ESP Marvels Documented by Rhine

In his book New Frontiers of the Mind: The Story of the Duke Experiments, Duke University professor Joseph Rhine discussed his search for people who would perform highly on tests of ESP. Rhine discusses tests that are mainly tests of clairvoyance, not telepathy. (The term ESP refers to both telepathy and clairvoyance.)  In a laboratory test of telepathy, one person will typically attempt to transmit a thought (or will look at some image), and another person will attempt to receive that thought or guess what image the other person saw. In a laboratory test of clairvoyance, one person will attempt to perceive something that cannot be seen with his senses at that time. 

Rhine and Hubert Pearce

The tests Rhine describes were done with Zener cards depicted below. Each card in the deck would have five possible symbols, the symbols depicted below. Each symbol would appear in the deck of cards the same number of times. 

 

In a test such as the one shown above, a subject would attempt to guess what was the symbol of a card at the top of the deck. The pack of cards would be like a deck of playing cards, in that all of the cards have an identical appearance on one side, but different symbols on the other side. By looking at the top of the deck, you could not see what was the symbol you would see when the card was turned the other way. 

On page 74 Rhine discusses tests he did with A. J. Linzmayer. We read that in card-guessing tests using Zener cards in which the chance of guessing the card symbol correctly is 1 in 5, Linzmayer guessed nine consecutive cards correctly. We read that he did the same feat the next day. The chance of getting such a result with nine consecutive guesses of these cards is 1 in 5 to the ninth power, or 1 in 1,953,125. 

On page 76 we read that instead of guessing about 60 cards correctly in a series of 300 card guesses (about the result expected by chance), Linzmayer guessed 119 cards correctly. The probability of a result that good can be calculated using a binomial probability calculator such as the Wolfram Alpha binomial probability calculator. Below are the inputs you can use. That calculator uses the confusing term "endpoint." It would be better if it used the clearer term "number of successes."

As the screen above indicates, the probability of getting a result as good as the result reported for Linzmayer is less than 1 in 10 to the 14th power, less than 1 in 100 trillion. 

On page 78 Rhine says that he tested Linzmayer and saw him guess correctly 15 consecutive times, using the Zener ESP test cards. The probability of getting this result by chance is 1 in 5 to the 15th power, or 1 in 30,517,578,125, about 1 in 30 billion. When continued for a total of 25 guesses, the result was 21 correct out of 25. The probability of getting a result that good by chance is about 1 in 100 billion.

On pages 94 to 95 of his book, Rhine discusses an experiment with Zener cards done with Hubert Pearce. Pearce correctly guessed 25 consecutive times the symbol of the top card of a deck of Zener cards that was cut each time. The probability of getting this result by chance is 1 in 5 to the 25th power, or 1 in 298,023,223,876,953,125. Rhine says it was the most phenomenal thing he ever witnessed. On page 104 Rhine says that George Zirkle duplicated Pearce's feat of making 25 consecutive correct guesses when being tested with Zener cards. 

On page 100 Rhine says that June Bailey averaged between 8 and 10 correct guesses on "thousands of trials" in which the expected chance result is only 5 correct guesses. On the same page we read that T. Coleman Cooper "was able to score reliably about 8 hits per 25 over thousands of trials."

In a set of 2000 guesses with Zener cards, the expected chance result is about 400 correct guesses. Getting 8 hits per 25 in a set of 2000 guesses would mean a number of successes of about 640. (8 out of 25 is .32, and 2000 multiplied by .32 is 640.)  To calculate the probability of getting the results discussed above for Bailey and Cooper, you can use the inputs below in the Wolfram Alpha binomial probability calculator:

The calculator tells us that the likelihood of getting the results reported for Bailey and Cooper is less than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

On the next page we read this about May Frances Turner: "Her averages through many thousands of trials were in the neighborhood of 9." The probability of getting such a result by chance would be much smaller than the tiny probability just mentioned. 

The account below appeared on page 90 of  the April 15, 1940 edition of Life magazine, which during its heyday was one of the three or four leading weekly magazines in the United States. We read of tests with Zener cards that have five possible symbols, on one side of the card. The chance probability of guessing one of the cards correctly is 1 in 5. 

On page 92 the same Life magazine article tells us of the remarkable success in a long-distance test carried out over a span of 250 miles. It is a test that can be considered either a test of clairvoyance or a test of telepathy:

The wording is ambiguous, leaving us in doubt whether the 16 out of 25 result was obtained on two consecutive days, or whether it was one result of 16 out of 25 spanning two days. I cleared up the ambiguity by searching in the writings of Joseph Rhine, to find his account. It occurs on page 60 of his book Extra-sensory Perception. We read this:

So the results on the first three tests were:

Test 1: 19 out of 25 correct

Test 2: 16 out of 25 correct

Test 3: 16 out of 25 correct

Rhine does not do a good job of explaining how unlikely this result is. But by using what is called a binomial probability calculator, we can estimate that. The first three tests add up to being 51 successes out of 75, in a test in which the expected chance result is about 15 (which is one fifth of 75). Using the Wolfram Alpha binomial probability calculator, we can calculate the chance of that level of success, by using the inputs below:

The probability of getting a result as good as this by chance is calculated above. It is roughly 1 in 10 to the 19th power or 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000.

The Life magazine article also discusses on page 95 tests of clairvoyance and ESP that Joseph Rhine did with the medium Eileen Garrett.  These were very unusual, in that the medium would go into a trance, and then start speaking as if she were another personality called Uvani. Often when this occurs with mediums, there is an impression of communication with some unearthly realm, such as an afterlife realm.  The original report of these tests appear at the beginning of this edition of the scientific journal Character and Personality, the December 1934 edition (Volume 3, Issue 2). On page 100 we read this report by Rhine:

"The experimentation with the Mrs. Garrett personality began on April 10 and lasted until April 28, approximately three weeks. During this period 14,425 tests or trials were given her in the normal state in clairvoyance and telepathy combined.

The work with the Uvani personality in clairvoyant and telepathic perception began on the 17th of April and lasted until the 25th. The amount of work per day, as well as the number of days, was limited by Uvani’s disinclination toward the experiments, which was in contrast to Mrs. Garrett’s willingness and patience. Only 1,575 trials were obtained with Uvani.

In all there were performed 16,000 trials at clairvoyant and telepathic perception. This number includes all the results, high scores and low. The most probable number of hits expected by chance for this number of trials would be 3,200 but the actual results were 4,018, or 818 hits above the chance mean. This gives an average per 25 of 6.3, and when evaluated for anti-chance significance, a value of X (i.e., deviation divided by probable error) equal to 24.0. This gives odds against the chance hypothesis of such a huge number—one with well over 50 digits—that it is beyond a moment’s question that chance is not the explanation."

Although he states very exactly the experiment's results, Rhine is not expressing very clearly how above chance these results are. But with a binomial probability calculator, a more clear idea of the improbability can be revealed. Using the Wolfram Alpha binomial probability calculator, the improbability can be calculated using the inputs shown below:

The tests involving guessing the symbol shown on a Zener card with 5 possible symbols. The tests were done with a deck of cards with an equal number of each of the five symbols. The probability of guessing correctly 4018 or more out of 16,000 cards is 1 in 7.7  times 10 to the 56th power. This is a probability of less than 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. We would never expect chance to produce such a result, even if you spent half of every person's life doing telepathy tests on them. 

The reported test result is one of the best test results ever achieved in a test of telepathy. I can recall only one better result: the result of the Riess test, reported here. 

Rhine's results were very convincing evidence for ESP.  I think he may have got results far more convincing if he had varied his procedural methods more. In the book we read of years using the same type of Zener cards, containing only abstract symbols with no particular emotional associations. There are endless other ways in which ESP could be tested. A method involving a more emotional component might be much more successful. For example, tests could be done with cards having emotionally powerful photos. A test of telepathy with such cards might produce much higher scores than tests using cards with abstract symbols. 

The 1925 New York Times article below (which you can read here) has the large headline "Balfour Says Telepathy Is Proved Fact." The Balfour referred to (Earl Balfour) was once a Prime Minister. 

To Understand Why Chance Cannot Engineer Things, Understand Improbability Explosions

 Every computer programmer is aware or should be aware of the concept of a combinatorial explosion. The term refers to a situation where the number of possibilities rises exponentially, resulting in so many possibilities that it is impossible to test them all. For a computer programmer, the problem with a combinatorial explosion is that it results in so many possibilities that you cannot test them all before releasing your software.

For example, imagine a screen like the one below. There are two checkboxes, and a single radio button, which can have one of three possible values. The total number of possible states the form can be in before it is submitted is a mere 12 states. So it is easy to make a comprehensive test of whether the form works under all possible conditions. A programmer can simply test all 12 of the states. 

But consider the web page below. It has very many inputs, including lots of dropdown controls, each of which allow the selection of many possible options. There is now a combinatorial explosion. There are so many possible ways the form can be configured before pressing the Submit button that no software developer can test all of them. By merely multiplying by about ten the number of inputs on the form, the number of possible configurations has increased exponentially, rising to trillions or more. 

The same idea is relevant to a chemist. Let's imagine a chemist is trying to determine the safety of various combinations of chemicals. Imagine that the combinations consist of three different chemicals from a larger set of chemicals. If the set of chemicals consists of only 20 chemicals, the number of possible combinations isn't very large. It is 1140. We can calculate that using the web page below (you can do a Google search for "combinations calculator" to find similar sites).

But imagine the set of chemicals is much larger. Suppose that there can be any combination of three chemicals from a set of 1000 chemicals. This results in a number of combinations equal to 166,167,000, as shown on the screen below.

This is an example of a combinatorial explosion. By merely increasing the size of the available chemicals set from 20 to 1000, we made the number of possible combinations increase by more than 100,000,000. The result is a set of possibilities too large to be tested.

Below is a visual I got when I asked the Google Gemini AI to produce an infographic explaining the concept of a combinatorial explosion. The end of the visual lists some "real world consequences" such as the need to use long (e.g. 14-character) passwords, the difficulty of calculating the shortest route between more than a dozen locations, and the difficulty of testing software when there are many possible inputs. The most important real-world consequence of combinatorial explosions (not mentioned in the diagram) is that no theory of accidental origins of very organized fine-tuned systems is credible whenever such systems require a special arrangement of very many parts. 

Rather similar to the concept of a combinatorial explosion (but not too similar) is what we may call an improbability explosion. We can use the term “improbability explosion” to refer to cases in which the improbability of something skyrockets exponentially and geometrically, because of a simple linear increase in the number of things that must happen for the event to occur.

I can illustrate the concept by imagining that you and four friends buy five contiguous seats in the seats beyond the outfield of Yankee stadium. What is the chance that you will be able to catch a home run that falls and hits where you are seated? A reasonable rough estimate is about 1 in 4814. There are only 13,000 seats beyond the outfield in Yankee stadium, and there are  about 2.7 home runs hit per game. 13,000 divided by 2.7 is 4814. 

But what is the chance that you and the person to your right will both catch separate home runs in the same game? To roughly calculate this, we multiply this 1 in 4814 probability by itself. This results in a probability of about 1 in 23,174,596.

Suppose that we try to calculate the likelihood that a line consisting of you and two or more of your friends (seated in a line) will all each catch a separate home run that lands where you are seated? The math looks something like this:

Chance that you will catch a home run: 1 in 4814.

Chance that you will catch a home run, and that your friend to your right will also catch a separate home run: 1 in 23,174,596.

Chance that you will catch a home run, and that your two friends seated to your right will also each catch a separate home run: 1 in  111,562,505,144.

Chance that you will catch a home run, and that your three friends to your right will also each catch a separate home run: 1 in 5.37 X 10^14.

Chance that you will catch a home run, and that your four friends to your right will also each catch a separate home run: 1 in 2.58 X 10¹⁸

We see here a good example of an improbability explosion. Even though it is isn't terribly improbable that any one of you five catch a home run, when we have the requirement that all five of you have to each catch a separate home run, the improbability rises geometrically and exponentially, finally resulting in an improbability that is essentially zero. The final probability of about 1 in 2.58 in 10¹⁸ is a probability of only slightly more than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. That is something so improbable that it would be unlikely to ever occur even if they keep playing baseball games for a billion years.

Here is another example of an improbability explosion. Imagine you go to a crowded party, and don't know anyone's name. You play a game in which you guess the name of each person before asking the name of the person. The probability of success on the first try is not terribly low – maybe about 1 in 200. But imagine you are trying to get an unbroken series of correct guesses. The probability of guessing the first two person's names correctly would be about 1 in 200 times 1 in 200, or 1 in 40,000. But the odds would increase geometrically and exponentially, like this:

Chance of guessing correctly first person's name: 1 in 200.

Chance of guessing correctly names of first two persons: 1 in 40,000.

Chance of guessing correctly names of first three persons: 1 in 8 million.

Chance of guessing correctly names of first four persons: 1 in 1,600,000,000.

Chance of guessing correctly names of first five persons: 1 in 320,000,000,000

Chance of guessing correctly names of first six persons: 1 in 6.4 x 10¹³.

Again, we have an improbability explosion. Very quickly, we get to a situation where there is no reasonable chance of success. This required only a simple linear increase in the number of unlikely successes required. 

Pretty much the biggest improbability explosion we can imagine would be the origin of life from nonliving chemicals. Such a possibility is called abiogenesis. Scientists frequently claim that abiogenesis occurred, even though they have zero scientific evidence for such a claim.  

Scientists have never been able to make a living thing under conditions simulating the early earth, and scientists have not been able to even make any of the building components of a living thing under experimental conditions realistically simulating the early earth.  The building components of visible organisms are cells, and the building components of a microorganism are proteins. Scientists have not been able to produce from scratch proteins or cells in experiments simulating the early earth. In fact, scientists haven't even been able to make appreciable amounts of any of the 20 building components (amino acids) of the building components of microorganisms under conditions realistically simulating the early earth.  

The famed Miller-Urey experiment that produced some amino acids used a mixture of gases (heavy in ammonia and methane) that is now widely regarded as not being the correct atmosphere of the early earth (as discussed here).  Such an experiment was never a realistic simulation of early Earth conditions, because it used a special glass apparatus unlike anything that would have existed billions of years ago, and because the experiment used continuous electrical bombardment for a week; and there is no reason to believe that any place on Earth ever received such a bombardment (lightning being something that only strikes any natural square meter no more than once or twice in a century).  Sequels to the Miller-Urey experiment using more realistic atmospheric mixtures (such as nitrogen and carbon dioxide) have never been realistic simulations of the early Earth, because they have depended on things such as 2-hour proton beam bombardments or strong electrical charges or artificial hydrochloric hydrolysis, things that do not correspond to what existed on the early Earth. 

To imagine the simplest living thing, we cannot imagine something like a virus. Viruses require living cells to reproduce, and biologists tell us that viruses did not exist until after living self-reproducing cells existed.  Nor can we imagine some mere self-reproducing molecule existing as a living thing before a cell exists. No such living self-reproducing molecule has ever been observed outside of the framework of cells, so the concept of such a thing is pure fantasy. Since it is a basic fact of biology that cells are the basis of all living things, we must imagine some kind of cell as the simplest living thing. 

A team of 9 scientists wrote a scientific paper entitled, “Essential genes of a minimal bacterium.” It analyzed a type of bacteria (Mycoplasma genitalium) that has “the smallest genome of any organism that can be grown in pure culture.” According to wikipedia's article, this bacteria has 525 genes consisting of 580,070 base pairs. The paper concluded that 382 of this bacteria's protein-coding genes (72 percent) are essential. So multiplying that 580,070 by 72 percent, we get a figure of about 418,000 base pairs in the genome that are essential functionality. This is all information that must be arranged in just the right way for the tiny microbe to be capable of self-reproduction. 

We can compare this complexity of the simplest self-reproducing organism to the complexity of a book.  A book of 250 pages has about 300 words per page, or about 1800 characters (or letters) per page. Such a book has about 450,000 characters. A single base pair in the genome can be compared to a letter or character in a book. So a rather good analogy for the simplest imaginable living thing is to compare it to a 250-page technical book, such as a 250-page book on how to build bridges or a 250-page book on how to construct computer programs using Java.  

What is the chance that such a thing could ever arise from a chance combination of chemicals? Such a probability is essentially zero. We have here an improbability explosion so big it can be called galaxy-sized. 

We do not get out of this jam by imagining that instead of having an inconceivably improbable arrangement of low-level chemicals, there might have been merely a combination of various functional proteins that happened to be floating about.  The functional proteins would not have existed prior to the origin of the first living thing. Before it folds into a three-dimensional shape, a protein typically consists of a sequence of hundreds of amino acids arranged in just the right way to achieve a functional end. If the existing genetic code is used, there are 20 possible amino acids that may be used in any position of this sequence. The average protein consists of about 375 amino acids arranged in just the right way to achieve a functional effect. Even assuming that merely half of such amino acids have to match the existing sequence of amino acids for the same protein functionality to be achieved, the probability of a protein appearing with similar functionality (based on chance combinations of amino acids) is therefore something like 1 in 20 to the 187th power, which is equal to about 1 in 10 to the 243rd power, or 1 in 10²⁴³.  That probability is essentially zero. 

You could summarize this situation by saying that the origin of each new protein molecule would require its own improbability explosion like the other improbability explosions I have discussed.  The origin of a self-reproducing cell from chemicals (requiring at least 300 different types of protein molecules) would require an improbability super-explosion consisting of at least 300 individual improbability explosions, each fantastically unlikely to occur. 

Calculations such as these actually vastly underestimate how big an improbability explosion would be required, because they assume an existing genetic code that limits the number of possible amino acids in a protein to only twenty.  But as a recent scientific article states,  "There are millions of possible types of amino acids that could be found on Earth or elsewhere in the universe, each with its own distinctive chemical properties....there are 10⁴⁸ ways of making sets of 20 amino acids." 

What this means is that we vastly overestimate the likelihood of the first living thing appearing by chance if we imagine an analogy such as a typing monkey producing the book of 450,000 characters by randomly striking keys on a keyboard. For a monkey at such a keyboard would always have his keystrokes restricted so that there would be something like a 1/30 chance of typing a valid character. Given all the possibilities for the genetic code (with 10⁴⁸ ways of making sets of 20 amino acids), a much better analogy is to imagine a monkey equipped with a pen and a 250-page book of blank empty pages. In this analogy, the monkey can make any type of mark, which may or may not be a valid character.  Similarly, chemicals randomly forming into amino acids (or base pairs representing amino acids) could make a vast number of combinations, with only the tiniest fraction corresponding to the twenty amino acids used in earthly proteins.  

The overall probability of a self-reproducing cell being accidentally produced would be incomparably smaller than the probability of a monkey at a keyboard producing a 250-page technical book all filled with relevant and coherent technical instructions. It would instead be more like the probability of a monkey equipped with a pen handwriting such a book, and producing the coherent 250-page technical book of useful instructions by making random scribbles on the blank pages. 

A scribble

How often would we expect such a result to be achieved by chance? Never in the history of the universe, even if there are 100 billion galaxies each containing billions of planets, and even if there were 13 billion years for such chance combinations. And similarly, if there were 100 billion galaxies each filled with 100 billion planets, and they were all populated with countless billions of monkeys scribbling on blank pages, we would not expect that any such monkey would ever produce even one full page with hundreds of words giving coherent technical instructions on how to do anything, even if there were 13 billion years for monkeys to engage in such scribbling. I haven't even discussed the issue of homochirality, an entirely separate requirement for abiogenesis, one that worsens the chance of it by very many additional orders of magnitude, probably making such a thing even trillions of quadrillions of quintillions of times less likely. 

And so abiogenesis (the imagined accidental origin of biological life from lifeless chemicals) must be described not merely as an improbability explosion, but the mother of all improbability explosions. 

Most people do not understand the simple mathematics involved in estimating the likelihood of accidents producing useful inventions. Part of the reason is that while students are tortured in high school with required mathematics courses such as algebra and trigonometry (involving calculations that almost no one ever uses), schools do a poor job of teaching simple mathematics that are useful in real life (such as financial mathematics), and simple mathematics that are useful in evaluating the credibility of claims such as claims of accidental biological origins.  Our intellectual ruling class does not want you to know the relevant mathematical principles, because if you understand them well, you would not believe the biology dogmas they want you to believe. 

In a previous post I stated one of those principles, what I called the first rule of accidental construction:

The first rule of accidental construction: the credibility of any claim that an impressively organized final result was accidentally achieved is inversely proportional to the number of parts that had to be well-arranged to achieve such a result, and the amount of organization needed to achieve such a result.

Additional consideration of the complexity of living things and the improbability of them arising from accidental combinations will lead the thorough thinker to some firm conclusions:

(1) There are combinatorial explosions and improbability explosions everywhere in the progression from one-celled life to multicellular organisms such as mammals. 

(2) The appearance of organisms as complex and highly organized as humans requires stratospheric heights of engineering and the most special arrangement of interdependent components, things that are utterly beyond the reach of blind chance. 

(3) Organisms such as humans require the most precise engineering all over the place, and such engineering is utterly beyond the reach of random unguided processes. 

In general, Darwinist professors ignore the mountainous improbability of parts fitting together to make complex innovations. Our Darwinist experts typically speak as if having the parts for something is about as good as  having that thing, ignoring the reality that the more complex something is, the more improbable that parts would accidentally fit together to make that thing, even if all the parts were present.  How often have we heard SETI enthusiasts speaking as if having "the building blocks of life" in space (by which they mean mere amino acids) was almost as good as having a living thing (which requires  a fantastically improbable special arrangement of such building components utterly beyond the reach of chance)? 

Roughly speaking, we can say that the improbability of a complex innovation appearing accidentally usually rises exponentially and geometrically as the number of parts needed for that innovation undergoes a simple linear increase, in most cases when a special arrangement of the parts is required. Similarly, the improbability of you throwing a handful of cards into the air and having them all form into a house of cards will rise exponentially and geometrically as the number of cards in your hand undergoes a simple linear increase.  Getting a two-card house of cards by accident isn't too hard, by having two cards lean together diagonally. But if all the humans in the world spent their whole lives throwing a deck of cards into the air, none of these random throws would ever produce a triangular 26-card three-level house of cards by accident. 

In his interesting book Cosmological Koans, which has some nice flourishes of literary style, the physicist Anthony Aquirre tells us about just how complex biological life is. He states the following on page 338:

"On the physical level, biological creatures are so much more complex in a functional way than current artifacts of our technology that there's almost no comparison. The most elaborate and sophisticated human-designed machines, while quite impressive, are utter child's play compared with the workings of a cell: a cell contains on the order of 100 trillion atoms, and probably billions of quite complex molecules working with amazing precision. The most complex engineered machines -- modern jet aircraft, for example -- have several million parts. Thus, perhaps all the jetliners in the world (without people in them, of course) could compete in functional complexity with a lowly bacterium."

What is the chance of you getting such wonders of engineering by unguided processes? Zero or negligible. 

Below we see one of the "molecular machines" that appear constantly in human bodies, by some means that we do not understand. It is an example of what is called a protein complex, a special team of different types of proteins, well-arranged to achieve some functional purpose. DNA and its genes do not specify the structure of protein complexes, but merely specify lower-level information such as which amino acids make up particular proteins.  More than 7000 types of useful protein complexes have been identified. The origin of protein complexes is an unsolved mystery of biology. As two scientists confessed in 2019, "A general theoretical framework to understand protein complex formation and usage is still lacking."  The problem is not one of merely explaining how proteins could bind together to become protein complexes.  The problem is explaining how protein molecules act so consistently and so rapidly to produce well-engineered protein complexes (often called "molecular machines") that are so useful and vitally necessary for organisms such as humans to exist, with there occurring so abundantly throughout the body a fine-tuned and purposeful organization of protein molecules into functional and beneficial teams of different types of proteins that we would expect chance to never (or only very, very rarely) produce.  

They Use the Word "Delirium" to Gaslight the Dying

Dying people often report seeing visions or apparitions.  But skeptics often try to sweep under the rug such experiences, by dismissing them as "delirium." 

Researching the topic of deathbed visions, Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson conducted research surveys of hospital workers. In a July 1977 paper published in Volume 71, Number 3 of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, they reported 178 cases of dying people who reported seeing an apparition of a dead person (Table 1). The number was much higher than the 68 who reported an apparition of a living person. The majority of these apparitions were described as having a purpose of being there to "take away" the dying person.  In the US there was a very high percentage of deathbed apparitions identified as a mother, father, spouse, sibling or offspring, while in India there was a relatively high percentage of apparitions identified as unidentified figures (Table 2). Roughly half of the people reporting such visions were characterized as having a consciousness of "clear," rather than "mildly impaired," "severely impaired" or "fluctuating" (Table 3). Registered users of www.archive.org can read the book describing this research, using the links here or here or here.  

We read the following on a page of the Psi Encylopedia describing deathbed visions:

"In 2017, Una MacConville carried out a study with Irish health care professionals. The carers reported that 45% of their patients spoke of visions of deceased relatives, often joyful experiences that bring a sense of peace and comfort."

 Some examples of deathbed visions can be found here and here and here.   A survey of family members of deceased Japanese found that 21% reported deathbed visions. A study of 103 subjects in India reports this: "Thirty of these dying persons displayed behavior consistent with deathbed visions-interacting or speaking with deceased relatives, mostly their dead parents." A study of 102 families in the Republic of Moldava found that "37 cases demonstrated classic features of deathbed visions--reports of seeing dead relatives or friends communicating to the dying person." 

A 1949 book states this: 

"It is a commonplace truth, observed by many physicians and clergymen, that a dying person, when conscious near the moment of death, acts or speaks as if he saw standing near loved ones who have already died. Dr. Russell Conwell told Bruce Barton in the interview quoted earlier in another connection, that he had witnessed this phenomenon 'literally hundreds of times.' "

The 2024 paper "Nurses' encounters with patients having end-of-life dreams and visions in an acute care setting – A cross-sectional survey study" reports this: "Fifty-seven nurses participated from a workforce of 169 (34% response rate), of whom 35 (61%) reported they had encountered end-of-life dreams and visions." We read this: 

"A meta-analysis of studies of estimates of patient reports indicated that 77% (95% confidence intervals [CI] 69%–84%) of people dying an ‘expected death’ may report an ELDV [end-of-life dream or vision]  (Hession et al., 2022). Across the world, studies provide consistent findings about ELDV." 

The survey gives us these interesting results for the 55 of 57 participants who answered "Yes" to one or more of the survey questions (I will round down the percentages). The percentages seem to refer to anything that the respondents either witnessed themselves or things the respondents observed other people reporting. 

• "Visions of dead relatives or religious figures ‘collecting’ or ‘taking away’ the dying person": 45%. 
• "Visions of dead relatives sitting on or near the patient's bed providing emotional warmth and comfort":  56%.
• "Patients reporting a sense of going back and forth from a different reality during the dying process": 32%
• "Coincidences, usually reported by friends and family of the person who is dying who say that the dying person has visited them at the time of death":  40%.
• "Dying dreams or visions through which the patient seems to be comforted and prepared for death": 38%
• "A comatose patient suddenly becomes alert enough to coherently say goodbye to loved ones at the bedside":  46%.

In the periodical here, the August 8, 1935 edition of the periodical Light, Constance Buttenshaw describes a deathbed vision of her dying mother:

"It was very clear that she saw two Beings standing at the foot of her bed. 'Who are those beautiful tall people at the foot of my bed? ' she asked, and from then she could hardly take her adoring and beseeching eyes away from them. She afterwards explained to us that they had come for her and were waiting to lead her Home. She was afraid, almost desperately at times, that they would go without her. She then began a most vivid description of what she saw. Her eyes left the confines of the room and seemed to be gazing beyond at the most stupendous scenes. She used words of beauty and description that she would not have used normally. In trying to describe colours she failed, saying: ' You have no words to describe the colours or beautiful sounds in your language.'  She saw beyond the Guardians at the bed a very lovely scene of river, valley, and mountain pass, through which she said she saw throngs of people passing. She said : ' I was here last year, I wonder if I ought to have stayed, don’t hold me back this time'  (see above) and, smiling to the Guardians, she said : ' I shall soon be ready, please don’t let them go without me.' ... All through these hours, from 3 p.m. to 11, she at no time had a distraught or strained look in her eyes nor any suspicion of senility....

There appeared to her to be, among many other things, people looking after and playing with many children in a beautiful garden full of flowers. Also, she several times mentioned a Being : ' It is not Alfred' (my husband), she said, ' but he is working out ideas, putting them into Alfred’s head and helping him to design things.'  And so on, hour after hour, using beautiful sentences, laughing at times at us and with us in the sweetest way, she crept nearer and nearer to the end (I prefer beginning), while we sat enthralled and oblivious of time.   She began to droop a little, quite pleasantly, just tired with all her wonderful marvels, but always saw vividly the waiting figures whom she from time to time unconsciously included by a look or word with us, so real they were to her. Her general anxiety was that her tenacious body would again prevent her spirit leaving. At last she sank back very gently. She appeared to be seeing and talking to my father, who had died some years before... Then she sank back smiling and passed on."

Many have heard about what are called veridical near-death experiences, which are cases in which someone seems to acquire knowledge during a near-death experience that he could not have got through normal sensory means. Many examples of such veridical near-death experiences are discussed here.  A lesser-known type of thing is what we may call a veridical deathbed vision. In such a vision a person may seem to learn of things he never discovered through normal sensory means. One example of a veridical deathbed vision is discussed in the 1921 newspaper account below, which you can read here. 

But there is a technique that materialists try to use to sweep under the rug such deathbed visions. The technique is to call them examples of delirium.  What is meant by the word "delirium"? It turns out that the word "delirium" is defined in a ridiculously broad way. It's a term meaning any change in mental state that comes on quickly. 

The Mayo Clinic page on the topic of delirium defines the term in a ridiculously broad way.  The page lists the following as symptoms of delirium:

"Anxiety, fear or distrust of others

Depression

A short temper or anger

A sense of feeling elated

Lack of interest and emotion

Quick changes in mood

Personality changes

Seeing things that others don't see

Being restless, anxious or combative

Calling out, moaning or making other sounds

Being quiet and withdrawn — especially in older adults

Slowed movement or being sluggish

Changes in sleep habits.

A switched night-day sleep-wake cycle"

A description of delirium so broad is just perfect for those who want to gaslight the dying by sweeping under the rug their reports  of  deathbed visions. You start out with a word "delirium" that suggests the idea of hallucinations to 90% of the people who hear the word. Then you stretch the definition so much so that it applies to almost anyone with the slightest deviation from perfect mental normality.  So then you can talk like this:

"Was your dying relative feeling a little anxious?  She was delirious. Was she feeling elated? She was delirious. Did she act a little restless in bed? She was delirious. Was there any change in her sleep habits? She was delirious. Did her mood change? She was delirious. Did she seem uninterested in what you were saying? She was delirious. Did she get a little angry some time? She was delirious."

Now, having defined "delirium" in so insanely broad a way, so that it applies to almost any slight deviation from perfect normality, the stage has been set for sweeping under the rug reports of deathbed visions.  The skeptic can then say that almost all dying people are delirious, so we shouldn't pay attention to anything they report.  Given that 90% of the people who hear the word "delirious" think of hallucinations, this technique may be effective.  But it is an appalling piece of word trickery and gaslighting. 

If you happen to be present at the deathbed of your relative, note carefully what they say, and do not tell them they are hallucinating or delirious, because you do not know such a thing. Tender affection is appropriate behavior to a dying relative, not gaslighting. 

Postscript: A web site today has an article on another type of deathbed phenomenon, one I discuss in my posts here.  The New York Times also has an article on this phenomenon.  We have an interesting quote by a major neuroscientist : 

"But in his 2024 book, 'Lucid Dying,'  Parnia firmly staked his position in the mind-body debate. 'We are at the cusp of the exploration of a new frontier in science,' he wrote, declaring himself 'quite optimistic that the nature of human consciousness — our very selfhood — will be discovered to be a flux of energy like electromagnetic waves that interacts with the brain and body but is not produced by them.' "

Science News BS Heat Map, July 16, 2026

                         

Recent Science News Article	BS Rating	Comment
"Is our intelligence rooted in how living organisms are organized?"		We have an interview in which one neuroscientist interviews another brain scholar who is promoting a book. The interview wanders all over the place, with no decent argument ever being formulated; and neither person sounds  like anyone who has a credible explanation of how human cognition arises. There's mention of a "constraint closure" explanation which sounds hopelessly inadequate as an explanation for the wonders of human minds.  The hierarchical organization of human bodies is one of the grandest marvels ever discovered, but it does not explain human minds or human memory. The author's book can be read online.  On page 10 she strangely states, "What makes organisms special, as I describe in chapter 10, is that the apparently invariant structures that constrain and enable these precarious flows of energy (processes) are also themselves reciprocally dependent on those flows of energy in turn."  There are 100 reasons why organisms such as you are special, many of which are a billion times deeper than that.
"The secret of human intelligence may lie in the power of a single brain cell"		We have the false claim that "researchers found that neurons in the human cortex are significantly more complex information-processing units ('microchips') than those of other mammals." Neurons are not anything like microchips. A scientist makes the false boast that his team discovered that "a single human neuron is itself an extraordinarily sophisticated computing device." The chain of reasoning used to try to justify this claim is a tortured mess. Brains are not computers, and (as discussed here) brains lack almost all of the characteristics of computers;  and individual neurons are not computing devices. See my post "11 Authorities Seem to Realize That 'Your Brain Is a Computer'  Is a Junk Metaphor."
"Dark matter's secret address revealed? Scientists say it may be hiding in fifth dimension."		Another "epicycle" to try and patch up the floundering theory of dark matter. When you have to imagine that something you fail to see is hiding in the fifth dimension, you are not in the realm of hard science.
"From friend to foe: How the brain updates feelings toward others"		We have a bad example of clickbait from the neuroscience magazine The Transmitter. In the article a neuroscientist makes the groundless boast "We found the neural mechanisms that underlie emotion toward others." The article quotes someone else saying, "“It’s truly unbelievable how much they did in this paper." A look at the paper being promoted shows exactly the type of schlock science work that predominates in today's experimental neuroscience research. The paper is behind a paywall but you can look at the Supplementary Information document, which shows the usual severe sins such as the use of way-too-small study group sizes such as only 5 rodents or only 9 rodents, and the use of the utterly unreliable technique of trying to judge "freezing behavior."  No neuroscientist has any credible tale to tell of how your feeling about something (such as your love or hate for someone or something)  could exist as a brain state.
"Detection of a four-carbon sugar in interstellar space"		The reported detection is not a very reliable one, for three reasons: (1) it is "bleeding edge" work using some new technology ("limitation has recently been overcome using ultrafast laser vaporization"); (2) the claimed detection is so far away (in the galactic center) that detection claims are relatively unreliable; (3) the reported amount is some tiniest trace amount that could easily be a false alarm.
"Scientists Say Gravity Has Been Holding Your Consciousness Together"		This is a bogus clickbait headline, provided by the Popular Mechanics site which so often publishes such headlines. As we know from astronauts living for many days in zero gravity, it is not true that gravity is necessary for either your consciousness or the continuation of your life (although the human race could not have arisen without gravity). Conversely, two of the other four fundamental forces of nature (electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force) are forces that you need for every hour of your bodily existence.
"Learning to identify new objects reshapes parts of the brain, research finds"		The press release from York University makes a false claim. Learning to identify new objects does not at all reshape any part of the brain. The research being promoted is a typical product from today's wasteland of cognitive neuroscience research: a study using a study group size of only 3 monkeys per study group (500% too small for any reliable result to be claimed).  The study has produced no evidence that any part of the brains of the monkeys it studied were reshaped in any substantial way.
"The 'Nuclear Nightmare' That Was Manufactured by the Media"		Yahoo.com has strangely offered this story today, under a label of "Science." The article is a nuclear power industry sales pitch, by a writer who writes like he never heard of the meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl which poisoned so many square miles. He tells the false tale that concerns about nuclear power plants were "manufactured by the media" without warrant. We have here another reminder that much of what you read labeled as "Science" is not science, but dubious or misleading corporate propaganda.
"Birds are not descended from dinosaurs — they are dinosaurs."		Silly Darwinist slop cluttering up Google News' science news page.
"Scientists Say They’ve Identified an Earth-Like Planet Right Next Door"		The term "Earth-like planet" should never be used unless some planet was discovered with life on it; and no such thing occurred in this case. The planet is twice the mass of Earth, and does not even revolve around a star like the sun. It instead revolves around a very different type of star called a red dwarf. Many think the chance of advanced life on planets revolving around red dwarf stars is slim.
"The hidden brain trait that makes some people fall for extremism"		There is no brain trait that makes some people fall for extremism. We have an interview with a neuroscientist and psychologist who fails to mention any such trait. He's promoting a book. The neuroscientist claims to have "run experiments with thousands of participants," but those were not experiments yielding brain data. We have no link to any papers or any mention of a paper, and the experiments are described as "neuropyschological games."  They were presumably just people playing online games, which don't tell us anything about brains, and which should never have been called "neuropsychological."

Below is an idea for a movie comedy, based on real-life bungling and lazy efforts in the world of science research and science literature, such as the efforts of slacker neuroscientists who keep using fumbling, lazy methods and sleazy shortcuts such as way-too-small study group sizes,  and who lazily fail to adequately study minds, anomalous mental phenomena,  brain physical shortfalls and medical case histories defying their dogmas.