Telepathy Debate in London

Sunday January 25, 2004

Scientists don't often engage in debates over the paranormal - this is not surprising because science is simply not a subject that lends itself well to an oral debate. Science is an exacting process that requires a great deal of patience. Understanding science and the conclusions of science requires a bit of education which too many people unfortunately lack. As a consequence, it's tough to convince people about something scientific in the format of oral debates.

Nature reports on the attempts of someone to debate telepathy in front of an audience in London:

[Lewis Wolpert, a developmental biologist at University College London argued] that telepathy was "pathological science", based on tiny, unrepeatable effects backed up by fantastic theories and an ad hoc response to criticism. "The blunt fact is that there's no persuasive evidence for it," he said. "An open mind is a very bad thing - everything falls out."

For Ann Blaber, who works in children's music and was undecided on the subject, [Rupert Sheldrake, a former biochemist and plant physiologist at the University of Cambridge] was the more convincing. "You can't just dismiss all the evidence for telepathy out of hand," she said. Her view was reflected by many in the audience, who variously accused Wolpert of "not knowing the evidence" and being "unscientific".

Wolpert couldn't possible address every single bit of alleged evidence in the context of a debate such as that. A bigger problem, though, is that he shouldn't have to - it was Sheldrake's responsibility to present peer-reviewed, reliable, testable, repeatable evidence for telepathy. He didn't do it and, because of that, he didn't meet the minimal scientific standards that exist for proving the existence of this alleged phenomenon. The fact that people in the audience didn't realize this is evidence that they don't really know how science works - the accusation that Wolper himself was being "unscientific" is as hollow as it is ironic, considering just how misplaced it was. Sadly, people's desire that things such as telepathy be true and that they have special powers is often much stronger than their desire to be scientific, skeptical, and logical.

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