Sponsor |  dragonhead | Mar 31, 2:34am | sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/Dawkins.html [sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/Dawkins.html]
Richard Dawkins is a man with a mission - the eradication of religion and superstition, and their total replacement with science and reason. Channel 4 TV has repeatedly provided him with a pulpit. His two-part polemic in August 2007, called Enemies of Reason, was a sequel to his 2006 diatribe against religion, The Root of All Evil?
Soon before Enemies of Reason was filmed, the production company, IWC Media, told me that Richard Dawkins wanted to visit me to discuss my research on unexplained abilities of people and animals. I was reluctant to take part, but the company's representative assured me that "this documentary, at Channel 4's insistence, will be an entirely more balanced affair than The Root of All Evil was." She added, "We are very keen for it to be a discussion between two scientists, about scientific modes of enquiry". So I agreed and we fixed a date. I was still not sure what to expect. Was Richard Dawkins going to be dogmatic, with a mental firewall that blocked out any evidence that went against his beliefs? Or would he be open-minded, and fun to talk to?
The Director asked us to stand facing each other; we were filmed with a hand-held camera. Richard began by saying that he thought we probably agreed about many things, "But what worries me about you is that you are prepared to believe almost anything. Science should be based on the minimum number of beliefs."
I agreed that we had a lot in common, "But what worries me about you is that you come across as dogmatic, giving people a bad impression of science."
He then said that in a romantic spirit he himself would like to believe in telepathy, but there just wasn't any evidence for it. He dismissed all research on the subject out of hand. He compared the lack of acceptance of telepathy by scientists such as himself with the way in which the echo-location system had been discovered in bats, followed by its rapid acceptance within the scientific community in the 1940s. In fact, as I later discovered, Lazzaro Spallanzani had shown in 1793 that bats rely on hearing to find their way around, but sceptical opponents dismissed his experiments as flawed, and helped set back research for well over a century. However, Richard recognized that telepathy posed a more radical challenge than echo-location. He said that if it really occurred, it would "turn the laws of physics upside down," and added, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"This depends on what you regard as extraordinary", I replied. "Most people say they have experienced telepathy, especially in connection with telephone calls. In that sense, telepathy is ordinary. The claim that most people are deluded about their own experience is extraordinary. Where is the extraordinary evidence for that?"
He produced no evidence at all, apart from generic arguments about the fallibility of human judgment. He assumed that people want to believe in "the paranormal" because of wishful thinking.
We then agreed that controlled experiments were necessary. I said that this was why I had actually been doing such experiments, including tests to find out if people really could tell who was calling them on the telephone when the caller was selected at random. The results were far above the chance level.
The previous week I had sent Richard copies of some of my papers, published in peer-reviewed journals, so that he could look at the data.
Richard seemed uneasy and said, "I'm don't want to discuss evidence". "Why not?" I asked. "There isn't time. It's too complicated. And that's not what this programme is about." The camera stopped.
The Director, Russell Barnes, confirmed that he too was not interested in evidence. The film he was making was another Dawkins polemic.
I said to Russell, "If you're treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it's not irrational to believe in it. I thought that's what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn't interested in taking part in another low grade debunking exercise."
Richard said, "It's not a low grade debunking exercise; it's a high grade debunking exercise."
In that case, I replied, there had been a serious misunderstanding, because I had been led to believe that this was to be a balanced scientific discussion about evidence. Russell Barnes asked to see the emails I had received from his assistant. He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong. The team packed up and left.
Richard Dawkins has long proclaimed his conviction that "The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans". Enemies of Reason was intended to popularize this belief. But does his crusade really promote "the public understanding of science," of which he is the professor at Oxford? Should science be a vehicle of prejudice, a kind of fundamentalist belief-system? Or should it be a method of enquiry into the unknown? |
|
|  |  438731 | Mar 31, 3:08am | | So here Sheldrake has his opportunity to present the evidence that the evil Prof Dawkins wouldn't allow. So does he present it? Does he bollox! |
|
| 
Sponsor | |
|
Sponsor | | dragonhead | Mar 31, 5:27am | Sheldrake has had many, many papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
"If he did have real evidence of telepathy it would be the biggest news in science history. I wonder why it's not."
I would contend it's because of people like Dawkins who aren't "interested in evidence".
What do you make of this?
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"This depends on what you regard as extraordinary", I replied. "Most people say they have experienced telepathy, especially in connection with telephone calls. In that sense, telepathy is ordinary. The claim that most people are deluded about their own experience is extraordinary. Where is the extraordinary evidence for that?" |
|
| | | 438731 | Mar 31, 6:39am | "Most people say they have experienced telepathy, especially in connection with telephone calls. In that sense, telepathy is ordinary. The claim that most people are deluded about their own experience is extraordinary."
Is that the best he can do? I stand a good chance of guessing who is phoning me based on who I have recently rang/texted, the time of day or week and any number of other clues. I'm certainly not telepathic.
Turns out Sheldrake has attempted to replicate the "phenomenon" under experimental conditions. It's covered in this article. |
|
| 
Sponsor | | northpaw | Mar 31, 6:46am | Scientists not interested in compelling evidence of the paranormal? I don't buy it, generally speaking. I realize there is some pressure to conform to whatever mainstream consensus science provides, but at the same time, there are tons of young, eager scientists coming up all the time who would love to get famous by turning the established consensus on its head. They don't because usually they can't - not because the desire isn't there or the greybeards won't let them.
The claim that most people are deluded about their own experience is extraordinary.
I completely disagree with that statement. Most people are deluded as hell about their own experiences, imo. Comes from the whole "people aren't rational, they're rationalizing" idea. |
|
|
Sponsor | | emortis9 | Mar 31, 10:13am | "Sheldrake has had many, many papers published in peer-reviewed journals."
Just because something is published in peer-reviewed journals does not make it credible.
Come on...telepathic dogs?
Really? |
|
|
Sponsor | | dragonhead | Mar 31, 11:37am | No, not just telepathic dogs. Loads of proper, top-notch stuff about plant biology too. He's a bona-fide scientist.
I tend to think that the telepathic dog stuff is a bit of a non-starter, it's just so open to ridicule, just because of the subject and the images it places in one's mind. Still, at least somebody is looking into this stuff with an open mind, unlike Dawkins, who will dismiss something out of hand without even bothering to look at evidence.
6. I don't buy that either! I wish it were the case, but can you imagine? Young research scientist looks into telepathy, Robert Winston and Dawkins get wind of it, young research scientist never works again. |
|
| | | 438731 | Apr 1, 12:11am | | From what I can tell, Sheldrake's telephone telepathy experiment was was pretty simple to perform. It should be easily repeatable, and if similar results were observed by other researchers, my interest would be perked. I'm just very sceptical that they'd see the same results. |
|
|
Sponsor | | emortis9 | Apr 2, 1:50am | "Young research scientist looks into telepathy, Robert Winston and Dawkins get wind of it, young research scientist never works again."
I disagree.
But the fact of the matter is that there have been countless experiments into the existence of telepathy and no real evidence has been found...nothing repeatable. Nothing much more than chance.
I think that if you hit Dawkins with rock solid evidence then he would have no choice but to believe it.
But at what point do you stop wasting money for research and say: "Hey...we've been trying to prove this for 20 years and the results always come up negative...I guess it's safe to say it doesn't exist. Until we acquire new information or come up with a better experiment I guess we will file this in the "not consistent with reality" folder" |
|
| Richard Dawkins comes to call | 11-16>| | | |
Skepticism and Science → Discussion