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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
 Posted - 06/05/2004 : 21:44:25 [Permalink]
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Phantom wrote:quote:
With regards to your point that Pam would not have been able to confirm proper operation of the ear pieces; the auditory nerve center located in the brain stem was tested repeatedly using 100-decibel clicks emitted from the molded speakers inserted into her ears. It was essential that the speakers were operating properly because in response to these clicks, sharp spikes on the electrogram (i.e. evoked potentials) would assure the surgical team that the brain stem was intact.
You misunderstood.
Pam could not confirm, while anesthetized, that she could not hear voices while the ear pieces were in place. The fact that loud clicks in her ears elicited spikes in brain activity is evidence that she could, indeed, hear while "knocked out."quote:
I'm far from naive. I reject the current peer review process for the reasons outlined in the link I posted above Cosmology Statement. Nevertheless, I remain optimistic about scientific progress in this field.
Okay. You're not naive, yet you consider the peer review for cosmology papers to be nearly identical to the peer review process for medical articles. I see: there must be some sort of medical "Big Bang" for which there is nothing but conjecture (that, after all, is the heart of the article you referenced). I wonder if you could identify such a biological event.
Perhaps you're not naive, and instead are just looking at the entire situation in far too simplistic a fashion. Questions of biology - and especially life after death - are far from having tidy little explanations. Biology, by its nature, is very messy. Gross, even. There is much goo. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Phantom
New Member
35 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2004 : 15:33:01 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Kil
OK, I found this:
Sabom and the Wondrous Story of Pam Reynolds
G.M. Woerlee [anesthesiologist]
http://mortalminds.tripod.com/html/w-reynolds.HTM
Woerlee:
quote:
Some authors make much of the fact that she could hear everything, in spite of the fact she had earplugs feeding clicking sounds into her ears. Of course she could hear what happened about her - proof of this is seen all about us. There are simply enormous numbers of people all around the world, wandering around, listening to loud music played through earplugs, while at the same time able to hear and understand all that happens in their surroundings. And people under anesthesia can hear things, otherwise this perfectly standard VEP monitoring technique would be useless as a measure of the depth of anesthesia. So being able to hear, despite the insertion of earphones making clicking sounds is nothing
wondrous.
Earphones vary in quality so to generalise that one must be able to accurately hear conversation is incorrect. Is Gerald Woerlee saying that it is impossible for earphones to block external sound, (specifically within this context - a decibel level that would be 'typical' within an operating theatre), so as to make speech unintelligible? If so, could you provide evidence in support of this?
Ultimately the claim that these specific speakers would not be able to prevent Pam from hearing Dr. Murray can easily be put to the test. I find it preposterous to believe that reputations would be put at such risk to a claim that could be so easily proved to be false?
If Pam had been able to hear everything despite the earphones, why should Dr. Spetzler find her case so remarkable? Are you suggesting that both Sabom and Spetzler are just extremely naive?
Gerald seems almost completely unaware of the philosophical dimensions of the mind-body problem and just ignores anomalies that don't fit in his world view. For him, there are no anomalies to be explained as they simply aren't there.
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
Pam could not confirm, while anesthetized, that she could not hear voices while the ear pieces were in place. The fact that loud clicks in her ears elicited spikes in brain activity is evidence that she could, indeed, hear while "knocked out."
If Pam was in a state that enabled her to confirm that she was not able to hear voices with these speakers in her ears, how would you establish that she was telling the truth?
The fact that loud clicks in her ears elicited spikes in brain activity does not mean that she was capable of hearing intelligible conversation via the auditory canal.
Suggested further reading:
The Lancet Study
Commentary on the Lancet
Study
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
You're not naive, yet you consider the peer review for cosmology papers to be nearly identical to the peer review process for medical articles.
I see: there must be some sort of medical "Big Bang" for which there is nothing but conjecture (that, after all, is the heart of the article you referenced). I wonder if you could identify such a biological event.
Regarding the peer review process...Indeed, the same obstacles are
present.
I agree with Michael Roll when he states:
We are still at the mercy of the peer-referee system. This is just a euphemism for censorship - keeping the old-boy network intact.
Edwin Burttin his classic 1924 Metaphysical Foundations of Modern
Science argued that all science was undergirded by a metaphysical system, whether or not acknowledged: 'the juices of metaphysical assumptions leak in at every joint.' Burtt contends that the assumptions of Newton, shorn of their Deism and reduced to mechanistic materialism, were passed on implicitly and unconciously down succeeding generations of scientists.
In 'Thinking Beyond the Brain: A Wider Science of Consciousness', Ed Lorimer states:
If one is wedded to a materialistic and brain-based philosophy that excludes the possibility of paranormal experiences, then one is very reluctant to accept the challenge that these experiences ostensibly pose to the established view. The research implications of this exclusion are strongly put in a book by the Estonian researcher Undo Uus entitled Blindness of Modern Science. If one bases one's research proposals on the premise that consciousness is a by-product of brain processes, the answers thrown up by research are likely to reflect the original starting point; many interseting questions go unexamined.
According to Professor Willis Harman:
Scientists too quickly assume (or behave as though they do) that the philosophical premises underlying science are not at issue - but they are part of the definition of modern science...Yet many debates that appear to be about scientific matters in fact centre around implicit ontological issues, about the ultimate nature of reality and the epistemological issues about how we might find out. |
"You laugh at me because I am different, but I laugh at you because you are all the same." |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2004 : 17:46:00 [Permalink]
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quote:
I agree with Michael Roll when he states:
We are still at the mercy of the peer-referee system. This is just a euphemism for censorship - keeping the old-boy network intact.
So.... people should just be let publish whatever drivel they care to spout? Oh, wait... they can. See the Internet.
Peer review is an extremely important part of publishing scientific data. It's not censorship. |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Phantom
New Member
35 Posts |
Posted - 07/15/2004 : 00:53:50 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dude
So.... people should just be let publish whatever drivel they care to spout?
Where in my posts have I made that absurd statement? |
"You laugh at me because I am different, but I laugh at you because you are all the same." |
| Edited by - Phantom on 07/15/2004 00:54:40 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 07/15/2004 : 09:35:19 [Permalink]
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Phantom wrote:quote:
If Pam was in a state that enabled her to confirm that she was not able to hear voices with these speakers in her ears, how would you establish that she was telling the truth?
Isn't that my point? What if she just made the whole "afterlife" part of her experiences up?quote:
The fact that loud clicks in her ears elicited spikes in brain activity does not mean that she was capable of hearing intelligible conversation via the auditory canal.
No, you said, and I quote:These speakers occlude the ear canals and altogether eliminate the possibility of physical hearing. The bolding is mine, but the words are yours. You failed to limit yourself to "hearing intelligible conversation," and instead insisted that Pam could not hear.quote:
Suggested further reading:
The Lancet Study
Commentary on the Lancet
Study
Neither of which address the issues with Pam Reynolds.quote:
Regarding the peer review process...Indeed, the same obstacles are
present.
You have yet to address the point: what biological event or barrier is there to knowledge equivalent to the Big Bang in cosmology? Quoting people talking about the philosophy of science in general, or of science's bias, does nothing to answer my question. If you've got no answer, just say so.
As for the Ed Lorimer quote:quote:
If one is wedded to a materialistic and brain-based philosophy that excludes the possibility of paranormal experiences...
Lorimer's problem is that he assumes that "brain-based" excludes the possibility of the paranormal. Why must it?
To address one other part of the quote:quote:
If one bases one's research proposals on the premise that consciousness is a by-product of brain processes...
What about those people who begin with the premise that consciousness is the processes of the brain? In other words, what if consciousness is the brain's function, and not a "by-product" of some other function (which would necessarily be unknown)?
Again: you should argue against positions that people actually take, instead using the extremely weak straw-man arguments presented by Lorimer and others.
Onto your next post:quote:
Where in my posts have I made that absurd statement?
You haven't, but you also haven't suggested a better system than peer review. At the moment, eliminating peer review would result in people publishing whatever drivel they want (as Dude said: see the Internet). What system of review would lack censorship, but still retain some degree of integrity? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 07/15/2004 : 12:49:48 [Permalink]
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quote:
posted by Phantom:
I agree with Michael Roll when he states:
We are still at the mercy of the peer-referee system. This is just a euphemism for censorship - keeping the old-boy network intact.
You said your opposed to peer review. |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2004 : 12:55:51 [Permalink]
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Does the subject begin with a belief in the afterlife?
Do the test givers? Do they have a vested intrest in proving it true?
Does the subject have an active imagination? Was she given leading questions to make her think about the afterlife before the experiment?
It is likely one or more of the testers do belive in the afterlife considering doctors are not scientists. (who would be much less inclined to pre-believe without strong repeatable evidence)
Why wernt follow up procedures done? Peer review from non-believers?
Since doctors are not scientists it is unlikely that proper double blind testing procedures were followed, for example the doctors claim that the earphones will prevent hearing. (clearly untrue with bone vibration, which is stronger than one might think)
AND IF ANYONE CAN SHOW THIS INFO PLEASE CONTACT RANDI.ORG AND CLAIM YOUR MILLION DOLLAR PRIZE. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Baza
New Member
United Kingdom
47 Posts |
Posted - 08/06/2004 : 14:05:12 [Permalink]
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| Cardiac arrest is NOT clinical death. Brain stem death is clinical death. |
Baza |
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