Skeptiko - Science at the Tipping Point

Investigative journalist and author Steve Volk seeks a middle-ground between mainstream science skepticism and researchers on the paranormal fringe.   Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Steve Volk, author of Fringe-ology.  During the interview Mr. Volk discusses his personal experience with poltergeist phenomena: Alex Tsakiris: In your book you do a very nice job of exploring the mystery of the paranormal. But at the same time, I look at the mystery associated with your experience with a ghost in your house. That is, what happened to you when you were a kid growing up and you experienced this poltergeist phenomena. At the end of the day, in the book you come away and say, “Well, it’s a mystery.” Steve Volk: It is. Alex Tsakiris: But that’s a tricky word because it could mean two things. It could appeal to that certain group of people who say, “Okay, we don’t know if it really happened. It’s a mystery.” Or another group of people could process it and say, “Oh, it’s a mystery. We don’t know the precise confluence of paranormal things that happened to cause it.” Are we using a word that doesn’t get us to the underlying question about this mystery? Steve Volk: I think in the totality of that chapter with the fact that I explore the idea of it having been a traditional sort of ghost, along with a range of skeptical explanations from the fantasy-prone personality which is really purely a psychological one to what I consider the more exotic materialist theories like Vic Tandy’s theory of infrasound that there are these sound waves below the level of human hearing that can cause us to even have visual hallucinations, on through Persinger and the electromagnetic energy temporal lobe interaction that he’s been pursuing for a while now, there’s this range of potential explanations right? I wanted to just put them all out on the table because I think that they all have some sort of validity. I think we need to be willing to consider all these possibilities. I suppose, in that respect Alex, I might appear a little bit of a gadfly at times because I’m challenging everyone to look at all the possibilities all the way on through. Steve Volk's Website Play it: Download MP3 (44:00 min.) Read it: Alex Tsakiris: We’re joined today by someone you’ve gotten to know over the last few episodes of Skeptiko as Steve Volk has been a guest host here and brought us three very informative, insightful interviews about the history of parapsychology, neuro-theology, and ghosts. Today Steve is here to talk about his new book, Fringe-ology, a book that covers all these topics and a lot more. Steve, welcome to Skeptiko. Steve Volk: Alex, thank you so much for having me. Alex Tsakiris: Well, it’s really great to have you on. The book is really fantastic. I really enjoyed it and of course, we’ve really primed the pump on this little discussion we’re going to have. I’m looking forward to getting into some of these things with you. Steve Volk: I was going to say maybe we should stop right at “It’s great.” [Laughs] Alex Tsakiris: [Laughs] Steve Volk: Let’s just call it there. Thank you very much, Alex. Good times. Alex Tsakiris: [Laughs] Well…of course we’re not going to do that. Steve Volk: I know, I know. Alex Tsakiris: But first I want to let people know I really did—I genuinely like the book. One of the things I thought was really, really great about it is you’re an investigative journalist and you really brought that kind of sensibility to this book. I love the way you dug into these topics, topics that aren’t covered nearly enough, of course. But you dug into them and you brought us a whole bunch of new information. You take Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, one of the opening chapters in the book—I mean, wow. Whoever knew that she was the real originator, the first NDE researcher? And you chronicle all of that and do a great job of doing it.

George Washington University Medical Center Professor, Dr. Lakhmir Chawla, answers critics of his near-death experience research. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. Lakhmir Chawla.  During the interview Dr. Chawla discussed whether his discovery of a surge in the brain’s electrical activity seconds before death might, or might not, be related to near-death experience: Alex Tsakiris: A moment ago you referenced the discovery of the first black swan as reminder of how science has to be prepared for unexpected discoveries.  Part of the frustration I hear from near-death experience researchers is, “hey, we keep finding all these black swans; where are the rest of you?”  They keep finding cases where patients report a near-death experience during a time when there’s no brain activity -- that’s a black swan. Then they look at your finding, which is interesting and surprising, but is quite speculative as far as being related to near-death experience and they say, “where’s the balance?” Dr. Lakhmir Chawla: I think that’s a very important point. At the end of the day, if near-death experience is going to enter a very durable research area it has to answer some of these questions.  Because right now we know that near-death experiences are very important to patients. So the stakeholders are very interested in it. So it will always have its relevant people who are very interested in it because it’s a big deal and it talks about the aspect of life when life potentially ends. What we’re suggesting in this paper is that we have an interesting finding at the time of death. It may have nothing to do with near-death experience, but the need to understand what this is or isn’t has a lot of value. Now, I’ll tell you, the other important issue is that we have patients who we allow to pass away and then we take their organs. Currently we use EKG as the metric for when they’re dead. Some people have suggested that you should wait and see if they have this spike because that may, in fact, be the border. And this has real consequences for the quality of the organs that are taken from these patients if they’re allowed to sit for even a minute or two minutes longer. So, the implications are beyond the near-death experience. Example of how Dr. Chawla's finding was reported Play it: Download MP3 (41:00 min.) Read it: Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome to Skeptiko  Associate Professor of Medicine at George Washington University Medical Center, Dr. Lakhmir Chawla.  Dr. Chawla, thank you so much for joining me today on Skeptiko. Dr. Lakhmir Chawla: Delighted to be here. Alex Tsakiris: So, Dr. Chawla, in 2009 you published a paper with the surprising discovery that some of your patients who were very close to death experienced a final surge in brain activity and the paper has gained quite a bit of traction, media attention, mainly because of this quote of yours: “We think that near-death experiences could be caused by a surge of electrical energy as the brain runs out of oxygen.” It‘s been a while since that paper was published.  So first I want to ask you, do you still think that what you saw has anything to do with near-death experience? Dr. Lakhmir Chawla: Obviously all of the patients in our study passed away so there’s really no way for us to truly know if what these people were experiencing is, in fact had they survived, being the signature of a near-death experience. What we did notice which was very striking is that in all these patients--and in this study we reported on seven patients on which we had very good documentation. We’ve seen these electrical surges, EEG activity, at the end of life in over 100 patients and what we basically have, I hypothesize that when people pass away something occurs in their neural structure. We have a hypothesis for why this may be happening, that causes this large intensity of electrical energy.

Noted parapsychology investigator and author Guy Lyon Playfair discusses poltergeists, after-death communication and the telepathy of twins. Join Skeptiko guest host Steve Volk for an interview with Guy Lyon Playfair.  During the interview Mr. Playf...

Dr. Mark Sheehan discusses his book, Healing Prayer on Holy Ground and the impact of prayer on his patients.

Cult expert Joe Szimhart discusses how genuine spiritual experiences can be exploited by religious cults.

Journalist and author Hazel Courteney describes her spiritual awakening and the science it led her to.

Neurotheology researcher, physician and author, Andy Newberg explains how fundamentalists Christians and Atheists share a minority view of God.

Biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake expresses dismay at latest claims made by Skeptic Richard Wiseman in his recent book, Paranormality.

Human consciousness researcher Dr. Stuart Hameroff describes how discoveries are revealing more brain complexity than artificial intelligence (AI) experts suspected. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. Stuart Hameroff. Dr. Hameroff is Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology at the University of Arizona, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies. During the interview Mr. Tsakiris and Dr. Hameroff discuss whether DMT-based psychedelic experiences provide evidence that our consciousness exists outside of the brain: Alex Tsakiris: Your understanding of the quantum mechanics of the neuron really stirs up a lot of angst among the AI singularity crowd. Tell us a little bit about that controversy. Dr. Stuart Hameroff: To look at our brain as 100 billion simple switches -- to look at a neuron as a switch or gate -- it's an insult to neurons. It's just not that simple. If you study biology you realize this.  But a lot of biologists get bogged down with the details and lose the big picture. They see the information processing in the cell as a minestrone soup of chemicals when they're ignoring the solid state system in the microtubules. The bit with the AI and the singularity, there's actually a couple of points of friction here. As I said, I spent 20 years studying microtubule information processing. The AI approach would be, roughly speaking, that a neuron fires or it doesn't. It's roughly comparable to a bit, 1 or 0. It's more complicated than that but roughly speaking.  I was saying no, each neuron has roughly 10-8 tubulins switching at roughly 10-7 per second, getting 10-15 operations per second per neuron. If you multiply that by the number of neurons you get 10 to the 26th operations per second per brain. AI is looking at neurons firing or not firing, 1,000 per second, 1,000 synapses. Something like the 10 to the 15th operations per second per brain... and that's without even bringing in the quantum business. So that alone was pushing the goalpost way, way downstream into the future. Dr. Stuart Hameroff's website Play it: Download MP3 (34:00 min.) Read it: Today we welcome Dr. Stuart Hameroff to Skeptiko. Dr. Hameroff is Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology at the University of Arizona, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies. Dr. Hameroff, thank you so much for joining me today on Skeptiko. Dr. Stuart Hameroff: You're welcome, Alex. It's nice to be here. Alex Tsakiris: You know, there are so many interesting topics I want to talk to you about, but I thought we might start with your credentials. As I was looking through some of your research in preparation for this interview, I ran across a comment from a blogger along the lines of Isn't this guy just an anesthesiologist who's playing around with quantum mechanics and consciousness stuff as a strange sort of hobby? So I just laughed that off because you have a distinguished academic career, a list of publications as long as my arm with some of the world's leading physicists. But then I ran across a similar comment again, and it got me thinking about the deeper issue of consciousness studies and the problem that I think a lot of folks have in figuring out who's really qualified to talk about this stuff. We see philosophers throwing in their opinions, neurologists, physicists, so do you want to talk a little bit about this field in terms of who's really qualified to venture into this area and say what consciousness is all about? Dr. Stuart Hameroff: Well, I don't presume to judge anybody. I think a ditch-digger might figure it out just out of luck or because he or she is motivated, so that's not the point. I think if you have a good approach you should use it. Now, my approach has been two-fold.  I got interested in microtubules inside cells when I was in medical school.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Deborah Blum discusses the challenges of science reporting and the paranormal taboo. Skeptiko guest host Steve Volk welcomes Deborah Blum author of, Ghost Hunters - William James and the Hunt for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. During the interview Ms. Blum discusses her approach to covering the paranormal: Steve Volk: This is one of the hardest things. Who do we believe? Who do we trust? I want to see somehow people in the middle pick this stuff up and look at it, but that's a very, very rare occurrence. Deborah Blum: I agree. Like I said, I'm a mainstream science journalist and daughter of a chemist. But what was fascinating to me when I started working on Ghost Hunters is that I'd go and give talks at different universities. I mean literally, I was at the University of Florida and they said, 'Oh, let us tell you about our haunted laboratory.' Or I was at a meeting with a bunch of animal researchers and I was sitting next to a very respected scientist from Stanford who immediately started telling me about the telepathic experiences she'd had with a friend of hers who is a scientist at Southwestern University. I thought to myself, 'This whole world exists that really those of us in the skeptic/science community never see because people just don't tell you about it. Steve Volks's website Fringe-ology Trailer Deborah Blum - Ghost Hunters Play it: Download MP3 (58:00 min.) Read it: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Tsakiris. On this episode, as you just heard, there's a new voice behind the interview so before we get started I thought we'd take a minute and introduce that voice, that being the voice of journalist and author, Steve Volk, who's joining me right now. Steve, hi and welcome to Skeptiko. Steve Volk: Alex, thanks for having me. Alex Tsakiris: I love this interview that you have for us today. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and why you wanted to talk to today's guest, Deborah Blum? Steve Volk: Well, she had gone down a path before me that I'd wanted to go down myself and ultimately did with my book, Fringe-ology, which doesn't come out until June. But the issue for me is that I've always covered traditional topics in journalism. I've started off covering music. I was a music critic and I ultimately veered into writing lots of narrative non-fiction about politics and crime and courts. You know, just traditional journalistic subjects. But what was always sort of at the back of my mind-it would be raised from time to time when something would bubble up in pop culture that would make me think of it-is this family ghost story that I had grown up with. There was supposedly a ghost that haunted my house when I was a kid. I have some memories of it myself. I just felt like as a reporter, though, that that subject was taboo-that I couldn't cover it for the obvious reasons that you always get into on this show. It would undermine my own credibility to even entertain the idea that such things as ghosts exist. Over time, though, I started realizing that when we talk about paranormal subjects, we're really talking about the big existential questions that people find themselves asking at 3 a.m., right? What does it mean to be human? Who are we? Is there life after death? Is there a God? All these kinds of issues--are we alone in the universe?-come up through paranormal topics whether it be UFOs or telepathy or ghosts. So I really admired Deborah Blum because here she is, a Pulitzer Prize winning science reporter where the taboo against covering these sorts of topics would be even stronger, and yet she went for it. She covered William James and the scientific search for the afterlife in her book, Ghost Hunters. So I felt like I really wanted the chance to visit with her and see what her motivations were.

Noted DMT researcher Dr. Richard Strassman describes how DMT allows consciousness to enter an out-of-body, freestanding, independent realm of existence. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. Rick Strassman, author of, DMT - The ...

Two teachers of A Course in Miracles have differing views on the validity of channeled wisdom. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Gary Renard, author of, The Disappearance of the Universe, and Robert Perry, author of Signs: A New Approach to Coincidence, Synchronicity, Guidance, Life Purpose, and God’s Plan.  During the interview Mr. Tsakiris and Gary Renard discuss verification of his work: Alex Tsakiris: One of the points in your book where I really had to stop and go — wait a minute — is when you say that you had these two beings, “ascended masters” show up in your living room. Amazing, amazing. But not unique in that other people have claimed similar kinds of things. So I’m not willing to dismiss that out-of-hand, but Gary, they showed up 17 times… you don’t have a photograph?  You don’t have videotape? You don’t have any kind of record of this? Gary Renard: Well actually, they’re still showing up today. We’re going to do a fourth book together. They do show up and they said that for me to try to prove that they existed would be entirely missing the point. Yes, I could take pictures of them but what would prove, Alex, that those weren’t two actors in the pictures? If I recorded them, what would prove that those weren’t two actors speaking on the tape? Gary Renard’s website Robert Perry’s website Play it: Download MP3 (41:00 min.) Read it: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris. On this episode, I’m going to tell you why I’m a skeptic. You know, this show’s been pretty critical of the skeptical community and the skeptical position on a lot of topics, but lost in all of that sometimes can be the fact that I really am a skeptic in a lot of ways. From that position I do understand, I think, why folks are skeptical. This show is going to give you all the reasons you need to understand why people become skeptical and why people even cross over a little bit and become dogmatically skeptical. I hope to also get at a larger, deeper question that’s really been rattling around in my head for a while and that’s that if we accept the science that’s been presented on this show, psi science, near-death experience science, parapsychology science-the best of it-that really leads us to understand that our world is quite a bit different than we normally experience it. That consciousness does seem to survive death. That things like telepathy and interconnectedness are real. Well, if we accept all that then how do we deal with all these very strange accounts we have and how do we adjust our filter to let some of it in but keep some of it out? And that’s going to lead us to Gary Renard, my first interview today, who’s the author of several best-selling books based upon A Course in Miracles. Then we’re going to have a follow-up interview and even more interesting interview with Robert Perry, who’s quite an interesting guy, and who has written some very interesting books but is also approaching things from this A Course in Miracles perspective. I think you’re going to find it very interesting to see how all of this plays out. Here’s my interview with Gary Renard: Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome Gary Renard, whose best-selling books document his spiritual experiences with two ascended masters who, as we discover, appear to him in physical form to tell him the true meaning of Jesus’s teachings and that you, Gary, in a previous life, walked with Jesus as the Apostle Thomas.  Gary, thanks so much for joining me today on Skeptiko. Gary Renard: Thank you, Alex. Alex Tsakiris: I want to go back and say I wasn’t quite sure how to handle that introduction. You know, of course, that’s going to be jarring to a lot of folks, especially my li[...]

Co-host of Point of Inquiry, discusses how Skeptics approach psychic science. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with skeptical writer and blogger Dr. Karen Stollznow. During the interview Mr. Tsakiris and Dr. Stollznow discuss to role of science in skeptical investigations: Alex Tsakiris: I do feel you, especially as an intellectual… and I know you’re a linguist and not trained as a parapsychologist… but you have somewhat of an obligation to build off of the original research or the best research that we have in the field. So, Gary Schwartz does medium research. Then, Julie Beischel picks up the gauntlet and is going forward in publishing work with mediums. So you can like that or you can not like it, but it really to me seems to get to the core issue which is does this kind of anomalous cognition between a “medium” and a deceased person really exist?  So, why aren’t you familiar with the research? Dr. Karen Stollznow: Well, once again, I think I’ve worked in so many different areas with so many different themes and topics within the paranormal and pseudo-science and often I’m writing an article that might be 1,000 words. I’m limited; I’ve got a word limit that I can’t go over so I need to condense anything that I write and if I’m going to a psychic fair and writing about my experiences there, I don’t need to necessarily reference the research of these people. If I was writing about the research of these people then that would be a different matter, obviously. I’d need to keep my finger on the pulse of everything that is being done in that industry. But if I’m looking at individuals out there on the street who are practicing this and given again, it’s just one small area of what I study and research, then I’m not necessarily obliged to know what these people are doing within that context. Dr. Karen Stollznow’s website Play it: Download MP3 (34:00 min.) Read it: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris. As you know, one of the things we like to do on Skeptiko is engage the skeptical community. If you go back through the past shows you’ll see that we’ve had on many, many of the leading skeptical figures, skeptical writers, publishers of skeptical magazines, hosts of skeptical shows, and certainly people who have viewpoints that are different from the guests that we normally have on-the proponents, the researchers, the thinkers about psi and parapsychology. It always surprises me that that willingness to look at both sides isn’t reciprocated by skeptics very much. You just won’t see that on skeptical shows. You’ll never see Dean Radin or Rupert Sheldrake or Jeff Long-I could go on and on-Roger Nelson, or any of the people that we’ve interviewed here that are scholarly, publishing in peer-reviewed papers, writing books, you’ll never see them on those skeptical shows. That’s one of the topics I touch on in my interview today with Dr. Karen Stollznow, who is the host of one such show, Point of Inquiry. She’s very open about a certain need to preach to the choir, and while I applaud Karen’s openness, it really got me thinking, I guess. And it got me riled up about a couple other things that seem to keep cropping up in this journey that is Skeptiko. One example of that came up when she referenced a couple of interviews and a joint investigation I did with skeptical science writer, Ben Radford. Now, if you’ve been around the show long enough to remember the psychic detective work that I did with Ben Radford then I really want to thank you. You’re a long-time, loyal listener. But that investigation with Ben was really somewhat of a turning point for me because I went into it thinking that if I could just get skeptics to look at the[...]

The author of, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, discusses why NDE evidence doesn’t measure up. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with philosophy of science and human consciousness scholar, Dr. James Fetzer. During the interview Mr. Tsakiris and Dr. Fetzer discuss evidence for the survival of consciousness, and whether this evidence undermines our current model of mind=brain consciousness: Alex Tsakiris: So let’s take a big step back and say that when someone has a flat EEG they are not supposed to have any conscious experience, let alone the kind of conscious experience near-death experiencers are reporting. What you say might be definitionally true and all that, but we just have to deal with the fact that people are having a conscious experience when they shouldn’t be having it. And that’s highly suggestive that consciousness doesn’t operate the way that we thought. It isn’t a product of the brain but is somehow separate from the brain and continues after the brain is severely compromised, if you want me to say it isn’t dead. Dr. James Fetzer: Well, as soon as you begin talking about an ordinary concept of consciousness you have to acknowledge that consciousness involves responses to stimuli in the environment that we access through our different senses, taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. Therefore, if we’re going to talk seriously about a form of consciousness that persists after death, we’re going to have to account for how it’s possible to have sensory experiences for an entity that is no longer embodied. In other words, if you no longer have your senses, if you no longer have a capacity for taste, touch, sight, smell, or hearing, how can you possibly have any conscious experiences after you’re dead? What we do know, Alex, is that when the brain is deprived of oxygen, the kinds of experiences that are typified by the reports of those who have these near-death experiences occur. Alex Tsakiris: That’s absolutely not true, Jim. You just haven’t delved into the. Dr. James Fetzer: Alex, that’s all just fine and dandy and I did not previously express any concerns about it. You have been pressing me on this point and I’m explaining to you that based on classic criteria from the philosophy of science, your proposition of the survival of consciousness after death is a paradigm case of an empirically untestable claim. Dr. James Fetzer’s website Play it: Download MP3 (28:00 min.) Read it: Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris. On this episode of Skeptiko we return to a topic that I’ve addressed many times before, and that is near-death experience science and how it squares with the mainstream science model of consciousness. That is, of course, that consciousness is solely and completely a product of the brain. Now I’ve wrestled this issue to the ground before, but it was really fun to dialogue with someone who I greatly respect and admire for his ability to courageously follow the data wherever it goes on a whole variety of topics that are certainly very, very controversial. Here’s my interview with Dr. Jim Fetzer: Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome back to Skeptiko Dr. James Fetzer, who is best known as one of the world’s leading authorities on the JFK assassination and the events of 9/11. But he’s also a scholar and author in the area of human consciousness. He’s written several books and many scholarly papers on the topic. So, Jim, thanks so much for joining me again today on Skeptiko. Dr. James Fetzer: Oh, Alex, it’s a real pleasure. I like the way you operate at a very high level of professionalism and I think your site is beautifully managed. Alex Tsakiris: Thanks a lot for saying that. It’s quite an honor coming from you. One of the reasons I’m s[...]

The author of, Sum: 40 Tales From the Afterlife, discusses his work as a neuroscientist and author. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Baylor College of Medicine Neuroscientist and author, Dr. David Eagleman. During the interview Dr. Eagleman  discusses why survival of consciousness and near death experience (NDE) research isn’t a prominent topic among neuroscientists, “I think it should be front and center. I mean, my impression is that scientists have different personalities and some are quite conservative and they like to stick with the party line. Now, I should specify that what the party line is at this moment in history is reductionism or materialism, which means you are just built out of your pieces and parts and that’s it. When those pieces and parts break and go away, then you go away. That’s a perfectly reasonable hypothesis and may well be right. I’m not criticizing that hypothesis, but I am saying that there are other possibilities, as well.” Eagleman continues, “I go all around and give talks to my colleagues at universities all around, and what I see in some universities in some places is you’re not even allowed to talk outside of that paradigm. Anything that gets said is really pooh-poohed. So I really admire these guys who are looking for the paradigm-busters.” Dr. David Eagleman’s website Play it: Download MP3 (18:00 min.) Read it: Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris. On this episode of Skeptiko, I have an interview with someone I’ve been trying to get on Skeptiko for a couple of years. Dr. David Eagleman, as you’ll learn, is a neuroscientist from the Baylor College of Medicine who wrote a book a couple of years ago all about the afterlife, but the book was a novel. The book got quite a bit of publicity. I actually heard about him first on NPR, the National Public Radio here in the U.S. The book became a best-seller and he went on to do all sorts of amazing stuff. But what always got me about his book is as a neuroscientist, how can you write a book about the afterlife and never mention afterlife science, near-death experience science, reincarnation science, any of that stuff? It’s like the only way we can approach this topic is fictional because there isn’t anything really here. I mean, that’s the kind of implication. So I really wanted to talk to this guy. It took a little bit of pounding and persisting, but eventually he was able to give me a short interview. I wish the interview was longer but it was all the time he had and I’m grateful for it. In the process of doing the interview and doing the research for the interview, I guess my frustration or anger kind of diminished a little bit, especially when I read his book. It’s really well-written. It’s poetic. It’s just a beautiful book in many ways. But when I got to the core issue in terms of how science can approach this topic, I ran head into The Big Lie. When it comes to psi research in general and near-death experience science in particular, the Big Lie goes something like this-it was first articulated on this show on one of the very early episodes by Dr. James Alcock who’s a psychologist and a well-known skeptic, a public guy, who’s recently been in the news, by the way, as somebody they trotted out to give some outrageously exaggerated counter-argument to Daryl Bem’s article, just an interesting little side note there. But anyway, very early on in Skeptiko, I had Dr. Alcock on and here’s his version of The Big Lie: “If we could come up with good data that showed there’s something to the paranormal, parapsychologists would be trampled by psychologists and physicists and so on rushing to the study of it.” Now, it was actually kind of fun digging up that quote fro[...]