Pam Reynolds: A Pre-emptive Takedown of NDE Skeptics

Question from Kamil:

Hey LX! Question about the famous Pam Reynolds NDE. On the awareofaware website, I found comments on the Pam Reynolds case where a few people who researched it called the science explanation BS because the skeptics lied. Here is a response from a guy who researched the case and found problems with Keith Augustine’s explanation:

“It’s a little bit irritating to read statements like that about the Pam Reynolds case! Meticulous researchers Smit and Rivas and myself (I’m not a researcher) studied this case in minute detail).

Her first veridical perception occurred when she was under burst suppression, a pattern of mostly flat brainwaves in which consciousness is categorically not possible. We have the clear statements from the surgeons who conducted the operation on this matter.

I doubt if you have any real conception of the brutality of the operation that Pam was subjected to. That’s not your fault of course; mischievous pseudo sceptics have been quite successful in spreading misinformation and downright lies about the case because they don’t like the obvious implications.

When surgeons are removing your eye socket (bone flap) to get into an area inside the skull so they can get down to the base of the brain in an area called the circle of Willis (apparently) they don’t want anyone to wake up… believe it or not. That is why they place you in the deepest anaesthetic state possible without killing the patient…burst suppression. Her EEG was monitored all the way through the operation and no brainwaves were detected at that time so it is impossible that she woke up.

However, even if she had been wide awake (as the sceptics prefer she still had
100 decibel clicking nodules (11 clicks per second) securely fixed in her ears which is comparable to hearing the sound of a pneumatic jack hammer several feet away. Pam would have heard these incredibly loud sounds in her ears if she had been awake but she never mentioned them.

Her second set of veridical observations occurred when she was not only without brainwaves, but her heart had stopped when they were starting the process of rewarming her on circulatory by pass. That occurred at 27 degrees C (I discovered that fact) a temperature at which consciousness is not possible. She was dead. And she still had the loud clicking nodules hammering away in her ear canals.

It was previously thought that this veridical observation occurred at 32 degrees C. Keith Augustine has it at 32 degrees C and refuses to change it. However even Gerry Woerlee had to admit that I was right.

So, the Pam Reynolds case is indeed absolutely solid (as it always was) but because there is no law to prevent people telling lies and spreading misinformation online, the popular misconceptions continue to this day.”

My question is, do you think it’s true that skeptics just lie, or hide the truth? Many people who believe in OBEs and NDEs say this. 

Also if it were true that we could not explain Pam Reynold’s case, would you then believe it was really her soul, or would you say we just cannot explain it? I am just really confused on what to believe. I have even heard of people who spoke with the doctor who performed the surgery saying there is no way she should have experienced this and gotten the details correct that she did, including the shaving of her head and the use of a tool with even the correct description (a saw that looked kind of like an electric toothbrush). Do you think this likely demonstrates truth in NDEs and souls?

Answer by SmartLX:

It’s rare that a near-death experience claim has a high enough profile to deserve its own Wikipedia page but here we are. To tackle the case point by point:

• It is never possible to determine when during the entire period of consciousness a dream or hallucination has occurred, because the subject has no sense of time when unconscious. If there was a period during which the brain was not active enough to form such experiences, such as when super-chilled and bloodless, it probably happened either side of that. Reynolds was under for hours before the procedure.
• From an NDE believer’s perspective, however, the timing is determined by what was “observed” in the outside world during the NDE. The one unique marker in this case was the use of an electric saw, but since it looked and sounded like a dentist’s drill this is hardly an outlandish guess to make, consciously or unconsciously. As for shaving her head…she woke up with a shaved head, didn’t she?
• See one of the reference links here: it’s possible to hear through the sound coming from the earphones, and you can test it for yourself if you don’t mind an unpleasant experience. Reynolds was a musician with a trained “ear”, making it even easier to pick something out. If there was any anaesthesia awareness in play, the noise does not invalidate it.

As for your other question about the behaviour of skeptics, the idea that they lie and conceal the truth is something believers in the disputed phenomena often claim. An X-Files-esque conspiracy to suppress evidential support for one’s own beliefs is easier to accept than a simple lack of evidence, because it makes it seem far less likely that one is just wrong. Perhaps some skeptics have been deceitful (they’re only human), even in the particular case of Pam Reynolds, but even with the facts “corrected” to what the advocates would like, there is not enough evidence to suggest anything supernatural. It’s possible that these accusations have been leveled at Augustine et al not just to rebut specific points but to discredit anything else they’ve written about the case, and reassure believers that even the refutations that seem legitimate must have holes in them somewhere. Saves them thinking too hard about it.