[withad]

I found this article - http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2010/07/02/the-end-of-... - which mentions some other cases and claims that Paul Kern didn't sleep... but did close his eyes and rest for a couple of hours each day. The whole thing's setting off some skeptical alarms in my head. I think it's pretty telling that all but one of the examples are unverified and from before 1950, when things like EEGs weren't available to verify if someone was sleeping or "just resting their eyes". The only modern case was followed for just four days, which is a long time to go without sleep but certainly not impossible.

It reminds me of credulous studies of people who claim they don't need to eat and drink, surviving off sunlight or air or something mystical. Dig into them a little and you invariably find that they were only monitored for a few days or they were left alone to bathe or pray or whatever else provided some gap where they could go and get food.

EDIT: Did a little more research and I came across a possible explanation that does seem to have some decent scientific studies to back it up (more than any of the non-sleeping examples, at least). "Sleep state misperception" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_state_misperception), where a patient doesn't think they've slept much or at all, even though they actually have.

[WayneDB]

Prahlad Jani has yet to be debunked and he was observed twice (in 2003, 2010) round the clock for up to 15 days without food and water intake or waste movements.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/International/man-eat-drink/sto...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prahlad_Jani

Very credulous. But, as the wise man says "We'll see." :)

[withad]

That's probably the one I was thinking of when I mentioned people going without water being allowed to bathe. There's quite a few red flags there - just one researcher doing the experiments (despite offers from other teams and noted skeptics like Sanal Edamaraku to investigate), the research never being published in a journal, the fact that he noticeably lost weight over just ten days, the CCTV coverage being incomplete... The "Reactions" section of the article covers a lot of them, enough to say that the studies are pretty much worthless.

In a case like this, it's up to the ones making the extraordinary claim to provide the evidence, not up to anyone else to debunk it.

[WayneDB]

The first time he was tested, he dropped a small amount of weight and the second time he didn't. Neither test was only done by one scientist and the second test was a much larger fanfare with Indian defense/government researchers present.

Bathing was also observed as was gargling (what he spit out was also measured). Even so - these "red flags" come from the same scientists that you don't trust. So, they should not support your cynicism in any way.

What are we left with?

  - Not published in a journal.
  - Incomplete CCTV coverage.

Also, it should be stated that according to many cynics, the CCTV coverage is incomplete because Jani moved out of view for moments at a time. He also received visitors and was allowed to take sun baths.

Anyway, I'm not really here to debate this case. I am just being an anti-cynic because it's been shown time and again that even the smartest people in the world have been dead wrong about what they think they know. Here is a terrific video that sums up this point very well - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA

[withad]

Most of the issues with the experiment were identified by other scientists, not the ones involved in the study. That's probably why it was never released in any reputable journal - the study design wouldn't pass peer review. Incidentally, releasing your results to the press before you've published academically is also a fairly reliable warning sign of pseudoscience.

When the entire experiment is based around constantly monitoring someone, any time where you can't see them is a pretty serious flaw in the experiment design. Even if he was only out of view for a few seconds (and I wouldn't mind a source for that), that's all it would take to drink some gargling/bathing water or quickly have a snack that some devotee left hidden.

Smart people can certainly be wrong and often have been. Sometimes due to their own preexisting beliefs and prejudices, sometimes because they were limited by the knowledge and technology of their time, and sometimes even because they're being deliberately deceived and their particularly expertise isn't suited to catching it (I cited Project Alpha in a comment below and there are many other examples).

The key thing about science, and remember that organised science is a relatively new idea in the span of human history and one that's made tremendous advances possible in a short time, is that it's about a consensus backed up by the evidence, not any single scientist's opinion. Sure, sometimes one scientist or a small team will come up with a radically new opinion in some field. When their evidence is examined and their experiments repeated by their peers, sometimes they're a Gallileo. More often they're a Pons and Fleischmann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion#Fleischmann.E2.80.9...). But if, and quite rightly only if, they've got good evidence and a theory that fits the facts better than any other, the consensus will shift.

It's not about cynicism, it's about rationality and skepticism. As the old saying goes, keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.

[WayneDB]

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Einstein

[nitrogen]

it's been shown time and again that even the smartest people in the world have been dead wrong about what they think they know.

...but everyone else is wrong a lot more often.

[mayanksinghal]

Both studies were done by the same scientist who seems to have other stakes in the process than just academic curiosity.

[WayneDB]

The chief scientist, Sudhir Shah, was the same each time and you're right that he is "an ardent proponent of Jain philosophy" according to his wikipedia page.

However, both tests were done with other researchers (in 2010, with "a team of 35 researchers from the Indian Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS) as well as other organizations") in the largest hospital chain in one of the most industrialized states in India.

So, still very believable to my mind, despite the reaction of the scientific community at large. Many are quick to say "impossible", citing what they know based on their own observations. It saddens me that modern scientists are such cynics. History has proven that "impossible" is just a point of view and that many things widely believed to be impossible in the past are completely doable.

[withad]

India on the whole has a lot of trouble with this sort of thing. One of the skeptics who criticised the Prahlad Jani experiments, Sanal Edamaraku (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanal_Edamaruku), had to leave the country to avoid arrest under outdated blasphemy laws for pointing out that the supposedly miraculous tears of a statue of Jesus were actually from a leaking sewage pipe. More recently, another noted skeptic, Narendra Dabholkar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narendra_Dabholkar), was shot dead shortly after making significant progress towards outlawing some very lucrative "mystical" practices.

And a large, well-funded project doesn't guarantee reliability. Science involves a certain amount of trust of your peers and scientists studying these claimed phenomena often miss tricks by the participants that someone trained in deception wouldn't (there's a reason so many skeptics and "debunkers" are magicians by training). Look at Project Alpha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alpha) - a couple of amateur street magicians were able to make a whole department of researchers believe they had psychic powers for years without even being challenged.

When it comes down to it, science is about evidence. That's why scientists were able to overturn ideas like geocentrism - they examined them and they didn't fit with the evidence, so they had to go. Theories that had seemed "impossible" to some (certainly not all) people before them, like the Earth going round the Sun, did fit the evidence when scientifically examined and they became the accepted scientific consensus (to cut a long story short).

Scientists dismissing these studies aren't doing so based just "on their own observations". There's a very solid base of scientific, verifiable evidence that says that people need to eat. I don't think it's overly cynical to say that a couple of flaky studies should do little to change anyone's mind.

[ninjin]

> "...both tests were done with other researchers (in 2010, with "a team of 35 researchers from the Indian Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS) as well as other organizations") in the largest hospital chain in one of the most industrialized states in India."

But this is exactly the problem, scientists in general are not trained to investigate cases where the phenomena studied is adversarial and has an interest in a given outcome. I am not saying that the man is a fraud, I don't know, but the mindset that you need to spot it will be very different from what most scientists hold. This is why I personally think that these kinds of people should at least initially be analysed by magicians and others who are trained in misdirection and illusion.

> "It saddens me that modern scientists are such cynics."

The amount of evidence required is usually proportional to the strength of the claim. In this case the man is asking us to suspend close to everything we know about how the human body processes waste and its energy requirements. Claiming that this is possible due to a deity. These are very grandiose claims and I think a lot of people are rightfully sceptical rather than cynical.

[tassl]

>It saddens me that modern scientists are such cynics. History has proven that "impossible" is just a point of view and that many things widely believed to be impossible in the past are completely doable.

Science is based on skepticism, you can't believe something just because somebody tells you to or because you hope it is true, and you can't trust all sources of information. This is why there is a system (we can admit it is improvable) where experts on a certain area review the quality and reproducibility of a work to ensure it reaches a certain/minimum level.

Obviously, something that we consider true today can be accepted as false tomorrow (even though usually in science more than false, the change is to not complete). And that's precisely the power of science.

[tokenadult]

History has proven that "impossible" is just a point of view and that many things widely believed to be impossible in the past are completely doable.

To the contrary, history has shown that many things are just plain impossible, and no change of state of mind will do anything to make them possible.

[jongraehl]

Some people may not realize that rational folk are just humoring spiritual scam artists when we offer to test them. We don't actually waste our time investigating the results of some shoddy trial that doesn't catch them cheating.