Did You Think Of This Headline Before I Wrote It?

from the whoa...-creepy dept

Tue, Sep 5th 2006 1:21pm — Joseph Weisenthal

Despite the ongoing advance of science there remain plenty of unsolved mysteries, and it's not uncommon for people to try filling in these gaps with non-scientific or pseudo-scientific answers. One of the more well-known proponents arguing that conventional science can't explain many phenomena is British scientist Rupert Sheldrake. Much of his work revolves around seemingly paranormal subjects, like the ability of dogs to know when their owners are coming home. Many people report that their dog always seems to be waiting at the door for them after work and through his studies he claims to have shown that this more than just the dog hearing the car come down the street, or the dog knowing what time of day its owner usually gets home. Another one he's fond of is the experience -- that we've all had -- of thinking about a person the second before getting a phone call from them. He's recently conducted new studies on this subject that purport to that this phenomenon is more than mere chance. But his latest study is based on a very small sample size (just 63 participants), and just 4 of the participants were videotaped. Chance could very well have played a part, as could other clues, like participants' prior knowledge of who would call them when. Charges that Sheldrake's experiments are poorly designed have been levelled at him throughout his career. A moment of extreme coincidence can feel very strange, perhaps even like clairvoyance, but trying to demonstrate them and show major cracks in conventional science seems doomed to fail. Sheldrake says he hopes to try his experiment next with text messages; we're guessing he'll be able to produce the same results.

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29 Comments

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armando, 5 Sep 2006 @ 1:31pm

happens all the time
with my wife. she'll think about someone she hasn't seen or heard from in a long while, and then she'll run into them someplace, or they'll call her up. she calls it "wishing them into her life". it happens so often we can't even call it creepy anymore.
it could just be a game of numbers, since she does have hundreds of friends she keeps in contact with, but it is pretty cool when it happens.
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DittoBox, 5 Sep 2006 @ 2:16pm

Hehe...Star Wars
Clairvoyance, love that word...

Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel's hidden fortress...
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Chronno S. Trigger, 5 Sep 2006 @ 2:17pm

I knew you were going to say that
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David Whatley, 5 Sep 2006 @ 2:18pm

Oh it's magic!
Such silliness always persists. Bad science, psuedo-science. Even educated people often don't understand the true odds of things, not to mention the concept of selective memroy of "hits" and forgetting or dismissing the "misses."

A good place to learn more, and debate more is www.randi.org. If one could show that the phone ringing pyschic trick is actually real, they could win the James Randi Foundation $1M prize. No one's managed it yet.

-- David
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Chronno S. Trigger, 5 Sep 2006 @ 2:24pm

maybe...
On several occasions at work I have picked up the phone to call someone and before I could even dial they were calling me. This has happened about a dozen times, especially with one of our clients. I’m not saying I’m psychic I’m just saying that maybe there’s something to this. (Not)
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David, 5 Sep 2006 @ 2:25pm

Does it ever NOT happen, armando?
Does she ever NOT run into someone she's "wishing" into her life? Do you keep track of how often that happens versus how often it does? Most people only remember the good things, and not the "failures". "Success" stands out more in your memory. Try the numbers game sometime, see if it really happens very often. And write down the names BEFORE she meets someone. I think your eyes will be opened.
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®idiculous ©rap, 5 Sep 2006 @ 2:55pm

I always look at the clock at 2:22 and 3:33
Seriously, I always do. It's just, like, so totally weird. I must have, like, super-ESP or something.
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Jim, 5 Sep 2006 @ 3:03pm

Re:
we call that tele-pathetic
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Teilo, 5 Sep 2006 @ 3:13pm

Isn't this the birthday paradox all over again?
There is a statistical "trick" that anyone can play in a group of people, called the birthday paradox. Simply put, what are the odds that any two people in a group have the same birthday? If you have 50 people, (if memory serves) nearly 99%.

Why? Because we're not talking any single birthday, but any out of 365 possible birthdays matching up with itself. Each person has a 49 in 365 chance of a match. Do the math for the collective odds and the odds are quickly in your favor.

How does this apply to the present article? Because as noted, Sheldrake is not counting the misses. If for any given call out of 50 you have one in a thousand chance of thinking of who it might be prior to their call (based upon the number of the people you know, and the frequency that you think about people in general), the odds for a single call to be a "hit" are one in a thousand, but the odds rapidly decrease if you add in the collective odds for all 50 calls. You quickly realize that you are almost certain to be thinking about someone at least once in those 50 calls, prior to the time that they call. That one you remember. The 49 you forget. One in 50 is pretty frequent, judging from the number of phone calls most people receive.

If Sheldrake is right, he would have to demonstrate precognitive ability in excess of these odds. If for instance, a person is consistently experiencing 10 or 20% more hits than a proper statistical analysis would predict, that might warrant further study (Not that Randi would be convinced anyway. He wouldn't be convinced if he was levitated on stage and thrown 50 feet.) Otherwise it's a waste of time.
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What?, 5 Sep 2006 @ 3:22pm

Why?
The whole experiment itself is full of holes, there are many things that could let your dog know your home; car, mailman, even a neighbor could be home before you. An animal HAS to know its suroundings, especially its territory plus its been missing you all day. A dog's ultimate goal is to be in your company, think about it.
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sm, 5 Sep 2006 @ 3:50pm

Re: maybe...
@Chronno S. Trigger:

Based on what you describe, many of your clients seem to be psychic, certainly not you.
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!Nodnarb, 5 Sep 2006 @ 4:31pm

or they have some leet hax
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2006 @ 4:35pm

"Much of his work revolves around seemingly paranormal subjects, like the ability of dogs to know when their owners are coming home."

"A moment of extreme coincidence can feel very strange, perhaps even like clairvoyance, but trying to demonstrate them and show major cracks in conventional science seems doomed to fail."

regardless of how credible Rupert Sheldrake is, why would proving that clairvoyance is possible show major cracks in conventional science? This statement seems unfounded to me.

I suppose it might show major cracks in materialism, which lately people seem to be taking as their religion and calling it science in order to shoot down other viewpoints.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2006 @ 4:54pm

Re: I always look at the clock at 2:22 and 3:33
Oh my gosh! That's so totally strange! I always look at the clock at like 1:11 and 11:11. Wow; I wonder if we're like clairvoyantly related or something?
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2006 @ 4:55pm

Carl Sagan's book, 'The Demon-Haunted World - Science As A Candle In The Dark', should be mandatory reading for all high school students. Young men and women would enter the world with a good start on their own personal baloney detector. jmtcw

~fuego
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paul, 5 Sep 2006 @ 6:04pm

Re: Isn't this the birthday paradox all over again
Somewhere between 23 and 26 people its about 50%. My math professor demonstrated this in class one day. The first students birthday (month and day) matched another students.
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?, 5 Sep 2006 @ 6:07pm

Re: Re: I always look at the clock at 2:22 and 3:3
Wow. That is really cool. I look at the clock when it is 6:66 and 66:66!

I think it is the world of the devil trying to tell me that I'm the Anti-Christ
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Drew, 5 Sep 2006 @ 6:20pm

He should use those participants as a control group and an equal size group under the influence of psychadelics. "Clairvoyant" thought is often thought to originate from endogenous tryptamines, the same type exploited by shamans for religious ceremony.
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jordan, 5 Sep 2006 @ 6:22pm

crazy
i dont understand why this is even a semi-popular story if he only has had 63 participants.
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PhysicsGuy, 5 Sep 2006 @ 7:20pm

Science
anyone who attacks "coventional science" because it doesn't explain everything needs to read some work by richard feynman and find out what science really is (and what it definetly isn't).

there are always cracks in conventional science, that's how it works, that's how it progresses. people come across those cracks and then develop new theories incorporating those cracks, but invariably along the lines more cracks are discovered. does this discredit everything before? no. take physics for example, newton developed an enormous amount of physical law, including gravity and the idea that light is like "tiny cannonballs". then along comes maxwell and shows that light is an electromagnetic wave and from this people learn that light is the same speed regardless of the frame of reference it is measured from, it's always c. then comes einstein who looks and says hey, well gravity can't be what newton said because nothing can travel faster than light so it's doubtful that gravity can, he then reworks gravity completely. shortly later he shows that light is what newton thought, tiny little packets which goes against the perfect demonstrations of light being a wave put out by maxwell. shortly thereafter it's found out that light is both, a wave and tiny little packets and so is all matter, which in turn shows that a lot of newton's laws were incorrect. well let's look at this now... newton's laws were found to be inaccurate and there are theories now that show, and are verifiable through observation, what these inaccuracies are and what the correct laws should be, but does this completely discredit newton's laws? not at all... newton's laws are excellent approximations to our current physical laws, so much so that airplanes, skyscrapers, the internal combustion engine are all engineered solely with these laws, so they can't be that bad. as it turns out there are always more cracks. it will inevitably go on, as quantum mechanics and relativity have cracks as the two don't coincide together and one is applicable to the really small and the other the really large.

wow... sorry for the long winded post here. i just wanted to demonstrate that there obviously are "cracks" in conventional science and that these cracks don't necessarily negate our previous concepts, and anyone who attacks it because of said cracks is, well, a moron. not to mention this guy sounds like he fits right in with the cargo-cult sciences. there's a thing called the scientific method. a real scientist should always doubt his own work the most and point out any flaws his own work contains, which this guy certainly does not.

to conclude, i will say, that you can't discount any proposed ... there really is no good word for this that doesn't have "mystical" connotations... psychic happenings (you CAN discount most proclaimed psychics though ;)). as there is always grounds for this in quantum mechanics depending on the interpretation you follow, but at the same time, due to quantum mechanics, you can't discount that we don't really live in the matrix. you CAN'T however credit either of these things as true until there is some way to verify such things (which, when dealing with quantum mechanical interpretations there most likely isn't) only that they're possibilities. and frankly there is a lot that science can't EXPLAIN (predict, yes, explain... no).
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Hamlet, 5 Sep 2006 @ 7:24pm

Science IS Magic....
HORATIO
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

HAMLET
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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PhysicsGuy, 5 Sep 2006 @ 7:36pm

Re: Science IS Magic....
Clarke's three laws of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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Maarten, 6 Sep 2006 @ 4:59am

Re: Re: Re: I always look at the clock at 2:22 and
"Wow. That is really cool. I look at the clock when it is 6:66 and 66:66"

I sense that you will be needing a new clock very soon....
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Clock, 6 Sep 2006 @ 6:25am

Re: Re: Re: Re: I always look at the clock at 2:22
I got a nice laugh when I saw that you only made the "66:66" bold, and not the "6:66." I hope that was a typing mistake on your part, and not you thinking that while 66:66 is not an actual time, 6:66 is.
(just in case you didn't realize, the minutes only go up to :59, before the hour increases. Missed first grade, did we?)
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Bounce, 6 Sep 2006 @ 1:31pm

Observation
Observability is a poor litmus for the existence of a phenomenon and practically irrelevant in the equation of belief. Photos of mid-air plane collisions are much less common than photos of UFOs. Facts of 100 years ago -- the wonderous wandering uterus, etc -- are ridiculed today. And who, indeed, has taken a snappy of God?

Anyone who dismisses a common sense of truth -- however outlandish it might seem -- based on the lack of hard evidence has a lot to learn about both science and religion.
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Maarten, 7 Sep 2006 @ 2:18am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I always look at the clock at
Lol, you're right. I noticed the 66:66 as being so obviously wrong, I totally missed the other one...which is only marginally less wrong, but still very much so.

I really should get more coffee into my system before posting...
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Diode Line, 7 Sep 2006 @ 7:29pm

The probability of 28 or more people (45%) guessing correctly which of 4 people will call is 0.000604785342036.

I wonder if he's actually doing a psychological experiment to see how many will believe him or something.
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Diode Line, 7 Sep 2006 @ 8:07pm

It's actually 571 trials, not 63 people. I guess that was Reuters' fault. Anyway, that makes it something like 4x10^-16 as he says in the paper available online. I assume that by 'casino dice' he doesn't mean 'weighted dice' ;-)
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2006 @ 6:24pm

CLOCK!!!!
I always look at the clock on 9:22 PM...

I was born at 9:22 Pm.. its just fuckin weird.
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