General anesthesia and consciousness

[stevevw]

Six times you state quite specifically that his eyes were taped shut. This doesn't really impact on the actual event, but I just wanted to note that. In cases like this, all you need is one person to make a claim that something happened and it's then taken as factual evidence. Case in point.

But it was more than one person and thats the point. Its not just one person saying I went to a footy game and did x. Its the person making the claim and another two or more witnesses supporting the claim. But skeptics who were not even there will make a claim without any support and claim its fact that disputes the eye witnesses. Seems a bit backwards to me.

We only have two eye witness accounts of the event - from something that happened at least 12 years prior to the statements being made. And in neither case does either of them say that the patients eyes were taped shut. Not at any time. We have lots of people saying that they were. You just did six times And a couple of them were quotes by others.

What we actually have is Rudy's assistant saying much later that patients eyes were sometimes taped. So not always. And not necessarily in this case.

Another unfounded claim. Cattaneo says that patients eyes are taped most of the time and not sometimes. That means its more likely they were taped. So yes necessarily in this case they were taped. You keep making a big deal out of this 12 year gap. I mean we often take evidence much older in abuse cases for example and its all fine.

But...you have quoted it as a fact. So you are wrong. It's not a fact. Just like it's not a fact that the doctor said there was no other way the patient could have known about what happened. Of course he could have. Simply by being told.

Told by who. Being in intensive case the only people having access is the doctors themselves and a nurse. I don't think the nurse of anyone knew of where the doctors were standing or that the post it notes were of any importance or relevance to tell the patient. It wasn't until the patient told the doctors that it came out important.

The doctors would not have told the wife as before they were told by the patient it was not even an issue on anyones radar to tell of. I think your clutching at straws.

Even when you relate what you consider to be the best example of an nde you can't even get the facts right yourself.

I don't think you have the facts right or are at least trying to throw unrelated scenarios that don't seem to be supported by the facts. At least I am going by the independent investigation that was done which seems more factual that some skeptics blog site. They concluded 'documented continuous eyes-closed unconsciousness' and eyes taped shut.

Washington. Amado-Cattaneo’s testimony is very valuable, as it explicitly confirms Rudy’s account. The evidential value of this case is increased because of the component of the Post-it notes, which involved seemingly out-of-body visual perception of phenomena during documented continuous eyes-closed unconsciousness that was highly unlikely to have been deduced from sensory input such as hearing or from logical deduction. Neither Rudy nor Cattaneo indicated that the patient reported any erroneous content.
https://ia904704.us.archive.org/8/items/moreitems/BRIEF REPORT re Lloyd Rudy.pdf

Although his eyes were taped shut, he later reported perceiving veridical details of the doctors and the OR that were later verified by the two surgeons.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...val_after_permanent_bodily_death_includes_TOC

Dr Rudy was one of the top heart specialists in the country. As taping of the eyes is done most of the time it can be assumed with confidence that the patients eyes were taped in that Rudy would follow those precautions in such a vital operation. But of course skeptics latch onto this and try to claim that is case just happen to be one of the rare times tape was not used without any evdience.

But even without this both doctors said the patients eyes were closed the whole time. They did not report his eyes opening or the turning or moving of the head as he was completely comotosed. Unless the patient had a sneeky split second look to capture everything he claims to have seen then this seems impossible.

Dr Rudy clearly states the patient was out to it the entire time and in fact didn't wake up for around 2 days after the event as to the extent of his state which would have only been more severe at the time.

I mean he was out [Milligan: Right], and was out for, I don’t know, even a day or two while we recovered him in the intensive care unit.

So therefore because the evdience shows he was unconscious, dead and there was no eyes opening with tape over them skeptics then go for the next best way to undermine things. They claim someone must have told him for which there is absolutely no evidence. Your conjecturing scenarios that have no evidence. Anyone can do that but it doesn't stand.

Your now claiming the doctors and everyone involved engaged in some formulated deception to fool everyone. Casting aspersions on a Dr who has a long history of integrity and I might add who has also been involved in other NDE cases. So everyone is lying. Thats the level skeptics go to to undermine the facts.

You would think by now being that there had to be several people involved to fool everyone that someone, anyone would have contradicted this case and said something. But none have even 20 plus years later. Independent inestigations by several doctors have supported the facts. The only people disputing it is sites like Skeptico and all they do is list unsupported accertions and anecdotes in an attempt to muddy the waters.

 

[stevevw]

I'm using anecdotal evidence ('hey, I was at the game with a friend - I remember the details') precisely to show you how unreliable it is.

But that is not a description of the events and facts of this case. To use your example it would be like 2 or 3 other people backing up your claim that you were at the game confirming the details. Then its a different story and has more weight.

You seem to take the glass half empty negative view of eye witness accounts when quite often they support the facts and are strong enough to be used in courts as evidence. In fact much of our daily lives and history is full of first person experiences that we readily accept. It only gets that way for materialists because they have an aversion of anything thats non materialistic.

You also have to remember that evidence of NDE doesn't prove that people actually left their bodies directly. Its just explaining unusual and hard to explain events. Like when a person miraclously recovers from cancer. We don't say it didn't happen or its a supernatural phenomena. We say it really happened but we cannot explain it according to current science.

It seems to me many skeptics balk and resist admitting these events because they fear it will lead to having to admit something supernatural is going on. But this is not the case and only prevents us from acknowledging the reality which then allows us to investigate further rather than just denying it didn't happen as is and stopping all further investigations.

 

[Bradskii]

I am going by the independent investigation that was done. They concluded 'documented continuous eyes-closed unconsciousness'

And they assumed it. So you assumed it. It's nothing but an assumption. It's a procedure that is sometimes done. But you stated that it was done as a fact. That's incorrect. You are basing your arguments on it. You mentioned it 6 years times in one post. Yet nobody who was present said that it had been done.

That's how these stories develop. Someone suggests something and it then becomes a fact. Somebody says 'sometimes eyes are taped' and then it becomes 'his eyes were taped'. So if anyone says that he simply saw what he reported then you have a convenient argument 'He can't have because his eyes were taped'.

That's now a statement that's completely inadmissible. Any arguments you have used based on that assumption are then themselves just assumptions.

 

[Bradskii]

But that is not a description of the events and facts of this case. To use your example it would be like 2 or 3 other people backing up your claim that you were at the game confirming the details.

There were two people. Me and the other guy. We both agreed we'd been to the game together. We had no proof. It was just anecdotal evidence. But we were both wrong. Anecdotal evidence, based on assumptions (you made are one regarding the eyes being taped as being a fact) is often wrong. The people we told would have believed us. They would have told others that it was a fact. Why not? Why would we lie? We both confirmed it. But we were wrong.

Anecdotal evidence is not worth the paper it isn't printed on. Memories cannot be relied a on. And making assumptions, as you just did, exacerbates the problem.

 

[partinobodycular]

The problem is when the patient started to regain blood pressure the doctors were there is a split second.

Now you're the one making assumptions. We know for certain that Dr. Rudy had dismissed the renewed electrical activity as nothing more than "an agonal thing." Meaning just part of the natural process of dying. We have no indication at all of how quickly they responded to the renewed blood pressure, or even for that matter how quickly they noticed it, or were even in a position to notice it. Other than the printout piling up on the floor, what could they actually see from the doorway. But to assume that they noticed it immediately and responded within a split second is clearly an assumption.

Remember, stick to the facts.

Then theres the fact that the doctors did not see the patient turn his head or open his eyes to see them.

You're assuming that it would've been necessary for the patient to turn his head in order to see them. But either way, what they were wearing would've been obvious when they returned to the operating table.

But keep in mind, you're counting on the fact that the doctors were close enough to the operating table to be able to see the increase in electrical activity and blood pressure. So they must've been pretty close. Which means that if they were close enough to see the monitors, then they were likely close enough to be seen by the patient as well. If they could see the monitors then he could most likely see them.

But even if he could theres the problem that the patients eyes were taped shut.

Another assumption. The tape is placed on the eyes by the anesthesiologist. We know that the anesthesia had been stopped and the anesthesiologist was gone. It's the recommended procedure for the anesthesiologist to remove the tape from the eyes when the procedure is done. So there's a very good chance that the tape was no longer there.

Again, stick to the facts as we know them, not as you presume them to be. The eyes may have been taped shut, and they may not have been, you don't know. But since it's the anesthesiologist's job to remove it, and the anesthesiologist was gone, there's a good chance that the tape was gone as well.

I'm going to ignore all the rest of the times that you mentioned the taped eyes. I realize that to you it's irrefutable, but it's really not.

They never once mention that the patient opened their eyes or moved.

Why would you expect that the eyes being open would be a detail that Dr. Rudy would feel the need to mention? He was a busy guy at the time. And the eyes are the anesthesiologist's responsibility.

I'm not talking about a patient who's actively moving their eyes, simply a patient from whom the tape has been removed by the anesthesiologist, such that they have some visual awareness of the things around them. But this isn't to discount the possibility that the patient did have some limited control of the motion of their eyes, at least until the anesthesiologist returns to re-tape them, and re-establish anesthesia.

Which quite coincidentally is when the patient stops reporting any events taking place around him. How remarkable, the anesthesiologist comes back and his "NDE" suddenly stops.

But even if this was not the case there is no way someone lying flat on their back eyes pointed to ceiling can then see an object clearly at the end of the bed.

Did you try this? Because I did, and I would easily be able to see a monitor in the air above the end of the surgical table. I also looked at photos of surgical setups, and some monitors would be practically impossible to miss, laying flat on your back or not. So to suggest that the patient couldn't see the monitor is disregarding both general surgical setup, and the testimony of Dr. Amado-Cattaneo himself who said, and I quote: "The messages to Dr. Rudy I believe were taped to a monitor that sits close to the end of the operating table, up in the air, close enough for anybody to see what it is there, like the patient for example if he was looking at it."

So the monitor was almost certainly close enough for the patient to see.

ONly the doctor said he was out for the count so much so that he didn't wake for a couple of days afterwards.

This is just poor reasoning on your part. We have two separate events being described here. In event one the patient died and his body was being prepared for the morgue. He's obviously not being given any more drugs. No pain killers, no sedatives, nada. In event two the patient has completed surgery and is being sent to post-op and then intensive care. I certainly hope that they're giving him pain killers and sedatives. So it's understandable that the patient would regain consciousness quickly in event one, but not in event two. They're completely different circumstances. In one he gets no drugs at all, in the other he most certainly will be kept on a regimen of pain killers and sedatives.

No my assumptions are based on the facts as mentioned above.

No, your assumptions are just that... assumptions. But your biggest assumption is that his eyes were taped at all times. But as I mentioned, taping the eyes is the responsibility of the anesthesiologist, as is removing it when the procedure is finished. Since we know that the anesthesiologist was gone, it's not that much of a stretch to assume that the tape was gone as well.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

I’m a big believer in NDE, but I think the first step in discussing them is acknowledging they are unprovable. By virtue of the fact that the experience happens entirely internally, within somebody’s own perception, one cannot “prove” it happened. Even if they describe the room, the people in it, what they said, there’s a thousand more logical explanations for it that have to be considered. Maybe they saw it all before hand and remember it through heightened perception that comes with the loss of motor or brain function. Maybe they made a good guess. Maybe they saw it after and folded it into the experience.

NDE are just one of those things that you either say “the amount of anecdotal evidence and stores that occur (or my own personal experience) has led me to believe they occur” or “the science doesn’t prove they occur and just as many people who almost die report no NDE experiences. so I don’t believe they exist beyond a synapse misfire that occurs in a brain losing blood, oxygen, and electrical stimulation.” Neither is wrong, both are right. Plenty of people say see or experience something that transcends earth, nature, and science. Plenty of people say they don’t and that one moment the TV is on, the next the plug is pulled and it all goes dark. I’m sure both accounts are very correct.

We also have to acknowledge that even if NDEs are proven to be true, that doesn’t prove the existence of God, the afterlife, verify Christianity, or disprove atheism or other spiritual beliefs. Having done plenty of research on NDEs on my journey to be a death doula, the Christian “I saw Heaven, hell, God and all things Christian” make up a minority of stories. Most experiences involve secular experiences, like loved ones who’ve crossed before being present, etc. There are just as many Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and even Pagan religious NDE reported. In fact, even in religiously tinged NDE, the reports of Pagan, Hindu, and Buddhist-themed experiences far outpace Christian ones. Christian NDE are even less common than Shinto NDE. It doesn’t prove these faiths to be true, only proves the influences of these faiths on the brain in life.

 

[All Becomes New]

What else could possibly have happened? Nobody told him what had happened to him? It was never discussed? The details weren't given to his wife? She and her husband never discussed it? Gimme a break. It's nonsensical to suggest otherwise.

We only have two eye witness accounts of the event - from something that happened at least 12 years prior to the statements being made. And in neither case does either of them say that the patients eyes were taped shut. Not at any time. We have lots of people saying that they were.

I'm sorry if I am missing something, but if everyone is talking about all this, then what is the reason to doubt the testimonies?

 

[Tinker Grey]

@Tropical Wilds and @Jesse Dornfeld,

These discussions get a little sloppy with short hands like using NDE as an indicator of what is under dispute.

I don't think @Bradskii would dispute that NDEs occur. Rather the dispute is whether the NDE is an actual out-of-body experience or whether just an artifact of the brain shutting down or rebooting.

Some have alleged (in this thread?) that these things were experienced when the brain was*actually* shut down. Nobody has provided a way to know that that is true.

That NDEs happen is not the dispute; it's whether the subject saw what they saw and how.

 

[Bradskii]

I'm sorry if I am missing something, but if everyone is talking about all this, then what is the reason to doubt the testimonies?

Anecdotal testimonies are often wrong. And even when they aren't, how they are interpreted often depends on what one would like to believe.

 

[All Becomes New]

Anecdotal testimonies are often wrong. And even when they aren't, how they are interpreted often depends on what one would like to believe.

As I have said before, we should believe people until there is a reason not to. Because some testimonies are not accurate does not mean they all are or that we cannot trust the overall thrust of what is said. You can't get very far in this world if you don't believe people.

 

[Bradskii]

As I have said before, we should believe people until there is a reason not to.

The reasons have been given.

Because some testimonies are not accurate does not mean they all are...

I and others have continually asked for the best examples to prove the claims. At the very least they have been found to be extremely unconvincing. And I'm being very generous there. And I think that's quite a reasonable position to take in checking the 'best' examples. It's nonsensical to suggest that we have to keep rejecting claim after claim after claim when the first half a dozen prove to be invalid.

or that we cannot trust the overall thrust of what is said.

As noted above, that's exactly what we can do. Bearing in mind that NDEs are reasonably common. No-one is arguing against them. It's the supernatural aspects of them that are in dispute. And have been quite easily shown to be without basis.

 

[All Becomes New]

And have been quite easily shown to be without basis.

You gave me a chuckle there friend. By your own admission, you are biased saying it would take a lot to convince you otherwise. Just because you CAN poke holes in some evidence does not mean that is closer to the truth. Point of fact, you go outside the evidence stated to make your case saying what is "likely" when there is no evidence that your suggestion is actually true. Again, it is not about what is certain, but about what is most probable. I would challenge you to stay within the evidence stated to make your case rather than inventing ideas of what could possibly have happened. Anything is possible. It is not about what is possible but what is probable.

 

[Tinker Grey]

It's fascinating to me that all NDEs seem to use a evidence things about the place they are being resuscitated at rather than, say, the goings on in the oval office at the same time.

Why don't DNEs talk about things that the patient couldn't possibly know such as what was happening between Rishi Sunak and his spouse rather than the regular goings on in an ER?

 

[Bradskii]

You gave me a chuckle there friend. By your own admission, you are biased saying it would take a lot to convince you otherwise. Just because you CAN poke holes in some evidence does not mean that is closer to the truth. Point of fact, you go outside the evidence stated to make your case saying what is "likely" when there is no evidence that your suggestion is actually true. Again, it is not about what is certain, but about what is most probable. I would challenge you to stay within the evidence stated to make your case rather than inventing ideas of what could possibly have happened. Anything is possible. It is not about what is possible but what is probable.

Exactly right. So if someone says 'this happened' and it's far from clear that it actually did, it's reasonable to look at what could actually have happened. Not what was possible, but what was more probable. And many of these stories rely on someone interpreting an event in a particular way. When there are what must be considered much more prosaic answers to the situation.

In the case recently discussed, the doctor said that there was no way the patient could have known what happened after he had been declared dead. That is patently absurd. His wife had been told that he had died. So she obviously was told that this rare event had happened and her husband was now relatively safe. That she was told details of what happened seems to be blazingly obvious. Otherwise...what? 'Oh, he's ok? Well, that's good. No need for any more details. That's fine.' She would have been told exactly what happened by any number of people conversant with the details. So to say 'there was no way he could have known' is simply preposterous.

It was brought up a half dozen times in one post that the patient has his eyes taped shut. No-one present ever said that he did. But that becomes a fact. Becuase it suits the narrative.

It has been said repeatedly that the patient could not have seen the post it notes. But the assistant doctor said just the opposite. That they were in a position where anyone could see them, 'including the patient.'

So the question then becomes, what is more likely. What is more probable. That some supernatural event occured, breaking all known physical laws. Or...His wife told him what happened while he was still under medication and he thought he remembered it. And he was told about or saw himself the notes.

If supernatural events such as this had already been proved to happen, then there might be a possibility that this might be an example. Not a very good one. But still a possibility. But as we stand, the most probable explanation by far is the mundane one.

And this is meant to be a great example. If this is one of the best, then I'll leave you to decide how all the others obviously appear in comparison.

 

[Bradskii]

It's fascinating to me that all NDEs seem to use a evidence things about the place they are being resuscitated at rather than, say, the goings on in the oval office at the same time.

Why don't DNEs talk about things that the patient couldn't possibly know such as what was happening between Rishi Sunak and his spouse rather than the regular goings on in an ER?

Fascinating, isn't it. Someone died and had a glimpse of the afterlife. You what!? What was it like? What can you tell us? This might change my life forever!

'Well, there was this shoe on the window ledge outside. And...some post it notes stuck on a terminal. And a bright light. And oh yeah...I saw my grannie.'

 

[stevevw]

The reasons have been given.

I and others have continually asked for the best examples to prove the claims. At the very least they have been found to be extremely unconvincing. And I'm being very generous there. And I think that's quite a reasonable position to take in checking the 'best' examples. It's nonsensical to suggest that we have to keep rejecting claim after claim after claim when the first half a dozen prove to be invalid.

Once again they are not anecdotal evidence. Is the eye witness testimony of an incident anecdotal or evidence that can be used to support what happened. The courts seem to think its evidence. In fact around 79 to 80% of convictions are made based on eye witness testimony.

I think the skeptics position is the unreasonable one to take. To say they the eye witness accounts of good people is "extremely unconvincing" and a "reasonable position to take" is unreal. Do we say that to all eye witnesses who report abuse.

On the one hand we have eye witness testimony and independent reports supporting what happened as opposed to your objections (the skeptics) that onlly hinge on made up anecdotals that actually have no eye witness testimony or independent reports.

Surely any reasonable person would say there is a big difference between the two and that if anything the skeptics claims are the "extremely unconvincing" and "unreasonable position to take".

If you think the eye witnesses and the patient are lying or concoting stories then you need to provide evdience and not mere unsupported and unreal accertions. You need the same if not better evidential weight as eye witnesses saying they heard the Doctors making up the story or a witness who admits telling the patient what happened. Not unfounded spectulation.

Otherwise anyone could say anything without any support and we would get nowhere.

 

[Bradskii]

Once again they are not anecdotal evidence. Is the eye witness testimony of an incident anecdotal or evidence that can be used to support what happened. The courts seem to think its evidence. In fact around 79 to 80% of convictions are made based on eye witness testimony.

From here: Myth: Eyewitness Testimony is the Best Kind of Evidence

'According to the Innocence Project , 358 people who had been convicted and sentenced to death since 1989 have been exonerated through DNA evidence. Of these, 71% had been convicted through eyewitness misidentification and had served an average of 14 years in prison before exoneration. Of those false identifications, 41% involved cross-racial misidentifications (221 of the 358 people were African American). And 28% of the cases involved a false confession.

The claim that eyewitness testimony is reliable and accurate is testable, and the research is clear that eyewitness identification is vulnerable to distortion without the witness’s awareness. More specifically, the assumption that memory provides an accurate recording of experience, much like a video camera, is incorrect. Memory evolved to give us a personal sense of identity and to guide our actions. We are biased to notice and exaggerate some experiences and to minimize or overlook others. Memory is malleable.

Memory doesn’t record our experiences like a video camera. It creates stories based on those experiences. The stories are sometimes uncannily accurate, sometimes completely fictional, and often a mixture of the two; and they can change to suit the situation. Eyewitness testimony is a potent form of evidence for convicting the accused, but it is subject to unconscious memory distortions and biases even among the most confident of witnesses. So memory can be remarkably accurate or remarkably inaccurate. Without objective evidence, the two are indistinguishable.'

The evidence presented in the case is by definition anecdotal. It is simply people's memory of an event that happened over a decade previously. There is no objective evidence whatsoever. None at all. Zero.

'So Steve, you are familiar with the case?'
'Most definitely'.
'So you know all the relevant details?'
'Indeed I do.'
'So, from memory, can you tell us if the patient's eyes were open or taped shut?'
'They were taped shut.'
'And you are sure about that?'
'Absolutely.'
'Can you tell me from where you remember this detail?'
'The doctors assistant confirmed it'.
'Can you read this account of the event as emailed by the assistant to an investigator? The underlined section.'
'It says "patients eyes were sometimes taped..." '
'Does it say that this patient's eyes were taped?'
'Umm. No.'
'So it's safe to say that your memory is not correct as regards this matter?'
'Umm. Yes'.
'We move to strike any claim that the patient's eyes were taped shut from the record.'

 

[Bradskii]

On the one hand we have... independent reports supporting what happened...

Nearly missed this.

No, we don't have independent reports. All the reports do is simply repeat the story as it was first told. There was and has been no attempt to verify any of it.

 

[stevevw]

It's fascinating to me that all NDEs seem to use a evidence things about the place they are being resuscitated at rather than, say, the goings on in the oval office at the same time.

Why don't DNEs talk about things that the patient couldn't possibly know such as what was happening between Rishi Sunak and his spouse rather than the regular goings on in an ER?

There are NDE experiences that have described situations away from the place they died. There are also NDE where more than one person was actually in the NDE and OBE. There are also OBE where a living person (not dying) has actually experienced OBE with the dying person.

 

[stevevw]

From here: Myth: Eyewitness Testimony is the Best Kind of Evidence

'According to the Innocence Project , 358 people who had been convicted and sentenced to death since 1989 have been exonerated through DNA evidence. Of these, 71% had been convicted through eyewitness misidentification and had served an average of 14 years in prison before exoneration. Of those false identifications, 41% involved cross-racial misidentifications (221 of the 358 people were African American). And 28% of the cases involved a false confession.

The claim that eyewitness testimony is reliable and accurate is testable, and the research is clear that eyewitness identification is vulnerable to distortion without the witness’s awareness. More specifically, the assumption that memory provides an accurate recording of experience, much like a video camera, is incorrect. Memory evolved to give us a personal sense of identity and to guide our actions. We are biased to notice and exaggerate some experiences and to minimize or overlook others. Memory is malleable.

Memory doesn’t record our experiences like a video camera. It creates stories based on those experiences. The stories are sometimes uncannily accurate, sometimes completely fictional, and often a mixture of the two; and they can change to suit the situation. Eyewitness testimony is a potent form of evidence for convicting the accused, but it is subject to unconscious memory distortions and biases even among the most confident of witnesses. So memory can be remarkably accurate or remarkably inaccurate. Without objective evidence, the two are indistinguishable.'

The problem is what you are doing is assuming all cases are unreliable. Your tarring the unreliable with the reliable. The fact that some people were wrongly identified doesn't negate those who were correctly identified due to eye witness accounts.

Eye witness experience is only part of the evidence though. Just like eye witness testimony other evidence helps build the case. So it is with NDE as I have already posted with the testing of brain waves during unconsciousness and clinical death and from physics, culture and psychology.

What we forget is to look at the individuals NDE as well, the similarities across culture and age, the repeated first hand testimony of meeting deceased relatives, of life reviews and profound effects on their lives. Most important the fact that they are more confident about their NDE reality than the lived reality of their daily lives.

This is different to illusions, dreams or imaginations which are usually not as clear or vivid, dazed, hard to remember. In fact I linked the evdience shows that the type of brain signal associated with NDE is different to dreams, illusions and imaginations.

The evidence presented in the case is by definition anecdotal. It is simply people's memory of an event that happened over a decade previously. There is no objective evidence whatsoever. None at all. Zero.

Yes each individual account is by itself a subjective perception of what happened. But so is absolutely everything we do and remember in history and thats only told by another subject. Our first and only measure of reality is our subjective conscious experience. Yet we can determine when its real in a number of ways and not just with science or rationality.

Though subjective experience can be an illusion or self deception it can be and is the only way we can verfiy something as real. Theres no other way. Even the science used to determine reality is itself used by the subject and for all we know this too is a self deception.

In the case of skeptics their experiences and mind is already immersed in a material ontology and epistemology and therefore belief (not scientifically verified) about the nature of reality. So they are subject to confirmation bias in that they have discounted other ways of knowing before any investigation to find the truth.

Its when conscious experience, the science and belief converge is when we are closer to the truth and reality. But to dismiss any will only lead to distortions of reality.

'So Steve, you are familiar with the case?'
'Most definitely'.
'So you know all the relevant details?'
'Indeed I do.'
'So, from memory, can you tell us if the patient's eyes were open or taped shut?'
'They were taped shut.'
'And you are sure about that?'
'Absolutely.'
'Can you tell me from where you remember this detail?'
'The doctors assistant confirmed it'.
'Can you read this account of the event as emailed by the assistant to an investigator? The underlined section.'
'It says "patients eyes were sometimes taped..." '
'Does it say that this patient's eyes were taped?'
'Umm. No.'
'So it's safe to say that your memory is not correct as regards this matter?'
'Umm. Yes'.
'We move to strike any claim that the patient's eyes were taped shut from the record.'

No its safe to say that maybe not because of your memory but perhaps a misreading or misinterpretation but you have misquoted the section by Amado-Cattaneo. He actually says Patients’ eyes are always shut during surgery, most of the time they are taped so they do not open since this can cause injury to the corneas.

So they are always closed, mostly taped (not sometimes taped) which makes a big difference because you are using (sometimes taped) to assume they weren't always shut so the same logic applies with (Mostly shut) can be assummed they were taped and always shut.

Cattaneo wasn't referring to the case but making a general statement. If his patients eyes were not taped he would have mentioned such a potentially vital fact. But he didn't and he went on to say "This was not a hoax, no way, this was as real as it gets. … One can believe what one wants to believe but this in my mind is a miracle unexplainable by current scientific knowledge”

But we more evidence from secondary independent source to support that the patient did not open his eyes and see anything during that time from Dr Rudy who said "He described the scene, things that there is no way he knew. I mean, he didn’t wake up in the operating room and see all this. [Milligan: No.] I mean he was out [Milligan: Right], and was out for, I don’t know, even a day or two while we recovered him in the intensive care unit"

So the patient being dead for 20 plus minutes and having compromised his brain so much that it shut down and was traumatised this had caused his brain to shut down and become comotosed that there is no way he could have opened his eyes or had any coherent and aware sense perception.

But wait we have even more evdience from independent reviews as I linked which support the case.

Although his eyes were taped shut, he later reported perceiving veridical details of the doctors and the OR that were later verified by the two surgeons. The unusual purely visual events the patient perceived included the two doctors standing in the OR doorway in their shirt sleeves and the Post-It notes stuck to the computer screen. These perceptions occurred from a vantage point near the ceiling during the time there was no brain electrical activity.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...val_after_permanent_bodily_death_includes_TOC

The evidential value of this case is increased because of the component of the Post-it notes, which involved seemingly out-of-body visual perception of phenomena during documented continuous eyes-closed unconsciousness that was highly unlikely to have been deduced from sensory input such as hearing or from logical deduction. Neither Rudy nor Cattaneo indicated that the patient reported any erroneous content. This case appears to belong to those most evidential cases of AVP in which perceptions during an NDE were confirmed as completely accurate by objective observers.

These reports determined that the patients eyes were taped shut and continuiously closed and he was unconscious for the entire time he was in the OR.

So its not just relying on one piece of evidence its a number of independent lines of evidence which build the case. This is opposed to the skeptics evidence which is nothing, only anecdotals and made up scenarios. There not one piece of evidence that says the patient was not comotosed and able to wake, that people colluded to concote a falsehood, that the doctors are lying or that the patient didn't have the experience he said he had.

To say that the evidence against the case is stronger, to say that the evidence is just based on supported made up anecdotals or that as you said extremely unlikely or next to none is unreal. Anyone can see the case for is much stronger. The most reasonable position to take is that this actually happened by as Cattaneo said we have no scientific explanation for it at present. But that doesn't mean the supernatural happened.