Scientific Community Unfair to Dr. Rupert Sheldrake

[Vitor Moura]

Scientific Community Unfair to Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Imperial College London Dissertation Asserts​

Phillip Stevens of Imperial College London examines how normal scientific protocols are violated when controversial researchers publish their results.​

Faced with choosing a prominent figure for his Science and Society Masters dissertation, Phillip Stevens avoided the obvious. Instead of Kepler, Newton, or Darwin, Stevens chose controversial British biologist, and Perrott-Warrick Scholar, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. “I’d known about Rupert Sheldrake and I found him very interesting”, Phillips said.

Although skeptical of Sheldrake’s theories, Phillips focused on how Sheldrake was being judged, “I wanted to be impartial as to whether he was right or wrong and instead go on and look at whether he’d been treated fairly.”

Edited by Tricky: 

Article trimmed. Please do not paste entire articles. See rule 4 of the moderation agreement plus footnote 1 for guidelines.

A free (audio and transcript) of the complete interview with Phillip Stevens is available at: http://www.skeptiko.com/88-scientific-community-unfair-to-rupert-sheldrake/

Source: http://www.bignews.biz/?id=825988&keys=skeptiko-psi-parapsychology-sheldrake

 

[technoextreme]

Man promotes crank theory and has his career destroyed. Is that not what should happen?

 

[bob_conklin]

Man promotes crank theory and has his career destroyed. Is that not what should happen?

Man knows that when proper controls are used with his experiments that his results dissapear, and continues to capitalize on his theory. That pushes him over the line from delusional to fraudulent.

 

[kittynh]

you know, the problem with paranormal science is that if it WORKS and is PROVEN, it becomes SCIENCE. THe problem with paranormal "science" is that it's at the same state it was 5, 10, 15, 20 and even 50 years ago. It's all "vague". Read Dr.Blackstone's book,. Her sad search for the ever elusive proof of the paranormal is heartbreaking. But I respect her and other researchers that try to find REAL proof using REAL conditions and above all believe honesty is the only path to the truth. Is it about being "right" or truth? Science is about being as close to truth as possible which is why it is constantly refined and checked. Paranormal is about explaining away the misses and why it doens't always work. It is stagnant. Keep looking, but don't say there is no more need to look because it's "proven". Even real science never does that.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Susan Blackmore not Blackstone I assume.

(Just in case this confuses folks, lurkers and hangers on. )

 

[Vitor Moura]

Man promotes crank theory and has his career destroyed. Is that not what should happen?

Only if you want to kill what we call Science.

The Indian astrophysicist Chandrasekhar, with his theory of stellar development, is an example. After having encountered heavy resistance from established scientists, the young researcher did not publish his theory and turned to other branches of physics. More than twenty years later the theory was developed again by others. Chandrasekhar was finally awarded the physics Nobel prize in 1983 for other achievements.

Breach of rule 4 removed.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Cuddles

 

[Vitor Moura]

Man knows that when proper controls are used with his experiments that his results dissapear, and continues to capitalize on his theory. That pushes him over the line from delusional to fraudulent.

Sheldrake's experiments were replicated even by skeptics.

 

[Vitor Moura]

you know, the problem with paranormal science is that if it WORKS and is PROVEN, it becomes SCIENCE. THe problem with paranormal "science" is that it's at the same state it was 5, 10, 15, 20 and even 50 years ago. It's all "vague". Read Dr.Blackstone's book,. Her sad search for the ever elusive proof of the paranormal is heartbreaking. But I respect her and other researchers that try to find REAL proof using REAL conditions and above all believe honesty is the only path to the truth. Is it about being "right" or truth? Science is about being as close to truth as possible which is why it is constantly refined and checked. Paranormal is about explaining away the misses and why it doens't always work. It is stagnant. Keep looking, but don't say there is no more need to look because it's "proven". Even real science never does that.

In fact, Susan Blackmore found positive evidence for paranormal phenomena.

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/anomalistics/skeptic_research.htm

 

[riptowtan]

Only if you want to kill what we call Science.

The Indian astrophysicist Chandrasekhar, with his theory of stellar development, is an example. After having encountered heavy resistance from established scientists, the young researcher did not publish his theory and turned to other branches of physics. More than twenty years later the theory was developed again by others. Chandrasekhar was finally awarded the physics Nobel prize in 1983 for other achievements.

Edited by Cuddles: 

Edited for consistency.

Ok.. But the problem here is that Sheldrake is simply anomaly hunting. He hasn't come up with a real testable mechanism for how telepathy works. In science you need a theory to describe the data you come up with. Your argument is that Sheldrake is right because "mainstream science" (whatever that means) is ignoring his research because of arrogance and closed-mindedness. The real reason Sheldrake's ideas aren't taken that seriously is because he doesn't have much science to back them up. You can say the same things about any of those other scientists you mentioned. Sheldrake has a hunch and he could be right. But until there is a "theory of telepathy" or "telepathy mechanics", the anomalies will just remain anomalies.

 

[biomorph]

Phillip Stevens neatly side steps the data, for cheap publicity.....

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Only if you want to kill what we call Science.

The Indian astrophysicist Chandrasekhar, with his theory of stellar development............

In 1921 the chemist William C. Bray discovered a chemical reaction with
periodic oscillations...............

In the twentieth century, Alfred Wegener's idea of continental drift was initially ridiculed................

Other particularly infamous examples include the failure of scientists to recognize the existence of meteorites despite reports by farmers of rocks falling from the sky into their fields. ..................

Then there was poor Ignaz Semmelweis, an obstetrician in the 1800s .................

Those are wonderful examples of how science really works ..

What do they have to do with Sheldrake ?

 

[blutoski]

In fact, Susan Blackmore found positive evidence for paranormal phenomena.

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/anomalistics/skeptic_research.htm

She's happy to discuss Sheldrake: [Sheldrake is scientific – at least in many respects – but his theory is wrong. So the interesting question is why his books keep on selling.]

 

[Ersby]

Only if you want to kill what we call Science.

[...]

In the twentieth century, Alfred Wegener's idea of continental drift was initially ridiculed, despite considerable evidence to support it, because as one geologist put it, "If we are to believe Wegener's hypothesis, we must forget everything which has been learned in the last seventy years and start all over again." His theory languished for decades before it became the premise for the currently accepted idea of plate tectonics.

As someone else has pointed out, Wegener's ideas were accepted pretty quickly considering how ground-breaking (ho ho) they were. From 1912 to the 1950s, as evidence accumulated in its favour, science was happy to throw out "seventy years" of learning. Compare this to astrology, which barely changes from generation to generation.

 

[Vitor Moura]

Ok.. But the problem here is that Sheldrake is simply anomaly hunting. He hasn't come up with a real testable mechanism for how telepathy works. In science you need a theory to describe the data you come up with. Your argument is that Sheldrake is right because "mainstream science" (whatever that means) is ignoring his research because of arrogance and closed-mindedness. The real reason Sheldrake's ideas aren't taken that seriously is because he doesn't have much science to back them up. You can say the same things about any of those other scientists you mentioned. Sheldrake has a hunch and he could be right. But until there is a "theory of telepathy" or "telepathy mechanics", the anomalies will just remain anomalies.

The mechanism of gravity was a complete mystery at the time that Isaac Newton proposed the concept, but people accepted its existence nonetheless. We did not have a mechanism to explain it until Albert Einstein proposed in his general theory of relativity that gravity is the warping of space and time. This case demonstrates that even arguing that no mechanism is conceivable is not enough to reject an idea since the warping of space and time was certainly an inconceivable idea when Newton proposed the concept of gravity. Unless we are willing to say that we know that no mechanism is even possible, we should not dismiss a concept simply because we do not know its mechanism.

Source: http://books.google.com/books?id=QN...ity is the warping of space and time.&f=false

And my argument is NOT that "Sheldrake is right because "mainstream science" (whatever that means) is ignoring his research because of arrogance and closed-mindedness." My argument is that Sheldrake is right because the experiments told so. Lack of explanation is not a good reason to deny the observation.

Edited Brech of Rule 4; please ensure you provide a cite/reference for all quoted material.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Locknar

 

[Vitor Moura]

Those are wonderful examples of how science really works ..

What do they have to do with Sheldrake ?

The examples shows that lack of explanation is not a good reason to deny the observation, and even a 'crank theory' can be right.

 

[Vitor Moura]

She's happy to discuss Sheldrake: [Sheldrake is scientific – at least in many respects – but his theory is wrong. So the interesting question is why his books keep on selling.]

Unfortunely her article is a very bad one. She thinks Wiseman did not replicated Sheldrake's results, when in fact he replicated. She says she did not found anything paranormal in her research, when in fact she found. And she goes on and on in this...

 

[Vitor Moura]

As someone else has pointed out, Wegener's ideas were accepted pretty quickly considering how ground-breaking (ho ho) they were. From 1912 to the 1950s, as evidence accumulated in its favour, science was happy to throw out "seventy years" of learning. Compare this to astrology, which barely changes from generation to generation.

Science was happy to throw out "seventy years" of learning only after science has found a mechanism. Unfortunely Wegener was already dead.

 

[Mojo]

It is interesting that all of Vitor's examples of ideas that were rejected by "the scientific community" are ideas that have been accepted by "the scientific community". It takes a lot of argument, and new ideas are given a hard time, but that's how science figures out which ideas are good ones. To quote Huntsman, "science is the process of crash testing ideas."

 

[Ersby]

Science was happy to throw out "seventy years" of learning only after science has found a mechanism. Unfortunely Wegener was already dead.

Well, that's hardly science's fault. But you're right - when everything was put together and made sense, it became accepted. Is this necessarily a failing?

 

[rjh01]

<snip>

And my argument is NOT that "Sheldrake is right because "mainstream science" (whatever that means) is ignoring his research because of arrogance and closed-mindedness." My argument is that Sheldrake is right because the experiments told so. Lack of explanation is not a good reason to deny the observation.

Who has duplicated Sheldrake's experiments? Where are they published? Until you can answer those questions and a few more like it then you cannot say that Sheldrake is right.