I think the 'Inspirational' forum is the best place for this link:

http://www.aspr.com/topics.htm

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The Heavenly Afterlife exist.

Oooh...I actually already had this site bookmarked.

A fun challenge for you: on the page linked, click on the link to "online research" and take a look at the questionnaire. See how many ways this research methodology will lead to biased data. (for the record, it is not just me who says this--also found on this page is a link to Wiseman and Morris's book on evaluating Psi claims. They also point out the egregious errors in much of parapsychological research. Also for the record, there is a great deal of parapsychological research that is methodologically sound, too, and the American Journal of Parapsychology has taken the laudable step of including studies based not on significance of findings, but on soundness of methodology.) (oops, that is a hint about some of the biases in the online research...)

I have done that. However, I am not convinced they are able to explain all the experiences scientifically, just because some few of the questions is related to asthma, allergi and salt intake.
Could you explain to me more spesific?

Here is a other site for people who has experienced paranormal experiences:

http://www.healthsystem.virginia.ed...ntacting_us.cfm

What do you say about that site and institute? I think they don't explain all paranormal experiences scientifically, but support the experiencers. (I think you agree that many don't want to talk to their doctor or friends about things like this, because they are afraid they don't believe them.)

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The Heavenly Afterlife exist.

Great! Could you think of instances in your life which sounded like the things they were interested in? (I know I could) Would you be interested in writing them? About what? What sorts of things do you think people will write to them about, and what sorts of things won't people write about that are directly appropriate to their study?Yes, they do support the experiencers, but that is a double-edged sword. In giving examples of the sorts of things they are looking for, they may be suggesting things to their readers which were not there to begin with. We know, for instance, from Elizabeth Loftus's work on eyewitness testimony, that leading questions can strongly influence the memory of a witness (for instance, if you are asked "how fast was the red car going when it smashed into the blue car", as opposed to "how fast was the red car going when it bumped into the blue car", you will give a higher speed, and be more likely to report broken glass. And this is just the substitution of one word!), and can even lead to the confident recall of events which not only did not, but could not have happened. So there is a very real danger in asking such specific questions in this sort of research.

In addition, there is a methodological concern. In your most recent link, I looked at "Careers in paranormal studies" (hey, if they pay I am there!), and found this: "... We offer the link here because we feel that the site is particularly informative and helpful.* However, we do not endorse Palmer's claim that, "Most parapsychologists....feel that the evidence from real-life (or spontaneous cases, as we officially call them) is not as good as evidence obtained in the laboratory."**On the contrary, we*feel that evidence from spontaneous cases is better evidence as it is derived from what really happens in the world rather than contrived circumstances." The problem is, they are not getting "spontaneous cases", but rather they are systematically searching out rare events and limiting their studies to that rare population. It would be as if we wanted to study whether lucky charms work, but limited our population to lottery winners! If we found that 70% of lottery winners carry lucky charms, it would still be utterly meaningless, until we compared those numbers with the rest of the population. (imagine the different conclusions if we found that in the general population, 70% of people carried charms. In that case, the charms have no effect. If 90% of the general population carried charms, we might think the charms have a negative effect! If 50% of the pop. carries charms, though, we might think they have a positive effect.) You must see, simply knowing about one subgroup tells us nothing until we compare to the larger group. These paranormal websites are ignoring the greater population; if the events reported to them are extremely rare in the overall population, it could very easily be that they are in fact random events. Studying them and calling them significant would be like drawing a circle around a randomly shot arrow and claiming it was a bullseye!
I absolutely do agree with this--and what is more, there is a mainstream psychology journal article which supports you in this, in an analysis of UFO claims. I'll try to dig up the exact reference.

Your point is very sound--researchers need to respect the experiences of these individuals, so as not to bias the data away from appropriate reporting of such events. But the danger goes both ways, and I fear that these sites have gone well beyond merely respecting the experiences, and must ask themselves how much of what they are measuring is what they themselves have added to the mix.

However, I think it's good to have some researchers to talk to for those who has experienced many OBE's, etc.
I know myself that I would be very happy of a group to talk about my experiences, if I had experienced OBE's, etc.

If I sometime do experience OBE's, I am pretty sure I would have contacted researchers like this. Because it's good to talk about things, and OBE's is something I would not talk about to all people I meet.
(But researchers like this support the experiencers, so they feel better and are less afraid of the paranormal experiences.)

I think some also just want to talk about their paranormal experiencers.
You know,- it's good to talk about things you are thinking very much about, and perhaps not mentioned before.

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The Heavenly Afterlife exist.

I agree, but with the proviso that these researchers must make the effort not to isolate themselves from the scientific community that researches such experiences skeptically.

Suppose that this research group is the only group that reliably finds OBE evidence...they could claim that they are doing it right, and no one else is, but others could just as easily claim that this group is finding only experimenter effects. The only way they can be certain that they are not actively producing the effects that they are finding is to heed the advice of their critical colleagues and make sure that their supportive attitude does not translate to sloppy methodology as well.

In addition, they might wish to set up, purely for the purposes of establishing the rarity of the phenomena, poll a representative sample of the population using a much different questionnaire than that on their website. They really need to determine the effects of their leading questions before they can draw any conclusions from their answers. As is, these are seriously flawed questionnaires, and any conclusions would be suspect.

I can't remember the specifics, but I seem to recall one set of paranormal researchers who were trying to find out if people really were having out-of-body experiences. The signed up a number of people who claimed that in their OBEs, they would be outside thier body, floating around the room. They had a simple test. They wrote a simple word on a piece of paper in clear view, but on top of a cabinet, where only a person "floating around the room" could see it.

Not a single OBE experiencer could identify the word.

Sorry I don't have references, but I know that in my OBE's (mentioned in another thread) I only had vague impressions of floating around the room, not specific. It really was more like a hallucination than a real thing.

I have that one somewhere at my office, but not here. In the meantime, try searching for "angular gyrus AND OBE", and see the commotion. Some researchers have been able to cause an OBE through direct stimulation of a particular brain area. They also claim this area is particularly succeptible to dips in blood pressure (I had no idea different parts of the brain behaved differently with regard to blood pressure, so I am currently taking that claim with a grain of salt). Of course, there are the predictable responses, such as "just because brain stimulation can cause an OBE does not mean all OBEs are caused by brain problems!"...which is true, of course, but what the brain studies do is put the burden of proof back on those who claim an OBE is something more. All it would take is someone who could reliably see that piece of paper you wrote about, and brain stimulation would no longer explain all the evidence. But so far...looks like the brain is our most likely suspect.

What, AGAIN??!!

That reminds me about a article in a norwegian magazine about a woman with epilepsy.
Some doctors had to figure out how the epilepsy was acting in the brain with help of electrones. In some centres of the brain, she said she felt she was out of her body. But it was only with stimuli on some spesific places in the brain she had this feelings.

I have not found references about this case on the Internet, though. I was just reading it in a norwegian science magazine.

It could have been that Digital has read about the same case, but in a other language. Because it sounded somehow familiar.
But remember,- the article in the magazine I read, was only based on 1 single person, thus it may be different for other persons.

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The Heavenly Afterlife exist.

This was Dr. Olaf Blanke...and yes, this story is of one person, but it replicates something found in another years ago, and with brain imaging studies. You are right to be skeptical, but don't forget to be at least equally skeptical of the other explanations that, instead of having 1 single person as evidence....have none.