From: invalid@invalid.net   
      
   On 15 Oct 2005 13:10:01 -0700, clave_scripts@spl.at wrote:   
      
   > that one can explore the obe in a scientific manner under the auspices   
   > of phenomenology, for one   
      
   Sometimes scientific dream studies are based heavily on anecdotes.  One   
   example is a study in which the researchers broke some of their   
   subjects' dream accounts into pieces, matched the pieces up randomly,   
   and asked judges to try to distinguish mismatched dreams from intact   
   dreams.  For the most part, they could not, which suggests that dreams   
   may well unfold randomly.  Even if OBEs were being studied as an aspect   
   of neuroscientific dream research, the first-hand accounts would not   
   necessarily be thrown out as valueless.  The researchers would probably   
   want to correlate the data shown by their recording devices (MRI's etc.)   
   with certain features of the accounts of their subjects, who are the   
   only ones who can say what was going on in their heads, however   
   inaccurately.   
      
   Anecdotes are important sources of data for certain sciences, so to say   
   that they have little scientific use is an overgeneralization.  They may   
   not be of much use in physics, but they can be important in psychology,   
   for instance.  One does, however, have to learn to separate what is   
   useful in them from what is not.  People tend to mix interpretations and   
   assumptions with observations, for one thing, but they can be trained to   
   reduce that tendency (though one might not want them to reduce it,   
   depending on what one is actually studying).   
      
   --   
      
   It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.   
   --Despair, Inc.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)