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Controversies Skepticism
Healthy skepticism plays an important part in science, and stimulates research and critical thinking. Healthy skeptics are open-minded and interested in evidence. By contrast, dogmatic skeptics are committed to the belief that "paranormal" phenomena are impossible, or at least so improbable as to merit no serious attention. Hence any evidence for such phenomena must be illusory. Several such Skeptics have attacked my research on the unexplained powers of animals and on the sense of being stared at. Click on their names if you want to know what they said, and to read my replies. Most of them are associated with CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, an organization devoted to debunking evidence for "paranormal" phenomena, and to promoting skeptical claims in the media. CSICOP publishes the Skeptical Inquirer, 'the magazine for science and reason'. The Perrott-Warrick Public Debate - Does Telepathy Happen? Rupert debates with Prof Chris French, Prof Simon Blackburn in the chair Rupert at the BA Festival of Science UEA Norwich Sept 2-9th 2006 On September 5, 2006, Rupert presented a paper on Telephone Telepathy at the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual Science Festival.
Rupert's paper was widely reported in the media and gave rise to a major controversy.
Full details, including press comments, audio interviews and discussions, and articles... Controversy in Brirtish Columbia - a skeptic objects to Rupert lecturing at the University of British Columbia Writing on The Tyee.ca a website, skeptic Shannon Rupp inquired under the title Pitching Woo-Woo "Why is UBC promoting New Age pseudoscience?". In August 2005, with many subsequent repeats, National Geographic TV Channel broadcast a programme called "Is It Real? Psychic Animals" (also called "Is It Real? Animal Oracles") in which a professional media skeptic tried to debunk Rupert Sheldrake and Aimee Morgana's research on the telepathic abilities of a parrot, N'kisi. The skeptic, a person with no scientific credentials, and the National Geographic commentator made unfair and misleading criticisms to which Rupert was given no chance to respond. He had agreed to take part in the programme only after being assured by National Geographic that the presentation would be fair and unbiased. Sheldrake and his Critics: The sense of being glared at. In this special edition of JCS Rupert summarises his case for the 'non-visual detection of staring'. His claims are scrutinised by fourteen critics, to whom Rupert then responds. Editorial Introduction by Anthony Freeman The Sense of Being Glared At: What Is It Like to be a Heretic? (pdf format) Three papers by Rupert The Sense of Being Stared at
The complete edition is available in paperback:
Professor Lewis Wolpert, FRS, Wolpert is well known in Britain for his
outspoken scepticism. He and Rupert Sheldrake took part in a debate on
telepathy at the Royal Society of Arts in January 2004, which was
reported in Nature and can be heard online here. The publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Director of the Skeptic Society, the host of the Skeptics' Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology, and the author of a regular column in Scientific American called "Skeptic". In an article in USA Today (Feb 26, 2003) about Rupert's book The Sense of Being Stared At, And other Aspects of the Extended Mind, he was quoted as saying, "The events Sheldrake describes don't require a theory and are perfectly explicable by normal means". It turned out he could not substantiate this claim, and had not even seen the book. Rupert proposed an online debate. He accepted this challenge in March 2003, and said he would "get to it soon". In May he told Rupert, "I have not gotten to your book yet".
James Randi Conjurer and the former Principal Investigator of CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. He was named "Skeptic of the Century" in the January 2000 issue of The Skeptical Inquirer. For more on Randi's attempts to debunk Rupert's conclusions... Dr Richard Wiseman
Conjurer and professional Skeptic based at the
University of Hertfordshire in England, a Consultant Editor of The Skeptical Inquirer , and a Research Fellow of CSICOP. For Wiseman's attempts to debunk Rupert's work on dogs. However, Richard Wiseman admitted in his recent Skeptiko interview, that his data does correspond with Sheldrake's. Dr David Marks CSICOP Fellow and professor at City University,
London. He is the author of The Psychology of the Psychic (2000), in
which he rejects a wide range of "paranormal" phenomena, including Rupert's research on the sense of being stared at. He attacked this research in
2000 in the Skeptical Inquirer in an article co-authored with John Colwell.
He attacked this research again in 2003 in The Skeptic, and also tried to explain away Rupert's work on return-anticipating dogs. Sir John Maddox, Emeritus Editor of the scientific journal Nature. He was the author of an infamous editorial in Nature in 1981 about Rupert's first book, A New Science of Life, in which he wrote "This infuriating tract... is the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." In an interview broadcast on BBC television in 1994, he said: "Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned in exactly the language that the Pope used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reason. It is heresy." Dr Robert A. Baker Retired psychology professor at the University of Kentucky, and a CSICOP Fellow. In the Skeptical Inquirer he dismissed the sense of being stared at as false: "Skeptics.... believe that it is nothing more than a superstition and/or a response to subtle signals from the environment." Baker claimed to provide empirical evidence to support his presuppositions. For Rupert's analysis of Bakers "demonstrations"... Robert Todd Carroll Robert Todd Carroll produces "The Skeptic's Dictionary" on the internet. According to his Wikipedia entry, he is a "longtime advocate of atheism and scientific skepticism". His Ph.D. is on a seventeeth century bishop, and he teaches philosophy at Sacramento City College. He made some misleading comments on research I conducted with Aimee Morgana on her parrot N'kisi, to which I reply here. |
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