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Originally Posted by David Bailey  Rupert always impresses me because he is always on the lookout for possible conventional explanations for phenomena. For example, he comments in that interview that when he realised that many dogs that had passed on were described as having anticipated their owner's return while alive, he suspected that the phenomenon might just be a rosy recollection of an ex-pet. |
I must admit that this is the thing that troubles me most about the Dogs that Know experiments. If you speak to dog owners and say something like "there is this theory... blah blah... have you ever noticed anything like that with your pet?" You are likley to get a lot of false positives as people buy into the suggestion. Its the same with the anecdote about telephone telepathy. If you address a group by first telling them that something exciting might be going on and then ask them if they have experienced it you will get a positive response but I'm not sure that it means anything. It reminds me of some of the tricks Uri Gellar used to get up to on tv in the seventies where he would stare into the camera and then ask people to phone in if they had a broken watch that suddenly started working again by the power of his suggestion. I recall some people testifying that they had watches with missing parts that had miraculously regenerated and they sounded very sincere.