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Paranormal upsets top scientists
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 UNITED KINGDOM. Innovative biologist Dr Rupert Sheldrake believes his telepathy research, recording the percentage of correct anticipations of the identity of telephone callers and e-mail senders, has produced results that are "a thousand billion to one against it being a chance effect”.
  And retired neuropsychiatrist Dr Peter Fenwick, who helps run the Scientific and Medical Network, believes he will soon have enough evidence to show that consciousness exists after death.
Both ideas will be familiar to individuals who take an interest in parapsychology and, indeed, would have been happily debated at the Society for Psychical Research’s 30th international annual conference held at Liverpool Hope University (1-3 September).
But Sheldrake and Fenwick received a less than enthusiastic response from some of the UK’s 300 top scientists and engineers when they presented their findings to the annual British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) Festival of Science at the University of East Anglia, Norwich (2-9 September).
According to the national newspaper, “The Independent” (6 September): “Leading scientists have criticised Britain’s premier public forum on science for hosting a series of lectures on controversial research into the paranormal that suggests the possibility of mental telepathy and the existence of consciousness after death.”
It said the BA was sharply rebuked on 5 September for allowing paranormal researchers to have a public platform at the meeting. Science editor Steve Connor added:
“Lord Winston, a former president of the BA, said that he knew of no properly conducted studies indicating that telepathy and the paranormal were anything other than nonsense. ‘It is perfectly reasonable to have a session like this, but it should be robustly challenged by scientists who work in accredited psychological fields,’ he said.”
A more astonishing attack, however, came from Professor Peter Atkins of Oxford University, who said that there was no reason to suppose that telepathy or the afterlife was anything other than a “charlatan’s fantasy”.
Helen Haste, a psychologist at the University of Sussex and the organiser of the paranormal session, defended the invitation that had been extended to Sheldrake and Fenwick. “We at the British Association feel we should be open to discussions and debates which are seen as valid by people generally inside and outside the scientific community.”
However objectionable the words of Prof Atkins, the controversy served to highlight paranormal research in a way that might not otherwise have been possible. Sheldrake, who is best known for his theory of morphic fields and resonance, also took part in a discussion on BBC Radio 4’s “The Material World” (5 September) as well as having a live discussion with Prof Atkins on BBR Radio 5 the same day.
Two days later, The Times published a comment from Sheldrake, “Gosh, I was just thinking about you” in which he criticised sceptical scientists for ignoring the evidence for telepathy.
You can find links to all of these evenets on Rupert Sheldrake’s excellent website: www.sheldrake.org.
At the beginning of October, The Times also published an interview with Dr Peter Fenwick about his views on consciousness surviving death (see separate story).
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Posted on Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Category: Parapsychology
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