Posted on 12/31/2001 7:36:09 PM PST by medved
Evidence of a natural communication system in man and probably all higher kinds of animals, which is (or at least was) vastly beyond anything man has ever devised:
The first site involves my own analysis of the claim of prophesy in our own age and details some of what Julian Jaynes had to say in claiming that the entire manner in which the human brain works is entirely different from the way it worked 4000 years ago.
The second site involves the world's ultimate fortean type story.
Friends are telling me about seeing articles regarding Nkisi in normal kinds of science journals so I assume Sheldrake and others feel safe talking about it now.
Rupert Sheldrake is the former director of studies at Cambridge who has taken to investigating things normally viewed as paranormal, using intelligent experiment design and statistical methods. His "Seven Experiments Which Could Change the World" is worth having a copy of and some will have seen the German TV documentary involving the little dog in London who knows precisely when its owner first thinks of returning home. He is not loved by the CSICOP crowd and their ilk on sci.skeptic but, hey, nobody can please everybody.
Sheldrake spoke at the big Kronia confab in Laughlin Nevada this summer and, amongst the things he spoke of and showed the audience, was a film involving Nkisi, the African grey parrot which has basically learned to speak English. The bird was fortunate in her choice of owners and has been home-schooled, the NEA and its minions not being allowed near her.
Sheldrake told us he had people coming to him with animal stories all the time, and that the Nkisi story was the prize of them all. The lady who trains Nkisi no sooner had her talking, than it became apparent that the bird was telepathic and, often as not, knew what she was thinking aforehand. The test Sheldrake and his assistents put Nkisi to was fairly straightforward: the trainer and an assistent of Sheldrakes went to another room and the assistent pulled 80 photo images out of an envelope, one at a time for the trainer to look at, while Sheldrake and a camera assistent remained in the room with Nkisi and attempted to get Nkisi to tell them what the trainer was seeing. The images were normal things you might see in New York City: trees, flowers, pidgeons, trucks, cars, people...
Sheldrake noted that the bird hit on about 30 of the 80 images, including several streaks of three or four in which she did not miss; you or I would not hit one. He noted that, often as not, when the bird failed, it was because she kept on talking about the previous image.
At the time, Sheldrake told us that this story struck him as so weird he was afraid to talk about it other than at gatherings of the unusually eccentric (such as a kronia gathering). Like I say, that no longer seems to be the case and you can read the story at the web site noted above.
And so, we come to the question of telepathy and evolution. Nkisi is clearly using some kind of a communication system which is vastly beyond anything man has ever created or dreamed of creating. Is there any way in which such a thing could evolve and, if so, how? And, if such a thing did evolve, then why do we no longer have access to it?
The only thing that I could find at CSICOP about Sheldrake’s parrot is the following, which was dated 2/15/01.
"… I have inquired about obtaining a video of these trials (preferably unedited) or a transcript. We are eagerly anticipating a response.
The USA Today story was disappointing, even disturbing. It was an uncritical and unbalanced report on Rupert Sheldrake's claims about psychic abilities in pets. The article states that Sheldrake's work "has been met with skepticism among some scientists" (italics mine). This statement leads CSICOP to wonder exactly which scientists comprise the assumed majority actually convinced by Sheldrake's claims.
Totally lacking in the article is any recognition that mainstream scientists aren't merely disputing Sheldrake's results because they're controversial. The fact is that other researchers can't seem to replicate them. Conspicuously absent from the story was Sheldrake's previous psychic pet research-namely, his 1994 experiments in England videotaping the behavior of a terrier named "Jaytee" for Austrian television. He concluded that the dog could sense when his owner was coming home through a psychic "connection." Specifically, Sheldrake speculated that animals are guided by "morphic fields" and telepathic influences from their owners. However, Richard Wiseman, Senior Research Fellow in psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in England, tried to reproduce Sheldrake's results by setting up his own videotaped trials of Jaytee. Wiseman, whose findings were published in the British Journal of Psychology (1998), failed to find any evidence that Jaytee had an extrasensory ability to predict his owner's return. …"
The article is Here
I always wonder why psychics have to put up signs. They know you're coming. I wonder why they don't rush out into the street to tell me that they have some important information to impart to me, and to me alone...
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At college, during winter break, a group of students was doing 'research' on the paranormal, specifically on clairvoyance. They'd set up a table inviting people to take a multiple choice test. The gimmick was, the questions were not given, only the answers. After collecting test results, they'd see if anybody was able to correctly answer more than one would expect through random chance.
I walked up to their table. "I knew you were going to give me this test," I said, and then walked away...
--Boris
Sheldrake's response to Wiseman:
Richard Wiseman started his career as a conjurer, and like Randi is a skilled illusionist. He is well known in Britain as a media Skeptic, and regularly appears on radio and TV programmes as a debunker of psychical phenomena. In addition, he tirelessly promotes the Skeptical cause through public lectures.
When my experiments with the dog Jaytee were first publicized in Britain in 1994, journalists sought out a skeptic to comment on them, and Richard Wiseman was an obvious choice. He put forward a number of points that I had already taken into account. But rather than argue academically, I suggested that he did some experiments with Jaytee himself, and arranged for him to do so. I had already been doing videotaped experiments with this dog for months, and I lent him my videocamera. Pam Smart, Jaytee's owner, and her family kindly agreed to help him.
With the help of his assistant, Matthew Smith, he did four experiments with Jaytee, two in June and two in December 1995, and in all of them Jaytee went to the window to wait for Pam when she was indeed on the way home. As in my own experiments, he sometimes went to the window at other times, for example to bark at passing cats, but he was at the window far more when Pam was on her way home than when she was not. In the three experiments Wiseman did in Pam's parents' flat, Jaytee was at the window an average of 4% of the time during the main period of Pam's absence, and 78% of the time when she was on the way home. This difference was statistically significant. When Wiseman's data were plotted on graphs, they showed essentially the same pattern as my own. In other words Wiseman replicated my own results.
I was astonished to hear that in the summer of 1996 Wiseman went to a series of conferences, including the World Skeptics Congress, announcing that he had refuted the 'psychic pet' phenomenon. He said Jaytee had failed his tests because he had gone to the window before Pam set off to come home.
In Sepember 1996 I met Wiseman and pointed out that his data showed the same pattern as my own, and that far from refuting the effect I had observed, his results confirmed it. I gave him copies of graphs showing may own data and the data from the experiments that he and Smith conducted with Jaytee. But he ignored these facts. He reiterated his negative conclusions in a paper he submitted to the British Journal of Psychology together with Smith and Julie Milton. This paper appeared in August, 1998, with a fanfare of skeptical publicity in the British media, initiated by a press release accompanying the publication of the paper. (Wiseman, R., Smith, M and Milton, J. Can animals detect when their owners are returning home? An experimental test of the 'psychic pet' phenomenon. British Journal of Psychology 89, 453-462)
Meanwhile, Wiseman continued to appear on TV shows claiming he had refuted Jaytee's abilities, and even as recently as February 2, 2000 he was still making this claim in his public lectures. Unfortunately, his presentations are deliberately misleading. He makes no mention of the fact that Jaytee waits by the window far more when Pam is on her way home, nor does he refer to my own experiments. He gives the impression that my evidence is based on one experiment filmed by a TV company, rather than on more than two hundred experiments, and he implies that he has done the only rigorous scientific tests of this dog's abilities. I confess that I am amazed by his persistence in this deception.
I have written a detailed commentary on the paper of Wiseman, Smith and Milton, which you can read by clicking HERE (Sheldrake, R. (1999) Commentary on a paper by Wiseman, Smith and Milton on the 'psychic pet' phenomenon. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 63, 306-311)
Wiseman, Smith and Milton published a reply to my commentary in the January 2000 issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (64, 46-49). In it they attempt to justify the way they publicized their skeptical claims in the media. Nevertheless, they say they were "appalled" by the way some of the newspaper items portrayed Pam Smart. But although they helped initiate this media coverage, triggered by the press release accompanying the publication of their paper, they consider themselves blameless: "We are not responsible for the way in which the media reported our paper and believe that these issues are best raised with the journalists involved."
In their reply they raise three main points:
1. They say that the pattern of behaviour whereby Jaytee was at the window most when his owner is on the way home could be because he simply went to the window more and more as time went on.
2. They say the my analysis of their data "was clearly post hoc and would not provide compelling evidence of psi ability unless it was supported by a larger body of research."
3. They justify their failing to mention my own research with Jaytee on the grounds that it had not yet been published when they submitted their paper to the British Journal of Psychology, and add that "the experiments appear to contain design problems (Blackmore, 1999)". They also object to the way I reported their research in my book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home.
My reply to their remarks has been published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 64, 126-128 (April 2000). Here is the full text:
The "Psychic Pet" Phenomenon
In the January issue of the Journal Richard Wiseman, Matthew Smith & Julie Milton published a reply to my note (Sheldrake, 1999a) about their claim to have refuted the "psychic pet" phenomenon. This claim was made in the British Journal of Psychology (Wiseman, Smith & Milton, 1998) and widely publicized in the media. It was repeated as recently as February 2 this year in a presentation given by the first author at the Royal Institution entitled "Investigating the Paranormal".
At my invitation, Wiseman and Smith carried out 4 videotaped experiments with a dog called Jaytee, with whom I have carried out more than 100 videotaped experiments (Sheldrake, 1999b). My experiments showed that Jaytee usually waited by the window for a far higher proportion of the time when his owner was coming home than when she was not. This occurred even when his owner, Pam Smart, came at non-routine, randomly-selected times and travelled by unfamiliar vehicles such as taxis. This pattern was already clearly apparent months before Wiseman et al. carried out their tests.
In the 3 experiments that Wiseman and Smith carried out at Pam's parents' flat, the pattern of results was very similar to my own. Their data show a large and statistically significant effect: Jaytee spent a far higher proportion of time at the window when Pam was on the way home than when she was not (Sheldrake, 1999a).
The difference between our interpretations of these experiments arose because Wiseman et al. had a different agendum from mine. I was engaged in a long-term study of this dog's anticipatory behaviour, whereas they seemed more interested in trying to debunk a "claim of the paranormal". They themselves defined an arbitrary "claim" for Jaytee's "signal" and judged this by disregarding most of their own data. They argue that since they specified their criterion in advance (or rather criteria, since they changed the criterion as they went along), the agreement of their pattern of results with mine is irrelevant. "Testing this claim did not require plotting our data and looking for a pattern" (Wiseman, Smith & Milton, 2000, p. 46). Although thy refused to look at the pattern shown by their own data, I plotted their data for them, together with plots of my own data showing the same obvious pattern. I gave them these graphs before they submitted their paper to the British Journal of Psychology in 1996. Both in their paper and in their sceptical claims in the media, they chose to ignore what their own data showed.
"We tried the best we could to capture this ability and we didn't find any evidence to support it, " Smith was quoted as saying, in an article entitled "Psychic pets are exposed as a myth" (Irwin, 1998). "A lot of people think their pet might have psychic abilities but when we put it to the test, what's going on is normal not paranormal'" Wiseman asserted in the press release accompanying their paper. These are examples of the comments they now describe as "reponsible and accurate."
Wiseman, Smith & Milton try to justify ignoring the pattern shown by their data on the grounds that it was "post hoc". I cannot accept this argument. First, I had been plotting data on graphs right from the beginning of my research with Jaytee. Second, their dismissal of post hoc analysis would deny the validity of any independent evaluation of any published data. The whole point of publishing scientific data is to enable other people to examine and analyze them. Of necessity, the critical analysis of published data in any field of research can only be post hoc. And third, the plotting of graphs is not normally regarded as a controversial procedure in science. Consequently I do not agree with them that my representation of their results in my book (Sheldrake, 1999, Figure 2.5) is "misleading".
In their recent note, they raise two scientific, as opposed to legalistic, points. First, they suggest that Jaytee may simply have gone to the window more and more the longer Pam was out, and hence been there most when she was on the way home. But a comparison of Jaytee's behaviour during Pam's short, medium and long absences shows that this was not the case (Sheldrake, 1999b). Moreover, in control experiments in which Pam did not come home, Jaytee did not go to the window more and more as time went on (Sheldrake, 1999b, Figure B.2).
Second, they say that my experiments "appear to contain design problems (Blackmore, 1999)". Susan Blackmore's comments were made in an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement , which concluded: "There are better ways to spend precious research time than chasing after something that lots of people want to be true, but almost certainly is not." She thought she had spotted "design problems" in my experiments with Jaytee (Sheldrake 1999b) because "Pam was never away for less than an hour". (In Wiseman Smith & Milton's experiments Pam was likewise never away for less than an hour.)
This is why Blackmore thought there was a problem: "Sheldrake did 12 experiments in which he bleeped Pam at random times to tell her to return..... When Pam first leaves, Jaytee settles down and does not bother to go to the window. The longer she is away, the more often he goes to look. [Y]et the comparison is made with the early period when the dog rarely gets up." But anybody who looks at the actual data (Sheldrake, 1999b, Figure B.4) can see for themselves that this is not true. In 5 out of the 12 experiments, Jaytee did not settle down immediately she left. In fact he went to the window more in the first hour than during the rest of Pam's absence, right up until she was on the way home, or just about to leave.
In the light of Blackmore's comments, I have reanalyzed the data from all 12 experiments excluding the first hour. The percentage of time that Jaytee spent by the window in the main period of Pam's absence was actually lower when the first hour was excluded (3.1%) than when it was included (3.7%). By contrast, Jaytee was at the window 55.2% of the time when she was on the way home. Taking Blackmore's objection into account strengthens rather than weakens the evidence for Jaytee knowing when his owner was coming home, and increases the statistical significance of the comparison. (Including the first 60 minutes of Pam's absence in the analysis, by the paired-sample t test, t=-5.72, p=0.0001; excluding the first 60 minutes, t=-5.99, p<0.0001.)
Blackmore's claim illustrates once again the need to treat what sceptics say with scepticism.
In conclusion, I agree with Wiseman, Smith & Milton (2000, p.49) that my analysis of their data "would not provide compelling evidence of psi ability unless it were supported by a larger body of research." It is in fact supported by a large body of research, summarized in my book (Sheldrake, 1999b) and soon to be published in detail in a peer-reviewed journal.
References
Blackmore, S (1999) If the truth is out there, we've not found it yet. Times Higher Education Supplement, 27 August, 18.
Irwin, A. (1998) Psychic pets are exposed as a myth. Daily Telegraph , 27 August.
Sheldrake, R. (1999a) Commentary on a paper by Wiseman, Smith and Milton on the 'psychic pet' phenomenon. JSPR 63, 306-311.
Sheldrake, R. (1999b) Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home. London: Hutchinson.
Wiseman, R., Smith, M. & Milton, J. (1998) Can animals detect when their owners are returning home? An experimental test of the 'psychic pet' phenomenon. British Journal of Psychology 89, 453-462.
Wiseman, R., Smith, M. & Milton, J. (2000) The 'psychic pet' phenomenon: A reply to Rupert Sheldrake. JSPR 64, 46-49.
Continue to James Randi or Sir John Maddox
If the results are truly valid, they should fairly easy to replicate with a large number of pets.
Sheldrake notes that the big questions in science no longer require "big science" to attempt to answer, and that experiments costing a few hundred dollars to concoct and computers costing under a thousand dollars will often suffice. Significant compute power particularly used to be found only in universities, the military, and large corporations, but now is cheap.
The one other thing anybody interested in this kind of thing should have around is a copy of Julian Jaynes' "Origin of Consciousness". Check out that first url I noted if you haven't already.
Probably because you cannot read the "mind" of a random number generator! There being no "mind" to read, in such a case.
Perhaps its just me, but I am failing to descern in all this how telpathic parrots are squaring off against Charles Darwin.
You are not alone in failing to discern this. If Sheldrake's "morphogenic fields" are real, this does not go against evolution since he proposes that these fields evolved naturally, and are a kind of "memory" of the organism's past history, in the same sense as DNA is a kind of "memory". If this theory is somehow substantiated, it merely does away with the more purely materialistic, mechanistic interpretations of evolutionary theory. It does not propose to prove that creatures were suddenly created out of nothing, without stemming from earlier ancestors.
I mean if ESP exists then state lottery officials must have a contingency in place for such things.
And what does evolution propose for this circumstance?
Never mind state lotteries. Think about Las Vegas. Those guys monitor everything and notice the slightest statistical deviation, and they effectively churn through WAY more population space than the state lotteries.
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