Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, in one of his Sherlock Holmes stories, wrote "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." He meant that once you've eliminated everything else, the one thing left must be the truth of the matter at hand. What else couldit be? It sounds great and makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, it is completely wrong.
This video and those who believe it proves anything fall prey to this old, disproven nostrum. It is essentially the logical fallacy of 'argument from ignorance' wherein a 'truth' is derived by what one does not know. It is popular among UFO buffs, a la "well, it wasn't a plane or a balloon or Venus, so it must have been a real UFO!" (where 'real UFO' is the unadmitted code phrase for 'alien space ship'), and it is again used in this video.
For Conan-Doyle's formula to work - deriving truth by the process of elimination - it is absolutely necessary to eliminate every single other possible solution. To do that you need to know of every other possible solution. To apparently eliminate just two (sensory leakage/anxiety) doesn't cut it, except for those whose belief may be bought so very, very cheaply.
The burden of proof is on the claimant, in this case Rupert Sheldrake, who hasn't uncovered one single iota of evidence for his "morphic resonance" idea in the 26 years since he dreamed it up. It is no mistake that the term "morphic resonance" sounds science-y and bears a striking resemblance to the true scientific term "morphogenetic field", but the resemblance ends with the spelling and his use of the root 'morphic'. 'Morphogenetic field' is a heuristic device biologists use to frame thought on how a living thing develops its shape and is not meant to represent any actual 'field', as with electromagnetic field. Its definition bears no resemblance to Sheldrake's definition of morphic resonance. Whether the PhD biologist Sheldrake didn't know this or whether he knew and ignored it is unforgivable, the telltale mark of a pseudoscientist.
It is not the responsibility of science or skeptics to disprove 'morphic resonance' nor disprove the psychic powers of Sheldrake's dogs - it is Sheldrake's responsibility to prove his claims. He hasn't come close to doing this after decades of trying. He has proved it to people who don't know enough to properly judge his 'evidence' however.
It is a fact of life that a true thing remains true whether one believes it or not and an untrue thing remains untrue whether one believes it or not. A thing doesn't pop in or out of scientific reality and truth based on one's beliefs about it. That requires scientific evidence that stands well independent of any given person's beliefs about it, and of that Sheldrake provides none.  |