[David Bailey]

Chris,

"But according to the Journal of Scientific Exploration plate tectonics is a paradigm in crisis!"

Ha ha - but let's not just trade debating points!

"The important point that I am making is that if you investigate natural explanations you can make real progress. "

If you suspect that there are morphic resonance effects at work, it is entirely reasonable to design an experiment in which you try to eliminate 'natural' explanations of the phenomenon. This is just normal science, chemists start with clean equipment, not investigate if the dirt on their equipment might have produced anomalous results. Gravity wave researchers try to eliminate other sources of vibration, etc etc.

"However, Sheldrake is not really interested in any explanations other than morphic resonance".

It was an earlier comment of this sort that made me question your actual experience of science, because most experimenters have an axe to grind of some sort! Sheldrake is no different!

"His experiments use rejecting the null hypothesis that the dog's behaviour is completely random as the criteria. This effectively biases the experiment to confirm his preconceived ideas."

No! Sheldrake knows more than most how subtle animal behaviour can be, so he sets up an experiment to eliminate the dog's 'normal' ways of knowing to determine if it knows anyway. How does this differ conceptually from a thousand other animal behaviour experiments?

"You have repeatedly told me to forget "morphic resonance" because the idea is too vague. How can I possibly ignore the theory that Sheldrake is supposedly confirming with these experiments? This is the root of the problem."

Because the various concepts in this area rather blur into one another - morphic resonance, telepathy, precognition, Ψ, .... Sheldrake is trying to test the idea that the dog can somehow get information out of its owner's brain. Of course, it is hard to rule out simple precognition of the homecoming event, but either represent a form of anomalous awareness.

You write as though Sheldrake invented the idea of dogs knowing when their owners are coming home, much as you did "rainbow farting uniocorns" - this completely misses the point. These phenomena are reported anecdotally - just as meteorite falls used to be reported - it is totally reasonable for him to choose to explore them.

"I have read the papers and all of my comments are directed at exactly what I have read.
Stop pretending that Sheldrake's experiments are methodologically pure."

Well, I don't think your criticisms relate closely to what is in that paper. How can you raise the important potential issue of car sounds without acknowledging that Sheldrake dealt with that by dropping several minutes of data! The same goes for a number of your other comments. You state potential problems as though Sheldrake had not handled them, leaving it to the reader to check and discover that he explicitly thought of them and worked round them or tested for them.

I originally read Sheldrake's paper some years ago, and debating with you, I began to doubt if Sheldrake had done as good a job as I remembered. It came as a shock to re-read the paper and remind myself of the truth. My sense is that some orthodox scientists get a red mist in front of their eyes when they read anything Ψ-related, and they can't evaluate the evidence before their eye's properly. I mean, claim if you wish that Sheldrake simply fabricated his data, but outside of that, he really does seem to have covered most of the viable alternative explanations in that experiment - and he gets a large effect size.

David