Michael Sabom and other people have made researches which tested some OBE reports. Of course, they are not accepted by scientists. Why? What is the skeptics arguments against them? Why are not credible?

I have not readed Sabom's Death and Light book. Is anybody here, who can tell me something about it?


http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html#a9
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/r ... 1.html#a06

Welcome to the forum Transilvanian!



You can introduce yourself here and tell us a bit about yourself!

As to your OP, I'm sure our resident paranormalist @jerome will pop along to comment!

Looks like the newbies are all going to be welcomed with unlimited free beer, now that campermon is a mod.

Welcome to the forum, BTW

I think that the experiences that are interpreted as some out-of-body event, must be accepted. The interpretation however, does not.

One reason for doubting the veracity of the claim, is that there is no known mechanism to allow for such an event.

I am not sure but hasn't a researcher placed items in a selection of operating theaters around the world where they may only be seen by a person having an "out of body" experience.?

I believe his/her reasoning is that as a lot of people report such events during surgical operations than that will be the best place to do the research. I have no idea if there has been any report yet - positive/negative.


Nb I thought your OBE researches had something to do with the British Honours System.

A fly by?

Hy skeptics!
#5: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7621608.stm ?
The research is not finished and I don't know about any researches like this.

And that is the research I was talking about.

Edit: And the report is 4 years old.

Further Edit:

also see http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=38

AWARE Study Update January 2013
The AWARE study which was started in 2008 is a long-term project that aims to study the relationship between mind consciousness and brain in patients who undergo cardiac arrest and clinical death. Many people have sent requests to the Horizon website for more information regarding this project. We have to firstly point out that the Horizon Research Foundation is not directly involved with the running of the study and therefore does not have specific information regarding this. Nevertheless while we know it is not usual for investigators to release results of their studies until their research has been completed, we did nevertheless contact the investigators for a recent update in view of the numerous request that we have received.

and according to above release (there is a lot more) preliminary results will be released in September/October 2013.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread872432/pg1
We will have the results soon!

Hy again!
So, is here anybody who has read something from Michael Sabom? For example: Death and Light, Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation or something else?
Can you say something about his resarches? Are they only anecdotes of people who experienced them, or are confirmed by doctors too? Why is he unscientific? Only because his is looking for evidence for spiritual life after death? Or he has metodological problems? Why is he not "authentic", and credible?
I didn't find anything from skeptics, who analised his cases on the internet. I hope, that an "expert" in this will be able to comment for all my questions.

Thank you again.
PS:Sorry for my English!

Transilvanian

Sabom focuses on near death experiences (NDE). NDEs are sometimes but not often accompanied by an OBE. It depends on how you define NDE.
OBEs usually happen without any medical emergency. Some rare people will have an OBE when they fall asleep.

Basically OBEs and NDEs are two separate things. Some people claim that they are able to perceive distant happenings while out-of-body. Some people claim to have evidence. That mainstream science cannot offer any support for that strongly points to such claims being delusional. There is some mainstream research aimed at actually understanding OBEs, primarily the current research by Olaf Blanke in Switzerland.
ETA: People who have OBEs don't necessarily believe that they are paranormal or anything other than a freaky experience. In my experience they are usually not in any way deluded about the nature of these experiences.

I find it rather dubious that there should be a difference between every-day OBEs and OBEs reported in conjunction with a so-called NDE. Of course, it is very difficult to actually make experiments with subjects experiencing an NDE. So, someone can make up pretty much any claim without fear of being experimentally disproven.
Personally, I think NDEs are a social construct rather than an objective medical phenomenon.

For some very good examination of the topic go here:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... HNDEs.html
It also deals with Sabom's book in particular.

I had OBE quite often when I was young about 10 years. Never thought it anything special. Just flew around the place.
I could see myself lying in bed. I think it was a sexual fantasy as I used to fly to houses where I knew girls who I liked very much lived and look down on them.
I agree NDE is something very different. OBE has nothing to do with death.

http://www.paranormalpeopleonline.com/i ... -of-death/

What Parnia attributes as a cause for this situation does nothing to strengthen these preliminary conclusions, which are that few of the participants in the AWARE Project have shown positive results. That is, few have had experiences that support the purpose of the study, and to-date, not one patient has relayed the content of the placards, or even noted seeing a placard at all.

A negative result is still a result though.

This view of the numbers gives perspective, but no one is claiming that NDE’s with OBE components don’t happen. The skeptical view is that those experiences are much too subjective to be considered reliable testimony on the reality of an after-death landscape.

What "not one" means? Not a single person or not only one person?

Not a single person,

'Not one' in English means 'none'

Example; 'Not one person got the answer right' could be written as 'Nobody got the answer right'