Sheldrake's work is far from amateur. What's interesting is how often the criticism hinges on an assumption that he has not controlled for a variable when he, in fact, has. Just compare Rupert's careful research with regards to dog telepathy to Randi's careless debunking of the same - embarrassing because Randi had to, in the end, admit he had never seen Sheldrake's research.
This is a repeated story of the 'skeptics' (a word to which this organised movement has no right to) of either turning their back to evidence (Wolpert vs. Sheldrake), or alternatively criticizing methodology without reading it. If they fail in either, they agree that there are no flaws they can see, but since they know the phenomenon is impossible there must nevertheless be a flaw in there somewhere (Hyman). This tendency is plainly evident in the current thread. |