beside the point, as far as I can see. It seems to be another opportunity to nit-pick at a particular class of evidence while other similar evidence abounds and is ignored by the nit-pickers.

[EDIT]: I've just noticed that similar points are being raised in the Terror Management Theory thread... http://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-te...l-evidence

That's interesting about your step mother, Dave ! Did she describe any of the nuts and bolts of it, was she in some kind of "ethereal" body or not ? How did it help her ...or did it not help her ? (Help meaning reassure.. or not )

Well, first of all, Malf, Van Lommel's patients were NOT near death, they were clinically dead !

Shenanigans : >

 > A Portland, Oregon Emergency Room doctor named Mark Crislip, however, reviewed the original EEG readings of a number of patients claimed by scientists as being flat-lined or “dead” and discovered that they weren’t dead at all. “What they showed was slowing, attenuation, and other changes, but only a minority of patients had a flat line, and it took longer than 10 seconds. The curious thing was that even a little blood flow in some patients was enough to keep EEG’s normal.”

Which patients ? Not Van Lommel's ....so which ? Unfortunately we do need to know, to be precise... otherwise it might just be something that never actually happened the way Crislip (a materialist ? Science based Medicine origin)  said it did. Surely as the "thoroughly" scientific sceptic you are, you wouldn't just expect us to take his word for it now, would you ?

> Crislip also analyzed the NDE study by Pim von Lommel and his colleagues published in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet, in which the authors “defined clinical death as a period of unconsciousness caused by insufficient blood supply to the brain because of inadequate blood circulation, breathing, or both.

> If, in this situation, CPR is not started within 5-10 min, irreparable damage is done to the brain and the patient will die.” As Crislip notes, however, most of these cardiac patients were given CPR, which by definition delivers oxygenated blood to the brain (that’s the whole point of doing it).

I don't know how many of Van Lommel's patients were given CPR (certainly not off the top of my head). What has that got to do with anything in regard to whether or not a patient is dead ? They give CPR to patients who's hearts have stopped depending in what situation they are in, and that is the first of stage of death and if CPR and defibrillation doesn't work, it becomes permanent death ! Many of Van Lommel's patients will not have received CPR. rather they will only have been defibrillated.  

Most importantly, as Crislip ought to know, but obviously doesn't (I know and I'm only a layperson) CPR doesn't generate sufficient blood into the brain when the heart has stopped, nowhere near enough to restore consciousness (Parnia says around 10-20 per cent) In fact CPR is intended only to provide some oxygen to the brain to stop the cells being irreversibly damaged.

> “By the definitions presented in the Lancet paper, nobody experienced clinical death,” Dr. Crislip concluded, adding that as a physician who has conducted CPR many times, “No doctor would ever declare a patient in the middle of a code 99 dead, much less brain dead. Having your heart stop for 2 to 10 minutes and being promptly resuscitated doesn’t make you ‘clinically dead’. It only means your heart isn’t beating and you may not be conscious.”

That's just semantic nonsense ! They were clinically dead, Van Lommel's study was meticulous on this point. He writes in the recent book The Science of Near Death Experiences (Missouri Medicine)

"All of these patients would have died of a cardiac arrest within five to ten minutes....We always collected a record of the  ECG (heart rhythm or stoppage)  during the cardiac arrest of all patients included in our study."

Crislip said >"No doctor would ever declare a patient in the middle of a code 99 dead,"

So what's Crislip saying here ? Of course Van Lommel wouldn't have declared them dead until the process of resuscitation had been sufficiently applied. Does that mean they weren't dead? Of course not, they were in the first stage of death. If Van Lommel's patients weren't dead then why did he bother resuscitating them for goodness sake?

Crislip said > "Having your heart stop for 2 to 10 minutes and being promptly resuscitated doesn’t make you ‘clinically dead’. It only means your heart isn’t beating and you may not be conscious.”

So if a persons heart stops he's still alive ..is that right Malf ? So if he/she is still alive there's surely no need to bother resuscitating them. But if their heart isn't beating (cardiac arrest) they only... may...not be conscious ... ?   MAY ?  A very odd statement by any stretch.

While Crislip is better qualified that me to talk about medical matters, he is not (as an infectious disease specialist) better qualified than Van Lommel and Parnia to pronounce judgement on NDE's and his comments in addition to that, demonstrate it.

In summary, it's just another inaccurate and misleading piece of propaganda from a dyed in the wool materialist (and his accomplice), to try to discredit NDE research.

Thanks Tim. I won’t take it any further in this part of the forum.

That's interesting about your step mother, Dave ! Did she describe any of the nuts and bolts of it, was she in some kind of "ethereal" body or not ? How did it help her ...or did it not help her ? (Help meaning reassure.. or not )

A little background. I was still a teenager at the time, mostly unaware of things like out of body experiences and this was years before I read the Moody book. My step mother was a down-to-earth Yorkshire woman who actually didn't like talk of spiritual stuff (even though my father was interested). She thought of psychics in the same way she thought of stage magicians ... something like entertainers but not to be taken seriously.

She was dying of cancer, in her last days. She didn't talk about her feelings to me but did to her best friend - a woman totally disinterested in the spiritual, much like my step-mum. It was after a visit that she told me the story, putting it down to all the drugs and feeling sad that my step-mother's mind was going. I wasn't so sure of that because she seems perfectly lucid when I talked to her. I was also present when the hospital chaplain visited and she told him that she was ready and looking forward to the end. She was at peace and content but certainly not delusional.

So all I got was the bare bones story - that she suddenly found herself floating near the ceiling and watching people come and go from the room. Nothing more detailed, I'm afraid.

A little background. I was still a teenager at the time, mostly unaware of things like out of body experiences and this was years before I read the Moody book. My step mother was a down-to-earth Yorkshire woman who actually didn't like talk of spiritual stuff (even though my father was interested). She thought of psychics in the same way she thought of stage magicians ... something like entertainers but not to be taken seriously.

She was dying of cancer, in her last days. She didn't talk about her feelings to me but did to her best friend - a woman totally disinterested in the spiritual, much like my step-mum. It was after a visit that she told me the story, putting it down to all the drugs and feeling sad that my step-mother's mind was going. I wasn't so sure of that because she seems perfectly lucid when I talked to her. I was also present when the hospital chaplain visited and she told him that she was ready and looking forward to the end. She was at peace and content but certainly not delusional.

So all I got was the bare bones story - that she suddenly found herself floating near the ceiling and watching people come and go from the room. Nothing more detailed, I'm afraid.

Thanks, Dave. Bit like this one from Dr Joseph Issles, the cancer specialist.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7hIa...ce&f=false

Thanks Tim. I won’t take it any further in this part of the forum.

I don't mind, Malf. It's your job to 'fight your corner' but I wish so called sceptics (like Shermer) would just admit that they will never accept any evidence whatsoever for survival and leave it at that.

Thanks, Dave. Bit like this one from Dr Joseph Issles, the cancer specialist.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7hIa...ce&f=false

Oh, there's one more thing I remember about my step-mother and the subject of the afterlife. Even though she was pretty intolerant of such talk, she did once open up because, as I said, my father was very interested. She told of one night during the war (WW2) when she woke to see her brother standing at the end of her bed. He was in uniform and he spoke to her. He reassured her that he was OK - that he was safe now. Then he disappeared. Within a short time (not sure whether it was the next day or some days later) the dreaded telegram arrived and confirmed he had been killed in action on the day he appeared in her bedroom.

There are so many stories like this that I have to be careful not to mix her story with those I have read about since but I'm pretty sure of the basic facts as described above. Perhaps it wasn't a telegram - maybe it was a visit from the Army? I can't be sure of that but I do remember her telling that story and I remember being shocked that she would share such a thing after being so dismissive of all that "spiritualist stuff". She told us that her brother's name was John and showed us a photograph of him in uniform.