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Sheldrake's email telepathy

RichardR

Master Poster
RichardR
Joined
Nov 21, 2001
Messages
2,274
Anyone have a view on Sheldrake's experiments on psi and emails? Apparently people can guess who is going to email them, greater than chance:

SUMMARY

This study investigated possible telepathic communication in connection with e-mails. On each trial, there were four potential e-mailers, one of whom was selected at random by the experimenter. One minute before a prearranged time at which the e-mail was to be sent, the participant guessed who would send it. 50 participants (29 women and 21 men) were recruited through an employment web site. Of 552 trials, 235 (43%) guesses were hits, significantly above the chance expectation of 25%. Further tests with 5 participants (4 women, 1 man, ages 16 to 29) were videotaped continuously. On the filmed trials, the 64 hits of 137 (47%) were significantly above chance.
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As I recall, his experiments on staring were criticized for poor randomization. Anyone know anything about this?
 
They were told in advance that, if they had not heard from the experimenter by five minutes before the trial time, they had not been chosen and should carry on with whatever they were doing and not think about the participant.
Source
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How are they going to stop doing that?

"Don't think of an elephant".

:rolleyes:
 
CFLarsen said:
How are they going to stop doing that?

"Don't think of an elephant".

:rolleyes:
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Will you stop that? I was nearly asleep...

I recall Paul and others doing an online experiment into Sheldrakes claims about telephone telepathy. I hadn't realised he extended it to email.

I can certainly tell who I'm going to get emails from, as there are only about six folk who ever bother. (Not including Betty Stroker, Dick Grower, V Agra, and several HotSchoolGirls). I replied to the last suggesting they contact the education authority about fixing the air conditioning, but I have had no reply.
 
It just gets worse...

In cases where e-mail addresses were web-based (as, for example, in hotmail.corn), the "time sent" was derived from a clock on the web site and was therefore already set to the correct time.
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What an ignoramus. The clock on the web site is not the same as the mail server clock.

The whole experiment is riddled with this clock-mess: There is not one Master Clock to keep track of time, but many.

"A man with one watch knows what the time is. A man with two watches can never be sure".
Danish proverb.
 
"En mand med et ur ved hvad klokken er. En mand med to ure kan aldrig være helt sikker".

Yep. It does! :)
 
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