Evidence of an afterlife: Long excerpt #3

Radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long writes in "Evidence for Survival of Consciousness in Near-Death Experiences: Decades of Science and New Insights" - "I began investigating near-death experiences in 1998 with the establishment of the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF). NDERF started with a website devoted to NDE, www.nderf.org. From its inception the NDERF website had a detailed questionnaire that included a request for the complete NDE narrative. The current version of the NDERF questionnaire asks over 100 questions. In the greater than 20 years that NDERF has been active, we received over 3500 NDEs. This combination of the availability of thousands of NDEs and the results from detailed surveys allowed the most extensive investigation of NDEs ever reported.

"The current version of the NDERF survey was closed for accrual after receiving 834 sequentially shared NDEs. The immediately prior version of the NDERF survey included 1122 sequentially shared NDEs. These NDERF studies are the most extensive scientific investigations of NDEs ever reported.

"The two most recent versions of the NDERF surveys included the NDE Scale questions. The NDE Scale asks sixteen questions about the content of the near-death experience. This Scale is the most validated research method to help distinguish NDEs from experiences that are not NDEs. A Scale score of 7 or higher is required to classify experiences as NDEs. Throughout this article, the NDErs whose survey results I am presenting all had NDE Scale scores of 7 or above. This further validates these experiences as actual NDEs. All experiences included in the NDERF studies also had clearly documented life-threatening events at the time of their NDEs. For inclusion in the NDERF studies presented in this article, unless otherwise stated, all NDEs were single NDE accounts, shared in English, and were shared by the individual who personally had the NDE.

"In all NDERF studies, experiences were classified as near-death experiences only if there was a lucid experience at the time of a close brush with death. Experiences in the NDERF studies are unbiased NDE accounts. No NDEs were excluded from the NDERF studies solely because of any particular content. The full text of the NDE narratives is posted to the NDERF website, excluding comments that would identify the NDErs, are significantly disparaging toward identifiable individuals, or contain inappropriate comments such as advocating illicit substance use. The NDEs posted on the NDERF website are edited to correct obvious spelling and grammar errors. NDEs quoted in this article from the NDERF website may be paraphrased for clarity. As remarkable as the NDE quotes are in this article, please remember that they accurately represent the real experiences of NDErs from all walks of life and around the world.

"The NDERF surveys are internet-based. The internet has been utilized for scholarly surveys for decades. Many published studies directly compared the reliability of internet surveys with “pencil-and-paper” surveys concluding that they are comparable in reliability. This important concept is discussed further on the NDERF website.

"The reliability of the NDERF survey is enhanced by using the tried-and-true scientific method of redundancy. This involves asking several questions addressing the same concept in different areas of the survey with slightly different wording. I am impressed at the consistency in responses to the redundant NDERF survey questions. The time required to complete the greater than 100 questions on the NDERF survey is a strong disincentive for anyone to complete the survey fraudulently.

"Another important method of validating the near-death experiences posted on NDERF comes from the large volume of visitors to the NDERF website. There are currently well over 50,000 unique visitors to the website each month. This allows an enormous number of people to read the posted NDEs and let us know of any concerns regarding possible plagiarized or falsified NDEs. Over the decades of NDERF’s existence it has been gratifying that far less than 1% of NDEs submitted to the NDERF website survey are plagiarized or otherwise falsified. My background as a physician also helps verify the validity of the described medical circumstances of the life-threatening events leading to the NDEs. Finally, it is notable that the NDEs published on NDERF are consistent in content with NDEs in published articles, books, and other reliable internet collections of NDEs. Further details regarding the methodology of the NDERF studies are available on the NDERF website."

Jeffrey Long, MD, "Evidence for Survival of Consciousness in Near-Death Experiences: Decades of Science and New Insights." In the next several posts I will share excerpts from Long's 2021 article. Footnotes have been deleted. The complete text is available as a pdf at https://www.nderf.org.