On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 09:33:04AM +0530, Ritu wrote: > Some two years ago, a couple of scientists in UK were trying to > get funding to carry on a research on the existence of the human > soul. I am not sure what happened to them but the paper they published > after the preliminary research did receive some publicity. Basically > they interviewed post-operative patients and some 1/3 of the people > reported OBE. They apparently located objects 'hidden' in the room > during their surgery, recounted conversations in the room between > various people, the tunnel of light was mentioned...stuff like that. > Somewhat interesting.
This does not sound like very good science. Psychics can often convince the naive that they have some power, but on closer study it has always proven to be deductions based on knowledge of the person combined with generalities and some random guesses (people tend to remember the correct guesses and forget or discount the incorrect ones). People fool themselves. That is why science is needed to test our knowledge, to prevent us from fooling ourselves. A better study might look for predictions or observations by such patients that could not possibly have been known beforehand BY ANYONE (at least, anyone not divine or whatever). And the study must document ALL SUCH PREDICTIONS consistently -- otherwise it runs the risk of just documenting the ones that become well-known or remembered because they happened to come true by random chance. Once a comprehensive list is made (perhaps over several years?) of predictions and results, it can be looked at statistically and compared to what might have been predicted by random chance (or even better, a control group could be made of people who were asked to make such predictions while sitting in a room, who were told to just "guess"). It is not an easy experiment, but generally the way science works is that if there really is something there, people will get suggestive evidence on smaller scale experiments, and then become interested in pursuing it comprehensively. So the argument that no one has ever done such an experiment is really not convincing -- if the effect was real, it is likely someone WOULD HAVE done such a definitive experiment, since they would have been naturally led that way when their first tentative experiments were frequently successful. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
