[jbri]

Demanding that research show immediate practicality is a good way to end up doing no meaningful research whatsoever.

Virtually every major discovery in the past hundred years (if not more) stems from research that had no obvious direct application. The biggest benefit of the post-industrial society is being able to spend time on things that aren't immediately useful, but potentially have greater benefits further down the road.

[apl]

Keep in mind that "All breakthroughs are derived from basic research" (if true) doesn't entail "All basic research leads to breakthroughs".

We still need to judge the merit of basic research; in this case I'm slightly more skeptical as to its potential to unravel, well, anything about the mind at all.

[andyjohnson0]

I agree with you on the need to use judgement. In this case though, while the research might not tell us much about the mind, knowing more about the regions of the brain that are active during an NDE could provide more insight into how the brain is physically affected by oxygen starvation. It might also help with designing physical and psychological therapies for the negative consequences [1] of near death experiences for survivors.

It does seen like a lot of the discussion about this subject is (often implicitly) trying to address a religious/afterlife aspect of nde. For example, the article says 'The "near-death experience" reported by cardiac arrest survivors worldwide may be grounded in science'. The brain is a physical object that is subject to the laws of physics, so that "grounding" is inevitable whether we know how it works or not. This shouldn't be surprising and there isn't an alternative, short of admitting religion or parapsychology.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience#Effects

[jbri]

I'm not saying that it is - but research for its own sake is worthwhile, even if you don't know beforehand how earthshaking the results will be.

Sure, sometimes you swing and you miss, but if that makes you too scared to swing at all then you're never going to hit anything.

[snowwrestler]

The problem is that there is no way to tell in advance which basic research will be useful later on.