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). 

We read the following on a page of the Psi Encylopedia:

"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. 

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. 

Biosphere Shouts From 100 Directions About Its Purposeful Agency, But Mainstream Stays Deaf to Such Clues

 When I read a previous article written by science writer Phillip Ball at Quanta Magazine, an article on DNA, I felt like writing a post in response that would be entitled "Pondering DNA, Phillip Ball Drops the Ball" (a reference to fumbling). Phillip Ball is a writer who has figured out that the long-told story about DNA and its genes simply isn't true. But he seems to have completely failed to realize the enormous implications of such a thing. 

As an explanation for how human bodies arise, "DNA as body blueprint" was always a childish myth, both because DNA has neither any body blueprint nor any cell blueprint, and also because blueprints have no power to build things (as explained below). 

Not long after DNA was discovered about the middle of the twentieth century, scientists and science writers began spreading a false idea about DNA: the idea that DNA contains a specification for building an organism such as a human.  There are various ways in which this false idea is stated, all equally false:

• Many described DNA or the genome as a blueprint for an organism.
• Many said DNA or the genome is a recipe for making an organism.
• Many said DNA or the genome is a program for building an organism, making an analogy to a computer program.
• Many claimed that DNA or genomes specify the anatomy of an organism. 
• Many claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) specify phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism), or that the genotype is a "map" of the phenotype. 
• Many claimed that phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) are "expressions" of genotypes (the DNA in organisms). 
• Many claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) "map"  phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) or "map to" phenotypes.
• Many claimed that DNA contains "all the instructions needed to make an organism."
• Many claimed that there is a "genetic architecture" for an organism's body or some fraction of that body. 
• Many claimed that DNA or its genes "guide," "direct" or "control" the nine-month process by which a zygote progresses to become a full-sized human baby. 
• Using a little equation,  many claimed that a "genotype plus the environment equals the phenotype," a formulation as false  as the preceding statements, since we know of nothing in the environment that would cause phenotypes to arise from genotypes that do not specify such phenotypes. 

All of these claims were false. DNA is no such thing as a blueprint, recipe or program for making an organism or any of its organs or any of its cells or any of the organelles that make up such cells.  At the post here I have a list of 40+ statements by 50+ experts (almost all scientists and doctors) who confess that DNA is no such thing as a program, blueprint or recipe for making an organism. 

Phillip Ball has realized that the long-told story about DNA and its genes simply is not true.  In the very mainstream publication The Guardian, Ball said this about the Human Genome Project that ended in 2003, noting the failure of science figures to clean up their old misstatements about DNA after they were debunked by the Human Genome Project:

"But a blizzard of misleading rhetoric surrounded the project, contributing to the widespread and sometimes dangerous misunderstandings about genes that now bedevils the genomic age. So far, there have been few attempts to set the record straight. Even now, the National Human Genome Research Institute calls the HGP an effort to read 'nature’s complete genetic blueprint for building a human being' – the 'book of instructions' that 'determine our particular traits'. A genome, says the institute, 'contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism'. But this deterministic 'instruction book' image is precisely the fallacy that genomics has overturned, and the information in the genome is demonstrably incomplete. Yet no one associated with genomic research seems bothered about correcting these false claims...Plenty remain happy to propagate the misleading idea that we are 'gene machines' and our DNA is our 'blueprint'."

So Ball has realized that the long-told "DNA as body blueprint" story is bunk. The subtitle of his article "Why the Human Genome’s Tangled Physicality May Confound AI" is "Our genetic heritage is not a blueprint or an algorithm, as many biologists have imagined, but something else entirely." Ball discusses some of the enormous complexity of the processes involving DNA.   But Ball has failed to realize the gigantic implications of the fact DNA and its genes don't tell how to make anything bigger than protein molecules.  The problem is that once you get rid of the old lie that DNA is a blueprint for building bodies, organs and cells, you have no mechanistic explanation for how bodies, organs and cells get built. That explanatory failure explodes the pretensions of today's biologists, showing that their boasts of understanding the origin of the human species are groundless legends.  The truth is that scientists understand neither the origin of the human species, nor the origin of any full human body, nor the origin of any human mind. 

Ball gives us a little new bunk to replace the old bunk, saying, "Our cells are, in effect, making complex decisions about how to use their genes — both the information they contain and the structure they assume."  Cells don't make decisions; people make decisions.  If a cell had understanding, it would have no understanding of anything beyond itself. So we can never explain how human bodies get constructed by some idea of cells making a decision. A stem cell would not have any idea of what type of cell to become and where in the body to go to in order to serve the grand final purpose of helping to construct a mobile perceiving organism with a cardiovascular system and a digestive system and arms and legs and a vision system. 

Ball fails to perceive what the main explanatory problem is regarding the origin of individual human bodies. That problem is what I call the missing specifications problem. The missing specifications problem is the problem that the arising of adult human bodies requires at least six extremely complex specifications that are nowhere to be found in the human body. 

DNA and its genes only specify low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up a particular protein. DNA and its genes do not specify how to make anything larger than a protein molecule. In fact, DNA and its genes fail to even fully specify how to make a folded protein molecule of any particular type. To be functional, protein molecules require complex special three-dimensional shapes. DNA and its genes do not specify how such shapes arise.  The problem of how the special three-dimensional shapes of proteins arise is the unsolved problem known as the protein folding problem (not to be confused with a different problem called the protein folding prediction problem, which deep learning software has made some progress on). 

3D shape of a folded protein molecule

The "sister problem" of the protein folding problem is the protein complex origination problem, the problem of how proteins form into complex special teams so well-engineered and fine-tuned they are often called "molecular machines." No substantial progress has been made on that problem, as some scientists confess in quotes at the end of this post. Below we see one such protein complex, consisting of hundreds of protein molecules teaming up to become a special functional component. 

The nuclear pore complex (credit: Protein Data Bank, link)

So how does there arise over nine months of pregnancy a full human body, consisting of so many layers of physical organization above the layer of mere protein molecules? How does a mere speck-sized zygote (existing just after impregnation) progress to become a state of organization a billion times more impressive, the full organization of a human body? Such an origination is a miracle of organization a hundred miles over the heads of today's scientists. Their failure to explain this problem (the problem of morphogenesis) is a failure that makes a mockery of all claims that they understand the origin of the human species. If you do not understand the origin of any individual human body, you do not understand the origin of the human species. 

Given the utter lack of anything in a speck-sized zygote or the surrounding mother's womb that can sufficiently explain the progression from such a speck-sized object to a full human body, and given the lack of any credible explanation for the more impressive phenomena of human minds and human memory (none of which are credibly explained by brains), reality compels the inference that every human being arises because of transcendent agency. Nature never told us or even suggested that the universe is self-explanatory; nature never told us or even suggested that biological life is self-explanatory; nature never told us or even suggested that human bodies are self-explanatory; and nature never told us or even suggested that bodies or brains explain human minds.  Nature never told us or even suggested that the laws of nature are even a hundredth of what is needed to produce a human being.  We must postulate a purposeful agency acting throughout the biosphere to produce the stupendous wonders of biology, which mechanistic science is light-years away from explaining. I sometimes have used the acronym GOAL for such a transcendent agency. GOAL stands for Global Organizing Activity of a Life-force. The pillars of such an inference are shown in the diagram below. For a long explanation of why the pillar clues compel the two inferences listed at top, read my post here. 

By "transcendent agency" I mean purposeful intelligent agency beyond anything currently understood by humans.  The nature of such agency is mysterious. 

In another Quanta magazine article, Phillip Ball considers the issue of biological agency. He fails to address the issue with much insight, but at least inadvertently documents how clue-blind today's biologists are on this topic. His subtitle immediately goes astray, referring to, "The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly." That is not a sensible definition of "biological agency."

We can give three sensible definitions of "biological agency":

(1) Organismic agency: the ability of organisms to act in ways that they will or decide to act, something that is the same as volition. There are endless mysteries of organismic agency, including the basic mystery of how any organism is able to choose a particular action (something not explained by anything we know about brains), and also endless mysteries of why organisms choose the particular path that they do (such as endless mysteries involving hard-to-explain instincts). 

(2) Component agency: the tendency (throughout the biosphere) for components in all layers of biology to act towards the achievement of purposeful goals (such as organization and homeostasis) that make possible the origination and continuation of biological organisms. 

(3) Morphogenetic agency: the agency driving the progression (over nine months) from a speck-sized zygote to a full human body. 

Today's scientists have no credible material and mechanistic explanation for any of these three types of agency. For example, no neuroscientist can explain why a human being may choose one type of life direction or one type of career rather than another. Such things can be explained by referring to minds and persons and personalities, but cannot be explained in terms of brains or neurons. 

In regard to component agency and morphogenetic agency, the explanation failures of biologists are gigantic and everywhere. Scientists lack any credible explanation of so simple a thing as how human cells are able to reproduce; they lack any credible explanation of the most basic mental processes such as thinking and memory; scientists lack any convincing explanation of how proteins are able to fold into the 3D shapes needed for their function; scientists are unable to explain how so many useful protein complexes (often called "molecular machines") are able to form; and since DNA is not a specification for making a human, or any organ, cell or organelle, scientists lack any credible explanation for the nine-month progression from a speck-sized zygote to an adult human. For a long discussion of some of these huge mysteries that physics, chemistry and biology have gigantically failed to solve, read my post "Problems a Hundred Miles Over Our Heads" here, and also read my posts here and here. 

No one can understand how badly scientists have failed to explain organismic agency unless he makes a deep study of topics such as brain physical shortfalls, a topic Ball never seems to have studied. No one can understand how vast is the explanatory gap involving component agency and morphogenetic agency unless he makes a thorough study of the endless stupendous marvels of purposeful construction that occur during human development and also every day in the human body. No one can be properly informed about the topic of biological agency if a writer discussing that topic is failing to discuss the marvels of organization occurring on so many different levels within the human body. But Ball makes little or no mention of such a reality. Guys like him almost always do a very bad job of explaining the vast levels of organization and dynamism within the bodies of organisms such as humans, just as they do a very bad job of explaining the extent of human mental powers and human mental capabilities. The reason is that the better such things are explained, the less likely you will be to believe in hand-waving vacuous sound bites such as Ball's claim that there are  "decision-making circuits in the brain." 

Below are some relevant quotations by scientists:

•   Scientists Walker and Davies state this in a scientific paper: "DNA is not a blueprint for an organism; no information is actively processed by DNA alone...DNA is a passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins."
• Geneticist Adam Rutherford states that "DNA is not a blueprint," a statement also made by biochemistry professor Keith Fox. 
• "The genome is not a blueprint," says Kevin Mitchell, a geneticist and neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, noting "it doesn't encode some specific outcome."
• "DNA cannot be seen as the 'blueprint' for life," says Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, who says, "It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times."  
• "The majority of cellular proteins function as subunits in larger protein complexes. However, very little is known about how protein complexes form in vivo." Duncan and Mata, "Widespread Cotranslational Formation of Protein Complexes," 2011.
• "A general theoretical framework to understand protein complex formation and usage is still lacking." -- Two scientists, 2019 (link). 
• "The problem of protein folding is one of the most important problems of molecular biology. A central problem (the so called Levinthal's paradox) is that the protein is first synthesized as a linear molecule that must reach its native conformation in a short time (on the order of seconds or less). The protein can only perform its functions in this (often single) conformation. The problem, however, is that the number of possible conformational states is exponentially large for a long protein molecule. Despite almost 30 years of attempts to resolve this paradox, a solution has not yet been found." -- Two scientists, "On a generalized Levinthal's paradox," 2018. 
• "How proteins fold remains a central unsolved problem in biology. While the idea of a folding code embedded in the amino acid sequence was introduced more than 6 decades ago, this code remains undefined. While we now have powerful predictive tools to predict the final native structure of proteins, we still lack a predictive framework for how [amino acid] sequences dictate folding pathways....Almost seven decades of experimental and theoretical inquiry have not revealed a 'folding code' at the amino acid level, i.e., rules endowed with the generality and predictive power required to connect amino acid sequence to how the protein attains its structure....Machine learning made it possible to identify weak correlations to generate the structure most likely to correspond to a sequence. This tour-de-force effort has largely solved the problem of predicting protein structure from sequence...but with a key limitation: the algorithm that predicts the structure is a complex black box of pattern recognition that casts little light on the process of folding and that tells us nothing about why only some sequences fold, or how physics and evolution are coupled." -- Five scientists in the year 2025 (link). 
• "The real challenge—that remains unanswered after more than 50 years of research in the structural biology field—is understanding the mechanisms that lead proteins to fold into their native state. The reason for these difficulties is that the central question of the protein folding problem remains unresolved: specifically, how a sequence of amino acids encodes its folding pathways." -- Scientist Jorge A. Vila, 2025 (link). 
• "Yet while these are several examples of well-understood processes, our study of animal morphogenesis is really in its infancy." -- David Bilder and Saori L. Haigo1, "Expanding the Morphogenetic Repertoire: Perspectives from the Drosophila Egg." 
• "Fundamentally, we have a poor understanding of how any internal organ forms." -- Timothy Saunders, developmental biologist (link).
• "An adult human body is made up of some 30 to 40 trillion cells, all of which stem from a single fertilized egg cell. The process by which the right cells appear to arrive in their right numbers at the right time at the right place -- development -- is only understood in the roughest of outlines." -- Five scientists (link). 
• "Our understanding of how our organs form is still in its infancy" -- A research project abstract written by scientists (link). 
• "Biochemistry cannot provide the spatial information needed to explain morphogenesis...Supracellular morphogenesis is mysterious...Nobody seems to understand the origin of biological and cellular order."  -- Six medical authorities (link).  "
• "Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how these individual actions coordinate over a macroscopic number of cells to grow complex structures with exquisite functionality is unknown." - Five scientists (link). 
• "However, our understanding of the molecular and physical basis of morphogenesis in plants or in any other eukaryotic system [e.g. mammals] is still in its infancy due to the complexity and non-linearity of processes involved in morphogenesis dynamics (or Morphodynamics)." -- A description of a 2017-2021 scientific project, presumably written by scientists (link). 
• "Understanding morphogenesis in vertebrate tissues in development and disease poses one of the most significant challenges in the life sciences. Despite the impressive technical advances aimed at cellular and subcellular characterization and manipulation over the past half century, a clear picture of how form is created still remains in its infancy." -- Four scientists in 2025 (link). 
• "We don't know what dark matter is, we don't understand how the brain works or consciousness, we don't understand morphogenesis, we don't understand the origin of life." -- Physics PhD Michael Nielsen (link). 

Many Scientists Are Making False Statements in Grant Applications Asking for NSF or NIH Money

In my very long post here, I extensively documented misstatements and lies in the literature of materialism. Very many of the untrue statements that I list in that post are statements by scientists themselves. Nowadays very many scientists make untrue statements in interviews, in the articles they write, and in the science papers they write. It is not at all true that almost all scientists are careful to be rigorously truthful when writing scientific papers. Nowadays scientific papers very often have titles boasting that the described research showed some grand thing that it failed to actually show. 

But what about the grant applications that scientists write, in which they ask the US government to give them money for some type of research? Are almost all scientists careful to avoid misstatements in such grant applications? It seems not. While examining the abstracts of only a very small number of research projects approved by the National Science Foundation or the National Institute of Health, I found many misstatements. Such misstatements are a particularly serious matter, because when they occur it is an offense as bad as lying on your income tax return. A person who lies on his income tax (asking for a refund) is someone asking that the government give him money that he should not have. A person who lies on a research grant application is typically someone asking for research dollars from the US government that the person should not be given. Even if a research project may deserve a certain small amount of money (say, $100,000), a scientist is guilty of a crime as bad as lying on his income tax if the scientist makes false claims in his grant application, causing his project to look more necessary or important than it is, and leading to that project getting a higher amount of research dollars. 

I can give some examples of false statements I read after examining the abstracts of only a very small number of research projects approved by the National Science Foundation or the National Institute of Health. I got these examples by reading abstracts after doing queries on the search tools of the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health, tools allowing you to look up particular research projects and how much money has been allocated to such projects. We can assume that the same false statements were made in any grant application made for the same projects. 

• The term "engram" refers to the theoretical idea of a specific location in the brain where a memory is stored. One research project claimed in its abstract that specific engrams had been located and activated. The claim has no basis in fact. Various studies have claimed to have located or activated engrams in rodents. But all of these studies are very low-quality studies guilty of poor research practices such as using way-too-small study group sizes and using unreliable techniques to try to judge whether fear recall occurred in rodents.  This research project received more than $200,000 in funding. Claims of "engram discovery" typically involve noise-mining in which someone looks for some place of higher neural firing when a rodent is learning or recalling. Because neurons fire randomly between about 1 and 200 times a second, some little places of higher neural firing can always be found, regardless of whether engrams exist or not. 
• Another study awarded much less money made the incorrect claim that engram cells in the brain can be tagged, and that fear memories can be artificially activated in some situation in which an organism has no source of fear. The claim is incorrect, and stems from claims made in poorly-designed junk science studies using way-too-small study group sizes. 
• One project awarded more than  $100,000 claimed in its abstract that the accelerating expansion of the universe is evidence for the multiverse, the idea that there are many universes. The expansion of our universe does nothing to suggest that there are other universes. 
• Awarded more than $200,000 in federal funding, another research project claimed in its abstract that memories had been transferred from one animal to another. The claim has no basis in fact. A study claimed to have transferred memory from one sea slug to another. But the study used a study group size so small and memory recall techniques so unreliable that it cannot be taken seriously as evidence for such a claim. 
• Awarded more than $1,000,000 in federal funding, another research project claimed that a particular small fraction of the brain encodes rewarding memories.  There is no adequate basis for any claim that any part of the brain encodes memories, and scientists lack any credible theory of how experiences or learned knowledge could be converted into brain states in some act that could be called an encoding of memory. Very much human brain tissue has been examined by very powerful microscopes, but microscopic examination of human brain tissue has never discovered any trace of anything humans learned. 
• Awarded about $1,000,000 in federal funding, another research project claimed that learning produces changes in extremely tiny  features in the brain called dendritic spines.  There is no robust evidence that this claim is true. Dendritic spines are short-lived  unstable things subject to rapid turnover, things too unstable to be a storage site of memories that can last for decades. You  can study some dendritic spines and watch them change over a period of time when some organism is learning something. But there is no reason for thinking that the learning did anything to produce the changes in the dendritic spines you observed. Similarly, you can track  changes in the flowers of your garden as you take a college course; but there is no reason for thinking your learning did anything to produce such flower changes.  
• One research project awarded a million dollars contained two terrible misstatements in the first two sentences of its abstract. One of these used the old deceit of defining morphogenesis as a mere problem of how the shape of an organism arises. Morphogenesis is properly defined as the process by which an organism develops from a speck-sized zygote to the full organization of a newborn or adult body, something that is a billion times more complex and more hard-to-explain than a mere origination of a shape. In its second sentence the research abstract repeated the Great DNA Myth, the lie that there is in DNA or  it genes a genomic program determining morphogenesis. As discussed here, DNA does not specify the full shape or form or structure of any organism, nor does it specify how to make any organ of an organism or any cell of an organism. 
• Another research project awarded about a million dollars was guilty of the same two deceptions described above. 
• Another research project awarded about a million dollars told us the huge lie that developmental biology has been hugely successful in reducing the seeming miraculous self-organization of a fertilized egg to a fetus and adult to a list of genes and the instructions for their regulation in the noncoding genome.  Nothing of the sort has occurred.  DNA and its genes do not specify any of these things: how to make a full human body, how to make any organ system, how to make any organ, how to make any cell, how to make any of the organelles that make up a cell.
• One research project awarded a large sum of federal money was all based on the claim that a certain subject had a type of memory failure that the subject did not actually have. 
• Another research project application abstract made the false claim that "sharp-wave ripples" are crucial for memory consolidation. The claim is an "old wives' tale" of neuroscientists, having no basis in sound science. As discussed here, studies trying to support the claim are typically very low-quality science studies using way-too-small study group sizes. 
• Another research project application abstract made the false claim that a particular lab had identified molecular mechanisms of memory consolidation. No molecular mechanisms of memory consolidation have ever been discovered, and any claims to have done that will not hold up to scrutiny. An example of a very low-quality paper claiming a relevant experimental result is the paper here. The only study group sizes used are way-too-small study group sizes such as only 4 or 5 rodents. 

What is going on in such grant applications is some lying and a great deal of recitation of dubious dogma, and repetition of groundless socially constructed triumphal legends of biologists, who exist in cloistered belief communities in which many "old wives' tales" are repeated, and many faulty speech customs are followed. 

There are various things that could be done to reduce the amount of money given to lying or misleading applicants. They include the following:

(1) None of the project abstracts I examined had any references to previously published science papers. A standard could be established that all abstracts for research proposals should have citations backing up any claims made that are not universally recognized. This would make it easier to check whether there exists a sound basis for some claim made to try to show that the suggested research is important. 

(2) Instead of granting very large awards such as $1,000,000 covering all funding for a multi-year project, funding could be provided on a yearly basis, with additional funding for that project based on an examination of whether the project was producing high-quality reproducible research following best practices. 

(3) Research grants could be denied for projects that did not supply a detailed research plan specifying the exact number of subjects to be used, the exact method of gathering and analyzing data, and so forth. This would help exclude cases in which huge amounts of money is awarded to Researcher X even though Researcher X has only a hazy or half-baked notion of how he will spend the money. 

(4) All research proposals (funded or not-yet-funded) should be viewable under some public interface allowing knowledgeable scholars to submit comments disputing the accuracy of statements in research proposals or comments criticizing the proposed methods or reported methods. 

(5) A system could be put in place where any individual can submit a "claw-back request" complaining that statements in the research proposal are inaccurate, or that the money spent did not result in credible high-quality research. Upon reviewing such "claw-back requests" US government officials might request some university or college granted a certain amount of project funding to repay that funding back to the US government. 

Postscript: A professor of neuroscience recently boasted that experimental science "has a powerful, century-old tool kit for limiting false inferences," one that includes "preregistered analyses." But the professor confesses that "preregistration remains rare in neuroscience." Oops, it looks like our neuroscientists are not doing what they need to do to avoid false inferences. 

• "False report probability is likely to exceed 50% for the whole literature. In light of our findings, the recently reported low replication success in psychology is realistic, and worse performance may be expected for cognitive neuroscience." --Denes Szucs and John P. A. Ioannidis, "Empirical assessment of published effect sizes and power in the recent cognitive neuroscience and psychology literature" (link). 
• "Cognitive neuroscience is far from relying on firm methodological grounds."  -- Stefan Frisch,  "The Tangled Knots of Neuroscientific Experimentation" (link). 
• "As Mark Twain is reported to have said: 'It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't true.' In contemporary neuroscience, the list of assumptions that just ain't true is long indeed, so patience is required as I expose each in turn." -- Henry Vin, neuroscientist and psychologist, "The Crisis in Neuroscience" (link). 
• "Exaggerated claims and low levels of reproducibility are commonplace in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, due to an incentive structure that demands 'newsworthy' results."  -- psychologist Richard Ramsey (link).