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"The Unstoppable Schwartz"

Interesting Ian said:
The rational thing to do is to neither reject nor embrace some alleged hypothesis or phenomenon until we have very good reasons for our decision.
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Ian, I think this is the point where I my philosophy and yours diverge.

I feel that the difference is that I tend to apply what I think of as a "common sense" filter to the alleged hypothesis or phenomenon, so that if it is quite an extraordinary claim, then I want to see some modicum of reasonable evidence. (Note that I deliberately did not ask for extraordinary evidence there.)

(I'm not saying my "common sense filter" is perfect, and that everyone-else's filter should be calibrated the same way as mine, I'm just explaining my own personal approach to new ideas and information.)

If you, or anyone else, cannot show me evidence I can believe for myself, it does not lead me to dismiss the hypothesis out of hand, just to be very skeptical of it. On the scale of "embrace" to "reject", I'm quite close to "reject".

You then argue vehemently for the (sometimes) miniscule possibilty that the phenomenon may exist, I don't let it clutter my mind until there is some kind of believable (to me) evidence.

Now don't get in a tizzy - I'm not saying my way is right. I'm just stating that that is my way. If I've misrepresented you in this post - please feel free to correct me.
 
Interesting Ian said:
Another question is why should anyone wish to stop Schwartz? Should we attempt to stop all scientific enquiry into the nature of the world and consciousness?

If he's unstoppable then good for him.
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I have to agree with this one to a certain extent. If Schwartz wants to conduct research into such a phenomenon, that’s fine. Although, he should expect any evidence he finds to be extensively scrutinized. If he can produce convincing evidence for such a phenomenon that can withstand the meticulous and comprehensive analysis required by science, that’s just wonderful, good for him, it could produce a new scientific field of study.

However, until he has this evidence, not just “common” anecdotal reports, he shouldn’t be making claims about the existence of such a phenomenon.
 
Interesting Ian said:
I think they are. That is not to say, however, that their reports can be relied upon. But their reports should be given a certain amount of weight. We, who do not have their experiences, cannot claim that we know better than they do. We still cannot claim this even if it should transpire they are mistaken.
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Ian, just because someone says something does not make it so. If there is no physical evidence to corroborate the statement, then the claimant is simply mistaken in their perceptions.

Interesting Ian said:
I keep reading about it all over the place. As you'll know I don't read frivolous stuff.
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Appeal to popularity and appeal to anonymous authority

Interesting Ian said:
To reject an alleged phenomenon means to assume it doesn't exist.

The rational thing to do is to neither reject nor embrace some alleged hypothesis or phenomenon until we have very good reasons for our decision.
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No, Ian. The rational thing is to assume nonexistence until shown good evidence of existence. "I don't know" is not an acceptable answer in scientific inquiry.
Interesting Ian said:
Another question is why should anyone wish to stop Schwartz? Should we attempt to stop all scientific enquiry into the nature of the world and consciousness?
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Schwartz is not performing scientific inquiry; he's hatching crackpot ideas in vanity press books and won't show the scientific community his cards like he's supposed to. Why isn't he showing his cards to peer review? Because he knows he'll be laughed out of the room.
 
Interesting Ian said:
I don't know if the effect is not seen in these cases. Can you substantiate your claim here?
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Sure. I've met a number of persons that needed blood transfer and felt no personality changes. Anedoctal data work both ways. Also, can you point any reports of similar effects related to blood transfusions?

Interesting Ian said:
Anyway Beth said that blood cells have a short lifespan which kinda blasts away that argument from the skeptics.
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Ian, for how long the donor's cells would need to stay in the receiver's body for the effect be detectable? If there's no data on the lenght of this "incubation time", then the argument is not blasted away.

Also, don't forget marrow...
 
Hastur said:
Schwartz is not performing scientific inquiry; he's hatching crackpot ideas in vanity press books and won't show the scientific community his cards like he's supposed to. Why isn't he showing his cards to peer review? Because he knows he'll be laughed out of the room.
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Actually, Schwartz and his co-researchers did publish their results in a peer-reviewed journal. They have a paper titled "Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients That Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors" in The Journal of Near-Death Studies, Spring 2002. I just found it and haven't had a chance to read it yet. At a glance, it appears to be a synopsis of the cases they looked at.
 
Interesting Ian
Are you maintaining that it is uncommon for organ recipients to claim that their personalities and abilities have been so influenced? If so where are you getting your information from?
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An organ recipient. I also know the donor.


Yes, people have reported this happening.
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Who, where, when? Exactly what happened? Are the recipients just curious and want to do a bit of research or are you claiming that if the donor could play Bach then the recipient can suddenly sit down at a piano and play?

Ossai
 
Ossai said:
Interesting Ian
if the donor could play Bach then the recipient can suddenly sit down at a piano and play?Ossai
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I just read Schwartz's article the Journal of Near Death Studies. In one case the recipient had no previous interest in classical music and afterwards would listen to it for hours. The donor's family stated that he loved classical music and played the violin. The donor did not suddenly know how to play the violin, but his taste in music had a sudden and inexplicable change after the surgery to that of the recipients likes. Skills didn't seem to be transfered, but rather interests, likes and dislikes, and in some cases, apparently memories and feelings related to the donor's death. I don't know about the cellular memory hypothesis, but the coincidences in the 10 cases that are detailed in the paper are pretty astounding.
 
Let's have a look at some random stats I managed to dig up here

15,991 kidney alone transplants (6,642 were living donors)
6,167 liver transplants.
603 pancreas alone transplants.
880 kidney-pancreas transplant.
152 intestine transplants
2,016 heart transplants.
38 heart-lung transplants.
1,173 lung transplants.
27,020 TOTAL
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That's just 2004, and just the US - that adds up to a hell of a lot of cases to cherry-pick coincidences from ;)
 
All of the coincidences of a recipient receiving abilities and personal habits and tastes of the donors is just that, coincidental. The fact that Dr. Schwartz's 'study' contains only anecdotal evidence and not any way to test the theory or to prove the anecdotes.

IF Dr. Schwartz were a reasonable scientist he would have developed a theory as tow why this happens, and then tested his theory, confirming it or busting it, instead he simply gathers anecdotal evidence and presents it as 'fact' that support a series of coincidences and speculation.

If this is actually happening as Dr. Schwartz contends then it should be verifiable and can be replicated, those that can't verify and replicate, rely on anectdotal evidence.
 
Gah, Dr Frank beat me to it. Anyway, some more figures so we can decide if it is a common event or not.

The paper "Cellular memory" (Schwartz et al) says that Pearsall collected 74 transplant patients who change in character could be compared to the character of the donor. This was in the space of ten years. 1987-1997.

Using US statistics for only the three major organ transplants (Heart, heart & lung, and lung) there were 28,801 operations in those ten years. So about 0.0026% of organ operations results in this phenomenon. And that's being very generous.
 
drfrank said:
Let's have a look at some random stats I managed to dig up here



That's just 2004, and just the US - that adds up to a hell of a lot of cases to cherry-pick coincidences from ;)
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According to the paper, the ten cases are 'representative' of 74 cases that were brought to Pearsall's (one of the authors) attention over a period of 10 years. Since they were brought to his attention, it's safe to conclude they are not likely to be representative of organ transplants overall. The authors acknowledge that they cannot compute the percentage of transplant recipients who experience these type of personality changes.

Even given that cherry-picking of the cases occurred, some of the incidents are still rather inexplicable. The paper's a fairly interesting read if you can a hold of it. It's available on the internet but only by subscription. Fortunately, my university library subscribes to the service, which hosts a substantial number of peer-reviewed journals.

J. Arthur Hastur writes:
IF Dr. Schwartz were a reasonable scientist he would have developed a theory as tow why this happens, and then tested his theory, confirming it or busting it, instead he simply gathers anecdotal evidence and presents it as 'fact' that support a series of coincidences and speculation.
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He has a theory: Cellular memory. You don't have to like the theory (I don't) to recognize that he is attempting to gather data and confirm the theory. Anecdotal evidence isn't the best, but it's not like you can subject people to organ transplants as part of a study of this nature. They state that "further research is necessary to investigate the recipient-donor coincidence phenomenon systematically" and claim that such research is underway. It will be interesting to see if they publish results of a more systematic (without cherry-picking) study.

I don't think that this one study is convincing by itself, but it is intriguing. And Dr. Schwartz and his colleagues to appear to be playing by the rules insofar as they have published their results in a peer-reviewed journal and they do have theory (albeit a rather far-fetched one) regarding how it could occur.

Cherry-picking the data, that's a valid criticism. But their methodology could also be interpreted as simply profiling cases that are unusual enough to justify further study into the issue is a reasonable first step in such research. Insufficient evidence to support their assertion - also a valid criticism and also a flaw that is acknowledged by the authors.
 
I have no argument with that, I'm just very skeptical of theories in which the theorist makes the theory but offers no way to verify it.
 
Beth said:
I just read Schwartz's article the Journal of Near Death Studies.
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How does one determine whether a jounal is peer-reviewed or not? I'm asking because the Journal of Near Death Studies does not sound like it's peer-reviewed, but I'm more than willing to be shown I'm wrong.

In one case the recipient had no previous interest in classical music and afterwards would listen to it for hours. [...] I don't know about the cellular memory hypothesis, but the coincidences in the 10 cases that are detailed in the paper are pretty astounding.
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His musical tastes changed? Pardon me, but that doesn't seem to be extraordinary in any way. I never used to like country music, but in my 30s developed an interest in certain kinds. About the same time a friend of mine started listening to classical music. No transplants necessary. Hardly seems astounding.
 
Ersby said:
Gah, Dr Frank beat me to it. Anyway, some more figures so we can decide if it is a common event or not.

The paper "Cellular memory" (Schwartz et al) says that Pearsall collected 74 transplant patients who change in character could be compared to the character of the donor. This was in the space of ten years. 1987-1997.

Using US statistics for only the three major organ transplants (Heart, heart & lung, and lung) there were 28,801 operations in those ten years. So about 0.0026% of organ operations results in this phenomenon. And that's being very generous.
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0.26% you mean. And I fail to understand how this is generous. On the contrary, I would have thought this was very ungenerous. I would imagine people would tend to keep quiet about it for all sorts of reasons.

People used to think NDEs were extremely uncommon until the 1980's. But the same principle applies. Namely people are reluctant to talk about their experiences.

However if it is anything like only 0.26%, I think the hypothesis that various normal explanations suffice might well be reasonable.
 
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