Beginning in the 1970s, a handful of independent researchers and those associated with respected universities and medical institutions around the world began turning their attention towards a phenomenon that was becoming increasingly more prevalent and reported in the general population - that of the “near death experience”.

By conducting thousands of interviews around the world with those reporting NDEs, as well as many of the doctors who were present for them, researchers began to amass a treasure trove of data.  Even early on, this data was telling them that NDEs had the very high likelihood of being real.  Now, fifty years of research and tens of thousands of cases later their findings appear to have confirmed this.

Because their research rest heavily on this massive body of subjective evidence, it is necessary to understand how probability and chance factor in to their conclusions.  This can be measured by what is known as statistical significance. In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred by chance. Sample size and refined outcomes of the data being tested are a key.

The quantity, quality, consistency and corroboration of data collected and the research undertaken over these 50 years has, from a technical standpoint, removed chance from the equation.  While statistical significance is not 100% definitive in any calculation, the weight of the evidence, and the conclusions drawn therefrom, are now very difficult to dispute.