Honestly, a big part for me behind the whole 'desperation' is simply due to the astonishing amount of misinformation or half-truths online about NDEs, including from pseudo-skeptics who have flat-out lied about them.
Some of you may recall from Skeptiko this video I've mentioned before from pseudo-skeptical militant debunker Holy Koolaid, a.k.a Thomas Westbrook. It sparked quite a lot of criticism online, including the decent article from near-death.com debunking all of his claims, none of which have aged well. The website owner, along with blogger Ian Wardell, made multiple comments on his video addressing this but Koolaid just ignored them and has not addressed their points since.
The thing that annoyed me is that he did respond to one guy who called him out on his bs. He pointed out that Westbrook is a fraud and a hypocrite for being dishonest and lying about his NDE as well as what he posted on NDERF.org. He then pointed out how he took Parnia and Jeffrey Long out of context, misrepresented their work and then jumped to conclusions, ignoring folks like Kenneth Ring. And what was Westbrook's response?
"Yeah I faked it and I'm a liar but I was proving a point that these are anecdotal and can't be trusted...I haven't read Kenneth Ring's work but based on the Amazon description it sounds anecdotal so I'm not interested, but trust me I've done loads of research and there's no good data."
The worst part is he got a bit of praise for that remark (while glossing over nearly everyone else's criticisms that were made). How on earth he can get support for admitting that he's a liar to 'prove a point' is beyond me, especially when so many debunked every point he made in the video.
He also made a video last year on split brain experiments, which naturally neglected to mention the criticisms of the experiments and the fact that there have now been two studies indicating that splitting the brain doesn't split consciousness, which are pretty easy to find. Typical.
Fortunately I know people like him are dying out and have/are fading into obscurity, but it's still frustrating that content like that exists.
The reason I'm eager then is because I want these people to be definitively disproven, even though much of what they say already has been disproven, refuted or debunked anyways.
(This post was last modified: 2020-11-26, 11:32 PM by OmniVersalNexus.)
Some of you may recall from Skeptiko this video I've mentioned before from pseudo-skeptical militant debunker Holy Koolaid, a.k.a Thomas Westbrook. It sparked quite a lot of criticism online, including the decent article from near-death.com debunking all of his claims, none of which have aged well. The website owner, along with blogger Ian Wardell, made multiple comments on his video addressing this but Koolaid just ignored them and has not addressed their points since.
The thing that annoyed me is that he did respond to one guy who called him out on his bs. He pointed out that Westbrook is a fraud and a hypocrite for being dishonest and lying about his NDE as well as what he posted on NDERF.org. He then pointed out how he took Parnia and Jeffrey Long out of context, misrepresented their work and then jumped to conclusions, ignoring folks like Kenneth Ring. And what was Westbrook's response?
"Yeah I faked it and I'm a liar but I was proving a point that these are anecdotal and can't be trusted...I haven't read Kenneth Ring's work but based on the Amazon description it sounds anecdotal so I'm not interested, but trust me I've done loads of research and there's no good data."
The worst part is he got a bit of praise for that remark (while glossing over nearly everyone else's criticisms that were made). How on earth he can get support for admitting that he's a liar to 'prove a point' is beyond me, especially when so many debunked every point he made in the video.
He also made a video last year on split brain experiments, which naturally neglected to mention the criticisms of the experiments and the fact that there have now been two studies indicating that splitting the brain doesn't split consciousness, which are pretty easy to find. Typical.
Fortunately I know people like him are dying out and have/are fading into obscurity, but it's still frustrating that content like that exists.
The reason I'm eager then is because I want these people to be definitively disproven, even though much of what they say already has been disproven, refuted or debunked anyways.
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