Chris,
OK - maybe the owner should ring home sometimes and say "back in half an hour". However, I would have thought that reducing the predictability of the return time still further would be more fruitful. After all, surely arrangements could be made for the owner to be given a return time based on a random number generator AFTER she had left and was not in communication with anyone in the house - but surely that is what Sheldrake did in at least some of his trials? This is what I don't understand about your approach, surely you want to eliminate the possibility of sensory leakage, not test what would happen if you deliberately introduce it!
BTW, at the time when our cat was anticipating our return times, it was the neighbour that observed the effect most clearly because he was sat in her lounge and would ask to be let out. Our return times would vary from about 7.00 to about 11.00 or even later sometimes! We certainly did not tell the neighbour when we were coming home, and often it was a spur of the moment decision anyway.
Tell me how you would analyse Alex's experiment if he randomly introduced possible sensory leakage into (say) half his experiments. To judge from the video, the dog could hardly improve his performance, so (am I being too cynical) you would compare the 'with leakage' result with the 'without leakage' result and say "See the dog does no better when he knows the answer, so there must be sensory leakage of some sort - not morphic resonance!"
Please tell us what you would use as the sign of genuine morphic resonance (or Ψ, if you prefer).
David  |