Quote:
Originally Posted by David Bailey  Regarding the problem of going to the window more than once, This is a problem because you can't just ask someone to assess the tape blind - because the tape will obviously end when the owner comes home!
There is also, presumably the possibility of an effect similar to that discussed in the presentiment experiment - that the dog becomes more and more likely to go to the window as time goes by (surely they are coming soon...)
The devil of all this, is that whatever you do, someone will condemn you loudly for having got it all wrong! However, if you offer to make the raw data tapes available to any interested sceptic (maybe on line) maybe you can avoid that.
Suppose you got a human to observe each tape and identify the point at which the dog was anticipating the return BEFORE viewing the complete tape and therefore identifying the actual return home. Our neighbour used to say that she knew when we were returning because of our cat's behaviour (in her house).
David |
I seem to recall reading that Sheldrake used two independent observers to view and rate the video tapes. He then compared their evaluations of whether the dog was 'anticipating'. He found their assessments to be very similar.
Regarding your point about contaminating the observation by ending with the owner coming home (BTW this is a very interesting point I've never heard anyone mention), this can be easily overcome by dividing the tape into sections that are independently analyzed. Reviewers would, for example, rate a 10 minute segment of video without knowing whether it would end with the owner coming home.
The other problem of seeing more anticipating behavior as time goes on can be easily overcome by varying the length of the trips. This criticism was made by Susan Blackmore. But she must have not dug into the research very thoroughly as it was addressed by Shledrake in his trials.