telepathy and Sheldrake

sage

heard of rupert sheldrake? he seems to be a very respectable biologist trying to gather evidence for telepathy. reading his book "the sense of being stared at". must say the evidence he gives is very convincing though the mechanism he proposes to explain the phenomenon is plain wispy.can't debunk the evidence though. would like some feedbacks. find more in www.sheldrake.org

SGT

Sheldrake is a crackpot. For some commentaries about his work, please read here.

zoobyshoe

"He is one of the growing horde of `alternative' scientists whose resentment at the aspiritual nature of modern scientific paradigms, as well as the obviously harmful and seemingly indifferent applications of modern science, have lead them to create their own scientific paradigms."

This strikes me as something more than crackpottery. It's a kind of parasitic feeding off science. He wants the respect and reputation that mainstrean science has gained for itself but he's using it to promote distinctly unscientific ideas.

sage

so what they are saying in effect that the experiments are biased due to non random sequencing of trials. that is possible. are there any other examples of skeptics performing ESP experiments and finding negative results? he has also done some experiments with parrots and peoples ability to guess telephone calls- has anybody debunked them?

No-where-man

I say,also,that Sheldrake is a crackpot,but I want irrefutable proofs for that,are there any proofs that sheldrake is crackpot?
He says that nothing today can explain why every ant knows what is its job when they build those structures,even when there were no neural cells,ants still communicate knew what to do(personally,I say they have missed another ant's neural system.

SGT

Ants communicate by pheromones. Each ant leaves its pheromones in the path and the others follow it.

Pengwuino

Whoa i can feel when people are staring at me!!!

only sometimes though :-/

No-where-man

Yes,and why Sheldrake is trying to find God in ants?
Why he doesn't believe that pheromons are responsible for ants' communications?

SGT

I suppose the ants worship a god in the form of an anteater. This god punishes the bad ants by eating them. The good ants will be reborn as queens.

PIT2

This thread clearly shows the fear that some people seem to have of the 'unknown'.

Calling him a crackpot, a parasite, or stating that he thinks God is in ants, just demonstrates this.

SGT

I don't think anybody here fears the unknown. Science is the search to unravel the unknown.
But not every search into the unknown can be classified as science. What Sheldrake does is metaphysics, not physics. Of course you are free to believe in him and in global consciousness, but that does not make those things science.
By the way, if Sheldrake can reproduce the phenomenons he claims to have observed, he is entitled to the million dollar prize offered by James Randi Educational Foundation.

PIT2

This isnt about what i believe or not. Its about people running around shouting crackpot and such, as if those are actually arguments against anything.

Oh and btw, the Global Consciousness Project is science at work. Just because it goes against ones personal opinion, doesnt make it non-science.

Also, i suggest to stick to scientific resources instead of debunk sites. It would be useful to stay objective in these kinds of matters.

zoobyshoe

I am not afraid of the unknown, Pit2, I am annoyed by people who just make stuff up as they go along.

I am very open minded about the existence of telepathy, and that it might have a basis in the known phenomena of physics and biology.

Guys likt this guy, who just make up new, untestable, forms of energy out of the blue, are the ones who make it all sound so silly that no reputable scientist is going to want to seriously study it.

zoobyshoe

What science? It isn't physics. It isn't biology.

Don't you realize Sheldrake just made "morphic resonance" up?

http://skepdic.com/morphicres.html

And don't you realize skeptic sites are science sites?

PIT2

So what, its still science.

Oh really, well ive got a nice skeptic site for u:

Skeptic about skeptics:
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/home.htm

Theres also a bunch of religious sites which are skeptical of science, are they also science sites?

zoobyshoe

In what way? How are you defining science?
I'll check it out. I'm skeptical of a skeptic or two.
Are these sites "skeptical" of science or would the more accurate word be "unbelieving"?

Now, back to the question you didn't answer: you do realize that Sheldrake just confabulated the concept of "morphic resonance" don't you? He just invented it out of thin air to account for telepathy. It's useless: you can't measure it, or even detect it. You can't plan experiments with it. It's a made up idea. Take it up to the general physics forum and start a thread asking the real physicists to explain "morphic resonance", why don't ya?

Now if you want to discuss the possibility of telepathy being some hitherto undocumented human ability to sense electric or magnetic fields, or as some quantum "spooky action at a distance," then there would be something that's actually been detected to speculate forward from.

PIT2

The definition of science can be found in google

The question of what i realise or know is irrelevant here.
I was merely adressing the point that there is no need to go around calling people 'crackpot'.

Can u tell me how this has been detected?