Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

by Michael Shermer

  When I place my hand on your shoulder (after you are hypnotized) I shall be able to talk to a hidden part of you that knows things are going on in your body, things that are unknown to the part of you to which I am now talking. The part to which I am now talking will not know what you are telling me or even that you are talking... . You will remember that there is a part of you that knows many things that are going on that may be hidden from either your normal consciousness or the hypnotized part of you. (Knox, Morgan, and Hilgard 1974, p. 842)

  This dissociation of the hidden observer is a type of altered state.

  What exactly do we mean by an altered state or, for that matter, an unaltered state? Here it might be useful to distinguish between quantitative differences—those of degree—and qualitative differences—those of kind. A pile of six apples and a pile of five apples are quantitatively different. A pile of six apples and a pile of six oranges are qualitatively different. Most differences between states of consciousness are quantitative, not qualitative. In other words, in both states a thing exists, just in different amounts. For example, when sleeping, we think, since we dream; we form memories, since we can remember our dreams; and we are sensitive to our environment, though considerably less so. Some people walk and talk in their sleep, and we can control sleep, planning to get up at a certain time and doing so fairly reliably. In other words, while asleep we just do less of what we do while awake.

  Still, sleep is a good example because it is so different that we do not normally mistake it for a waking state. The quantitative difference is so great as to be qualitatively different and thus count as an altered state. Though the EEG readings in figure 7 are only quantitatively different, they are so much so that the states they represent may be considered as different in kind. If a coma is not an altered state, I do not know what is. And it cannot be duplicated in a conscious state.

  Consciousness has two characteristics: " 1. Monitoring ourselves and our environment so that perceptions, memories, and thoughts are accurately represented in awareness; 2. Controlling ourselves and our environment so that we are able to initiate and terminate behavioral and cognitive activities" (Kihlstrom 1987, p. 1445). Thus, an altered state of consciousness would have to interfere with our accurate monitoring of percepts, memories, and thoughts, as well as disrupt control of our behavior and cognition within the environment. An altered state of consciousness exists when there is significant interference with our monitoring and control of our environment. By significant, I mean a dramatic departure from "normal" functioning. Both sleep and hypnosis do this, as do hallucinations, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, and other altered states.

  Psychologist Barry Beyerstein makes a similar argument in defining altered states of consciousness as the modification of specific neural systems "by disease, repetitive stimulation, mental manipulations, or chemical ingestion" such that "our perception of ourselves and the world can be profoundly altered" (1996, p. 15). Psychologist Andrew Neher (1990) calls them "transcendent states," which he defines as sudden and unexpected alterations of consciousness intense enough to be overwhelming to the person experiencing them. The key here is the intensity of the experience and the profundity of the alteration of consciousness. Do we do anything in an altered state that we cannot do in an unaltered state of consciousness?

  Yes. For example, dreams are significantly different from waking thoughts and daydreams. The fact that we normally never confuse the two is an indication of their qualitative difference. Further, hallucinations are not normally experienced in a stable, awake state unless there is some intervening variable, such as extreme stress, drugs, or sleep deprivation. Near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences are so unusual that they often stand out as life-changing events.

  No. The differences are only quantitative. But even here, it could be argued that the differences are so great as to constitute a qualitative difference. You can show me that the EEGs recorded when I am normally conscious and when I am hallucinating severely are only quantitatively different, but I have no trouble experiencing and recognizing their dramatic difference. Consider the near-death experience.

  The Near-Death Experience

  One of the driving forces behind religions, mysticism, spiritualism, the New Age movement, and belief in ESP and psychic powers is the desire to transcend the material world, to step beyond the here-and-now and pass through the invisible into another world beyond the senses. But where is this other world and how do we get there? What is the appeal of some place we know absolutely nothing about? Is death merely a transition to this other side?

  Believers claim that we do know something about the other side through a phenomenon called the perithanatic or near-death experience (NDE). The NDE, like its related partner the out-of-body experience (OBE), is one of the most compelling phenomena in psychology. Apparently, upon a close encounter with death, some individuals' experiences are so similar as to lead many to believe that there is an afterlife or that death is a pleasant experience or both. The phenomenon was popularized in 1975 substantiated by corroborative evidence from others. For example, cardiologist E Schoonmaker (1979) reported that 50 percent of the more than two thousand patients he treated over an eighteen-year period had NDEs. A 1982 Gallup poll found that one out of twenty Americans had been through an NDE (Gallup 1982, p. 198). And Dean Sheils (1978) has studied the cross-cultural nature of the phenomenon.

  When NDEs first came into prominence, they were perceived as isolated, unusual events and were dismissed by scientists and medical doctors as either exaggerations or flights of fantasy by highly stressed but very creative minds. In the 1980s, however, NDEs gained credibility through the work of Elisabeth Kiibler-Ross, a medical doctor who publicized this now-classic example:

  Mrs. Schwartz came into the hospital and told us how she had had a near-death experience. She was a housewife from Indiana, a very simple and unsophisticated woman. She had advanced cancer, had hemorrhaged and was put into a private hospital, very close to death. The doctors attempted for 45 minutes to revive her, after which she had no vital signs and was declared dead. She told me later that while they were working on her, she had an experience of simply floating out of her physical body and hovering a few feet above the bed, watching the resuscitation team work very frantically. She described to me the designs of the doctors' ties, she repeated a joke one of the young doctors told, she remembered absolutely everything. And all she wanted to tell them was relax, take it easy, it is all right, don't struggle so hard. The more she tried to tell them, the more frantically they worked to revive her. Then, in her own language, she "gave up" on them and lost consciousness. After they declared her dead, she made a comeback and lived for another year and a half. (1981, p. 86)

  This is a typical NDE, characterized by one of the three most commonly reported elements: (1) a floating OBE in which you look down and see your body; (2) passing through a tunnel or spiral chamber toward a bright light that represents transcendence to "the other side"; (3) emerging on the other side and seeing loved ones who have already passed away or a Godlike figure. It seems obvious that these are hallucinatory wishful-thinking experiences, yet Kiibler-Ross has gone out of her way to verify the stories. "We've had people who were in severe auto accidents, had no vital signs and told us how many blow torches were used to extricate them from the wreck" (1981, p. 86). Even more bizarre are stories of an imperfect or diseased body becoming whole again during an NDE. "Quadriplegics are no longer paralyzed, multiple-sclerosis patients who have been in wheelchairs for years say that when they were out of their bodies, they were able to sing and dance."

  Memories from a previously whole body? Of course. A close friend of mine who became a paraplegic after an automobile accident often dreamed of being whole. It was not at all unusual for her to wake in the morning and fully expect to hop out of bed. But Kiibler-Ross does not buy the prosaic explanation: "You take totally blind people who don't even have light perception, don't even see shades of gray. If
they have a near-death experience, they can report exactly what the scene looked like at the accident or hospital room. They have described to me incredibly minute details. How do you explain that?" (1981, p. 90). Simple. Memories of verbal descriptions given by others during the NDE are converted into visual images of the scene and then rendered back into words. Further, quite frequently patients in trauma or surgery are not totally unconscious or under the anesthesia and are aware of what is happening around them. If the patient is in a teaching hospital, the attending physician or chief resident who performs the surgery would be describing the procedure for the other residents, thus enabling the NDE subject to give an accurate description of events.

  Something is happening in the NDE that cries out for explanation, but what? Physician Michael Sabom, in his 1982 Recollections of Death, drew on the results of his correlational study of a large number of people who had had NDEs, noting age, sex, occupation, education, and religious affiliation, along with prior knowledge of NDEs, possible expectations as a result of religious or prior medical knowledge, the type of crisis (accident, arrest), location of crisis, method of resuscitation, estimated time of unconsciousness, description of the experience, and so on. Sabom followed these subjects for years, re-interviewing them as well as members of their families to see whether they altered their stories or found some other explanation for the experience. Even after years, every subject felt just as strongly about his or her experience and was convinced that the episode did occur. Almost all stated that the experience had a definite impact on their outlook on life and perception of death. They were no longer "afraid" of dying nor did they "mourn" the death of loved ones, as they were convinced that death is a pleasant experience. Each felt that he or she had been given a second chance and, although not every subject became "religious," they all felt a need to "do something with their lives."

  Although Sabom notes that nonbelievers and believers had similar experiences, he fails to mention that we have all been exposed to the Judeo-Christian worldview. Whether or not we consciously believe, we have all heard similar ideas about God and the afterlife, heaven and hell. Sabom also does not point out that people of different religions see different religious figures during NDEs, an indication that the phenomenon occurs within the mind, not without.

  What naturalistic explanations can be offered for NDEs? An early, speculative theory came from psychologist Stanislav Grof (1976; Grof and Halifax 1977), who argued that every human being has already experienced the characteristics of the NDE—the sensation of floating, the passage down a tunnel, the emergence into a bright light—birth. Perhaps the memory of such a traumatic event is permanently imprinted in our minds, to be triggered later by an equally traumatic event—death. Is it possible that recollection of perinatal memories accounts for what is experienced during an NDE? Not likely. There is no evidence for infantile memories of any kind. Furthermore, the birth canal does not look like a tunnel and besides the infant's head is normally down and its eyes are closed. And why do people who are born by cesarean section have NDEs? (Not to mention that Grof and his subjects were experimenting with LSD—not the most reliable method for retrieving memories, since it creates its own illusions.)

  A more likely explanation looks to biochemical and neurophysiological causes. We know, for example, that the hallucination of flying is triggered by atropine and other belladonna alkaloids, some of which are found in mandrake and jimsonweed and were used by European witches and American Indian shamans. OBEs are easily induced by dissociative anesthetics such as the ketamines. DMT (dimethyltryptamine) causes the perception that the world is enlarging or shrinking. MDA (methylene-dioxyamphetamine) stimulates the feeling of age regression so that things we have long forgotten are brought back into memory. And, of course, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) triggers visual and auditory hallucinations and creates a feeling of oneness with the cosmos, among other effects (see Goodman and Gilman 1970; Grinspoon and Bakalar 1979; Ray 1972; Sagan 1979; Siegel 1977). The fact that there are receptor sites in the brain for such artificially processed chemicals means that there are naturally produced chemicals in the brain that, under certain conditions (the stress of trauma or an accident, for example), can induce any or all of the experiences typically associated with an NDE. Perhaps NDEs and OBEs are nothing more than wild "trips" induced by the extreme trauma of almost dying. Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception (whence the rock group The Doors got its name) has a fascinating description, made by the author while under the influence of mescaline, of a flower in a vase. Huxley describes "seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence" (1954, p. 17).

  Psychologist Susan Blackmore (1991, 1993, 1996) has taken the hallucination hypothesis one step further by demonstrating why different people would experience similar effects, such as the tunnel. The visual cortex on the back of the brain is where information from the retina is processed. Hallucinogenic drugs and lack of oxygen to the brain (such as sometimes occurs near death) can interfere with the normal rate of firing by nerve cells in this area. When this occurs "stripes" of neuronal activity move across the visual cortex, which is interpreted by the brain as concentric rings or spirals. These spirals may be "seen" as a tunnel. Similarly, the OBE is a confusion between reality and fantasy, as dreams can be upon first awakening. The brain tries to reconstruct events and in the process visualizes them from above—a normal process we all do when "decenter-ing" ourselves (when you picture yourself sitting on the beach or climbing a mountain, it is usually from above, looking down). Under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, subjects saw images like those in figure 8; such images produce the tunneling effect of the NDE.

  Finally, the "otherworldliness" of the NDE is produced by the dominance of the fantasy of imagining the other side, visualizing our loved ones who died before, seeing our personal God, and so on. But what happens to those who do not come back from an NDE? Blackmore gives this reconstruction of death: "Lack of oxygen first produces increased activity through disinhibition, but eventually it all stops. Since it is this activity that produces the mental models that give rise to consciousness, then all this will cease. There will be no more experience, no more self, and so that... is the end" (1991, p. 44). Cerebral anoxia (lack of oxygen), hypoxia (insufficient oxygen), or hypercardia (too much carbon dioxide) have all been proposed as triggers of NDEs (Saavedra-Aguilar and Gomez-Jeria 1989), but Blackmore points out that people with none of these conditions have had NDEs. She admits, "It is far from clear, as yet, how they are best to be explained. No amount of evidence is likely to settle, for good, the argument between the 'afterlife' and 'dying brain' hypotheses" (1996, p. 440). NDEs remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of psychology, leaving us once again with a Humean question: Which is more likely, that an NDE is an as-yet-to-be explained phenomenon of the brain or that it is evidence of what we have always wanted to be true—immortality?

  The Quest for Immortality

  Death, or at least the end of life, appears to be the outer limit of our consciousness and the frontier of the possible. Death is the ultimate altered state. Is it the end, or merely the end of the beginning? Job asked the same question: "If a man die, shall he live again?" Obviously no one knows for sure, but plenty of folks think they do know, and many of them are not shy about trying to convince the rest of us that their particular answer is the correct one. This question is one of the reasons that there are literally thousands of organized religions in the world, each claiming exclusive knowledge about what follows death. As humanist scholar Robert Ingersoll (1879) noted, "The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had." Without some belief structure, however, many people find this world meaningless and without comfort. The philosopher George Berkeley (1713) penned this example of such sentiments: "I can easily overlook any present momentary sorrow when I reflect that it is in my power to be happy a
thousand years hence. If it were not for this thought I had rather be an oyster than a man."

  In one of Woody Allen's movies, his physician gives him one month to live. "Oh, no," he moans, "I only have thirty days to live?" "No," the doctor responds, "twenty-eight; this is February." Are we this bad? Sometimes. It might be splendid if we were all to adopt Socrates' reflectiveness just before his state-mandated suicide: "To fear death, gentlemen, is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not; for it is to think one knows what one does not know. No man knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest of blessings for a human being; and yet people fear it as if they knew for certain that it is the greatest of evils" (Plato 1952, p. 211). But most people feel more like Berkeley and his oyster, and thus, as Ingersoll

  was fond of pointing out, we have religion. But the quest for immortality is not restricted to the religious. Wouldn't we all like to live on in some capacity? We can, indirectly, and, if science can accomplish what some hope it will, perhaps even in reality.

  Science and Immortality

  Because purely religious theories of immortality—based on faith, not reason—are not testable, I will not discuss them here. Frank Tipler's Physics of Immortality is the subject of chapter 16 of this book, as Tipler's work requires extensive analysis. Suffice it to say that by "immortality" most people do not mean merely living on through one's legacy, whatever it may be. As Woody Allen said, "I don't want to gain immortality through my work; I want to gain immortality through not dying." Most people would not be content with the argument that parents are immortal in the sense that a significant part of their genetic make-up lives on in the genes of their offspring. From an evolutionary viewpoint, 50 percent of a person's genes live on in their offspring, 25 percent in their grandchildren, 12.5 percent in each great grandchild, and so on. What most of us think of as "real" immortality is living forever, or at least considerably longer than the norm. The rub is that it seems certain that the process of aging and death is a normal, genetically programmed part of the sequence of life. In evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins's (1976) scenario, once we've passed reproductive age (or at least the period of intense and regular participation in sexual activity), then the genes have no more use for the body. Aging and death may be the species' way of eliminating those who are no longer genetically useful but are still competing for limited resources with those whose job it now is to pass along the genes.