Publications scientifiques
> Sawing the branch of near-death experience research: A critical analysis of Parnia et al.’s paper
Renaud Evrard, Erika Pratte et Thomas Rabeyron publient dans la revue Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, une étude critique à propos d’un article de Parnia et al. publié dans la même revue et proposant une nouvelle appellation pour l’expérience de mort imminente : recalled experience of death (expérience rappelée de la mort).
In their recent paper, Parnia and colleagues propose a new label for the near-death experience (NDE): recalled experience of death. They claimed NDEs are “authentic” only when an objective danger is present and that authentic NDEs have a proven core phenomenology. We consider that these claims are insufficiently supported by empirical data. NDEs appear as a continuum of heterogeneous experiences of consciousness precipitated by the disjunction of processes usually combined in normal mental activity. The “core phenomenology” of NDEs is also opened to several criticisms. Closeness to “real” death does not appear to be a decisive criterion for characterizing NDEs. The author’s adhesion to Raymond Moody’s NDE model produces a biased partition of this field of research that is unable to provide the basis for a consensus.