A furious row broke out today at Britain’s premier science forum over the decision to allow believers in the paranormal to promote their views without challenge from the mainstream.
The row was triggered by the British Association for the Advancement of Science’s decision to showcase highly controversial research purporting to demonstrate telepathy and life after death.
Critics including Lord Winston and Sir Walter Bodmer, both past presidents of the BA, expressed particular alarm that three speakers who think paranormal phenomena are real were allowed to hold a press conference without challenge from sceptics. Some said telepathy has already been found wanting in experiments, and has no place at a scientific meeting.
Other scientists said that while discussion of the subject was acceptable, the panel’s lack of balance was like inviting creationists to address the prestigious meeting without an opposing view from evolutionary biologists. Several members of the BA said that they would raise the matter with its ruling council.
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Sir Walter, a geneticist and cancer researcher, said: “I’m amazed that the BA has allowed it to happen in this way. You have got to be careful not to suppress ideas, even if they are beyond the pale, but it’s quite inappropriate to have a session like that without putting forward a more convincing view.”
The session on the paranormal featured three pieces of research, each of which claims to find evidence for phenomena that most scientists consider impossible under the laws of physics.
The first study, into telepathy, was conducted by Rupert Sheldrake, an unorthodox biologist whose work tends to inspire strong reactions among both supporters and critics.
Many people report experiences in which they were thinking of a friend or relative who happened to phone them at that moment. Most scientists regard this as coincidence, reinforced by forgetting the many times we think of friends who never ring, but Dr Sheldrake has tried to test whether it is actually down to genine telepathy.
He asked 63 volunteers to select four friends, one of whom would then be selected at random to ring them at a pre-arranged time. On picking up the phone, the subject would say who he thought was calling.
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By chance alone, people should get the right friend 25 per cent of the time, but Dr Sheldrake found that they actually did much better than this, with a success rate of 40 per cent in 571 tries. Callers were often several miles away, sometimes thousands of miles away, and distance did not affect the outcome.
In a follow-up trial, the participants were videotaped to ensure they were not getting messages from their callers. The four subjects tested in this way did even better, picking the right caller 45 per cent of the time.
Dr Sheldrake claims the results as good evidence for genuine telepathy, at least between some people who know each other well. “The odds of this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one,” he said.
But critics said that the effect was more likely to result from flaws in Dr Sheldrake’s methods. In one set of studies, the subjects lifted the received before making their choice, allowing possible clues to the caller’s identity from the quality of the line.
It was also possible that people got clues from the time of the call. “If the subject knows four people well, they will know who tends to be on time, who tends to be late and who early,” said Richard Wiseman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. “If they call me at 11.02 not 11, I’d likely guess it was going to be my late friend.”
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“He is reporting results that are far higher than those usually found by parapsychologists, and there is good reason to be sceptical. The design of the experiments are more messy than most in the field, and so the results could be due to participants picking up subtle cues from the callers - it is important that other scientists attempt to replicate the alleged effect.”
Dr Sheldrake works independently, though he is currently funded with a grant from the Perrott-Warrick Fund, which is administered by Trinity College, Cambridge. His other work includes studies that claim to show blindfolded people can tell when they are being stared at, and that pets can communicate telepathically with their owners.
The second study reported yesterday was led by Peter Fenwick, a consultant neuropsychiatrist who is interested in near-death experiences and “end of life experiences” that occur when people die. He thinks these may provide evidence for an afterlife.
Though his work is not yet published, he has collected data in hospices on apparently paranormal phenomena that occur at death. He says that many dying people experience visions of dead friends and relatives welcoming them to an afterlife, and that the living relatives of dying people are “visited” by them at the moment of death, reporting that they are dying but that all will be well.
Dr Fenwick has also documented uncanny events such as clocks stopping and bright lights at the moment of death. “One of commonest forms is a luminous object, composed of light and love, which hangs above the body. This is often interpreted as the soul leaving the body.”
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Again, sceptics reject this all as nothing but anecdote, hallucination and pure coincidence.
The third speaker at the symposium was Deborah Delanoy, Professor of Psychology at the University of Northampton. Along with presenting an overview of the past 30 years of paranormal research, she discussed a study of her own in which volunteers are asked to try to arouse or calm down another person by thinking about them. Electrical activity on the skin is then measured to determine whether this has a direct effect.
Her experiments suggest that people can influnece others’ physiology in this way, with success rates better than chance. This might demonstrate that thought can convey a “healing effect”, though she is more cautious than the other researchers.
The event was organised by the Scientific and Medical Network, an organisation with about 3,000 members dedicated to”exploring the interface of science, medicine and spirituality”. The Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, said it “lies far from the scientific mainstram and the list of speakers reflect this”.
Helen Haste, chair of the BA’s programme organising committee, said that all three speakers have proper academic credentials and that though their work is controversial, it is conducted in a rigorous, scholarly fashion. Professor French’s presence at the panel discussion would allow for sceptical dissent to be heard, though it was unfortunate he was not at the press event, she said.
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“We feel at the BA that we should be open to discussions or debates that are seen as valid by people inside the scientific community, as long as they are addressed in acceptable ways. These seem to be phenomena that are commonly experienced but have not been subjected particularly effectively to scientific investigation. It is a legitimate area of research. I do think it’s appropriate at a festival like this to have people who are serious about their approach and experimental methods.”
Lord Winston, the fertility specialist, said: “It is perfectly reasonable to have a session like this, but it should be robustly challenged by scientists who work in accredited psychological fields. It’s something the BA should consider, whether a session like this should go unchallenged by regular scientists.”
The BA, which celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, is a charity that seeks to to advance the public understanding, accessibility and accountability of the sciences and engineering. Its annual meeting, which is being held this year at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, has often caused controversy, most notably in 1860 when Thomas Huxley championed championed Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution against Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford.
When asked whether he thought he was descended from apes on his mother’s or father’s side, Huxley responded:”I would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop.”