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The most comprehensive research into near-death experience deals a kill shot to skeptics and aims to change how science views the afterlife.
Science has studied the near-death experience for more than 20 years. Most research has concluded NDEs are real and unexplainable, but scientists have been slow to accept consciousness beyond death. A new scientific study by Jeffrey Long, M. D. may change that. The research compiled in his new book, Evidence of the Afterlife, represents the largest, most comprehensive study of near-death experience and according to the study’s author is, “a real game-changer”.
Dr. Long explains, “we looked at nine lines of evidence that indicate the reality of near-death experiences and their consistent message of an afterlife. With each of these lines of evidence we carefully reviewed all prior scholarly research on the subject and made our contributions with our original research… from my point of view, the scientific term is compelling, but you can put it another way — the nine lines of evidence that I present is proof of the reality of near-death experiences.”
The conclusions of Dr. Long’s research are paradigm smashing for near-death experience skeptics who’ve argued that limited brain functioning may explain NDEs. “What near-death experiencers see correlates to their time of cardiac arrest and it is almost uniformly accurate in every detail. That pretty much refutes the possibility that these could be illusionary fragments, or unreal memories associated with hypoxia, chemicals, REM intrusion, anything that could cause brain dysfunction”, Dr. Long stated.
“I looked at over 280 near-death experiences that had out-of-body observations of Earthly ongoing events… If near-death experiences were just fragments of memory, unrealistic remembrances of a time approaching unconsciousness or returning from unconsciousness, there is no chance that the observations would have a high percent of completely accurate observations. They’d be dream-like or hallucinations. But 98% of them were entirely realistic… In fact, these observations of Earthly ongoing events often include observations of things that would be impossible for them to be aware of with any sensory function from their physical body. For example, they can see the tops of buildings. They can see far away. In my study over 60 of these near-death experiencers later went back and independently attempted to verify what they saw in the out-of-body state. Every single one of these over 60 near-death experiencers that reported checking or verifying their own observations found that they were absolutely correct in every detail.”, Dr. Long said.
While some near-death experience researchers have been reluctant to make the leap from NDEs to proof of the afterlife, Dr. Long is convinced by his research findings, “I’ve gone over every skeptic argument I can get my hands on. At the end of the day, I have no doubt in my mind near-death experience is for real. It’s a profound and reassuring message that we all have an afterlife. Every single one of us. And it’s wonderful. It is probably the greatest thrill of my life to be able to carry forward that important message to the world. I wouldn’t do it if I weren’t absolutely convinced that it’s correct.”
The conclusions of this research will be controversial, but Dr. Long stands ready to take on the critics, “I would be delighted to debate any near-death experience skeptic, any time, any place, on any media, as long as they’re scholarly, well informed, and as long as it can be a very high-level, intellectual debate.”
Jeffrey Long, M.D., is a physician practicing the specialty of radiation oncology (use of radiation to treat cancer) in Houma, Louisiana. Dr. Long has served on the Board of Directors of IANDS (International Association for Near-Death Studies), and is actively involved in NDE research. His book, Evidence of the Afterlife (HarperCollins), was published in 2010.
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Alex Tsakiris: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and on today’s show I have an interview with Dr. Jeff Long, author of, Evidence of the Afterlife. As you’ll hear, Dr. Long is probably one of the most qualified near-death experience researchers. He’s just compiled a huge body of that research into this book. This guy delivers the goods. I had a chance to interview him a few months ago for the documentary film that I’ve told some of you about that we’re putting together. He’s on top of his game. A medical doctor, well qualified in the field of medicine; also a very accomplished researcher.
When it comes to claims of a global consciousness linking us all to tragedies like the earthquake in Haiti, or the terrorist attacks of 9/11, there are many skeptics.
While the research results of the 12 year old Global Consciousness Project have withstood serious skeptical examination from researchers who’ve dug into the millions of test results collected on the publicly available website, skepticism persists.
But according to Alex Tsakiris, host of the Skpetiko science podcast, dialog between controversial science researchers and their doubters is a good for science, “it’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to unconventional science - that’s what makes it unconventional - but skeptics need to look deeper… critical thinking demands we’re sometimes critical of our own cherished beliefs.”
Tsakiris continued: “We’ve helped initiate a collaboration on the Global Consciousness Research Project work of Dr. Roger Nelson, and a skeptical researcher from the University of London named Dr. Chris French. That’s a step in the right direction. Many skeptics bemoan the lack of interest in science education, but when presented with the chance to explore topics like the Global Consciousness Project, that clearly have great fascination to the public, they shy away. This is unfortunate. Science is a method, it’s not a position. There are no unscientific topics, just unscientific methods.”
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Alex Tsakiris: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and on this episode of Skeptiko I wanted to do a little bit of an update.
Faced with choosing a prominent figure for his Science and Society Masters dissertation, Phillip Stevens avoided the obvious. Instead of Kepler, Newton, or Darwin, Stevens chose controversial British biologist, and Perrott-Warrick Scholar, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. “I’d known about Rupert Sheldrake and I found him very interesting”, Phillips said.
Although skeptical of Sheldrake’s theories, Phillips focused on how Sheldrake was being judged, “I wanted to be impartial as to whether he was right or wrong and instead go on and look at whether he’d been treated fairly.”
What he discovered surprised him. Stevens found that despite an unblemished academic record and a research fellowship at the Royal Society, Sheldrake faced public scorn from colleagues for publishing his theory of morphic fields which suggests a living, developing universe with its own inherent memory. “There was a review in the journal, Nature in which the editor, John Maddox said that the book, A New Science of Life, should be burned”, Stevens said. “You’d think that that sort of attitude towards what was just a theory would be out of date and would be seen as you know, unscientific. But in fact, it damaged Sheldrake’s career, not John Maddox’s career.”
But the biggest surprise came when Stevens looked at Sheldrake’s collaboration with skeptics like Dr. Richard Wiseman. According to Stevens Wiseman failed to follow normal procedures scientists use when collaborating and reporting their results.
“Wiseman actually did repeats of Sheldrake’s results. He never denied this, but he only admitted it, I think, ten years later. I mean, in normal experiments, if you repeat someone’s results, you say it. And there didn’t seem to be any reason for him not to say, ‘I’ve repeated his results. These experiments work. Sheldrake wasn’t wrong.’ And you know what? Sheldrake was a Research Fellow at the Royal Society. I would hope that when he has some experiments and tests things he’d get it right because he’s from one of the best institutions of science in Britain and in the world. So I really don’t know why Wiseman took so long just to say, ‘Yes, the patterns in Sheldrake’s works were repeated in my own.’”, said Stevens.
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Alex Tsakiris: Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and on this episode of Skeptiko we’re going to talk about science and skepticism. You know, a few months ago I received an e-mail from a gentleman in the UK who was completing his master’s dissertation on the philosophy of science. He had chosen Rupert Sheldrake as the person that he was going to profile as part of his dissertation. I had done a couple of interviews with Dr. Sheldrake, as well as delved into the research that he had done with skeptic Richard Wiseman, who’s a professor in the UK as well.
Join Host Alex Tsakiris for a discussion with The Men Who Stare at Goats author, Jon Ronson. The 35-minute interview explores the science of remote viewing portrayed in the film, and whether skepticism is warranted.
Jon Ronson is a British journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker. Ronson has a distinctive self-deprecating reporting style, which incorporates aspects of Gonzo journalism while skeptically exploring quirky characters.
Ronson’s third book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, has been turned into a major motion picture starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges.
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Announcer: On this episode of Skeptiko, author of The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jon Ronson.
“They stuck a bunch of soldiers in a room at Fort Meade in Maryland, including some who’ve gone on to become quite famous paranormal buffs like Ed Dames and Dermot Monocle and Ingo Swann and so on, and they kind of stuck them in a room and told them to be psychic. And some of them tried to be psychic for like 20 years and they do point to some remote viewing successes, but even if they did manage to harness psychic powers which you know, I suspect they probably didn’t, but even if they did, there was still nothing the military could do with it.”
Announcer: Stay with us for Skeptiko.
Alex Tsakiris: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and on this episode I have a very interesting interview with the author and really main character behind the movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jon Ronson.
Of course, I was more interested in the science behind the movie and the skeptical spin on it. I mean, haven’t people like Hal Puthoff and Steven Schwartz established that remote viewing really works and that the military should be interested in it? So we had a chance to talk about that and a number of other of Jon’s projects. And stick around for the end of the interview and I’ll tell you about a little bit of the additional research I did and some of the follow-up e-mail exchange I had with Jon. Here’s my dialogue with Jon Ronson.
Guest: Dr. Rupert Sheldrake is the current Perrott-Warrick Scholar and Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, near San Francisco, and a Visiting Professor and Academic Director of the Holistic Thinking Program at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut.
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Announcer: On this episode of Skeptiko, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: The heads I win, tails you lose, Chris French says that psychic researchers do this. Actually, I think skeptics do it more. If they get a result that shows no effect then they say, oh well, it hasn’t worked to this new phenomenon here. If there’s a positive result, as there are in many of my own experiments, then they say, oh, then the experiments must be flawed in some way. So I think this way of arguing works absolutely both ways.
Announcer: Stay with us for Skeptiko.
[Theme Music]
Alex Tsakiris: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and on this episode I have an interesting interview with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. Now you’ll recall that on the last episode of Skeptiko we talked to Dr. Chris French, from the University of London, and one of the topics that came up was his collaboration with Dr. Sheldrake, particularly on the telephone telepathy experiment they’ve been looking at but also on the other experiments with telepathy that Sheldrake has pioneered.
Guest: Dr. Chris French of the University of London discusses his skeptical research of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s Telephone Telepathy experiments and the psychology of skepticism.
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Announcer:On this episode of Skeptiko, Dr. Chris French.
Dr. Chris French:I imagine in lots of ways parapsychologists are sometimes ahead of the game. I mean,again, I’ve actually argued this in print at least here. I, for a long time, as I said, when I first became a skeptic, I was kind of an early extreme skeptic and had an overly negative view of parapsychology. And I used to go along with the argument that parapsychology was a pseudo-science. I don’t anymore.
Announcer:Stay with us for Skeptiko.
[Theme Music]
Alex Tsakiris:Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and on this episode of Skeptiko, I have an interview with Dr. Chris French from the University of London, a well-known skeptic and a publisher of a skeptical magazine there in the UK. Dr. French, of course, is not only known as a researcher of anomalous psychology, more or less his official title, but is quite a skeptic and someone who has collaborated with Dr. Richard Wiseman, who we spoke about many times on this show, in debunking various claims including psychics.
He’s appeared many times on TV doing so, and most recently began an investigation with Dr. Wiseman. They selected one very public psychic and tested her. He’s also done quite a bit of work in collaborating with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake on his experiments. And he, from time to time, has investigated a number of other parapsychology claims. So we had a lot to talk about. I think it’s a good conversation. Here’s my dialogue with Dr. Chris French.
So I’m joined today by Dr. Chris French, a professor of psychology and Head of Anomalistic Psychology, the research unit at University of London. Dr. French, as many of you know, is well regarded in the skeptical community, as well as in the scientific community in general, particularly in the UK. He’s also known generally as an open-minded, fair-minded skeptic, so that’s quite a reputation and we’ve had quite a chat leading up to this conversation. I’m really looking forward to it. Dr. French, thanks again for joining me here today on Skeptiko.
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THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED
Alex Tsakiris: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and on today’s show, the Global Consciousness Project.
We’re going to come at this from a number of different angles. The way I got here is really I think the biggest part of this story, but more of that will come later. First let me tell you a little bit about what the Global Consciousness Project is.
Skeptiko Host, Alex Tsakiris, offers a point-by-point response to the comments of noted Skeptics, Dr. Steven Novella, and Dr. Richard Wiseman. During the 30-minute show Tsakiris examines Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s, “Dogs That Know” experiment and the criticisms leveled against it. Tsakiris also discusses the critismes of Dr. Richard Wiseman and reveals how his claims are contradicted by published reports on the experiment.
Response to Skeptics, Dr.Steven Novella and Dr. Richard Wiseman
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Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and critics. I’m your host Alex Tsakiris, and those of you who’ve been following the last few episodes of Skeptiko know that we’ve been having an ongoing debate with the folks over at the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. It all started a few weeks ago when, out of my frustration with the skeptical community, I reached a breaking point and said “Look, this is impossible! Skeptics aren’t interested in research. They don’t support it, they don’t read it, they don’t do it.” Well that episode generated quite a response from Dr. Steve Novella. Steve called me out a little bit, challenged some of the examples I was using to make my case, and this in turn led me to join the folks at The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe for Episode Number 125 of their show, which was very well done, was very fair, we had a good exchange. And they published almost the entire interview even though it was very long. So if you haven’t heard that please go and check it out. Now, a good part of that discussion was Steve, centred around one particular experiment done by Dr. Rupert Sheldrake of Cambridge, to see whether some dogs have an unexplained ability to know when their owners are coming home, basically whether some dogs might be psychic. Now after the interview I went back and researched some of the points Steve had made, and I found that there were some pretty serious factual errors, but I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to put those out. And then came Episode Number 126 of The Skeptics’ Guide, where Steve interviewed Richard Wiseman, the principal skeptical researcher who’s really faced off with Rupert Sheldrake on this experiment. And I’ve got to tell you after listening to that interview I was pretty mad. And that’s when I decided I want to put together this show, and respond to the inaccuracies in those two interviews. And then I got into doing it and I realised that there’s another point that needed to be made. And that’s that even though there’s a lot of disagreement between us, we’re also finding some common ground. Some common ground in our desire to dig through this stuff and really find the truth. So I want to start this show with a clip from Jay Novella that captures some of what I’m talking about.
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Skeptiko host, Alex Tsakiris, responds to Skeptics Guide to the Universe’s, Dr. Steven Novella. In a point-by-point response, Tsakiris claims Novella’s recent broadcast provides further evidence that prominent Skeptics are often severely misinformed about parapsychology and psi research. Tsakiris also details why allegations of research improprieties against Dr. Dean Radin are untrue, and calls upon Dr. Novella to help correct the situation: “…Steve got on me for calling Skeptics hypocritical, but I want you to imagine for a minute how Dr. Novella would feel if he spent five years of his life doing meticulous, careful research, publishing in peer-reviewed journals, only to have some hack come along and make baseless, reckless claims that call into question his integrity. He wouldn’t stand for it, and he shouldn’t stand for it in this case either.”
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Alex: Welcome to skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakaris.
If you recall, on the last episode of skeptiko, I took a break from the interview format that we generally follow, and took the time to look back on the more than 30 skeptiko interviews that I’ve done. I’ve learned the takeaway for me - if you recall - was not very favorable with regard to the skeptical community.
Guest: Dr. Richard Wiseman discusses the skeptical community, paranormal research, quirky psychology, and what’s lacking in paranormal research.
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Announcer: In this episode of Skeptiko, well-known researcher and skeptic, Dr. Richard Wiseman, explains why collaboration is needed in parapsychological research.
Dr. Richard Wiseman: The public are actually quite badly served by the science community in that sense that there’s a deep wanting to know what’s going on from some members of the public. So I think a coming together where people actually design experiments, conduct those experiments, interpret them, in a collaborative way may be a lot more constructive way forward.
Science has studied the near-death experience for more than 20 years. Most research has concluded NDEs are real and unexplainable, but scientists have been slow to accept consciousness beyond death. A new scientific study by Jeffrey Long, M. D. may change that. The research compiled in his new book, Evidence of the Afterlife, represents the largest, most comprehensive study of near-death experience and according to the study’s author is, “a real game-changer”.
While the research results of the 12 year old Global Consciousness Project have withstood serious skeptical examination from researchers who’ve dug into the millions of test results collected on the publicly available website, skepticism persists.
Faced with choosing a prominent figure for his Science and Society Masters dissertation, Phillip Stevens avoided the obvious. Instead of Kepler, Newton, or Darwin, Stevens chose controversial British biologist, and Perrott-Warrick Scholar, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. “I’d known about 
Join Host Alex Tsakiris for a discussion with The Men Who Stare at Goats author, Jon Ronson. The 35-minute interview explores the science of remote viewing portrayed in the film, and whether skepticism is warranted.
Guest: 
