What yall think of this?

[KFatal]

http://www.meta-religion.com/Paranormale/Afterlife/scientist_claims_proof.htm

 

[CalcuoCuchicheo]

Not much.

This isn't conclusive although I admit, I can't explain how some people are able to perform what appear to be supernatural feats.

 

[Illuminattile]

Not much.

This isn't conclusive although I admit, I can't explain how some people are able to perform what appear to be supernatural feats.

http://skepdic.com/coldread.html
http://skepdic.com/hotreading.html

I still don't know exactly how they get it to work, but that's how they do it. Derren Brown did it, and he certainly doesn't have any supernatural abilities.

 

[CalcuoCuchicheo]

Oh I know Derren Brown did it to prove that you don't need to be 'gifted' to do this shit but still, in this case (obviously I don't know how trustworthy the 'customer' is or the writer) the 'customer' says that she doesn't usually have the carrots or whatever in her house but they jsut happened to be there around this time. Then again, we don't know what the psychic had asked beforehand & so I suppose the 'customer' may have leaked this information unwittingly.

Anyways, I am a skeptic but I still won't claim to understand how some people do what they do (tricks or not).

 

[radkin]

There is another experiment that british scientists are conducting at the moment, they are trying to get to the bottom of why so many heart attack patients see their bodies as they're floating away and why they always see a tunnel of light and other people travelling down it.

The patients always tell of this experience when they technically die and then are brought back to life, the scientist have said that it happens too much to be coincidence

So one of the tests they were going to do is to actually hide things around the room that could only be seen from above, e.g put an object on top of the wardrobe etc. and not tell the patients and in theory if the outer body experience was something that actually happened and not just the brains way of comforting us when we die then the patients should be able to identify these objects

It will be interesting to see the results of this experiment

 

[Bina]

Interesting theory, but i dont think scientists can really prove (or disapprove) that there is an afterlife after death- we can only experience this when we die. Could this not be a 'dream-like' state that the person goes into, i.e. after having a heart attack, its gona cause other elements of the body and brain not to function 100% at first.

I duuno, just another theory!

 

[CalcuoCuchicheo]

In regards to the heart attack thing; like you implied in part of your post radkin, I think that it has more to do with people's preconceptions of dying, & that, when they think they're dying they imagine what they're 'seeing' as they had thought this is the way it would happen.

Suggestion is a powerful tool.....

 

[Illuminattile]

There is another experiment that british scientists are conducting at the moment, they are trying to get to the bottom of why so many heart attack patients see their bodies as they're floating away and why they always see a tunnel of light and other people travelling down it.

The patients always tell of this experience when they technically die and then are brought back to life, the scientist have said that it happens too much to be coincidence

So one of the tests they were going to do is to actually hide things around the room that could only be seen from above, e.g put an object on top of the wardrobe etc. and not tell the patients and in theory if the outer body experience was something that actually happened and not just the brains way of comforting us when we die then the patients should be able to identify these objects

It will be interesting to see the results of this experiment

I think I read something about that, I'll see if I can remember where it was.

An explanation of the "tunnel of light" was given by Susan Blackmore:

"If you started with very little neural noise and it gradually increased, the effect would be of a light at the centre getting larger and larger and hence closer and closer....the tunnel would appear to move as the noise levels increased and the central light got larger and larger....If the whole cortex became so noisy that all the cells were firing fast, the whole area would appear light"

She has an article about NDEs here

It's also been found that very similar experiences can be triggered by using the drug Ketamine. You can read about that here.

 

[Illuminattile]

Here we go. From the mighty James Randi's commentary:

DUBOIS AGAIN

Here are a few excerpts, with my comments, about a recent news article about Dr. Gary Schwartz, PhD, the scientist from the University of Arizona who fancies that he has established the existence of life-after-death because he cannot believe he's deceived by the talking-to-dead-people artists. The first item involves his meticulous investigation of Allison Dubois, a "psychic" discussed here recently. To no one's surprise, Schwartz found her to be in touch with woo-woo forces:

Schwartz first put Dubois through a direct, informal reading on himself. A beloved mentor of his had just died, but he told her nothing about that woman. Among other things, Dubois told Schwartz "the deceased was telling me that I must share the following — I don't walk alone," a seemingly innocuous piece of information, but critical to him.

"My friend had been confined to a wheelchair in her last years — there is no way Allison could have known that," he said.

Wow! A stunning hit! How can we deny that "not walking alone" perfectly describes being confined to a wheelchair? Well, most of us won't be able to see that perfect description, Dr. Schwartz. How about having friends or a companion, being married, having supporters, being a member of a support group, etc., etc.? It certainly does not describe being in a wheelchair. I know several persons who are thus confined, and though they don't walk, they get around quite well! Where are your standards for arriving at such an identity, Dr. Schwartz? If Allison had described your friend as saying "I have support," would that define that she received a pension, used crutches, a truss, or a wheelchair, had inherited money, had insurance, or received encouragement? You are leaping to an unsupportable conclusion here, but of course you need to, to maintain your fantasies. So you don't walk alone, perhaps....? To continue:

After that, the formal, scientific experiments began under controlled conditions — some of them completely "blinded," so Dubois could not see or talk to the person she was reading, or vice versa. They were not even told each other's full names.

Hey, Schwartz! A junior Boy Scout could develop a better protocol without even graduating from Harvard — an accomplishment you never fail to press on us. "Some of" the experiments were not "blinded"? Why weren't all of them blinded? Because Dubois wouldn't do them that way, or because you decided they didn't need to be done like that? And, no "full names"? Only "George" or "Lucy"? Gee, that only tells the gender, I guess. But who cares? Allison is the real thing, so we can throw her that bone.

In one of these experiments, Dubois was asked to contact a deceased person close to a woman in England she had never met. She was told only the woman's first name and that she wanted to hear from her deceased husband. During the actual reading, Dubois was at the UA lab, and the woman was in England.

Okay. This sort of situation would indicate that conditions are pretty good, right? True, we have the gender of both the "readee" and the sought-after "spirit" or "ghost," and the relationship between the two, but we can accept that data-leak. The geographic separation is also good. But then it all falls apart, though Schwartz seems unaware of that — perhaps willingly ignorant in this respect. Continuing:

A transcript of the information Dubois got during the reading — supposedly from the dead husband — was sent to his wife in England, who scored it as 73 percent accurate. "That's extraordinarily high accuracy, and Allison always scored in the near-80 percent range," Schwartz said. "That clearly puts her among the best of the best."

Really? Well, I'm willing to accept that figure, Dr. Schwartz, but I have an observation: the reading must have run on forever, for there had to be at least 100 data-points given by Dubois in order to provide an accuracy of 73 percent, but arriving at such a percentage is meaningless anyway, since we don't have the data, and don't know the probability of each statement being true when applied to a randomly selected individual. But that's of little importance, since luckily we can now examine that transcript, and by inquiring of the woman in the UK, we will have validation of that accuracy, won't we? What??!! We can't have access to the transcript or to the subject? Drat!

Schwartz has established beyond any discussion, the fact that we can't see his data. Only the Society for Psychical Research, his publisher, can see that material — and perhaps not even them, for all we know. Certainly, a mere magician in Florida cannot be granted access! Back to the Adventures of Gary the Naïve. Says he, concerning the JREF million-dollar prize that both he and the University of Arizona have refused:

"I refused for the same reason all serious scientists in America and Europe have refused. The process of this prize lacks scientific credibility and integrity," he said. "This guy is not a scientist — he is a mediocre magician who loves the public eye."

Well, I'm not about to argue with Schwartz about "this guy's" mediocrity, but I'll tell you that when Professor John Taylor of King's College, London, referred to me years ago similarly as "a mere conjuror," my response seemed adequate: "Conjuror, yes, John, but 'mere' — never!"

The JREF prize has every bit of "scientific credibility and integrity." It is vetted and supervised by the best and most respected scientists, from MIT, Columbia, Yale, and other academic centers all over the world — alas, but not from Harvard, which might be a fatal flaw. It's real, it has integrity and credibility, and Dr. Gary Schwartz knows it well. His arrogant ivory-tower dismissal of this magician is understandable, since he is defenseless before the challenge we offer and must studiously ignore it.

But wait.... There's that transcript sent to the UK. Perhaps an established academic out there would care to ask Dr. Schwartz for a copy? Would he, and will he, refuse a real academic access to that material for the purpose of an analysis and evaluation? More to the point, would he provide Dr. Ray Hyman with a copy? Even better: will Dr. Schwartz give a copy to the University of Arizona's President, Dr. Peter Likens?

Let's see....!

Meanwhile, refer to www.csicop.org/si/2001-11/mediums.html and http://skepdic.com/essays/schwartz.html for in-depth references to Schwartz's findings. Be sure to be seated with your seat-belts fastened; it's a bumpy ride.

 

[Hankaveli]

There is another experiment that british scientists are conducting at the moment, they are trying to get to the bottom of why so many heart attack patients see their bodies as they're floating away and why they always see a tunnel of light and other people travelling down it.

The patients always tell of this experience when they technically die and then are brought back to life, the scientist have said that it happens too much to be coincidence

So one of the tests they were going to do is to actually hide things around the room that could only be seen from above, e.g put an object on top of the wardrobe etc. and not tell the patients and in theory if the outer body experience was something that actually happened and not just the brains way of comforting us when we die then the patients should be able to identify these objects

It will be interesting to see the results of this experiment

that experiment has already been done with amazing results, sorry I don't feel like google right now to find.