An explosive article has appeared in The Daily Telegraph claiming that researchers have possibly found
hard evidence that there is a life-after-death, see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/11144442/First-hint-of-life-after-death-in-biggest-ever-scientific-study.html.
It's been known for a long time that some people who have recovered after being
close to death report remarkable experiences; typically these begin with seeing
your own body from above. You feel a sense of peace and love and find yourself
travelling down a tunnel towards a bright light, visiting a beautiful
otherworldly land populated by people who have died, including your departed
friends and relatives, and even encounters with God. The experience varies from
person to person and there are a vast number of reports with many unique disparities.
Because we live in an age where scientific medicine and technology has given us
the ability to resuscitate patients much closer to death than ever before,
sometimes even when their heartbeat and breathing have completely stopped for a
number of minutes, these reports are becoming more and more common. The
earliest investigations into this subject go back to the late 19th century, but
it was in 1975, when Dr Raymond Moody published his book Life After Life, that the term "near-death experience"
entered the popular English lexicon. The completed study the newspaper article
discusses is the latest, biggest and most thorough scientific experiment into
this phenomenon ever conducted; it also included some brand new experiments. It
is called the AWARE Study- AWAreness during REsuscitation, and it involved over
two thousand test subjects; it was led by Dr Sam Parnia of Southampton
University
Predictably, the AWARE project has been criticized by
Skeptics, notably by Dr Steven Novella (a suitable name because he tells a tall story) the academic neurologist, host of the
radio show Skeptics Guide to the Universe
and author of the Neurologica blog, see:
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/aware-results-finally-published-no-evidence-of-nde/.
Novella correctly points out a serious omission in the experiment's conclusion.
One of the tests that NDE researchers have suggested carrying out since the
early days is to place an object or image that would not normally be found in a
hospital resuscitation bay or intensive care ward somewhere where it can only
be seen from above. This is because NDE patients often describe being
"close to the ceiling looking down"; and if they can see one of these
visual tags it would be important evidence to support that their viewpoint is
real. Popular experimental models recommend the method of sticking a picture on
top of the spotlamps facing the ceiling. AWARE is the first test which
seriously included this protocol: To
assess the accuracy of claims of visual awareness during cardiac arrest, each
hospital installed between 50 and 100 shelves in areas where resuscitation was
deemed likely to occur; for example, emergency departments and acute medical
wards. Each shelf contained one image only visible from above the shelf. These
were different and included a combination of nationalistic and religious
symbols, people, animals, and major newspaper headlines. These images were
installed to permit evaluation of visual awareness claims described in prior
accounts. These include the perception of being able to observe their
resuscitation procedure from a vantage point above. It was postulated that
should a large proportion of patients describe visual awareness combined with
the perception of being able to observe events from a vantage point above, the
shelves could be used to potentially test the validity of such claims, as the
images were only visible if looking down from the ceiling. Some researchers
have proposed such recollections and perceptions are likely illusory. This
method was proposed as a tool to test this particular hypothesis. We considered
this to be important as, despite widespread interest, no studies had
objectively tested this claim. It was considered that should a large group of
patients with visual awareness and the ability to observe events from above
consistently fail to identify the images, this could support the hypothesis
that the experiences had occurred through a different mechanism, such as illusions,
to that perceived by the patients themselves. This is a good idea, although
I disagree with the last sentence because it's effectively enticing somebody to
try and prove a negative, which is fallacious. Unfortunately Dr Parnia's paper
does not mention that any of his subjects report seeing these hidden images; in
fact over three quarters of the respondents suffered their resuscitation in a place
where the hidden images were not even present. My first thought was to demand
that Parnia explain why did he not use more of these hidden images than the
fifty to a hundred that he actually did. The answer lies in the practical
hurdles of doing so. As an ex-hospital porter I'm somebody familiar with
hospitals, and indeed one of my duties was to clean and maintain resuscitation
bays and vehicles (not a task for the squeamish!), I know that it's very
unlikely that an object placed for that purpose in the area would stay put for long.
To make the experiment watertight the designers would have to include "double-blinding",
in other words the hidden image would need to be installed without telling the
emergency department staff it was there; otherwise it's possible that the
patient being resuscitated might learn of the hidden image from an everyday
source. Maybe something a member of staff said: "Doctor, why is there a
newspaper clipping stuck on top of the O2 manifold?" Skeptics would
definitely not hesitate to poke their finger through that hole. Indeed they
have criticized a recent anecdote using exactly that same argument. In a book I
read about NDE's a patient reports a view of a piece of surgical equipment that
would not normally be visible from somebody lying on the operating table, and a
Skeptic claimed that he could have seen the instrument through a reflection in
the doctor's spectacles! In fact Novella brings that point up in his analysis of
AWARE himself: My major concern was that
the study had been criticized for not having tight protocols; for example, some
have charged that the “hidden” images were visible to emergency department
staff and this could provide a mundane conduit for knowledge of the images to
get to cardiac arrest survivors. Perhaps these working obstacles make this
outwardly attractive methodology less feasible than it initially appears. I
also sense that Novella is anticipating a potential positive outcome for one of
these studies in the future and is getting his rebuttal in first.
What Dr Parnia has achieved is an excellent assessment of
the NDE phenomenon in the modern world; the best database ever created to gauge
the level of NDE incidence in resuscitation survivors. He and his team have
also gathered an invaluable overview of what it's like to have a near-death
experience that can educate people who have never had the good fortune... or
rather bad fortune... to enjoy this
experience for themselves. After all, you can't exactly take photographs of the
Spiritworld to bring home and show people. The Telegraph article also addresses a point I hadn't heard of before,
the issues with interviewing people recollecting events after being given drugs
like painkillers and sedatives. These medications are standard procedure in the
care of somebody who is resuscitated, but will cause other inevitable impediments
in near-death experience research. This adds to all the other challenges that
the AWARE team have taken on as well as anybody possibly could. This is where I
think Dr Novella is being very unfair to the AWARE team; he dismisses the
entire project as "essentially a bust" and he harshly chides the Telegraph story for claiming that it
indicates evidence of life-after-death. However I think that the AWARE project
does indeed provide evidence of life-after-death. It failed to achieve all its
mission objectives, but what it did achieve is definitely accomplished. The
near-death experience is a very real phenomenon. Back in 1975 Dr Raymond Moody
postulated that NDE's were going on all the time in hospitals all over the
world; they've even happened spontaneously during non-medical recoveries from
illness or injury. Scientifically proving beyond any doubt at all that NDE's
are not just a product of electrical activity inside the cranial neuropile is
fundamentally difficult, but in my view there's easily enough smoke around to
make it highly likely that a real fire is burning. I've looked at both sides of
the story, like I try to do every subject, and I'm not convinced by the Skeptic
explanation, that this entire phenomenon is just the wildcard firing of the
human brain in its death throes. I've spoken before about how denial of NDE's is
not necessarily science-based and has powerful cultural, ideological and
psychological roots; therefore I question the objectivity of Dr Novella and
other atheo-Skeptico-materialist debunkers of the near-death experience. Are
they being intellectually honest in their denigration of near-death experience
research, or are they just scared that they might lose their "MBA",
see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-greatest-mba-speech-in-history.html?
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