Analysing Rupert Sheldrake's Tests on the Paranormal

 

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This essay is on Sheldrake’s The Science Delusion. It exposes the faulty logic, lack of evidence, and philosophical errors in his tests.

Image created by Chat GPT on a prompt by the writer.

In his book The Science Delusion, the biologist and paranormal researcher Rupert Sheldrake cites many tests — some of which are his own — of telepaths and paranormal phenomena. I noted the lack of evidence for many of his claims about these tests, as well as faulty logic and philosophical mistakes. Sheldrake and his defenders will (or may) argue that the hard detail and data can be found elsewhere in various papers and surveys. However, many believers and sympathisers (who read this book) won’t go elsewhere. So I read The Science Delusion as a book that should stand on its own, just as non-sceptics will have done so.

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Sheldrake on Mainstream Science

Rupert Sheldrake frequently argues that “mainstream science” ignores his own work, as well as paranormal phenomena generally. Yet he himself cites examples which show that this isn’t true. For example, the University of Virginia, Goldsmiths (University of London), Lund University (Sweden), the University of Edinburgh, etc. all tackle paranormal phenomena. For Sheldrake, the problem here is that these are all specialist parts of the aforementioned universities, not parts of existing science departments. That isn’t enough for him.

Sheldrake isn’t happy that there are parapsychology laboratories or research units at some universities … and then there are scientific laboratories. In other words, he argues that parapsychology has been pushed aside and into a niche. It’s clear that Sheldrake wants parapsychology to be mainstream, and that’s why he’s very critical of what he calls “mainstream science”. For Sheldrake, it’s not enough that there have been trials and tests in “fringe” parapsychology laboratories. There should be trials and tests in scientific laboratories.

Sheldrake is demanding a lot!

Sheldrake on Card-Guessing

Sheldrake tells us that “[m]any card-guessing trials were carried out at the famous parapsychology laboratory at Duke University, North Carolina” (now called the Rhine Research Center). Sheldrake writes:

“By chance subjects would have been right 20 per cent of the time. In hundreds of thousands of trials, the average hit rate was 21 percent, only slightly above the chance level, but highly significant statistically because of the large number of trials.”

A difference of 1 percent may not seem much. As it is, 1% may well be “significant”. Does this 1 percent difference become significant statistically because of “the large number of trials”? Surely given a larger the number of trials, one would expect a larger percentage difference if this parapsychological phenomenon were real. Moreover, Sheldrake treats the 20% mathematical probability as a baseline for human behavior. The 20% refers only to numbers and cards in the abstract, not to human persons guessing the next card.

If telepaths can guess which cards will come next, then why can’t they guess them every time, and in many different contexts?

After saying that a 1% difference is significant, Sheldrake goes on to say why the difference wasn’t actually wider:

“Unfortunately, the experimenters’ desire to follow rigorous scientific procedures led them to adopt procedures far removed from the way telepathy occurs in real life. These repetitive, boring laboratory tests between strangers using abstract stimuli were about as unnatural as it was possible to be.”

Sheldrake often makes the point that the procedures used in the tests of the paranormal are more rigorous than in (much?/all?) mainstream science. He appears to be saying that here too.

It’s not clear why telepathic skills can’t be displayed in unreal life. Sheldrake may have reasons for saying this. However, saying that the tests were “repetitive”, “boring”, etc. doesn’t seem adequate.

Sheldrake concludes that

“[i]n the 1960s, a new generation of researchers tried to find ways of doing research that were closer to the conditions under which telepathy occurs spontaneously, particularly in dreams”.

Here’s the important point to extract from all this. Sheldrake argues that these tests (under supposedly “controlled conditions”) aren’t like what “occurs in real life”. Does that mean that telepathy is at its strongest when no scientists or sceptics are around to witness them? Do only believers witness them?

Sheldrake on a Boxing Match and a Dead Rat

Sheldrake provides some more cases. For example,

“one subject dreamed about buying tickets for a boxing match while the sender was looking at a picture of a boxing match”.

Why couldn’t this be a coincidence? It’s not even as if the sender was looking at a picture of people buying tickets for a boxing match. He was looking at a picture of a boxing match, and the subject was dreaming about buying tickets for a boxing match. Sure, there is indeed a connection. But it could be a coincidence.

Sheldrake’s next example is even weaker. In this case,

“the subject dreamed of a dead rat in a cigar box, while the sender was looking at a picture of a dead gangster in a coffin”.

Sheldrake admits that the “connection was more symbolic”.

It’s not clear that this connection is actually symbolic. The dead rat in a cigar box needn’t have symbolised a dead gangster in a coffin, just as a dead gangster in a coffin needn’t symbolise a dead rat in a cigar box. It is indeed odd to dream of a dead rat in a cigar box. Yet many dreams are weird. Why didn’t the subject dream of a dead gangster in a coffin if such telepathy is a real thing?

Sheldrake concludes that “[i]n a total of 450 dream telepathy trials, the overall results were very significantly above the chance level”. Since Sheldrake himself brought up symbolism, then that changes much. Anything can symbolise anything. If a subject dreams about a sausage, and the sender is looking at a picture of a farm, then that dream can be taken to symbolise that farm because pigs exist on farms, and sausages are made out of pork. With symbolism, you have free rein. That means that one experimenter may see y as symbolising x, whereas another experimenter doesn’t.

Sheldrake presents another case that seems obviously flawed. As ever, he can claim that the details are supplied elsewhere. Most readers won’t go elsewhere. This is Sheldrake:

“[W]hen emotional images were *about* to appear, the increase in electrodermal activity began *before* the picture appeared on the screen, three or four seconds in advance.”

The flaw in this seems so obvious that I can’t help thinking I’m missing something. The increase of electrodermal activity might have been due to the expectation of seeing “emotional images”, even if it were possible that “calm pictures” might have been selected by the computer. After all, psychologists tell us that rehearsing an emotional, fearful, sad, etc. situation often brings about the exact same physical symptoms that would occur during an actual situation. (See here.)

Sheldrake on J.W. Dunne and Precognition

Now read the following sentence from Sheldrake:

“[J.W. Dunne] found he often dreamed about events that were about to happen, but usually forgot these dreams.”

What’s wrong with it?

If the British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher J.W. Dunne “usually forgot these dreams”, then how did he know that they were dreams about events that were about to happen? It can be supposed that the word “usually” (as in “usually forgot these dreams”) may be doing some work here. Is it? If Dunne usually forgot these dreams, then that must mean that sometimes he didn’t forget them. However, Sheldrake uses the words “these dreams”. The dreams he forgot were supposedly about events that were about to happen.

Perhaps Dunne retrospectively worked out that his forgotten dreams were about events which were about to happen. This may make sense in the context of Sheldrake’s claim that

“[o]nly by keeping careful records of his dreams, writing them down as soon as he awoke, did the phenomenon become clear”.

Is this what happened?

When Dunne began to keep careful records of his dreams, did he then realise that his dreams were about events that were about to happen? Yet that only applies to the dreams which occurred after he started to keep records. What about the dreams which occurred before Dunne started to keep records? Did he still dream about events that were about to happen, but later forgot them?

Interestingly, Sheldrake doesn’t offer his readers evidence that Dunne’s dreams did accurately foretell events in the future. Instead, he tells them that Dunne “made an astonishing discovery” about his dreams.

Of course, this can be tied into déjà vu, and Sheldrake does the tying himself. Dunne “found that he sometimes had experiences that seemed familiar”. It may well be the case that Sheldrake supplies examples elsewhere. Readers can consult Dunne’s book An Experiment With Time to get details. Yet that doesn’t change the fact that the details aren’t actually in Sheldrake’s book. So that surely means he expected most of his readers to accept his words as they stand. Indeed, readers need to accept Dunne’s words, as well as Sheldrake’s words about Dunne’s words.

Sheldrake on Telephone Telepathy

Sheldrake tackles what he calls “telephone telepathy”. He continues:

“Hundreds of people told me that they had thought of someone for no apparent reason, and then that person rang in a way that seemed uncanny. Or they knew who was calling when the phone rang before they looked at a caller ID display or answered.”

Sheldrake says that “some people simply accepted that it was telepathic or intuitive”. He then cites some rather obvious arguments against this. What he concludes is the interesting bit. Sheldrake writes:

“I searched the scientific literature to find out if these standard arguments were supported by any data or observations. I could find no research whatever on the subject.”

What kind of data, observations or tests is Sheldrake talking about here? How would scientists test the cases in which people “thought of someone for no apparent reason, and then that person rang”? This seems almost impossible to test. It would require a scientist to know when a person randomly thought about someone, and then that someone ringing them. No matter how ingenious such a test is, I still can’t see how this could be done.

The other thing is that if this test were done by “sceptical” scientists, then they would only do so in response to Sheldrake’s claims. Perhaps that’s precisely Sheldrake’s point. No such test would ever be carried out by sceptics unless the paranormal claims were themselves being tested. There is indeed little chance that a scientist would test something as obscure as placing people in experimental situations in which they have a random thought about someone, and then that someone phones them.

Sheldrake above talked about the lack of “data or observations” from sceptics. His own data, on the other hand, was a “series of surveys in Europe and in North and South America”. This was the result:

“On average, 92 per cent of the respondents said they had thought of someone as the telephone rang, or just before, in a way that seemed telepathic.”

Now that is indeed data. However, it’s not an account of a scientific test or experiment. To be fair to Sheldrake, perhaps he would accept that and say that’s precisely why we need tests on this topic. And, yes, he did devise his own test. The problem is that his test was very artificial, as well as being divorced from the account he gave of hundreds of telepaths. In simple terms, Sheldrake’s test seems to have been designed to bring about only positive results. Here, Sheldrake will say that this often happens in science. The problem is, when it happens in science, Sheldrake criticises it.

Firstly, Sheldrake only tested subjects “who said they quite frequently knew who was calling before answering the phone”. It can be supposed that people who don’t think they are telepathic wouldn’t have been tested at the same time. Still, this is an odd test.

As stated, these tests were so artificial (as, I suppose, many scientific tests and experiments are) that it’s hard to know where to start. However, it’s worth focussing on one sentence from Sheldrake:

“None of the subjects was right every time, but they were right much more than they should have been if the chance coincidence theory were true.”

Is it now unfair to ask the following question? —

Why weren’t these subjects right every time?

If telepathic skills or abilities are real, then why weren’t the telepaths right every time? Sheldrake may cite test conditions which may have interfered with their telepathic skills. After all, when referring to another test, he claimed (as quoted earlier) that

“the experimenters’ desire to follow rigorous scientific procedures led them to adopt procedures far removed from the way telepathy occurs in real life”.

In the case of telephone telepathy, the test conditions and procedures could have interfered in a positive way too! In other words, if “rigorous scientific procedures” dampen down the effects of telepathy, then a lack of such things can do the opposite. Of course, in the telephone telepathy case, Sheldrake will claim that he did use rigorous scientific procedures. Did he? It certainly has the outward appearance of a scientific test. However, once you scrape the test’s surface, that’s not the case at all. It’s as if Sheldrake believes that by simply using the jargon and supposed procedures of scientific tests, his tests become scientific.

Sheldrake may believe he’s on safe ground here because he’ll probably say that all scientific tests and experiments are artificial in many ways. Artificial, yes, but also bogus?

Sheldrake on Sceptics

I wonder if Sheldrake would see me as being a “self-appointed vigilante”. He uses these words about the “members of skeptical organisations”. I’m not a member of a sceptical organisation, so Sheldrake may see me as a lightweight who can be safely ignored. The problem here is that Sheldrake takes issue with critics precisely because they’re members of sceptical organisations. This would mean that Sheldrake has set up a no-loose situation for himself.

What about these self-appointed vigilantes?

If they didn’t appoint themselves, then who would appoint them? And why, exactly, are they vigilantes? (Sheldrake does explain this.)

Again, I wonder if I fit into the artfully selected sceptics whom Sheldrake cites. It can be admitted, it wouldn’t look good for sceptics if readers were to rely exclusively on Sheldrake’s own words about them.

Take the case of the developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster Lewis Wolpert, whom Sheldrake mentions a few times in separate places. (Wolpert died in 2021.) He was well known (perhaps even among “materialists”) for being opinionated and sometimes rude. (Take Wolpert’s critical words on philosophy too.)

Sheldrake tells his readers that he had

“summarised evidence for telepathy from thousands of scientific trials and showed a video of recent experiments”.

How did Wolpert react to all this?

According to Sheldrake, he “star[ed] ahead, tap[ped] a pencil on the table, sighing as if bored”. Moreover, “[h]e did not turn around to see the evidence behind him”. Wolpert might well have been bored with the (supposed) evidence. However, he went along to a debate on this subject. So, if Sheldrake is telling the truth, Wolpert’s behaviour was embarrassing. What’s more, it seems like Sheldrake was telling the truth because this debate was covered by the journal Nature (‘Telepathy debate hits London’). In that article, it’s said that “[m]any in the audience variously accused Wolpert of ‘not knowing the evidence’ and being ‘unscientific’”. This may depend on people taking “the evidence” as genuine evidence. However, that still doesn’t excuse Wolpert’s tubthumping behaviour.

Sheldrake tackles the sceptics again. He writes:

“Sceptics often argue that such impressive collections of data are misleading, because researchers may publish only positive results, and leave negative studies unpublished in their files, the so-called ‘file-drawer effect’.”

Then comes the important line:

“This objection is plausible, but it applies to all branches of science, including physics, chemistry and biology, where most data go unpublished.”

Okay. Let’s say that the file-drawer effect does occur in physics, chemistry and biology too. That still means that it occurs in research on the paranormal. So how does the case of physicists, chemists and biologists hiding negative results help Sheldrake’s own case?

An Anti-Materialist Warrior on Physicalism

 

This essay tackles Rupert Sheldrake’s many criticisms of what he calls “materialism”. Indeed, he’s at war with materialism, and mentions it in almost every paragraph he writes. Sheldrake takes materialism to be a dangerous and malign worldview that should be replaced with an alternative benign worldview — his own. In this essay, it’s also shown that Sheldrake has a penchant for straw men and straw positions. This shouldn’t be a surprise if you place it in the context that Sheldrake believes that adopting his own worldview will “make[] a huge difference”. Indeed, his worldview will “affect[] the way we relate to other people and to the world”. It will “shape[] our experience of ourselves” too.

Note that I’ll be using the word “physicalism” in the following. I do so partly because the biologist, writer and parapsychology researcher Rupert Sheldrake himself states the following:

“Physicalism means much the same as materialism, but rather than asserting that all reality is material, it asserts that it is physical, explicable in terms of physics, and therefore including energy and fields as well as matter. In practice, this is what materialists believe to.”

In my discussions with anti-materialists, spiritual idealists, religious people, etc., a few — very few — of them have acknowledged that there are differences between physicalism and materialism. However, they claim that such differences don’t make a difference. That simply means that both physicalism and materialism, despite their differences, aren’t spiritual idealism, panpsychism, neo-vitalism, etc., and that neither posit non-material spirits and souls.

Sheldrake falls into this position too.

There is a big difference between old-style materialism and contemporary physicalism. Many pre-20th century and even 20th century materialist philosophers didn’t pay much attention to physics. Physicalists obviously do. In addition, it’s bizarre that Sheldrake plays down the fact that physicalists accept the reality and importance of “energy and fields” (i.e., not only “matter”) because in many discussions I’ve had with anti-materialists, they claim that “materialists” aren’t even aware of fields and energy, and that such people are still stuck in the 19th century. Anti-materialists, spiritual idealists, etc., on the other hand, are very keen on energy and fields. The problem here is that they see energy and fields in many ways that go against the actual physics. In fact, the metaphors which Sheldrake champions (“science can’t escape metaphors”) rule the roost when spiritual idealists, etc. discuss energy and fields. What’s more, Sheldrake’s morphic resonance hypothesis is itself deemed to be a “field theory”.

Sheldrake’s Worldview

The bottom line is that Sheldrake doesn’t just have a philosophical problem with physicalism: he believes it is morally and politically dangerous too. In his own words, it negatively impacts on “the way we relate to other people and to the world and shapes our experience of ourselves”. In addition, Sheldrake states that physicalists believe that we aren’t “capable of making choices” or “living among other beings with sensations, experiences and desires”.

Sheldrake carries on with his theme of adopting a philosophical position because it makes a “huge difference”. He writes:

“It makes a big difference if you think of yourself as a zombie-like mechanism in an unconscious mechanical world, or as a truly conscious being capable of making choices, living among other beings with sensations, experiences and desires.”

What a stark and crude binary Sheldrake has just set up.

Not even the most extreme physicalist — or an eliminative materialist— thinks of himself as a zombie-like mechanism, and he doesn’t adopt anti-physicalism in his private life either, as Sheldrake alleges occasionally. Sheldrake may well believe this is the logical conclusion of physicalism without even bothering to argue why that’s the case. The thing is, it’s not the logical conclusion of physicalism that we’re all zombie-like creatures, let alone that all physicalists must think of themselves in these terms.

Of course, the word “zombie” isn’t defined by Sheldrake, and perhaps there’s no reason why he should do so in a popular book for the layperson. In any case, we all more or less know what a zombie is… or do we? Not really. There’s a big difference between a philosophical zombie and a Hollywood zombie, a distinction that Sheldrake ignores for rhetorical effect.

Finally, rather than attacking physicalism, Sheldrake tells his readers about what he’s offering the world as an alternative. He’s “[l]iberating minds from confinement in heads”. And such a liberation is “like being released from prison”.

Is Sheldrake a Panpsychist?

In one place, Sheldrake defends panpsychism simply as a means to attack what he calls “materialism”. Yet it’s not at all clear that he was a panpsychist at this point. Take this example:

“The question ‘Is Matter Unconscious’ is not just an abstract, intellectual question. It makes a huge difference. It affects the way we relate to other people and to the world and shapes our experience of ourselves.”

Perhaps, then, Sheldrake places matters as to how “we relate to other people and to the world”, etc. before truth or theoretical consistency. The panpsychist Philip Goff certainly does. Take Goff’s own very Sheldrake-like account of matters. In Mind Chat (2021), he said:

“If we see trees and rivers as conscious, it changes the way we legislate and act politically. Panpsychism could inspire a movement where environmental protection becomes a moral imperative, not just a pragmatic choice.”

[Goff’s book Galileo’s Error is similar to Sheldrake’s The Science Delusion, which was published some seven years before. The prose is similar, and at points the ideas are identical.]

To repeat. To Sheldrake and most panpsychists it “makes a huge difference” (i.e., beyond philosophy and truth) if you accept panpsychism. That is correct. Panpsychism is essentially a worldview that incorporates politics, morality, religion, social relations… everything.

Similarly, at least according to Sheldrake (as well as Goff), if one accepts materialism, then that makes a huge difference too. The difference here is that many materialists may not realise that their embrace of materialism makes a huge difference to everything. In fact, many materialists (according to people like Sheldrake, Bernardo Kastrup, etc.) don’t even realise that they’re materialists!

Sheldrake on Materialism

Sheldrake states what he takes to be the (i.e., the singular definite article) materialist position:

“If materialism is true, all bodies, including yours and mine, are essentially unconscious.”

Then Sheldrake assumes that every physicalist is an epiphenomenalist:

“Your subjective experiences emerge from your brain as epiphenomena, or they are merely an aspect of the physical activity of your brain, but they cannot have any effects. Your thoughts, desires and decisions cannot interfere with regular physical causality.”

Not all physicalists are epiphenomenalists. Of course, Sheldrake may argue that physicalists must be epiphenomenalists if they follow the logic of their own position, even if they don’t realise this. The problem is that Sheldrake doesn’t argue this case. In fact, he rarely argues his case at all.

Subjective experiences can “emerge” from the brain and still not be epiphenomena. Sheldrake doesn’t even care to mention this possibility. Perhaps, again, this is because he assumes that such a stance is logically incoherent. Sheldrake does mention one possibility: that subjective experiences may be aspects of the physical activity of the brain. Yet Sheldrake takes this possibility to be an example of epiphenomenalism too. That’s because he concludes that such subjective experiences “cannot have any effects”. Why can’t they? If they’re aspects of the physical activity of the brain, then it seems that they can have effects.

A clue to Sheldrake’s position can be found in his use of a single word: “merely” (as in “merely an aspect of the physical activity of the brain”). Why merely? This seems to work against both monism and panpsychism. That because according to these positions, matter has two aspects. Therefore, the brain has two aspects. The point here being that the brain having aspects which are subjective experiences doesn’t rule out the latter having effects. In fact, the opposite is the case.

Sheldrake adds to his conflation of physicalism with epiphenomenalism when he states that according to the former,

“[y]our thoughts, desires and decisions cannot interfere with regular physical causality”.

Not only is this a conflation of physicalism with epiphenomenalism, Sheldrake is smuggling in determinism too. The thing is, regardless of determinism, your thoughts, desires and decisions can interfere with regular physical causality if they’re taken to be aspects of the physical activity of your brain.

Sheldrake then continues his conflation in the form of his ‘Questions for materialists’. His first question goes as follows:

“Do you believe that your own consciousness is merely an aspect or epiphenomenon of the activity of your brain?”

Then comes yet another conflation:

“If consciousness does nothing, why has it evolved as an evolutionary adaptation?”

It may seem to some readers that Sheldrake is offering two alternatives when he uses the word “or”. That is, either you’re an epiphenomenalist or you believe that consciousness is an aspect of the activity of your brain. As stated, consciousness could be an aspect of the brain and not be an epiphenomenon. So Sheldrake’s epiphenomenalist conclusion that “consciousness does nothing” needn’t follow at all.

Sheldrake’s last question about consciousness — when seen in evolutionary terms — simply assumes that it “does nothing”. (How can it be an “evolutionary adaptation”?) Not all physicalists do believe that consciousness does nothing. What’s more, many believe that it is an evolutionary adaptation.

Yet again, there are problems with these physicalist alternatives. Sure! But Sheldrake simply ignores the alternatives entirely and sticks to his straw targets. Moreover, conceding that there are problems for physicalism isn’t really to concede that much. That’s because for every problem that physicalism has, spiritual idealism, panpsychism, etc. have — rhetorically - two or more problems. And when it comes to Sheldrake’s own philosophical worldview, it’s full to the brim with problems.

Again, all these physicalist alternatives to Sheldrake’s neat conflation of physicalism and epiphenomenalism may well be problematic. However, it would help if he had the decency to so much as mention them. So perhaps Sheldrake knows that turning his straw men into steel men would negatively impact on his philosophical worldview.