Rupert Sheldrake is an English author and parapsychologist (someone who studies paranormal phenomena, such as telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis and other forms of ESP). In recent times he gained notoriety for having his TED talk banned, a talk that questioned, what Sheldrake believed to be, the ten dogmatic assumptions of modern science.
He is credited with coming up with the hypothesis of “morphic resonance” and has argued that dogs have the power of telepathy, in his book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (1999), drawing on what he believes is compelling experimental evidence. Sheldrake was also a good friend of Terence McKenna, who, with the mathematician Ralph Abraham, engaged in several trialogues, discussing a myriad of unusual ideas and fringe theories. (Some recordings of these trialogues, which were also later turned into books, can be watched on YouTube: The Evolutionary Mind, Metamorphosis, The Apocalyptic Tradition, Education in the New World Order, and many more).
The problem with Rupert Sheldrake, however, is that his ideas do not really survive critical investigation and so they remain within the realm of pseudoscience. Also, his book, The Science Delusion (2012), which many celebrate as an attack on the dogmatism in science, instead involves a distortion of how science actually operates.
Despite having a PhD in Biochemistry, Sheldrake has received a great deal of criticism from the scientific community for his work on telepathy. He views this attack as a refusal to look at the evidence he has collected over the years on this topic; however, none of his experiments has ever been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, suggesting that there is no compelling evidence in the first place. In Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, Sheldrake describes how he videotapes the behaviour of dogs and concluded that they knew when their owners set off to go home. Dogs would apparently wait by the doorway before they could hear the noise of their car approaching, for example.
The psychologist Richard Wiseman wrote a paper entitled, The Psychic Pet Phenomenon: A Reply to Rupert Sheldrake and in it he critiques Sheldrake’s interpretation of the data. Wiseman attempted to duplicate Sheldrake’s experiment using the same ‘psychic’ pet that Sheldrake had used in his own experiments; a dog named Jaytee. Sheldrake then analysed Wiseman’s data and said that it pointed to psychic abilities: Jaytee, for example, would wait on the porch for longer periods of time when the owner was closer to arriving home, a phenomenon consistent with Sheldrake’s own results.
Wiseman, on the other hand, is not convinced. He argues that the observed patterns could easily be explained by Jaytee’s natural waiting behaviour – a dog is more likely to wait on the porch for longer the longer their owner is away. So it should not be surprising that Jaytee is on t the porch before the owner comes home. This is evidence of a dog anticipating the arrival of their owner, instead of knowing it through psychic abilities. Wiseman also criticises the fact that Sheldrake’s experiments have not been published in peer-reviewed journals, but only in his books. This has meant that his methodology has not been fully described, making it difficult to properly assess the validity of his methodology.
Sheldrake has also explored the phenomenon of when people ‘know’ that they’re being stared at, in his book, The Sense of Being Stared At. In tens of thousands of trials, he reported that 60% of the subjects reported being stared at when they were and that 50% of the subjects reported being stared at when they weren’t. He sees this as evidence of weak psychic abilities. However, the results are not that significant and the 60% hit rate could be explained by other factors than psychic abilities. Richard Wiseman has also replicated the experiment and found that subjects detected stares at rates no better than chance.
Another idea that has characterised Sheldrake’s career has been ‘morphic resonance’ and the ‘morphogenetic field’. In his 1981 book, A New Science of Life, Sheldrake refers to ‘morphic resonance’ as the basis of “memory in nature….the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species.”
Morphic resonance is the influence of previous structures on subsequent similar structures. Through morphic resonance each member of a species draws on a collective memory and in turn, through their own activity, contributes to it as well. The idea of a collective memory is similar to Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious, a pool of symbols and archetypes of which we are unaware. However, Sheldrake makes claims that go far beyond Jung’s idea that the collective unconscious is purely a phenomenon of human psychology. Sheldrake claims that morphic resonance is transmitted via ‘morphogenetic fields’ and that a member of a species will tune into the collective information in this field in order to shape its own development. In his own words, Sheldrake says:
It is not at all necessary for us to assume that the physical characteristics of organisms are contained inside the genes…Thus, morphogenetic fields are located invisibly in and around organisms, and may account for such hitherto unexplainable phenomena as the regeneration of severed limbs by worms and salamanders, phantom limbs, the holographic properties of memory, telepathy, and the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater quantities of a population acquire them.
Two claims here strike me as problematic: the first, that the physical characteristics of organisms are not contained inside genes. This is contradicted by a well-established and persuasive body of evidence which explains how DNA and gene expression affects the development of organisms. The second claim, that the morphogenetic field is invisible, leads sceptics to argue that the concept is magical and untestable (and therefore unscientific). Supporters of Sheldrake’s hypothesis could reply by saying that the quantum world is invisible to us, yet that does not mean it is unreal. That’s true; however, all the evidence points to a quantum world. Sheldrake’s obsession with telepathy does not necessarily point to a world full of invisible morphogenetic fields. Reports of telepathy can be explained without the unnecessary baggage of morphic resonance.
The most recent issue which Sheldrake has addressed has been the apparent dogmatism and fundamentalism found in modern science. These ideas were expressed in his most recent book, The Science Delusion and were summarised in his banned TED talk. Whether his TED talk (along with Graham Hancock’s) should have been removed from the TED website is a separate issue. It is not fair to say that they have been censored since they are available online anyway. Perhaps Sheldrake and Hancock should not have been invited in the first place, given the nature of TED talks.
Sheldrake maintains that the 10 dogmas of science are: (1) Everything is essentially mechanical, (2) All matter is unconscious, (3) The total amount of matter and energy is always the same, (4) The laws of nature are fixed, (5) Nature is purposeless, (6) All biological inheritance is material, (7) Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activity of brains, (8) Memory is stored in material traces in the brain, (9) Unexplained phenomena such as telepathy are illusory, and (10) Mechanistic medicine is the only one that really works.
Anyone with a scientific mindset would (and should) be suspicious about someone claiming that these ten points are religiously held dogmas. All of these 10 supposed dogmas are actually claims which have been bolstered by compelling evidence and which have not been falsified. Since the scientific method is inherently non-dogmatic – it involves a self-correcting mechanism where hypotheses which are inconsistent with the data are rejected – if there was real evidence for telepathy, purpose in nature, homeopathy, and so on, then these phenomena could be seriously studied.
But instead, Sheldrake sees the lack of interest in his own beliefs as a sign that science works by suppressing information which does not fit into its own framework of assumptions. It still remains the case that there is a lack of evidence for Sheldrake’s own strongly held assumptions, including the belief in a purposeful goal-directed universe, the belief that laws of nature are not laws at all, but are more like ‘habits’, the belief that the mind is essentially immaterial and non-local (not located in the brain), and the belief in panpsychism (a doctrine which says that all matter is conscious). The irony of Sheldrake’s attack on science is that he fails to subject his own assumptions to the same open-mindedness and critical thinking that he accuses scientists of lacking.
For more, check out this recent debate with Rupert Sheldrake, neuroscientist Colin Blakemore, and novelist Joanna Kavenna, who discuss whether we should view the human body as a machine. Blakemore’s position is that the human body is purely mechanical, which is at odds with Sheldrake’s critique of such mechanistic thinking.
Clinical psychedelic studies by Grof indicates for telepathy…. The dogmatic issue with science lies in the cessation of psychedelic studies following the controlled substance act 1970.
Research into the therapeutic use of psychedelics is ongoing and growing.
Curious: Rupert says that once some mice learnt a behaviour, mice all over the world learnt that behaviour quickly. How true is this (surprising) evidence?
If everyone felt like believing Rupert Sheldrake instead of the 10 Dogmas of Scientism, then there would be more bloggers writing about the well-established evidence for his ideas and they would be repeated “endlessly” in science classrooms and peer-reviewed journals. There are few people so committed to truth that they would not compromise it for a salary, respect, the opportunity to not freeze and starve, or the ability to feed one’s children.
Let’s not forget the unspoken eleventh dogma, which is that we must put on a convincing appearance of non-dogmatism or else the whole house of cards will fall down. And the twelfth dogma, which is that these dogmas are responsible for our wealth and well-being, and everything was terrible before we invented them.
Sheldrake’s alleged dogmas of science are straw men. For example, many ‘constants’ such as the speed of light being the fastest possible speed are recognized as assumptions that allow mathematical testing of related matters. Should new compelling evidence arise, a new ultimate speed will be accepted. Science holds few dogmas, perhaps only that any accepted belief may be disproven but this must be done through rigorous, replicable experimentation and rational conclusions. Science doesn’t hold Sheldrake’s alleged dogmas even if certain beliefs in science are strongly supported by evidence and therefore currently accepted as fact. Sure, to challenge well-established ‘facts’ will require very convincing new evidence. Sheldrake’s experiments claiming to show a dog knows when its human is leaving for home from far away were not rigorous, replicated, peer reviewed or even very convincing in the consistency of the data. Numerous ‘failed’ trials were discarded on various pretexts. The experiments did not control for the tendency of a dog to spend longer times at the window the longer its human has been away. The criteria eventually used to define the dog’s behaviour as reflecting telepathic knowledge were developed ad hoc to fit the observed behaviour into the hypothesis. Should the evidence for Sheldrake’s claims become strong, scientists will be the first to be excited and welcoming about the new information.
Sheldrake’s argument with science is not with the absolute speed of light, but with the scientific establishment’s cynical decision to keep its fluctuations secret while getting metrologists to “institute” an arbitrrary speed of light in 1973 and prohibit an adult discussion around its manifest variability,
As for dogs, I’m surprised Sheldrake wasted his time on them.
The main problem with Rupert Sheldrake is that he does not worship the Funyarinpa
Thanks for writing this. Someone posted it in a twitter thread where someone had quoted him, and I appreciated being able to learn more! Thanks again!!!
What is a dogma? a set of beliefs or principles that are accepted without question or skepticism within a particular ideology, religion, or philosophical system. Dogmas are often considered authoritative and unchangeable, and adherents are expected to adhere to them unquestioningly. Dogmas can be found in various areas of life, including religious dogmas within faiths, political dogmas within ideologies, and scientific dogmas within certain branches of science. These beliefs are typically treated as established and indisputable truths within their respective contexts. However, the term “dogma” can also carry a negative connotation when it implies close-mindedness and resistance to critical thinking or examination of beliefs.
Nothing in Science is accepted without question. Also, every scientific idea is open to change given new evidence discovered from the objective, factual universe.
Therefore, science is not a dogma.
Rupert Sheldrake is a mystic and a scientist who is trying very hard to make science serve the dogmas of religion. This strategy was rightly abandoned after Scholasticm failed. This led to the Western Enlightenment, “whose” ideas have been more fruitful than any form of mysticism ever has been. A regression back to this strategy has led to quackery which has offered practices which have had no measurable benefits, related to their foundational claims of causes, or harmful effects, since they are not evidence-based and yet continue despite evidence which contradicts their efficacy, like mystical ideas are continued. Examples include: Ayurvedic Medicine, Parapsychology, Chiropractic Medicine, Acupuncture and Gender affirming care.
There are a lot of blatantly false claims here. You say Sheldrake never published in journals– false, see: sheldrake.org/research/all-scientific-papers. You claim Sheldrake’s work was not peer reviewed. The first two journals I checked ARE peer reviewed. You claims one cannot review Sheldrake’s work, but the Kane paper in question is readily accessed. You claim Wiseman’s test refutes Sheldrake’s results, but Wiseman used a bogus scoring metric of “first time on window ledge”, for a dog that was hyperactive. The behavior change was for Kane to REMAIN on the ledge, and the appropriate metric would be to determine if this happened upon Pam heading home or not. Wiseman’s scoring metric — appears almost deliberately chosen to mask whether the real phenomenon took place or not. Its selection by a supposed experienced researcher should, if anything, raise a serious concern of deliberate data fraud by Wiseman. You claim that the dog gradually increased its time on the ledge, the longer Pam was away. this is explicitly tested for and refuted by the Sheldrake on figures 3 and 4 https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Testing-a-Return-Anticipating-Dog-Kane.pdf.
Moving on to staring, you claim that a 10% effect deviation from the mean is not significant in a 10,000 item test!!!!! Under what statistics? You also offer no other alternative causes , just “could be explained by other factors than psychic abilities”. Well, that is the nature of Popperian science — we scientists need to always be open to the possibility of being wrong, and something else happening. But with no alternatives, science works with the predictive model, which here is psi, rather than “well, maybe we will discover something else someday”. You also implies that the effect is not real, because Wiseman did not show it. But attention by the experimenter is part of the test, and under Wiseman’s control. Denier failure under intentionality conditions is actually expected under the attention-psi hypothesis, and is seen in many other psi tests of the goats and sheep effect among agents and subjects, and was verified in Wiseman’s joint tests with https://marilynschlitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Wiseman-and-Schlitz-1999.pdf
This “case” appears to just be a series of falsehoods, in order to smear a researcher who is generating data you find disturbing. There is pseudo-science at work here, but it appears to be by you and Wiseman, not Sheldrake!
Author
Thanks for taking the time to write this response. It’s been a while since I’ve looked into Sheldrake’s claims, as well as those from Wiseman, so I appreciate you sharing these resources and critiques.
One thing to note, initially, is that I didn’t claim Sheldrake hadn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but that his experiments hadn’t. However, perhaps I’m mistaken about this. Have his experiments appeared in a scientific journal? I think it’s also worth noting that many journals are peer-reviewed, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the journal is a scientific one or reputable. In terms of your other criticisms, I’m open to delving more deeply into the experiments and revising my view in light of the evidence.
Sam,
I came in with both barrels blazing, because I have seen a lot of anti-psi propaganda, and your blog just looked like more.
I provided links to support the falsity of each of the errors I cited. Did you look for any of Sheldrake’s papers online? There are 100 linked on his website. And the one on the experiments with the dog has nearly a dozen graphs showing that the dog did not approach the windowsill more frequently over time, contra Wiseman, UNTIL Pam was coming home.
Reference quality is important. Parapsychology is a scientific field of study, and has peer reviewed journals. Are you now saying that peer reviewed science journals are not valid references?
For my take on Sheldrake, see https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/117324/29339
Author
That’s understandable. I’m (still) unconvinced about the reality of psi phenomena based on what I’ve read, but I’m awlays open to reading more into it. My mind could be changed. Also, I wrote this particular post over 10 years ago, so I would like to think I’m less of a hard-nosed/arrogant sceptic now. I take your point that parapsychology can be considered scientific (even by sceptics).
Hi Sam,
Thats great that you are more openminded now. I showed up here because your blog was cited on PhilosophySE as a reason to dismiss Sheldrake as a pseudoscientist, and I was frustrated that the reasons given were mostly falsehoods, at least per my knowledge. Would you be willing/able to correct those points?
I would also like to do a test case with you on my belief Sheldrake is a good experimentalist, and Wiseman is not. The test would be their dog telepathy papers.
My understanding of the key question is whether the dog (Kane vs. Jaytee, they are the same dog, not sure which name is right, or neither) would go to the door or window to an anomalous degree after Pam started home, vs. the rest of the time she was out.
To figure this out, one should look at the time that Pam was away before being told to return, and then compare the dog’s behavior before this time as a control, to after this time, and determine if there were significant differences at either “return decision” “return travel” or “approach house”, or all of the above.
Sheldrakes paper does this admirably. He plots time-axis graphs, and compares “time at door (or window)”, and identifies a significant increase, vs. the dog’s movements prior. He uses the same methodology, and same scoring criteria, for every test. 9 of the 10 tests showed anomalous time at the window as Pam was coming home, two of those 9 had prior events with similar anomalous times at the window. The results strongly suggest telepathy.
Wiseman’s four tests all used different methodologies, and different scoring criteria. He did not distinguish a control time vs. a measurement time, and one cannot tell, from the way he published his data, if there is anything anomalous in the time the dog is at the door (window) during the control and non-control times. If the dog’s frequ3ency at the door 9window) increased from 10% in the control period to 30% in the test period, we would not know — unless we take the data and plot it ourselves. AND — because his “signal” was always satisfied in the control period, he would still have declared such a test a “failure”, despite it supporting telepathy!
Here are the papers: http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/petsBJP.pdf https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Testing-a-Return-Anticipating-Dog-Kane.pdf
Are you interested in checking my summary?
Thanks
Author
Hi, sorry for the late reply. I think in the future I could perhaps write another post that delves into these points. That would be easier. I will also try to read the papers you’ve shared from Wiseman and Sheldrake when I find the time. Thank you for sharing them!
Thanks again for being openminded Sam. Rereading my initial reply, I realize it would be a bit clearer if I elaborated on the sheep/goats point. Psi theory holds that mental intentionality affects the success of telepathy, and telekinesis. A skeptic in a test, can therefore under this theory produce contrary results to the test objectives, by having contrary intentions. For example, in telekinesis tests, by trying to avoid the tested for result, a TK capable skeptic can produce BELOW random results, which then get compiled with the above random results of TK believers, reducing effect size. Tests for this effect have seen “goats” consistently perform below random.
The same is true for telepathy tests, where the “goat” can think about something other than what they were instructed to think about. In telepathy, there isn’t a “negative” effect predicted for this, but instead the results would be random. The way this applies to staring tests is that Wiseman could have looked at the subjects, but thought about something else rather than focusing on them. Since the psi thesis is it is the intention, not the eye direction that is being sensed, this would lead to an inattentive “goat” scoring no different from random. And that is exactly what happened with the joint test Wiseman did. Two researchers, one a “sheep” and one a “goat” used the same setup at different test times, and the sheep showed statistically significant positive deviations from random, and the goat (Wiseman) showed random. This joint experiment supports the causative effects of intentionality in a gaze being sensed by the subjects, and allows one to dismiss Wiseman’s solo non-results.
As a further comment Sam, I had intended to thank you for your welcoming tone despite my blazing barrels, but then left that out as I was typing. So thanks! 🙂
Author
Appreciate the response! Nothing wrong with being passionate about a subject, especially if you come across something that you feel doesn’t give a full/nuanced picture of it.
Give us one repeatable experiment, just one. That’s all it would take to legitimize scientific investigation of parapsychology. Decleve’s pedantic explanations of the dog experiments are opinions. I would further add that Sheldrake’s claims to understand so many diverse areas of science is insulting. Sam, you are way too nice to Decleve. Why doesen’t the man throw a little respect in your direction? The scientific method is the the final and only way to discover the nature of the universe. Others need not apply.
Todd Ferguson — Parapsychology DOES implement the scientific method. Your unsupported claim that it does not, is blatantly false.
Here is the evidence pyramid for science: https://library.une.edu/research-help/help-with/evidence-based-practice/the-evidence-pyramid/ Note that systemic analyses and meta analyses — which both are evaluations of replications, are at the top of this pyramid.
Here is a list of several dozen meta analyses and systemic analyses of data replications, showing replicable psi phenomena: https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/meta-analysis-parapsychology#Forced-Choice_Meta-Analyses So, not just one replication, but hundreds.
Here are three sample meta analyses of psi phenomena:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4706048/
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/r9yw5
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/3d7at
All demonstrate replicability, with noteworthy effect size, and massive statistical confidence.
It is not “just one” replication, but thousands that have been well documented, and well analyzed.
This post is about Sheldrake, and I provided links to both Sheldrake’s and Wiseman’s studies that Sam had opined on. Everyone can examine both studies, and compare for themselves how well controlled, analysed, and replicated these two experiments were. Rather than disparaging ME and my summary of the quality of these two researcher’s work, why not read the two studies yourself, and compare them. Note that Sheldrake has reanaalyzed Wiseman’s 5 evaluations, and found they match his own conclusions when they are evaluated using the appropriate scoring metric. Look for yourself, rather than posting smears.
dcleve