I don't view the "electrode stimulation and see what happens and then believe it's probably the same as patients experiences" as something scientific.
Given that we don't exactly know how the brain works, what if out of body experiences are real and the scientific explanation just tries to fit it in the general accepted world view as a brain bug just because it's too strange?
Nobody's disputing that OOB experiences are “real”. What's at issue is the mechanism(s) by which they occur. The hypothesis in the article is that it's a psychological effect that can be exacerbated by brain injury. And the evidence outlined, such as experiments that can reliably produce equivalent effects, and similar brain lesions accompanying the most extreme examples provides some, although not overwhelming, evidence for the hypothesis.
If you're suggesting that people's perceptions and consciousness are actually physically separating from their body, well then that's just another hypothesis. One that needs supporting evidence and a proposed mechanism before it can be taken seriously. That is how science works. Simply saying “this phenomenon is strange” doesn't change anything. It doesn't make it immune to scientific inquiry, and it doesn't lower the standard of proof required of explanations. Science has successfully explained many phenomenon far weirder than OOB experiences.
>> One that needs supporting evidence and a proposed mechanism before it can be taken seriously.
IMHO it only needs supporting evidence - good solid evidence. A proposed mechanism is nice but is it really necessary? Do they really know how aspirin works? If so, did they prior to widespread use? Does anyone have a mechanism for quantum physics? Did Kepler have a mechanism for planetary motion?
I think a lot of science is actually people looking for the mechanism to explain accepted phenomena.
That's a good question to ask, but AFAIK the answer is 'we tried that and so far have been unable to exploit it.'
If OBE's involved some unsuspected extension of physical reality, then when someone is outside their own body, it should be possible to learn things that would not be knowable otherwise, eg to report an item placed under a bed, out of view of the experimental subject lying in the bed. I don't know if that's been tried, but there was extensive research into psychic phenomena in the 1970s that failed to yield any useful results. If you could gather hidden information during an induced out-of-body-experience that would be massive scientific breakthrough, and such an experiment would be trivially easy to design, so why hasn't it happened?
I am sympathetic to the idea because I've had chemically-induced experiences, including during surgery, that seemed extremely real, as well as certain experiences with precognition that I am unable to explain (ie trying to apply the most rigorous observational standards to an unfalsifiable situation; I am honestly unable to explain the phenomenon but I can't exclude the possibility of an episodic delusion, so scientifically it's almost worthless).
Well, it would be pretty simple to test if they have access to information "out of body" that they didn't before. Put them in the scanner or whatever, put out a card with a freshly-invented message, see if they remember it when they come out.
My understanding is that OOB experiences where the person gets access to information that could not conceivably be related by their physical bodily senses are quite common. There seems to be a sort of "barrier" for many people who will absolutely refuse to believe evidence of this sort.
It is really hard to "do science" to a phenomenon which seems to be willing to accommodate the faith of the tester. People who won't see it don't but if you are at all open to it it's easy to reproduce. YMMV
(BTW, if you see your body in bed don't jump out the window, jump into your body.)
> People who won't see it don't but if you are at all open to it it's easy to reproduce.
So, have someone who is "open" to it go and view something that they haven't otherwise had a chance to perceive in person, then when they wake up tell the experimenter what it was. If it's easy to reproduce, then they should be able to do that, and it should be easy to verify that they had an out of the body experience.
Instead, you just get anecdotes, of people repeating past experiences with no controls to blind it. Human memory is surprisingly faulty, people can fill in details later on in their memory, and so on. So it's very easy to think that you had a dream in which you saw something for the first time, and then later recognize it while you're awake; but it's also possible that you brain just filled in the memory when you saw it later. Or maybe you had seen it in the past but didn't have conscious recollection. And so on.
Simply hearing people say that they had OOB experiences in which they saw things that they never saw in person is not particularly credible.
It's pointless to argue, but here's another anecdote for the files...
One day, out of the blue, I had a vivid daydream. James Brown lay dead on the floor and three Gospel singers were wailing over him in the old way, mourning and crying out. That was December 24th, 2006, and I can be so certain because the next day was the day James Brown died.
It so happens that I am a huge James Brown fan. It would have been very hard for me to deal with his passing but some grace granted me a tiny kindness and eased my sorrow.
Now, these are incontrovertible facts, however subjective, and admitting such doesn't mean we must now believe in astrology or anything like that. But how could you expect to reproduce something like this in a lab? Nevertheless an attitude that dismisses such extremely common incidents seems to me to be unscientific.
Given that we don't exactly know how the brain works, what if out of body experiences are real and the scientific explanation just tries to fit it in the general accepted world view as a brain bug just because it's too strange?