Lively debate between biologist Rupert Sheldrake and telepathy skeptic Richard Wiseman reveals wide rift between skeptics and psi proponents Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for a spirited debate between biologist, author, and telepathy researcher, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, and noted researcher of anomalous psychology, and parapsychology skeptic, Dr. Richard Wiseman. During the 90-minute episode Sheldrake and Wiseman discuss the scientific evidence for telepathy and other psi phenomena. The debate covers a range of topics, but according to moderator Alex Tsakiris, the real friction began after the debate ended, "During the debate, Dr. Wiseman appeared eager to participate in collaborative research with parapsychologists. He went to great lengths explaining why skeptics and psi proponents should team-up on experiments of telepathy and other psi phenomena. But during an email exchange following the debate (published on the Skeptiko website), his stance took a radical change." According to Tsakiris, Wiseman stonewalled attempts to create a skeptics/proponents research forum, "I contacted three very prominent psi researchers and convinced them to take Wiseman up on his offer. They agree, but Wiseman would not. He made various demands aimed at agitating the other researchers, and even balked at a mere one-hour initial dialog. I was stunned, especially since I offered to fund the research." The discussion began with Professor Richard Wiseman offering a defense for scientific skepticism regarding psi phenomena, "In terms of my own research, some of it has looked at the notion that certain individuals possessing very strong psychic abilities, the mediums and the psychics and so on, and I'm very, very skeptical about that data. I don't think it shows anything particularly remarkable in terms of psychic ability going on. And then I've done a small amount of work, although other people have done a lot more, into the notion that psi is a more subtle signal. There, I'm fairly skeptical about the literature. I certainly wouldn't want to argue the case that psi definitely exists on the basis of that literature." But Sheldrake challenged the idea of relegating telepathy and other psi phenomena to the fringes of science, "I just want to go back a bit to what Richard called the Humian argument against miracles. Hume's argument against miracles was that miracles are extremely rare and it's more likely that people have been lying about them than that they actually happened. They so defy the common experience of humanity. Now, I think the argument is exactly reversed when it comes to phenomena like telepathy. They're not extremely rare. Whether it's 30 percent, 50 percent, 70 percent of the population who have had them, the details don't matter. The point is these things are very common. Hume's argument was that commonsense, the kind of common experience of the bulk of humanity, is what gives credence to something. So I think it's completely inappropriate to apply an argument against miracles to phenomena which happen on an everyday basis to large numbers of people." Next, the discussion examined the institution of science itself. Wiseman was asked to defend his statement, "I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that is proven. That begs the question do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal?". In defense of this, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" argument, Wiseman stated, "I think that parapsychologists by not far from 100 years of research have failed to come up with that level of evidence. It's not to say they couldn't in the future, but to me there just hasn't been the level of progress that you would expect given the amount of work that's been put in... that strength of evidence simply isn't there." To which Sheldrake responded, "Again, I come back to the fact that what we're dealing with here is an ideological issue. I mean, what Richard calls mainstream science and there's a kind of materialistic faith that many scientists have, at least in public. Many of them in private have telepathic experiences and have quite different views. Nevertheless, he's right. There is a kind of materialistic ethos in science. I think that itself is something we need to question and look at because it leads to an extraordinary blindness. He said that if you said there's a car outside, you wouldn't need to look. If you said there's a spaceship, you would, because that's an incredible claim. So it's okay for cosmologists to claim there are entire universes out there, a whole lot of universes, not just one, but trillions. No one bothers to look. The reason that gets past the filters is it doesn't overturn a particular ideology. What's at stake is not science itself but ideology." Special thanks to Bruce Mann. Play it: Download MP3 (75:48 min.) Read it: Alex Tsakiris: We have a very special live dialogue today between Dr. Richard Wiseman, Professor of Psychology at University of Herefordshire in the UK. In addition to his job there at the university, Dr. Wiseman, as many of you know, is also a parapsychology skeptic and an author of many popular books such as Quirkology, which explores the quirky way our mind works.
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