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LONDON. Scientist and author Dr Rupert Sheldrake had his theories on the paranormal put to the test by ITV1 London region on 7 November. Though the entertaining programme couldn't hope to prove anything, it did an excellent job of putting Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance across in layman's terms and demonstrated how its implications could be put to the test.

In the first of a new series of Reel London, titled The Man with the Extended Mind, reporter Jes Benstock recreated some of the biologist's experiments and participated in in one of them.

He sat blindfolded and, at the sound of a click, had to tell Sheldrake if he felt he was being stared at or not (pictured below). The staring was done, incidentally, at a reflection of the back of his head. The other experiments involved a dog who appeared to sense that his owner was returning home, and an amputee who experienced "phantom limb" effects: having feelings in the arm which he lost in a motorbike accident in the TT Races on the Isle of Man. In this last case, however, it was others – his partner and another person who was sensitive – who stood on one side of a door and were asked to say where they felt his non-existent arm was penetrating the door, which was determined by numbers one to six on both sides. The partner was almost totally wrong, but the male sensitive's results were impressive.

Nevertheless, a single experiment proves nothing and Sheldrake pointed out that they would need to do many such tests before they had enough to do a meaningful statistical analysis. Even so, it would certainly have opened a few minds to psychic possibilities.

Sheldrake received £100,000 in September last year when he was appointed to the Perrott-Warwick Scholarship for psychical research and parapsychology, which is administered by Trinity College, Cambridge – the university from which he graduated with a First Class honours degree in biochemistry.

He is becoming something of a media star, having also participated in the TV programme on Paranormal Pigeons for FiveTV and a discussion for BBC Radio 4's The Material World about his report on telepathy to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which annoyed some fellow scientists (see Paranormal upsets top scientists).

Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006
Category: Paranormal

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