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Originally Posted by Larry Boy  You're forgetting that the beep periods commenced at some point during a time frame of 80 to 170 minutes after the start of the trial. |
No, I'm not. If the owner is aware of ther range of time in which she is going to return then she can communicate this to the dog or if her parents are aware then they can communicate this to the dog. If the owner arranged the return period to coincide when she was going to be available to return home then this could also introduce some degree of her normal routine
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"Three of the 12 experiments were carried out in the afternoon, with beeps at 2:22, 3:04 and 3:36 PM; the remaining experiments were carried out in the evening with beeps at a range of times between 8:09 and 9:39 PM."
Is one hour and a half a "small time period", when the homecomings didn't last more than about 15 to 20 minutes? How does the dog pick out the right time to sit by the window?
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The dog generally starts going to the window before the owner starts to return. In many cases the dog started going 30 or so minutes before the routine time although in most cases it was a lot less.
The major point that I am making is that all the dog has to do for it to be spending more time at the window during the return time than during the main period is for it to start going to the window more and more often starting any time between the start of the recording up to when the owner starts the return journey. The null hypothesis that the dog will spend the same time at the window at all time periods assumes that it has no knowledge whatsoever about the likely return of the owner. I find it highly implausible that the dog is completely oblivious to the patterns in the comings and goings of its owner.
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I'm open to the possibility, but how do you communicate unconsciously to a dog that tonight, you're going to start going home sometime during a time frame between 45 to 90 minutes commencing at so-and-so many minutes from when you're leaving?
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How do owners unconciously communicate that they are about to take the dog for a walk? I don't think that you need telepathy or "morphic resonance" to explain this one either.
The dog obviously spend a large amount of time paying attention to the comings and goings of its owner. Whether the owner realises it or not she would have behaved differently if she was going to stay away for a night for example. The owners parents would have acted differently too. Do you think the dog could have picked this up? Sheldrake implicitly assumes that the dog cannot pick this up with its natural senses.
The way to tackle this phenomenon would be to design experiments that test dog's natural senses. How much can dogs pick up naturally?
Start with whether the dog can detect whether the owner is going to stay out for the night then work back to the amount of information the dog would need to reproduce the phenomena that Sheldrake recorded.