Raising AWAREness

In a previous post I said that if the vaunted AWARE study doesn't produce any "hits," we will have to take a new, hard look at NDE evidence.

I still believe this is basically true, but after thinking about it, I'd like to revise and extend my remarks, as the lying weasels in Congress say. In this case, I mainly want to revise and extend what I mean by "hits."

Broadly speaking, there are three possible outcomes for AWARE.

1. Patients accurately report seeing the target images and also accurately report observing events during the resuscitation procedure.

2. Patients accurately report seeing events during the resuscitation procedure but do not report seeing the target images.

3. Patients not do report seeing either the target images or the events during the resuscitation procedure.

A fourth possibility - accurately observing the target images but not any events - is logically possible, but too unlikely to worry about.

Now, if the outcome is #1, then the path will be cleared to take NDEs very seriously. Much more research will be required and, I hope, demanded.

If the outcome is #2, then we are essentially left where we are right now - with veridical reports given by patients who ought to be in no position to perceive anything, but without the additional confirmation that would have been provided by the target images. However, if the study's careful monitoring of patients' vital signs establishes that they were clinically dead during the events they perceived, it will move the pro-NDE argument forward.

Finally, if the outcome is #3, then it will leave the pro-NDE side on the defensive, needing to explain why, in the largest and most comprehensive study ever attempted, no positive results were obtained. This will certainly be painted as a victory for skeptics, and correctly so.

It's important to point out that the people running AWARE have said they will report all the patients' testimony, whether or not these results involve the target images. Sam Parnia has been quoted as saying definitively, "we will document all experiences from the cardiac arrest period."

I'm inclined to suspect that the outcome will be #2, or perhaps #2 with an ambiguous element of #1 (e.g., a partial description of a target image that, while not completely accurate, seems too good to be a lucky guess).

Time will tell.

Comments

[MatthewX78]

I have to agree with you. It is amazing that people have found tenures and shoes etc. But what is going to attract people to these, what are they pieces of paper with numbers on them? It may take along time to get a real hit. And if so what if they state the wrong numbers or could not read them?

[RabbitDawg]

Michael, I'm inclined to agree with you here, but perhaps this is just bracing for disappointment here. It's the hoary "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" stance.

Well, the worst case scenario would be #3, but somehow, I doubt that that will happen. We know that NDE's with accompanying OBE's do happen, and in a study this large, there should at least be a few OBE reports. The underlying doubt is all about the targets.

It all comes down to another old expression, at least for myself - the suspense is killing me.

[Leo]

Well with 5 previous identification target experiments already done they found number 2 which is exactly what will probably happen. But who knows!!!

[Paul]

If it turns out to be #1 I will spit out my teeth into a hospital trolley.

[J9]

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks there is a joke in here someplace.

[Michael Prescott]

"I hope I'm not the only one who thinks there is a joke in here someplace."

A joke? If there is, I don't get it. The AWARE study is a serious, well-thought-out, and well-funded project.

"If it turns out to be #1 I will spit out my teeth into a hospital trolley."

LOL.

[J9]

MP. I'm so sorry. There was so much talk of #1and #2 that I thought crudely someone would have made a joke.

[Michael Prescott]

Oh, I get it now. #1 and #2 ...

That's actually pretty funny, but I hadn't thought of it at all.

Don't be sorry. I kinda like toilet humor.

[Roger Knights]

Here's an interesting show on Coast-to-Coast AM (talk radio) tomorrow:

"Sunday August 8, 2010

"Dutch Cardiologist Dr. Pim van Lommel was shocked by the number of his patients who claimed to have near-death experiences. He concludes that these are authentic experiences cannot be attributed to imagination. Ian Punnett hosts."

He is the author of the new book,

Here's a reviewer's comment:

“Most books on NDEs only touch on some of the ideas that are presented, but the distinctive contribution of this book is that it presents and defends a complete theory of consciousness.... What a brilliant, erudite and magisterial book. A magnificent achievement, clearly a landmark book.” (Dr. Kenneth Ring, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Connecticut )
Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience

[Roger Knights]

Oops, here's the title of his book:

He is the author of the new book, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience

[Roger Knights]

PS Broadcast time is 10 pm to 2 am Pacific.

[Greg Taylor]

I wouldn't be surprised by #2, and I'm not sure it would disprove anything. Language functions seem to not translate well into the 'astral world' - I've seen anecdotes in various literature (remote viewing, occult/astral travels etc) where people saw something happening, which was later confirmed as correct, but either couldn't make out signs/writing/etc or it said something different.

[Trev.]

Based on what we already know about these types of report, I think it will be mainly number two which is fine because there is no medical explanation for how dead people can accurately observe their surroundings. I think there will be enough of these cases to really shake the foundations of materialism(gosh..)
Additionally, I think one or two will actually see the target.
Most cardiac arrest patients die, though, usually without gaining consciousness.

Maybe someone could devise a way to obtain mediumistic reports of the target from the other side.
Hmm...Maybe not.

[Paul]

I should imagine they would have more important things on their minds lol

[michael duggan]

#3

[.]

#2.5

[anonym]

Come to think of it, the results of psychological experiments on the reliability of eyewitnesses is probably quite relevant here. Apparently people who suddenly witness a (to them) unexpected crime, accident or other dramatic event usually have a memory of the events and the people involved that is distinctly incomplete and incorrect. If people can't be relied on to notice the gorilla, we shouldn't be surprised to see them miss the ceiling-facing signs or perhaps misremember them. Of course, it seems that NDEers generally report an unusually clear-headed, vivid and (less consistently) calm state of awareness, and correspondingly a very clear and vivid memory of what they experienced. If that is true, maybe we should expect them to make fewer mistakes than a normal eyewitness, though to some extent it still leaves the problem of whether the signs will draw their attention. Actually, one possible outcome of the study is that experiencers report unguessable things reliably enough to show that they weren't simply hallucinating (at least to some reasonable person; never mind any question of breaking down skeptics here) but that they also report things unreliably enough to show that what they see and remember isn't as reliable as it appears to them.

or perhaps #2 with an ambiguous element of #1 (e.g., a partial description of a target image that, while not completely accurate, seems too good to be a lucky guess)

If there are one or more false or inexact memories of the target image, then the result could be another disputable or ignorable statistical case for psi, this time that the accuracy of the experiencers' memories of the signs was above chance.

[sbu]

I'm expecting #3 but ofcourse hoping for #1. There is mounting evidence that NDE's are all due to a hallucination in the brain. There was a veridical perception study by Bruce Greyson scoring no NDE's at all due to a drug given to all subjects before undergoing operation. If a drug can supress NDE's from happening this suggest to me that it is only a hallucination.

Greyson ran his experiment on 50 patients, but not one of them reported having an NDE. On the other hand, most denied that they had ever been unconscious at all. “One of the factors involved is that, before their cardiac arrest was induced, these patients were all given medication that inhibited them from forming memories of the procedure,” Greyson says. “We under­estimated how complete the drug-induced memory inhibition would be.”

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/soul-search/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=

[bernie]

I think that is an argument in favour of NDE's being experienced but forgotten.

[Kathleen]

I think the weakest argument against NDEs is that they're hallucinations. Since when do people from many different cultures have hallucinations that are so remarkably similar? And there's no proof the drug is suppressing NDEs, it could just be making people forget them.

[sbu]

Actually a key finding in NDE research is the fact that NDE experiencers have a clear recall of the event even after many years compared to the fragmentation and randomness of 'normal' hallucinations. So I must disagree with you Bernie.

[Art]

The strongest argument for NDE's is their connection to the holographic universe theory. People who have NDE's routinely make comments that parallel, corroborate, or are congruent with what Michael Talbot talked about in The Holographic Universe. That connection is not easily explained away.

[Michael Prescott]

"a key finding in NDE research is the fact that NDE experiencers have a clear recall of the event even after many years"

Yes ... if they remember the event in the first place. But in Greyson's study the drug seems to have prevented the patients from incorporating the NDE into their memory to begin with.

In other words, a patient who comes to with a memory of an NDE will retain that memory vividly for years afterward. But this says nothing about a patient who comes to without any memory of an NDE.

[Aftrbrnr]

I think #2 is likely, note that Penny Satori did a similar experiment on a much smaller scale (signs in hidden places), the one person that did see something reported everything accurately except for the hidden sign.

[J9]

MP: if you like "toilet humor". We could say, if it turns out to be #1, I'll have a #2. But I digress.