A Compelling Veridical OBE

I am sure some of you have heard of this OBE before, but I couldn't find a thorough discussion on it other than on conspiracy sites. I'll post the videos and let you guys share your thoughts on it.

OBE circa 4:22

OBE circa 10:35

I'll post transcripts of the relevant parts if requested.

This one is compelling to me because it meets my 5 requirements when I joined this forum looking for these kinds of cases. (Here post 78).

1. Person has OBE
2. Person witnesses unique conversation (unique meaning it's not a conversation someone would reasonably expect to have occurred, i.e. "I hope person recovers, I am worried about person, etc.")
3. The witnessed event/conversation occurs in a location where physical hearing would be impossible even if the person was healthy.
4. The people who are involved in the event/conversation verify the accuracy of this unique conversation.
5. All people involved have no motive for lying (i.e. financial, fame, etc).
 
I agree that her knowledge about the smoking confirms the OBE.

I have read several hundreds of NDE accounts, and I'm personally very comfortable with NDE OBEs being "real" at this point. I'd like to see more people from the average crowd dig into it though.
 
I agree that her knowledge about the smoking confirms the OBE.

I have read several hundreds of NDE accounts, and I'm personally very comfortable with NDE OBEs being "real" at this point. I'd like to see more people from the average crowd dig into it though.

How come most, if not all, of the "evidence" for NDEs is in the form of anecdotes and not empirical evidence?
 
How come most, if not all, of the "evidence" for NDEs is in the form of anecdotes and not empirical evidence?

What are you talking about? Testimonies != Anecdotes, and testimonies are used in science and medicine all the time. You couldn't do medicine without relying on testimonies. Same is true for social sciences, etc. Bill O'Reilly threw the same argument at Jeffrey Long, and here is how Alex and Jeff hashed it out:

Alex Tsakiris: Here’s what I thought we’d do. Let’s jump right into this. Here’s where I’d like to start. That is with the research because it’s a point that seems to create some confusion. I was watching the interview you did with Bill O’Reilly on Fox and I thought that was a great example of where a guy, Bill O’Reilly in this case, becomes completely sidetracked with this anecdote thing. These are just anecdotes and we can’t really trust them because they’re anecdotes.

So I thought you should talk a little bit about survey work in medical research and that how when you ask one person about their NDE, you may have an anecdote, but when you compile a 150 question survey of 600 people, you have something much more than that.

Dr. Jeffrey Long: You almost just answered it right there. No doubt about it. When you have an anecdote, it simply means one or a few case studies. You have to be very hesitant to draw conclusions about small numbers. It would be like testing a new drug on three patients and trying to find sweeping conclusions about its effectiveness. You really can’t. You need much more data than that.

That’s why the NDERF study that I presented in the book is certainly vastly beyond anecdotal evidence. We actually studied 1,300 near-death experiences. It’s certainly not just a limited number of case reports. And you’re right, our modern questionnaire is over 150 questions, so no doubt we have the depth of analysis, as well. And most of the research that’s published in the book was based on surveying over 600 near-death experiencers that filled out the most recent version of the questionnaire.

Let me start out with sort of a basic scientific overview, and that is what’s real is consistently observed. So we’ve observed evidence of the afterlife and near-death experience is not only in the vast number of near-death experiences studied in tremendous depth in my own study, but all my major findings are corroborated by scores of prior scholarly studies. We’re way beyond what could reasonably be called anecdotal. We’re really in very hard-core evidence based on my work and the work of many others.
 
What are you talking about? Testimonies != Anecdotes, and testimonies are used in science and medicine all the time.

I think the key issue here is that we have no way to differentiate a potentially legitimate OBE claim from a fabricated OBE claim. Therefore we cannot know the reliability of the testimony. We have literally no way to verify if one NDERF entry is any more or less legitimate from another one, which is the key aspect in the rejection of anecdotes.
 
How come most, if not all, of the "evidence" for NDEs is in the form of anecdotes and not empirical evidence?

I guess the answer is: because they are reported by the person experiencing them. Such events do sometimes seem to contain information that supports the experience as being something more than purely an hallucination or dream or similar occurrence.

If by empirical you mean 'verifiable by someone other than the person observing them' then it seems to me, by their very nature (ie, unpredictable, occurring during emergencies, occurring when the body of the person reporting it is in a particular state) they will not be a) observable by others not in that same state at the same time, and b) not easy to replicate in a controlled way.

I'm not sure what you're expecting really. My dreams (when I can recall them - which is hardly ever) are not repeatable, and are not observable by anyone else but they do occur. So I think it is hard to argue that the experience reported is not real in the sense that it occurred. Whether or not we accept that the experience was actually what the person experiencing it thought it was will depend on the nature of any additional content that the person could not have known under the circumstances.

I don't think you're going to get much more 'empirical' than that from individual NDEs even if they are exactly what some claim for them.
 
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