Well spotted, WOTD! It had me puzzled.

IMO, the only one of the ten that even comes close to validity is the one concerning the Big Bang. I agree with him that it is not credible that the universe "banged from nothing", even the evidence suggests a big bang. My posts in the Loop Quantum Gravity thread explain what I think is wrong with mainstream cosmogeny.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

You're right that science doesn't assume materialism but I think your reasoning is a little off. Materialism has nothing to do with the supernatural - that is, you can accept both materialism and the supernatural, or accept a non-materialist position and reject supernaturalism, etc.

The reason why science doesn't accept materialism is because it is metaphysically-neutral, which means that it has nothing to say about the fundamental nature of reality (and materialism is of course a metaphysical position). Science ignores metaphysics because we can't demonstrate or support any metaphysical claim over another using scientific methods so it remains silent on the issue, and instead it simply assumes methodological naturalism.

This position essentially boils down to: "It doesn't matter what is true or real, it's simply most useful for us to assume the world is natural". As such, it ignores supernatural claims but does not say whether such claims are true or false. (Importantly, supernatural in this situation doesn't just mean "wacky" or "spooky", it refers to the way the claims are conceptualised. So a natural claim is one about an observable, measurable, repeatable, etc phenomenon whereas a supernatural claim is not. What this means is that even though in common language we might think of psychic abilities as "supernatural", they are viewed as "natural" by parapsychologists studying them - because if they weren't natural, we couldn't study them).

Agree. Thanks for the explanation. I thought my post looked odd when I submitted it and that would be why.

Actually I'd best clarify - having spoken to Pam Smart (by email) the owner of the dog, and Matthew Smith (who was Wiseman's co-researcher on the experiment), and obviously read pretty much everything that has been released over the years, I am not actually much closer to working out that Wiseman was right and Sheldrake wrong (or vice versa). It depends greatly upon assumptions, and how you read the data. I think my direct quotes from the participants in earlier threads and on my blog or on the thread following my Amazon review of Paranormality show that Smith (& Wiseman, as far as I can gather) are not making claims as strong as people here suggest about their results disproving Sheldrakes. I'm not a big fan of Sheldrake as I have said before, find psi discussions tiresome, and note he is repeatedly accused of shifting the goalposts by his critics, but here things are MUCH more ambiguous than anyone in the thread appears to realise.

You actually need to read the sources as always, or at least the original papers, as this has become as much about spin from both sceptics and psi-proponents as the actual original papers. I'll link to both, and encourage people as always to do the work, and actually check out the papers themselves, and of course to try replicating if they can find a claimed psychic dog of their own...

The background

http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Paper ... _video.pdf - Sheldrake's paper

http://www.richardwiseman.com/Jaytee.html is Wiseman's account

http://www.sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/wiseman.html is Sheldrake's response


Listen to the participants speak

Skeptico podcasts on the issue featuring Wiseman & Sheldrake on the dog experiments
http://www.skeptiko.com/11-dr-richard-w ... sthatknow/
http://www.skeptiko.com/35-dr-steven-no ... -research/
http://www.skeptiko.com/rupert-sheldrak ... man-clash/

Read much more on the issue, and take part in designing replications - Open Source Science
http://www.opensourcescience.net/index. ... _Return%3F


Short Bibliography

Sheldrake, R. (1998). A dog that seems to know when his owner is returning: Preliminary investigations. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 62, 220-232.
http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Paper ... gknows.pdf

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.
https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/dspace/bitstre ... 902380.pdf

Sheldrake, R. (1999a) Commentary on a paper by Wiseman, Smith and Milton on the 'psychic pet' phenomenon. JSPR 63, 306-311.
http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Paper ... omment.pdf

Sheldrake, R. (1999b) Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home. London: Hutchinson.

Wiseman, R., Smith, M. & Milton, J. (2000) The 'psychic pet' phenomenon: A reply to Rupert Sheldrake. JSPR 64, 46-49.
http://www.psy.herts.ac.uk/wiseman/pape ... greply.pdf

Sheldrake, R, Smart, P (2000) A Dog That Seems To Know When His Owner is Coming Home:
Videotaped Experiments and Observations, Journal of Scientific Exploration 14, 233-255
http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Paper ... _video.pdf

Sheldrake, R., and Smart, P. (2000b). Testing a return-anticipating dog, Kane. Anthrozoös, 13(4), 203-212.
http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Paper ... ogkane.pdf

Carter C (2010) Heads I win, Tails you lose, or how Richard Wiseman nullifoes positive results in parapsychology, and what to do about it JSPR 74, 156-2007
http://www.sheldrake.org/D&C/controvers ... iseman.pdf

VKMachine (2011) Rupert Sheldrake and the Psychic Dog on his blog Bare Normality http://barenormality.wordpress.com/2011 ... ychic-dog/

I think a couple of hours effort will leave you considerably more confused about what the truth was than you are when you started, and considerably better informed. Perhaps you can provide a mathematical or methodological critique that has not already been proposed? Anyway, I may not agree with Sheldrake or Wiseman on much, but I have made the effort to understand this issue -- and I promise it is far less clear cut than usually presented by either side...

j x

I'm not confused at all.

How many years has it been now? Has his experiment been repeated or verified by other experts int he field? Do we really need to suspend judgement for much longer?

I've tried reading the whole background to that story before. But from what I remember it's just bickering over how you interpret the dog visiting the window a dozen times every afternoon.

Do I really need to go much further? The dog is just behaving like a dog, not trying to predict exactly when it's owner is going to arrive home. People need to stop attributing human feelings to these animals.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:How many years has it been now? Has his experiment been repeated or verified by other experts int he field? Do we really need to suspend judgement for much longer?

I've tried reading the whole background to that story before. But from what I remember it's just bickering over how you interpret the dog visiting the window a dozen times every afternoon.

Do I really need to go much further? The dog is just behaving like a dog, not trying to predict exactly when it's owner is going to arrive home. People need to stop attributing human feelings to these animals.

kennyc wrote:I'm not confused at all.

No, but that is because you probably have not read the actual papers or looked at the footage. Oh there is one very peculiar aspect of this - James Randi suggested on one TV show he had reviewed the footage, but subsequently it was determined he had not. Seems to have been a false memory, but is often brought up as a critique of him, which is unfair as editing and TV pressures can make anyone say anything! I have not covered that aspect of the matter above as it is largely irrelevant to "are dogs psychic?"

As I have also pointed out before Sheldrake's conventional science was extremely productive and indeed he is considered very eminent as a biologist. I think I posted his publication record from just Nature a few years back. The notion because he holds strange ideas his actual biological work is flawed is certainly false, and we must remember that in 1981 his book on morphic resonance was hailed as a great book by New Scientist, a fact brought up by long term readers who ridiculed the hatchet-job on the thirty year reissue and quoted from the original review to show how claims it was misquoted and taken out of context by Sheldrake on the reissue cover were in fact utter bollocks - it was New Scientist who were using weasel words etc. I often wonder how they will cope if a new edition of JW Dunne's classic 1928 work "An Experiment With Time" on precognition comes out and uses the 1978 New Scientist review which again was a praise piece. It is amusing how science culture has hardened its attitudes in thirty years, and history is being rewritten. I mentioned this in a tweet exchange with Robin Ince last year when he asked about how the parapsychologists of the 70's were taken in by spoonbenders -- and as I pointed out, the parapsychological community was pretty much sceptical all the way from 1974 with a few exceptions (like Sheldrake, himself a biologist not parapsychologist), it was mainstream and very distinguished physicists who worked with Geller et al and endorsed the claims uncritically. However like many things, the myth has become "common knowledge", and people are uncomfortable with the truth.

j x

Nope. Not confused at all.
Dogs don't have ESP or telekinesis or mindreading abilities, nor do they believe in ghosts or gods and this Sheldrake fool is a woo-master.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:How many years has it been now? Has his experiment been repeated or verified by other experts int he field? Do we really need to suspend judgement for much longer?

I've tried reading the whole background to that story before. But from what I remember it's just bickering over how you interpret the dog visiting the window a dozen times every afternoon.

Do I really need to go much further? The dog is just behaving like a dog, not trying to predict exactly when it's owner is going to arrive home. People need to stop attributing human feelings to these animals.

The experiment has been repeated many times, by Sheldrake and others. I can dig out all peer reviewed papers on "psychic dogs" given a few hours, but there are a few books as well. To me the importance is what it tells us about methodological issues, our reliance on stats, the impossibility of controlling variables, and the very real problems in any experimental design, no matter how simple, and what that says about our science. The debate throws up massive questions about how our science culture works.

Are dogs psychic? Dunno. Huge peer reviewed experimental literature, ranging from PK effects in newborn chickens (OK, not exactly dogs) through to all manner of dog based studies - about eight decades worth of studies in Animal ESP. Working with spooks rather than canine ethology rather hinders me here from making a decision on the merits of the case. I think anyone who actually ploughs through it all will find it really is "just bickering over how you interpret the dog visiting the window a dozen times every afternoon": a surprising number of interpretations can be legitimately employed to the same few doggy actions. What we decide the doggy at the window really shows us about the nature of reality may well depend upon our preconceptions. My attitude is "insufficient data" -- find more dogs, run more trials. Sheldrake did that, and if I was not so colossally bored by the whole thing I might have bought his book and checked the results, but I hope my links above at least give the bare bones.

j x

kennyc wrote:Nope. Not confused at all.
Dogs don't have ESP or telekinesis or mindreading abilities, nor do they believe in ghosts or gods and this Sheldrake fool is a woo-master.

For a visitor to a sceptics forum you seem to have a colossal amount of faith that you know how things truly are. I seem to recall you once accused me of being not sceptical, and therefore on the wrong forum. However it strikes me you hold far more certainties than I do! I'm not sure we can actually ever demonstrate that dogs do not have ESP, even if we can show this one doesn't though.

j x

Jerome, forget the friggin' dogs, did you watch this video? The idiot has no clue about science and how it works, or is intentionally attacking it rather than doing it. I can only presume because his pet theory (pun intended) has been rejected by the rigors of science.

I read his book. I have never written a review because parts were perfectly sensible, and parts irritated the hell out of me, but mainly because I eventually grew too bored to concentrate. I'll watch the video later. I'm not a fan of RS, and have never met him, but I always listen to what people say so sure I shall watch it and forgetting the dosg is definitely somnething I'd like to do

j x

jerome wrote:

kennyc wrote:Nope. Not confused at all.
Dogs don't have ESP or telekinesis or mindreading abilities, nor do they believe in ghosts or gods and this Sheldrake fool is a woo-master.

For a visitor to a sceptics forum you seem to have a colossal amount of faith that you know how things truly are. I seem to recall you once accused me of being not sceptical, and therefore on the wrong forum. However it strikes me you hold far more certainties than I do! I'm not sure we can actually ever demonstrate that dogs do not have ESP, even if we can show this one doesn't though.

j x

Your semi-needling semi-attack semi-attempt-at-discrediting my perspective (as well as most of the other posters in this thread) is duly noted and rejected Jerome.

jerome wrote:... so sure I shall watch it ...

j x

Now we got that out of the way, maybe we can discuss the actual topic.

kenny I'm not attacking your perspective. I'm quite sure you would change it if you felt the evidence required that. I'm noting however it is only sceptical in a very limited sense -- it doubts one set of claims. So I joked that despite your claim in another thread before that I was not a sceptic, I'm a a helluva more sceptical than that (in that I critique both sides, at length and from a basis of knowledge of the purported facts, and actually talk to those involved where possible). It was not meant to be offensive, and I apologise if was rude.

j x

jerome wrote:Sheldrake, R., and Smart, P. (2000b). Testing a return-anticipating dog, Kane. Anthrozoös, 13(4), 203-212.
http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Paper ... ogkane.pdf

...Nor could his anticipations be explained in terms of smell or hearing, because he began to wait by the window when his owner was more than nine km away, and did so even when she was travelling in unfamiliar vehicles (Sheldrake and Smart 2000).

OK, so maybe, by that time, the dog had learned to associate some other cue with the imminent arrival of his owner. Think "inadvertent Pavlovian conditioning".

Yes, that was what struck me. However in all sets of filmed trials Smart's time of return was randomly established, and so I am not sure what the association would be. My cat watches out for Lisa's return from work at certain times; but it can clearly judge when enough time has passed for her to return, as it is predictable. Impressive, but not spooky. However is she came home early I don't think the cat would expect that. So the randomizing is possibly at the heart of the problem, but it's not a simple explanation...

sandinista wrote:guess he may be someone to look into. Usually when someone comes up against this kind of response on forums he/she is generally on to something.

No, they're usually just wrong just plain old wrong, statistically speaking. It is more likely that your great new paradigm changing idea is just plain wrong, than it's actually being the case that it's a paradigm changer.

For every historical "upset" of the scientific paradigm, there are millions of discarded, functionally useless and just plain wrong ideas.

sandinista wrote:Whenever you hear "mainstream scientific community" or "pseudoscience" the subject matter generally has some aspects of validity or interest.

Sometimes interesting yes, much rarer validity. Sometimes none of both. Most often interesting but wrong, unfortunately.

sandinista wrote:Terms like that are akin to "conspiracy theorists", just ways for internet warriors to attempt to "write someone off" with loaded terms. Fortunately it rarely works.

Mindless hyberbolic whining at the nasty establishment for not uncritically swallowing empirically unsupported ideas.

Combe back with something concrete, like independently verifiable, robust empirical evidence. You know, that inconvenient thing that makes modern science work, capable of growing new organs and limbs, sending robots to mars and countless trillions of other goods you're unconsciously taking for granted, and the absense of which made the bronze age a shitty time to live in.

I just love the irony of people railing against established science on the fucking internet using an instrument conjured by the very process he's now experiencing painful rectal contractions because of, because it isn't genuflecting before his entirely emotional attachment to the idea of a soul and a life after death.

When will you people ever grow up? Fucking children.

The dogs used to sit at the door about 10 minutes before Mrs. Lak got home from work. Her schedule was pretty random, she could arrive back anytime within about a 3 or 4 hour period, but they always knew exactly when to go sit at the door. Spooky, I couldn't find anything at all that would alert them to her impending arrival. Then we got a new truck. They didn't sit at the door for at least a week, they were completely surprised when she walked in. Then they started sitting at the door again. So, either they're psychically attuned to the truck, or their hearing is far superior to mine and it took them a while to recognize the new sound.