That was an interesting and thoughtful interview. I have a few comments:
1) A two year old's brain is busy doing an amazing task that older human brains only do with great difficulty - learning a native language! I think it using them as measures of reduced intelligence may be way off the mark.
2) He commented that a lot of animal get lost and never come home - as though that explained the few that do make it back across long distances. I don't think much of that argument because many such animals must die on the roads or in other ways, or may give up and find a new owner. Is he really suggesting that those that make it have simply engaged in a random walk and got lucky? I wish he had been a bit clearer about his views.
3) The notion that all researchers must (or even should) approach an experiment without a commitment either way is completely impractical, and almost never the case. Think of the folk looking for gravity waves - they are desperate to make a positive observation - if only because it will release more funds - they would probably not have invested years of their lives to the experiment if they seriously believed that gravity waves don't exist. The best you can hope for is that people don't bend the results.
4) Some dogs show amazing abilities that are more or less accepted. For example, one dog alerted her owner to the fact that a lesion on her leg was cancerous by constantly licking it. That a dog can detect this is very remarkable, but might be explained by some subtle odor, but what I want to know is how does the dog know the significance of that odor? Likewise with animals that seem to be aware of an earthquake some hous before it happens. Maybe they pick up faint sounds, but since they have probably never heard an earthquake before, how do they know what they are hearing?
David  |