British flakes

Today's time-waster while I wait for the first coat of sky blue to dry in what used to be the study is reader-baiting. The targets are citizens of the U.K. The subject is the paranormal.

I ask you, what's with the enduring popularity of belief in ghosts, telepathy, and other such flaky beyond-belief stuff in Great Britain? To be fair, it's not as bad as creationism in America, not by a long shot. The British Isles are the birthplace of John Locke, David Hume and Bertrand Russell, after all, and the legacy of the Enlightenment continues to burn brightly in England, for most part. But still, there seems to be a soft spot for soft pseudo-science across the pond and I'd like to know why.

What got me started on this phenomenon was a story in today's Independent: "Scientists angry after platform is given to 'charlatan's fantasy'."

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.

The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) was sharply rebuked yesterday for allowing paranormal researchers to have a public platform at its annual Science Festival, held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

Mainstream scientists expressed surprise that the BA had invited Rupert Sheldrake, who investigates paranormal experiences, and Peter Fenwick, a retired neuropsychiatrist who investigates near-death experiences, to its annual meeting.

You kind of knew Sheldrake was going to be involved, didn't you? This time, he was presenting "findings" that showed people can correctly anticipate which of four close friends would give them a ring on the phone. He says his subjects managed a 45 per cent accuracy rate, and reportedly claims the odds of that happening by chance are "a thousand billion to one against."

I'm going to call bullshit on that by pointing out the study involved just 63 "recruits" and unless there was an awful lot of phone calls, the odds against 45 per cent accuracy are nowhere near one in a thousand billion. (The story doesn't include a mention of size of n.)

The Independent could have been more skeptical of the math. More skeptical (sceptical) at least, than BA conference organizer and pyschologist Helen Haste, who said: "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." Which means what exactly? But we did get this "however" from one Professor Peter Atkins, of Oxford University, who said there was no reason to suppose that telepathy or the afterlife was anything other than a "charlatan's fantasy." And this rebuke:

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.

Again, America's got a lot to answer for these days when it comes to public understanding of science. There was that depressing reminder in the form of a poll on belief in evolution, after all. But I doubt the American Association for the Advancement of Science (of which I am a member) would host a conference on either telepathy or creationism. And wven less likely to do so without a rebuttal. So what gives?

Curiously, there is an interesting way to illustrate on one hand just how far from respectable science Sheldrake is, and on the other, how widespread paranormal belief is in England. It's all packaged nearly in this abstract, which currently tops Sheldrake's website:

Psychic Pets: A Survey in North-West England
by Rupert Sheldrake and Pamela Smart
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 61, 1997

ABSTRACT
A telephone survey was carried out in Greater Manchester to find out how many pet owners had observed seemingly psychic abilities in their pets. 46% of dog owners claimed their animals knew in advance when a member of the household was on their way home, compared with 14% of cat owners. Most of these animals reacted 5 minutes or less in advance, but a substantial proportion reacted 10 minutes or more in advance of the person's return. 69% of dog owners and 48% of cat owners thought there pets knew when they were going out before they showed any physical signs of doing so. 53% of dog owners and 33% of cat owners thought their pet responded to their thoughts or silent commands; and similar percentages thought their pet was sometimes telepathic with them. Just over half of those who had kept pets in the past thought that some of these animals were telepathic. More dog than cat owners claimed to have had psychic experiences themselves, and a higher proportion of "psychic" pet owners claimed that their pets exhibited psychic powers than "non-psychic" owners. The potential for experimental investigations of the seemingly psychic powers of pets is discussed.

Note that we're talking about observations of seemingly pyschic pets, not actually evidence of pyschic pet power. And this kind of research gets him into a top-flight "scientific" conference?