Fringe-ology (36 page)

A. Zeilinger et al., “Quantum Interference Experiments with Large Molecules,”
American Journal of Physics
71, no. 4 (2003): 319–25.

Blake Wilson, “Stray Questions for David Eagleman,”
Paper Cuts
,
New York Times
blog, July 10, 2009, accessed October 26, 2010, http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/stray-questions-for-david-eagleman/

Hal Arkowitz, “Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts,”
Scientific American
(January 2010), accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-the-eyes-have-it

The following sources provide a good overview of some of the more contentious, even strident claims of the New Atheists, including Dawkins's support of the idea that atheists be dubbed “brights.” This list, however, is not even close to comprehensive. The Eagleman lecture is provided for contrast.

Richard Dawkins,
Atheism and Faith,
http://videosift.com/video/Richard-Dawkins-Atheism-and-Faith and http://wn.com/I%27m_an_atheist,_BUT____by_Richard_Dawkins_1_of_6

“Richard Holloway in Conversation with Richard Dawkins” accessed October 26, 2010 (April 2008) http://www.stcuthbertscolinton.org.uk/wordweb/conversation.htm

David Eagleman, “On Uncertainty,” accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.vimeo.com/12543623

Richard Dawkins, “The Future Looks Bright,”
Guardian
, June 21, 2003, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/jun/21/society.richarddawkins.
Author's note:
The New Atheists do not all agree with Dawkins's endorsement of the “brights” idea. Christopher Hitchens has taken very public exception to it.

Christopher Hitchens,
Letters to a Young Contrarian
(Basic Books, 2001): 55.

Sam Harris, “Is Religion Built Upon Lies?” online dialogue between Harris and Andrew Sullivan, accessed October 21, 2010, http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Secular-Philosophies/Is-Religion-Built-Upon-Lies.aspx?p=3

Author's note:
These books provide a firm grounding in attempts to integrate science and spirituality.

Jean Gebser,
The Ever-Present Origin
(Ohio State Univ. Press, 1986).

Ken Wilber,
Up from Eden
(Quest Books, 1996).

Ken Wilber,
A Brief History of Everything
(Shambhala, 2001).

CHAPTER 1: ON DEATH AND NOT DYING

Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,”
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition
(Scribner, 1998), 288–91.

Nick Cave, “
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!”
CD (Mute, 2009).

Fern Welch, Interview, March 2009.

Christopher Reed, “Psychiatrist Who Identified Five Stages of Dying—Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance,”
Guardian
, August 31, 2004.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,
On Death and Dying
(Scribner Classics, 1997), 35–36 (story of her beginning work in death studies at Chicago hospital), 172–74 (story of farmer).

Russell Friedman, “Broken Hearts,”
Psychology Today
(September 21, 2009), accessed October 21, 2010, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/broken-hearts/200909/no-stages-grief

“The Myth of the Stages of Dying, Death, and Grief,”
Skeptic
14, no. 2 (2008), accessed October 26, 2010, grief.net/Myth%20of%20Stages.pdf

Author's note:
It may appear a contradiction that her five stages are often critiqued, yet
ODAD
remains required reading. In the end, academics now take a less dogmatic view of Kübler-Ross's stages—seeing them less as gospel and more as a rough guide. But for a primer on just what's happening inside one of those darkened hospital rooms, she remains tough to beat.

Raymond Moody,
Life after Life
(HarperOne, 2001).

Author's note:
The cadre of people gathered around Kübler-Ross's memory act, in metaphorical terms, not altogether unlike soldiers manning a barricade. The people I interviewed for this story, particularly Dianne Gray, all say they encounter a wide variety of people who see Kübler-Ross in diametrically opposed ways—both positive and negative. That Kübler-Ross herself felt personally wounded by the criticism of her that mounted over the years is not surprising; that the people who knew her best are still dealing with and responding to that criticism seems something else entirely and speaks to our desire to build up or tear down people depending mostly on whether or not they seem to symbolize our own worldviews.

Holcomb B. Noble, “Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, 78, Dies; Psychiatrist Revolutionized Care of the Terminally Ill,”
New York Times
, August 26, 2004.

Ken Ross, Interviews, March, April, June, and August 2009.

The following nine articles provide a strong overview of the role cognitive dissonance plays in the way we develop and defend our worldviews.

Vincent van Veen, “Neural Activity Predicts Attitude Change in Cognitive Dissonance,”
Nature Neuroscience
12, no. 11 (2009): 1469–74.

C. S. Carter, “Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Conflict Detection: An Update of Theory and Data,”
Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience
7, no. 4 (2007): 367–79.

V. van Veen, “Conflict and Cognitive Control in the Brain,”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
15, no. 5 (2006): 237–40.

Joshua Gowin, “Why It's Hard to Stop Believing in Santa Claus,”
Psychology Today
, (November 17, 2009), accessed October 26, 2010. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/you-illuminated/200911/why-it-s-hard-stop-believing-in-santa-claus

Daniel Levine, “Cognitive Dissonance, Halo Effects, and the Self-Esteem Trap,”
Psychline
2, no. 3 (1998): 25–26.

Daniel Levine, “Negotiating Cognitive Dissonance,”
Explorations in Common Sense and Common Nonsense
, 123–50, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.uta.edu/psychology/faculty/levine/EBOOK/

Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson,
Mistakes Were Made, but Not by Me
(Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

J. A. Bargh et al., “The Unbearable Automaticity of Being,”
American Psychologist
54, (1999): 462–79.

Rose Winters, Interviews, January, February, March, and May 2009.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,
The Wheel of Life
(Touchstone, 1997): 22–25 (parents, early childhood), 35–36 (early inclination to act as protector of those weaker than herself), 41–42 (early history with religion), 47–48 (conflict with father over career), 110 (discriminated against for gender), 114–17 (Manhattan State Hospital), 129–34 (her first lecture on death and dying), 176–78 (Mrs. Schwartz), 188 (claims to interview 20,000 people), 201–8 (history with Barham, whom she refers to as “B”).
Author's note
: Like
ODAD
, this book is referenced often. Required reading for anyone interested in Kübler-Ross.

Mwalimu Imara, Interviews, October, November 2009, January, February 2010.
Author's note:
Imara's name when he first worked with Kübler-Ross was Renford Gaines. He subsequently changed his name to reflect his African heritage. For clarity's sake, I refer to him by his current name throughout this book.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,
The Tunnel and the Light
(Marlowe, 1999): 86–87.

Loudon Wainright, “A Profound Lesson for the Living,”
Life
, November 21, 1969: 36–43.

Author's note:
One of the great, confusing aspects of Kübler-Ross's career arises from her flair for exaggeration. She found skeptics such a drag that she sought to quell their objections by claiming to study twenty thousand people who had died and come back. The math alone suggests these figures were impossible. If she had, for instance, run across one person a day, every day of the week, with an NDE story, it would have taken her fifty-five years to reach twenty thousand. Imara puts this down to “Elisabeth's way of saying she had accumulated plenty of evidence. This wasn't a handful of stories.” His claim is that he and Kübler-Ross filled two deep filing cabinet drawers with such stories. In short, Kübler-Ross accumulated enough stories to qualify as “plenty,” but far less than twenty thousand.

For the 20,000 reference, see Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, “Living and Dying,”
On Life After Death,
(1991), chapter 2.

American Heart Association, “History of CPR,” accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3012990

G. R. S. Mead,
The Vision of Aridaeus
(Kessinger, 2010): 17–25.

Thomas De Quincey,
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
: 70, accessed October 21, 2010, www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/tdquincey/Opium-Eater.pdf

Carol Zaleski,
The Life of the World to Come
(Oxford Univ. Press, 1996): 70.

Pim van Lommel, “Near Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands,”
Lancet
358 (2001): 2039–42.

Sam Parnia et al., “A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of The Incidence, Features and Aetiology of Near Death Experiences in Cardiac Arrest Survivors,”
Resuscitation
48, no. 2 (February 2001): 149–56.

Bruce Greyson, “Incidence and Correlates of Near-Death Experiences in a Cardiac Care Unit,” General Hospital Psychiatry 25, no. 4, (July–August 2003): 269–76.

Jeffrey Long,
Evidence of the Afterlife
(HarperOne, 2010): 5–19.

Alex Tsakiris, “Christian Theologian Claims Near Death Experience Not Communications with Divine,”
Skeptiko
, July 7, 2010, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.skeptiko.com/christian-theologian-claims-near-death-experience-not-devine/

Russel Noyes Jr., “Aftereffects of Pleasurable Western Adult Near Death Experiences,”
Handbook of Near Death Experiences
(Praeger, 2009): 41–62.

Diane Corcoran, Interview, October 2009.

Glen Brimer, Interview, October 2009.

Mary Roach,
Spook
(Norton, 2006).

Alex Tsakiris, “Dr. Jeffrey Long Takes on Critics of
Evidence of the Afterlife
”,
Skeptiko,
accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.skeptiko.com/jeffrey_long_takes_on_critics_of_evidence_of_the_afterlife/#more–649

Sam Parnia, Interview, January 2010.

D. Luke, “Lecture report: Inducing Near-Death States Through the Use of Chemicals—Dr. Ornella Corazza,”
Paranormal Review
43 (2007): 28–29.

Peter Fenwick, “Science and Spirituality: A Challenge for the 21st Century,” talk delivered at the Bruce Greyson Lecture from the International Association for Near-Death Studies 2004 Annual Conference, accessed October 26, 2010, www.larslanke.nl/download/Science%20and%20Spirituality.pdf

Christopher C. French, “Near-Death Experiences in Cardiac Arrest Survivors,” S. Laureys, ed.,
Progress in Brain Research
150 (2005): 356–57.

Karl Jansen,
Ketamine: Dreams and Realities
(Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2004): 134–35, 137–164.

B. B. Collier, “Ketamine and the Conscious Mind,”
Anaesthesia
27 (1972): 120–34.

A. Bianchi, “Comments on ‘The Ketamine Model of the Near-Death Experience: A Central Role for the N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor,' ”
Journal of Near-Death Studies
16, no. 1 (1997): 71–78.

D. K. Kim, “Ketamine Associated Psychedelic Effects and Dependence,”
Singapore Medical Journal
44, no. 1 (2003): 31–34.

R. E. Johnstone, “A Ketamine Trip,”
Anesthesiology
39 (1973): 460–61.

Rick Strassman, “Endogenous Ketamine-Like Compounds and the NDE,”
Journal of Near-Death Studies
16 (1997): 27–42.

Gerald Woerlee,
The Unholy Legacy of Abraham
(booklocker.com, 2008): 136–138, 282–289. Accessed October 26, 2010, www.unholylegacy.woerlee.org/images/unholy-legacy.pdf

Susan Blackmore,
Dying to Live
, ebook (Prometheus Books, 1993): Loc. 87–89, 616–57, 736–38, 1217–20, 1309–57, 2536–80.

Susan Blackmore, “Experiences of Anoxia: Do Reflex Anoxic Seizures Resemble NDEs?”
Journal of Near-Death Studies
17 (1998): 111–120.

Bruce Greyson et al., “Explanatory Models for Near Death Experiences,”
Handbook of Near Death Experiences
(Praeger, 2009): 219–20.

Sam Parnia,
What Happens When We Die?
(Hay House, 2006): 21.
Author's note
: I interviewed Parnia in February 2009.

Alex Tsakiris, “EEG Expert Can't Explain Near Death Experience Data,” accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.skeptiko.com/eeg-expert-on-near-death-experience/

Janice Miner Holden, “Veridical Perceptions in Near-Death Experiences,” and “Explanatory Models for Near Death Experiences,”
Handbook of Near Death Experiences
(Praeger, 2009): 193–203, 30–231.
Author's note:
In this latter reference, Sabom constructed a particularly interesting experiment, in which experienced cardiac arrest patients were asked to describe their resuscitations and failed, inexperienced subjects who underwent NDEs proved accurate.

A quick quote from French:

“Challenges facing those proposing purely organic theories include not only producing direct evidence in support of their accounts, but also satisfactorily accounting for those NDEs that are known to occur in the complete absence of physical threat, such as those that occur when individuals are not actually close to death but only think they are.”

Further, for a strong skeptical take, I highly recommend: Keith Augistine, “Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences” (2003/Updated 2008) accessed October 21, 2010, at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html