Response to Skeptics' Guide Host, Dr. Steven Novella (Podcast)

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

The problem that you and most other "believers" miss is that Sheldrake's experiments are most definitely not about finding the explanation for this phenomenon. Sheldrake already has his explanation - "morphic resonance". His sole concern is to find evidence for his preconceived "solution". He started with his explanation and searched for problems in that order.

Chris, I rather think you have never done any actual science, because if you had, you would realise that hardly anyone does research without some idea of what they want to demonstrate - it just doesn't work that way!

Obviously, his experiments are meant to eliminate explanations 6-10. Explanations 2-5 are difficult to tease apart, and probably overlap one another. In any case, any of 2-5 would have enormous significance. Not even you accept explanation 1, I think.

My point is that it would be far more useful to make the next experiment more effective at eliminating explanations 6-10, and if you think you can make useful suggestions to Alex, why not go ahead? For the most part, science advances by doing more experiments - not by endlessly criticising those that have been done.

As I see it, the problem with at least some animal behaviour research, is that it never even considers Ψ explanations - so it does not try to prove them, or rule them out. However, to rule them out, they would have to do an experiment that may well achieve the opposite.

Forget 'morphic resonance' - I would concede that this concept is too vague to be considered a real theory. However, again you don't seem to realise the way science operates in speculative areas. Often researchers don't have the luxury of a number of well developed theories to choose between.

Remember. hardly any experiment is completely beyond criticism. Indeed, scientific papers often end with a section outlining possible improvements that could be incorporated into future experiments. Sheldrake's experiments to determine if a dog can be aware of the randomly determined return time of the owner seems to me to be designed to rule out explanations 6-10. Maybe they can be improved upon, but his concept is certainly sound.

I would say that the most effective approach is not to try to rule out 6-10 separately, but simultaneously. The random return times should eliminate 6,8,9,and 10. Furthermore, I understand that at least some of the trials used a taxi to return home, which more or less eliminates explanation 7.

When we returned home, our cat would ask to be let out of our neighbour's house ahead of our arrival - that must be a good minute before we arrived home in a pretty standard make of car. That seems to make explanation 7 pretty unlikely. At the time, I had exactly your mindset, so I laughed in a friendly but disbelieving sort of way - now I wish I had taken the opportunity to do a few experiments!

Part of the normal etiquette of science is that before you criticise an experiment you check with the experimenter. Lots of common sense experimental details never make it to the paper, so for example it is no use reading a paper and screaming "I know why this gave an odd result - they don't say they washed their test tubes before they started!". Likewise, I suspect if you contacted Sheldrake about these experiments, you might be reassured (if that is the right word) that he was far more thorough than you think.

At times you seem close to saying that 'science' should not even try to research claims of Ψ - just concentrate on pumping out propaganda telling everyone it is bunk!

David

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Chris Noble

"Morphic resonance" isn't even wrong. It is isn't a scientific hypothesis. It can't be tested. "Morphic resonance" isn't frontier science. It isn't science. It will never be science.

Formative causation hypothesis can be tested, it can be falsified, the fact of the matter is that very few scientists have bothered trying to properly test it to date. How about having a go? If not, why not?

It has been tested with some positive results.
Articles and Papers - Scientific Papers - Morphic Resonance - An Experimental Test of the Hypothesis of Formative Causation

[David Bailey]

Open Mins,

That is a pretty impressive paper - particularly since the research was done at a skeptic's lab!

The interesting thing is that if morphic resonance were accepted as real, I think we would see it all over the place. Think for example of how accomplished ordinary people have become at using digital electronics and computers - people report that their kids can work some of the equipment at incredibly young ages.

David

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Chris, I rather think you have never done any actual science, because if you had, you would realise that hardly anyone does research without some idea of what they want to demonstrate - it just doesn't work that way!

As usual your thinking is completely wrong.

Obviously, his experiments are meant to eliminate explanations 6-10. Explanations 2-5 are difficult to tease apart, and probably overlap one another. In any case, any of 2-5 would have enormous significance. Not even you accept explanation 1, I think.

That's the main thrust of what I am saying. I think Sheldrake is entitled to reject hypothesis 1. This does not entitle him to choose any of the other hypotheses as being proven.

Sheldrake designed his experiments so that if there was any sensory leakage whatsoever then the dog would on average spend more time at the window during the homecoming than in the main period. The experiments are designed to get an effect but not to explain it.

My point is that it would be far more useful to make the next experiment more effective at eliminating explanations 6-10, and if you think you can make useful suggestions to Alex, why not go ahead? For the most part, science advances by doing more experiments - not by endlessly criticising those that have been done.

I just made some useful suggestions. The benefit of testing hypotheses 6-10 individually is that the contribution of each can be quantified and this can lead to better controlled experiments in the future.

As I see it, the problem with at least some animal behaviour research, is that it never even considers ? explanations - so it does not try to prove them, or rule them out. However, to rule them out, they would have to do an experiment that may well achieve the opposite.

The problem is that the only definition of "psi" is "not explained by natrural science". The only way of testing "psi" is to investigate natural science. Think of animal navigation. How can you possibly test psi explanations? The only thing you can do is investigate natural explanations.

Forget 'morphic resonance' - I would concede that this concept is too vague to be considered a real theory. However, again you don't seem to realise the way science operates in speculative areas. Often researchers don't have the luxury of a number of well developed theories to choose between.

Stop trying to tell me that I don't understand how science works. Even Einsteins theories of relativity built upon existing knowledge. He didn't just pluck his ideas out of thin air.

Remember. hardly any experiment is completely beyond criticism. Indeed, scientific papers often end with a section outlining possible improvements that could be incorporated into future experiments. Sheldrake's experiments to determine if a dog can be aware of the randomly determined return time of the owner seems to me to be designed to rule out explanations 6-10. Maybe they can be improved upon, but his concept is certainly sound.

Sheldrake only pays lip service to the various natural explanations for the dog's behaviour so that he can ignore them. He never explicitly tests the assumption that his experiments control for these factors. He also assumes that any natural explanation has to explain the entire effect

I would say that the most effective approach is not to try to rule out 6-10 separately, but simultaneously. The random return times should eliminate 6,8,9,and 10. Furthermore, I understand that at least some of the trials used a taxi to return home, which more or less eliminates explanation 7.

The effective approach is not just to attempt to rule these factors out but to test to see whether you have done so. Even the supposedly random return times were not very random. The dog only needed rough information about the approximate return period in order to reproduce the observed pattern of being at the window mnore often in the return period than the main period. Why the reluctance to actually test this properly. Do one set of trials with the owner returning at routine times of her own choosing and do another set where the owner returns at truly random times over a 24 hour period. The null hypothesis would be that there will be no statistical difference in the amount of time that the dog spends at the window during the owner's return between the two groups.

When we returned home, our cat would ask to be let out of our neighbour's house ahead of our arrival - that must be a good minute before we arrived home in a pretty standard make of car. That seems to make explanation 7 pretty unlikely. At the time, I had exactly your mindset, so I laughed in a friendly but disbelieving sort of way - now I wish I had taken the opportunity to do a few experiments!

Part of the normal etiquette of science is that before you criticise an experiment you check with the experimenter. Lots of common sense experimental details never make it to the paper, so for example it is no use reading a paper and screaming "I know why this gave an odd result - they don't say they washed their test tubes before they started!". Likewise, I suspect if you contacted Sheldrake about these experiments, you might be reassured (if that is the right word) that he was far more thorough than you think.

Despite your assertions I am very much aware of the way in which normal science works. I know that if I am going to stand up at a conference and claim to have discovered a radical new theory that completely overturns modern science that I had better make sure I have covered all possible criticisms of my work. If I present shoddy, amateurish work then I would expect to be strongly criticised. Anyobody who has submitted a paper to a journal knows only too well the criticism that is an entirely normal part of science.

I don't have to provide the explanation for Sheldrake's results. He has to demonstrate, rather than just assume, that he has controlled for the perfectly natural explanations for the phenomenon.

I really don't think that Sheldrake is interested in finding explanations for the phenomenon. He already has his explanation - "morphic resonance". If he were really interested in the phenomenon he would have done more research to tease out the details. As it is he simply stopped when he had some preliminary results that appear to support his claims.

At times you seem close to saying that 'science' should not even try to research claims of ? - just concentrate on pumping out propaganda telling everyone it is bunk!

At times you seem to want to put words in my mouth. If you can come up with a theory of psi then investigate it. While "psi" is defined as something inexplicable via current natural science then "psi" is simply anomaly hunting and not science.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Formative causation hypothesis can be tested, it can be falsified, the fact of the matter is that very few scientists have bothered trying to properly test it to date. How about having a go? If not, why not?

It has been tested with some positive results.
Articles and Papers - Scientific Papers - Morphic Resonance - An Experimental Test of the Hypothesis of Formative Causation

Neither Rose nor I anticipated that the latency of the control birds would show a progressive decline, and we agree that this is probably due to an experimenter practice effect.

The experiment did not show the effects that Sheldrake predicted from his "theory". The only effect was one that Sheldrake agrees is likely to be an experimenter practice effect. It is dishonest to claim that these results are evidence for "morphic resonance". It is simply post hoc rationalization.

"Morphic resonance" is so vague and content free that anything and everything can be "predicted" from the pseudotheory. The accuracy of the predictions increases dramatically if you make the predictions after you have the results.

If anything this story is a good illustration of why real scientists should be wary of collaborating with people like Sheldrake.

[David Bailey]

Chris,

I started a detailed reply to you and then thought maybe I would go back and re-read Shaldrake's paper. This reminded me of the fact that he is a trained scientist, and the care and caution with which he explored this phenomenon shines out all through the paper. I would ask anyone who has been following this discussion to read the actual paper:

Articles and Papers - Scientific Papers - Unexplained Powers of Animals - A Dog That Seems To Know When His Owner is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations - Abstracts

(click on the icon at the end of the abstract to get the full paper in PDF)

Then ask yourself if Chris' use of words like 'shoddy' or 'amateur' are even remotely justified. Just read the paper and compare it with the stuff that Chris has written about it!

David

[lott]

Sheldrake's work is far from amateur. What's interesting is how often the criticism hinges on an assumption that he has not controlled for a variable when he, in fact, has. Just compare Rupert's careful research with regards to dog telepathy to Randi's careless debunking of the same - embarrassing because Randi had to, in the end, admit he had never seen Sheldrake's research.

This is a repeated story of the 'skeptics' (a word to which this organised movement has no right to) of either turning their back to evidence (Wolpert vs. Sheldrake), or alternatively criticizing methodology without reading it. If they fail in either, they agree that there are no flaws they can see, but since they know the phenomenon is impossible there must nevertheless be a flaw in there somewhere (Hyman). This tendency is plainly evident in the current thread.

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Chris,

I started a detailed reply to you and then thought maybe I would go back and re-read Shaldrake's paper. This reminded me of the fact that he is a trained scientist, and the care and caution with which he explored this phenomenon shines out all through the paper. I would ask anyone who has been following this discussion to read the actual paper:

History is full of trained scientists who have fallen to conformation bias. Blondlot was a respected scientist with numerous prestigious prizes in physics before he "discovered" N-rays. Most working scientists have fooled themselves at times. With any luck they discuss their work with colleagues before they present their work to the wider scientific community. Some scientists become too attached to their own ideas and make the transition to crank. The worst thing that they can do is to surround themselves by a small circle of people who either cannot see the problems in the pseudotheory or don't want to.

There is a monumental inequality between the magnitude of Sheldrake's claims and the magnitude and quality of the evidence that he presents to support it.

I've taken the time to suggest some strategies that might actually lead to progress in understanding the observed phenomenon of "dogs that know". Frankly, I can only conclude that you, and Sheldrake for that matter, are not really interested in understanding the phenomenon but are more interested in find support for your own preconceived ideas.

Here are my psychic predictions.

Sheldrake will never formulate what "morphic resonance" is beyond the current vague tenuous pseudotheory.
Sheldrake will continue to perform experiments and find confirmation(bias) for "morphic resonance".
Sheldrake will be ignored by the scientific community because of the grand inequity between the magnitude of his claims and the quality of his evidence.

[David Bailey]

Chris,

Whether or not Sheldrake ends up like Blondlot, only time will tell. Look up the history of continental drift for an alternative analogy.

However, you really do need to realise that you are raising a lot of issues regarding Sheldrake's research that he himself has thought of and settled. Just as one example, consider your explanation 7 - that the dog hears the approaching car. If you read Shelrake's paper, you will find that he considered this explicitly and drops the last few minutes of the return home to avoid any such possibility. The same thing goes for a lot of the issues you have raised with me and Open Mind.

Simply deriding Sheldrake's work does not cut it, as Lott has already pointed out. It is worth listening to Sheldrake's radio discussion with Peter Atkins, or his debate with Lewis Walpert to realise that conventional scientists of high repute can easily underestimate Sheldrake, and suffer public embarrassment as a result.

Go and find these tapes at Sheldrake's site and listen and think, otherwise your protestations have no more value than those of the endless queue of nuts finding fault with Special Relativity!

Please read the paper carefully before you criticise it, and relate any remaining criticism to the actual procedures that Sheldrake used.

N-rays are an interesting example, because as I understand it, they were provisionally accepted scientifically and then found to be non-existent. If people had not done N-ray experiments, and just argued about the methodology of the few that had been done, we might still not know if N-rays exist!

David

[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Chris,

Whether or not Sheldrake ends up like Blondlot, only time will tell. Look up the history of continental drift for an alternative analogy.

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

However, you really do need to realise that you are raising a lot of issues regarding Sheldrake's research that he himself has thought of and settled. Just as one example, consider your explanation 7 - that the dog hears the approaching car. If you read Shelrake's paper, you will find that he considered this explicitly and drops the last few minutes of the return home to avoid any such possibility. The same thing goes for a lot of the issues you have raised with me and Open Mind.

Sheldrake assumes rather than demonstrates that he has covered this possibility. I don't think explanation 7 can play a large role in the Jaytee experiments but it most definitely would play a role in the phenomenon in general.

The important point that I am making is that if you investigate natural explanations you can make real progress. Do a set of trials with the owner returning in their own car and do another set with the owner returning in a differnet car. Is there a statistical difference in the dogs behaviour? At what point do you see a statistical difference in the dog's behaviour? In the last 5 minutes? In the last 10 minutes?

Either way you have made progress and you can then design better experiments.

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

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.

Simply deriding Sheldrake's work does not cut it, as Lott has already pointed out. It is worth listening to Sheldrake's radio discussion with Peter Atkins, or his debate with Lewis Walpert to realise that conventional scientists of high repute can easily underestimate Sheldrake, and suffer public embarrassment as a result.

I am not simply deriding his work. I am offering practical suggestions for the way forward.

Go and find these tapes at Sheldrake's site and listen and think, otherwise your protestations have no more value than those of the endless queue of nuts finding fault with Special Relativity!

Please read the paper carefully before you criticise it, and relate any remaining criticism to the actual procedures that Sheldrake used.

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.

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. Sheldrake starts with his "morphic resonance" and looks for phenomena that he can use as evidence to support it. He then uses a strawman null hypothesis (that he can easily reject if there is any sensory leakage whatsoever) to cofirm his own bias.

N-rays are an interesting example, because as I understand it, they were provisionally accepted scientifically and then found to be non-existent. If people had not done N-ray experiments, and just argued about the methodology of the few that had been done, we might still not know if N-rays exist!

?
I guess we'll probably never know if invisible purple, rainbow farting uniocorns really exist either.



David[/quote]