Do Skeptics Play Fair?

Two months ago a debate over Intelligent Design blossomed into the larger issue of "positive" skeptics, those who consider themselves the watchdogs of truth in science. Such self-appointed guardians have a duty to be just as truthful and fair--but often they aren't. Skeptics spoil their own mission by following personal prejudice and hiding their agenda, which is to block the way for anyone who is a speculative or innovative thinker.

As a case in point, it's interesting to read this column in Scientific American by their house skeptic, Michael Shermer, and compare it to the response from the scientist he so openly derides:

LETTER submitted to Scientific American on 31 October 2005.

In his attack on my work (“Rupert’s Resonance,” Scientific American, November), Michael Shermer asserted that “Skepticism is the default position because the burden of proof is on the believer, not the skeptic.” But who is the believer and who is the skeptic?

I am skeptical of people who believe they know what is possible and what is not. This belief leads to dogmatism, and to the dismissal of ideas and evidence that do not fit in. Genuine skepticism involves an attitude of open-minded enquiry into what we do not understand, and this is the approach I try to follow.

Shermer ridiculed the hypothesis of morphic resonance by claiming I proposed a “universal life force,” a concept I have never used. He also misrepresented the evidence for the sense of being stared at. Experiments showing that people can detect when they are being stared at from behind have been widely replicated, with results that an independent meta-analysis has shown to be highly significant, as summarized in the Journal of Consciousness Studies (June, 2005), to which Shermer referred. He tried to give the impression that the case rested on unsupervised tests by people using the experimental protocol on my web site (www.sheldrake.org), but this is not true. My own summary of the evidence and the independent meta-analysis by Dean Radin did not include the data from these unsupervised tests, but relied instead on the results of many thousands of trials already published in peer-reviewed journals.

Shermer also referred to data from a staring experiment by Colwell et al, of Middlesex University, London, which showed a significant positive effect that could not be explained in terms of sensory clues. He mentioned that Colwell et al. suggested that this effect might be attributable to non-random features of the randomization sequences used in their experiment, but he omitted to mention that their suggestion has already been refuted by thousands of trials with
different randomization methods, including coin-tossing. The results were positive and highly significant statistically, whatever the randomization method.

Shermer’s partisan approach is like that of a politician trying to win an election. Readers of Scientific American would be better served by a fair and truthful presentation of the facts.


Rupert Sheldrake

London, England

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