{"id":30958,"date":"2023-02-09T17:50:07","date_gmt":"2023-02-10T01:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=30958"},"modified":"2023-02-10T06:17:07","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T14:17:07","slug":"numbers-and-near-death-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/numbers-and-near-death-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"Numbers and Near-Death Experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twelve years ago, I drove to Ohio to interview a man who claimed he died and experienced \u201cthe other side\u201d. Months earlier I had finished his book, My Descent into Death<\/em> that described his spiritual journey while in France with his wife and college students. Howard was an art professor at the University of Kentucky and a self-proclaimed atheist who had no time for ideas like God, religion, or the afterlife. This radically changed after believing his consciousness traveled across the veil while in a French hospital waiting for surgery due to a duodenal perforation. At this point he describes a detailed journey involving an out of body experience, beings of darkness and light, a life review, and a life changing conversation with Christ that resulted in a major paradigm shift.<\/p>\n

What in the world does this have to do with Tom and David Chivers\u2019 book How to Read Numbers? <\/em><\/p>\n

The experience above is an unpredictable anecdote based off a personal account. Chivers’ wouldn’t recommend we take a story like this and run. Plus, as westerners, many of us are naturally suspicious of claims like this that challenge our scientific minds and even religious assumptions about the after life. These stories and their details do not always fit neatly in either one of these boxes. On top of that, reports like this could be fabricated to sell books or gain attention. These experiences could simply be hallucinations of a dying brain in trauma.<\/p>\n

However, the number <\/em>of cases regarding this phenomenon and the quality of research around it is jarring\u2026if accurate.<\/p>\n

Near death experiences\u2026 consciousness studies\u2026other worldly adventures\u2026can we really take this seriously?<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s this subject (which I know is a bit taboo), business, engineering, or medicine, Chivers\u2019 provides some important tools to spot both intentional and unintentional limitations when numbers are being interpreted or reported. The value of How to Read Numbers<\/em> is that when data and research standards are known and met,<\/em> they may just point us to some conclusions, solutions, or questions that we never anticipated.<\/p>\n

I was surprised to find quality, academic research around this topic. The findings around the phenomenon known as \u201cnear death experiences\u201d or \u201cNDE\u2019s\u201d is compelling. It went beyond four or five people claiming to see the pearly gates in books at the local Christian bookstore.\u00a0 Dr. Bruce Greyson who is the Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia gave these numbers in, The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences<\/em>, a very dense book, \u201cTaken together, it is safe to say that between 1975 and 2005, at least 55 researchers or research teams in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia published at least 65 research studies involving 3,500 NDErs, addressing the experience, its aftereffects, or both.\u201d\u00a0 At this point there have been over 30 years of research and 600 peer reviewed scholarly articles dealing with this phenomenon that cuts across multiple disciplines like medicine, psychology, parapsychology, thanatology, and of course religion.<\/p>\n

Before reading Chivers\u2019 book I had never heard of \u201cp-value\u201d or really understood “statistical significance\u201d. So many things cannot be verified or predicted with absolute certainty, but they can be weighed against coincidence or randomness. In fact, what ultimately piqued my curiosity with near death research, assuming the numbers are accurate, was the likelihood that there would be this many people across the globe having common experiences that contained almost identical elements resulting in similar aftereffects. Also, what agenda would this field of research have, besides curiosity? Novelty maybe? Chivers does say, \u201cThe problem is that scientific journals want to publish scientific results that are interesting.\u201d (Chivers, 104) However, as interesting as NDE\u2019s are, this field has also been known to bring ridicule and dismissive attitudes from both the scientific community and religious world.<\/p>\n

Regardless of where we land with this fascinating subject, this book helps us maintain healthy suspicion overall, with not only numbers reported in various fields, but with all types of biased assertions made by academia, Fox, CNN, the Joe Rogan Show, the preacher on the radio, or our neighbor across the street.<\/p>\n

Research stats in general should be treated with a healthy amount of caution, which is what I believe this book communicates well when discerning data. Numbers and evidence can be cut, exaggerated, cherry picked, misread, or manipulated for intentional or unintentional reasons. Several cases in this book illustrate that when humans are involved there is bound to be agendas and fallibilities. There were times when I thought, \u201cGoodness, can you believe any studies or \u201cdata\u201d out there?\u201d I believe we can, but, like Chivers\u2019 implies, we should be aware of several factors and limitations before taking it all in hook, line, and sinker.<\/p>\n

Now, what do we do when data analysis, like that at University of Virginia, is<\/em> meeting quality standards, but is doing so in an unconventional field and has evidence that points in a direction that may challenge our assumptions? I think good researchers look for things that might prove their theories wrong. I have a great amount of respect for people who have said, \u201cThe evidence, or my understanding of it, led me to change my position on (fill in the blank).\u201d In fact, several of the initially skeptical researchers in near death studies have said just that.<\/p>\n

I believe this book is helpful in two major areas of analysis.\u00a0 It helps sharpen our critical thinking skills concerning data and stats, especially while we pursue information around our NPO’s. I need more survey’s! Secondly, it better helps us understand what quality research looks like. Which prompts us to pay closer attention to data, even in peculiar fields, that points to evidence that may just shake up our world. My hope is to remain open minded while maintaining high standards of research.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chivers, Tom, and David Chivers. How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them)<\/em>. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021.<\/p>\n

Holden, Janice Miner, Bruce Greyson, and Debbie James, eds. The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation<\/em>. Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger Publishers, 2009.<\/p>\n

Storm, Howard, and Howard Storm. My Descent into Death: A Second Chance at Life<\/em>. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Doubleday, 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twelve years ago, I drove to Ohio to interview a man who claimed he died and experienced \u201cthe other side\u201d. Months earlier I had finished his book, My Descent into Death that described his spiritual journey while in France with his wife and college students. Howard was an art professor at the University of Kentucky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":171,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2592,2489,2077,2606],"class_list":["post-30958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-chivers-dlgp02","tag-dlgp02","tag-how-to-read-numbers","tag-near-death","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30958"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30985,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30958\/revisions\/30985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}