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Originally Posted by scomsjw  One of the reasons I'm skeptical of this particular claim is that I have grown up with pet dogs and never noticed this type of behaviour. This is a very personal and anecdotal observation (and therefore worthless) but I think I would have noticed if any of them had this ability. I have noticed a tendency for some dog owners to make bizarre claims about their beloved pets (e.g. "he understands everything I say") and my intuition is that this is another one of those claims. For this reason the anecdotal evidence does not persuade me of anything. I would not have the patience to get involved in a watertight experiment but would be fascinated to see someone else do it. I suspect this is part of Alex's problem it is just so boring to control for all those variables. |
I don't think personal anecdotal observations are worthless at all - they often provide the ideas for research. My own experience was with one of our cats that seemed to anticipate our (pretty random) homecomings while sat in a neighbour's house. Purely by chance, the setup was almost ideal, given that it was before the era of cheap video cameras, etc. Unfortunately, at the time I was very skeptical and just dismissed what my neighbour told me as fanciful...
You raise a serious point - some pet owners go a bit overboard about the abilities of their pets
This is exactly why Alex and Rupert Sheldrake have both invested the time to study the claim. Really, if this claim were false, I would have thought the random-return-time experiment would have easily revealed this to be so.
Were your circumstances conducive to observing this phenomenon? Sheldrake's estimate is that only 50% of dogs can do this, furthermore, unless your dog was overlooked by a camera or someone else was at home, would you even know?
This is a serious question. Isn't there a problem here if whoever does any research into this phenomenon is considered sloppy/biassed if they get any positive results? Alex has shared some preliminary results with us - just as might happen in any laboratory. This does not mean he is ready to publish a watertight paper at this stage, nor, I think does it justify all the criticism that a few people here have heaped upon him.
David