Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to do a newspaper crossword puzzle later in the day? Me neither. But according to Rupert Sheldrake, it is because the collective successes of the morning resonate through the cultural morphic field.

In Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance, similar forms (morphs, or “fields of information”) reverberate and exchange information within a universal life force. “As time goes on, each type of organism forms a special kind of cumulative collective memory,” Sheldrake writes in his 1981 book A New Science of Life (JP Tarcher). “The regularities of nature are therefore habitual. Things are as they are because they were as they were.” In this book and subsequent ones, Sheldrake, a botanist trained at the University of Cambridge, details the theory, which is again hotly debated in the recent June Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Morphic resonance, Sheldrake says, is “the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species” and accounts for phantom limbs, how dogs know when their owners are coming home, and how people know when someone is staring at them. “Vision may involve a two-way process, an inward movement of light and an outward projection of mental images,” Sheldrake explains. Thousands of trials conducted by anyone who downloaded the experimental protocol from Sheldrake’s Web page “have given positive, repeatable, and highly significant results, implying that there is indeed a widespread sensitivity to being stared at from behind.”

Let us examine this claim more closely. First, science is not normally conducted by strangers who happen on a Web page protocol, so we have no way of knowing if these amateurs controlled for intervening variables and experimenter biases.

Second, psychologists dismiss anecdotal accounts of this sense to a reverse self-fulfilling effect: a person suspects being stared at and turns to check; such head movement catches the eyes of would-be starers, who then turn to look at the staree, who thereby confirms the feeling of being stared at.

Third, in 2000 John Colwell of Middlesex University in London conducted a formal test using Sheldrake’s experimental protocol. Twelve volunteers participated in 12 sequences of 20 stare or no-stare trials each and received accuracy feedback for the final nine sessions. Results: subjects could detect being stared at only when accuracy feedback was provided, which Colwell attributed to the subjects learning what was, in fact, a nonrandom presentation of the trials. When University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman also attempted to replicate Sheldrake’s research, he found that subjects detected stares at rates no better than chance.

Fourth, confirmation bias (where we look for and find confirmatory evidence for what we already believe) may be at work here. In a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted to “Sheldrake and His Critics,” I rated the 14 open peer commentaries on Sheldrake’s target article (on the sense of being stared at) on a scale of 1 to 5 (critical, mildly critical, neutral, mildly supportive, supportive). Without exception, the 1s, 2s and 3s were all traditional scientists with mainstream affiliations, whereas the 4s and 5s were all affiliated with fringe and pro-paranormal institutions. (For complete results, see Table 1 in the online version of this column at www.sciam.com)

Fifth, there is an experimenter bias problem. Institute of Noetic Sciences researcher Marilyn Schlitz—a believer in psychic phenomena — collaborated with Wiseman (a skeptic of psi) in replicating Sheldrake’s research and discovered that when they did the staring Schlitz found statistically significant results, whereas Wiseman found chance results.

Sheldrake responds that skeptics dampen the morphic field’s, whereas believers enhance it. Of Wiseman, he remarked: “Perhaps his negative expectations consciously or unconsciously influenced the way he looked at the subjects.”

Perhaps, but wouldn’t that mean that this claim is ultimately nonfalsifiable? If both positive and negative results are interpreted as supporting a theory, how can we test its validity? Skepticism is the default position because the burden of proof is on the believer, not the skeptic.

In the first half of the 19th century the theory of evolution was mired in conjecture until Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace compiled a body of evidence and posited a mechanism — natural selection — for powering the evolutionary machine.

The theory of continental drift, proposed in 1915 by Alfred Wegener, was not accepted by most scientists until the 1960s, with the discovery of midoceanic ridges, geomagnetic patterns corresponding to continental plate movement, and plate tectonics as the driving motor.

Data and theory. Evidence and mechanism. These are the twin pillars of sound science. Without data and evidence, there is nothing for a theory or mechanism to explain. Without a theory and mechanism, data and evidence drift aimlessly on a boundless sea.

For more than a century, claims have been made for the existence of psi, or psychic phenomena. In the late 19th century organizations such as the Society for Psychical Research were begun to employ rigorous scientific methods in the study of psi, and they had world-class scientists in support, including none other than Wallace (Darwin was skeptical). In the 20th century psi periodically appeared in serious academic research programs, from Joseph B. Rhine’s experiments at Duke University in the 1930s to Daryl J. Bem’s research at Cornell University in the 1990s.

In January 1994, for example, Bem and his late University of Edinburgh parapsychologist colleague Charles Honorton published “Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer” in the prestigious review journal Psychological Bulletin. Conducting a meta-analysis of dozens of published experiments, the authors concluded that “the replication rates and effect sizes achieved by one particular experimental method, the ganzfeld procedure, are now sufficient to warrant bringing this body of data to the attention of the wider psychological community.” (A meta-analysis is a statistical technique that combines the results from studies to look for an overall effect, even if the results from the individual studies are insignificant; the ganzfeld procedure places the “receiver” in a room with Ping-Pong ball halves over the eyes and headphones over the ears playing white noise and the “sender” in another room psychically transmitting visual images.)

Despite the evidence for psi (subjects had a hit rate of 35 percent, when 25 percent was predicted by chance), Bem and Honorto lamented that “most academic psychologists do not yet accept the existence of psi, anomalous processes of information or energy transfer (such as telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception) that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms.”

Why don’t scientists accept psi? Bem has a stellar reputation as a rigorous experimentalist and has presented statistically significant results. Aren’t scientists supposed to be open to changing their minds when presented with new data and evidence? The reason for skepticism is that we need replicable data and a viable theory, both of which are missing in psi research.

Data. The meta-analysis and ganzfeld techniques have been challenged. Ray Hyman of the University of Oregon determined that there were inconsistencies in the experimental procedures used in different ganzfeld experiments (which were lumped together in Bem’s meta-analysis as if they used the same procedures). He also pointed out flaws in the target randomization process (the sequence in which the visual targets were sent to
the receiver), resulting in a target-selection bias. Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire in England conducted a meta-analysis of 30 more ganzfeld experiments and found no evidence for psi, concluding that psi data are nonreplicable.

Theory. The deeper reason scientists remain unconvinced of psi is that there is no theory for how psi works. Until psi proponents can elucidate how thoughts generated by neurons in the sender’s brain can pass through the skull and into the brain of the receiver, skepticism is the appropriate response, as it was for continental drift sans plate tectonics.

Until psi finds its Darwin, it will continue to drift on the fringes of science.

Like all other animals, we humans evolved to connect the dots between events so as to discern patterns meaningful for our survival. Like no other animals, we tell stories about the patterns we find. Sometimes the patterns are real; sometimes they are illusions. A well-known illusion of a meaningful pattern is the alleged ability of mediums to talk to the dead. The hottest medium today is former ballroom-dance instructor John Edward, star of the cable television series Crossing Over and author of the New York Times best-selling book One Last Time. His show is so popular that he is about to be syndicated nationally on many broadcast stations.

How does Edward appear to talk to the dead? What he does seems indistinguishable from tricks practiced by magicians. He starts by selecting a section of the studio audience, saying something like “I’m getting a George over here. George could be someone who passed over, he could be someone here, he could be someone you know,” and so on. Of course, such generalizations lead to a “hit.” Once he has targeted his subject, the “reading” begins, seemingly using three techniques:

1. Cold reading, in which he reads someone without initially knowing anything about them. He throws out lots of questions and statements and sees what sticks. “I’m getting a ‘P’ name. Who is this, please?” “He’s showing me something red. What is this, please?” And so on. Most statements are wrong. If subjects have time, they visibly shake their heads “no.” But Edward is so fast they usually have time to acknowledge only the hits. And as behaviorist B. F. Skinner showed in his experiments on superstitious behavior, subjects need only occasional reinforcement or reward to be convinced. In an exposé I did for WABC-TV in New York City, I counted about one statement a second in the opening minute of Edward’s show, as he riffled through names, dates, colors, diseases, conditions, situations, relatives and the like. He goes from one to the next so quickly you have to stop the tape and go back to catch them all.

2. Warm reading, which exploits nearly universal principles of psychology. Many grieving people wear a piece of jewelry that has a connection to a loved one. Mediums know this and will say something like “Do you have a ring or a piece of jewelry on you, please?” Edward is also facile at determining the cause of death by focusing on either the chest or the head area and then working rapid-fire through the half a dozen major causes of death. “He’s telling me there was a pain in the chest.” If he gets a positive nod, he continues. “Did he have cancer, please? Because I’m seeing a slow death here.” If the subject hesitates, Edward will immediately shift to heart attack.

3. Hot reading, in which the medium obtains information ahead of time. One man who got a reading on Edward’s show reports that “once in the studio, we had to wait around for almost two hours before the show began. Throughout that time everybody was talking about what dead relative of theirs might pop up. Remember that all this occurred under microphones and with cameras already set up.”

Whether or not Edward gathers information in this way, mediums generally needn’t. They are successful because they are dealing with the tragedy and finality of death. Sooner or later we all will confront this inevitability, and when we do, we may be at our most vulnerable.

This is why mediums are unethical and dangerous: they prey on the emotions of the grieving. As grief counselors know, death is best faced head-on as a part of life. Pretending that the dead are gathering in a television studio in New York to talk twaddle with a former ballroom-dance instructor is an insult to the intelligence and humanity of the living.