Talk:Rupert Sheldrake

Comment by Tumbleman

Wiki policy is pretty clear on this issue - when dealing with subject matter that may be considered fringe both sides of the story must be presented without bias and with a neutral POV. There is absolutely no reason for wiki editors to determine the value one way or another to any hypothesis in the TALK section. Whether his hypothesis is BS or not, it's not our place to say. Since Sheldrake's ideas have made a notable controversy for over the past 20 years, it is reasonable that this controversy is presented without bias and with notable references that summarize the environment.The Tumbleman 23:00, 31 August 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tumbleman (talk • contribs)

Sheldrake is a notable figure in science for the notable controversy he has caused over the years with numerous articles, conferences, debates and even television specials and documentaries detailing on the matter and this goes back over 30 years. TEDx is the most recent historical example and caused a degree of controversy for TED, prompting TED’s Chris Anderson to later retract many of the claims against Sheldrake’s talk by TED Scientific Advisory Board, stating publicly “Some of his questions in the talk I found genuinely interesting. And I do think there’s a place on TED to challenge the orthodox. Maybe I’m expecting too much for this forum, but I was hoping scientists who don’t buy his ideas could indicate why they find them so implausible.” As this is notable in the history of sheldrake's career, I will be resubmitting shortly within the neutrality guidelines of wikipedia. The Tumbleman 23:11, 31 August 2013 (UTC)§ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tumbleman (talk • contribs)

The Tumbleman 23:14, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

article is plagued with bias either for or against both ways. just as many proponents of sheldrake as their are those with negative bias here. we can do better guys. the whole point is to be neutral and provide a complete history of notable individuals that detail notable events in their careers.The Tumbleman 23:14, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

FYI, in your initial comment on this page you had added to an obsolete section which referred to an older version of the article. It was bad timing that during the archiving process you had edited other sections, so I copied those. Appending to sections that are 3+ years old is confusing since there's no correlation with the current article. Vzaak (talk) 23:40, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Vzaak - are these talk archives available anywhere? odd timing indeed. Does this suggest that this is now the only current talk on the article? The Tumbleman 01:06, 1 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tumbleman (talk • contribs)

Thanks Vzaak!The Tumbleman 00:58, 1 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tumbleman (talk • contribs)

This is now article's talk page. There's a "search archives" field above, and the numbers next to it correspond to pages. The last archived page is 4. Something's wrong with your signing situation. I guess you removed the link to your user page in your signature, causing SineBot to think you're not signing. Vzaak (talk) 01:30, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

"Yes I noticed this too and will look into this problem. thank you."The Tumbleman 16:22, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, please add new comments below previous ones. And please read the guidelines at the top of this page. Vzaak (talk) 01:36, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

yup The Tumbleman 16:18, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

• Please note that on wikipedia WP:NPOV does not imply treating different viewpoints as equal, or creating a false balance. We put fringe views into perspective with respect to the mainstream, IRWolfie- (talk) 10:47, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not written in the point of view of a purely scientific mainstream context, however nor is this a peer reviewed journal. That is not the editing voice of Wikipedia. This page is not about Sheldrake's hypothesis, it's about his biography of which his hypothesis has played quite a significant role. Wiki policy is clear that subject matter must be *notable*. Fringe policy by Wiki is also clear - it is important wikipedia not give attention to *insignificant* works. I think you assume 'fringe' means something it does not and your voice sounds a little biased here. Sheldrake has a career of responding to his critics and publicly requests them to review his evidence and reasoning in conference, public debate, written works, and interviews. There have been television specials on him in this regard as well as subject of journalists in various publications. He has shared round table discussions with Daniel Dennet, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Jay Gould to name a few. If he is fringe, he is certainly a scientist of notable controversy. We are here to present this neutrally. We are not here to say his theory is fringe or not fringe - we are only here to report if someone notable has referred to it that way and in light of a notable controversy when relevant. The Tumbleman 01:55, 3 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tumbleman (talk • contribs)

Please keep in mind that you already shot yourself in the foot with the "bias" claim in your very first message on this page. You thought the article intro contained a "horribly biased definition" of Sheldrake's work, but it was his own words which were quoted. Please take that false positive to heart. Also remember that such accusations directed at individuals (as opposed to the article) are forbidden per WP:NPA (and remember WP:OUCH).

Nope - not shooting myself in the foot by any means and still stand beside my claims of bias - I have not yet really begun to edit this page yet and do believe still that this page written in bias - and my first edit may still stand because the source that was referenced was a biased article and if that article used that sheldrake quote in context or out of context and I am researching the source still. At face value it did look like I was mistaken however and apologized. I do not believe wiki has a 'shoot self in foot' policy (edit - i see now that you are referring to the OUCH policy) and I have accused no one directly that I am aware of.The Tumbleman 16:18, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

The above comment is in response to my comment. My response is below. Vzaak (talk) 19:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Your comments as a whole indicate that you need to become familiar with WP:FRINGE and the policies at the top of this talk page. They should answer most or all of the issues you've raised. In the past there have been problems with users not reading these policies, so please actually do so. Vzaak (talk) 02:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Yup, have read them and Yup, am familiar with WP:FRINGE. If you believe one of my comments is out of step with WP:FRINGE then please copy and paste the comment in question and advise to that specifically, thank you. I develop collective editing systems and am quite familiar with objective protocols, voices of neutrality, unbiased journalistic standards, etc etc so your concerns are quite misguided here. I am agnostic as to Sheldrake's theories - I am here to make sure his bio contains notable events that are significant to his biography as per wiki policy. The Tumbleman 16:18, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Claiming to be familiar with policy and actually demonstrating familiarity are two completely different things. Barney the barney barney (talk) 16:59, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

True - so let's all work on keeping all of us in check.The Tumbleman 18:25, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

User:Tumbleman, don't split up other people's comments like that. The signature distinguishes who said what, and it's confusing when it is not present. Also, could you please stop commenting in all italics? It's harder to read and there's no need to distinguish yourself like that. And, again, please fix your signature as it violates WP:SIGLINK policy. A signature link aids in marking the end of a comment, among other reasons for it.

I have fixed signature issues in preferences. I am not sure what you mean when you say 'split up other people's comments'. I comment directly underneath each comment with a editor signature.

Don't do what you just did again here, in the comment above. Don't insert your response between the paragraphs of someone's comment. There needs to be a signature in order to distinguish the end of a comment and to whom it belongs, otherwise mass confusion ensues. This is basic wiki convention and common sense. Moreover, there's no signature in your own comment directly above. Vzaak (talk) 23:43, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I understand not to comment in between paragraphs - I am just not seeing the reference to where I "just did again here, in the comment above." if I see a comment and then after that comment i see a user signature, I leave my comment with my user signature like you are doing as well. If I interrupted a paragraph somewhere, it was probably an accident. I was having problems in preferences earlier that I was not aware of so again, apologize if there has been sloppiness. The Tumbleman (talk) 00:35, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Your comment "Nope - not shooting..." splits my earlier comment, leaving my paragraph "Please keep in mind that..." signature-less. Your comment "I have fixed signature issues..." splits up my earlier comment "User:Tumbleman, don't split up other people's comments...", leaving that paragraph signature-less. Vzaak (talk) 00:53, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

There's also no signature in your indented comment below. If you indent like that, you need to attach a signature, otherwise people don't know who made the comment (short of investigating diffs). Vzaak (talk) 23:49, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

You removed "mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms" because "it does not define the author's hypothesis but rather an interpretation from a negative science writer". I don't know where that comes from, since the source quoted Sheldrake. Reverting your edit, I said, "No, that is a properly attributed quote from Sheldrake. Verify using google.". That should have been the end, but instead you comment on this talk page asserting that the quote is a "horribly biased definition of authors own work". I respond by giving you a direct google link for the quote. Now you say that your removal of the quote "may still stand".

Help us to understand your perspective. How on Earth could your removal still stand? Why did you think "mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms" was "horribly biased"? Vzaak (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Let me clarify and I apologize if any of my form here has been sloppy. Correct, I did originally remove ""mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms" because, academically speaking, it is not how Sheldrake presents his hypothesis and the quote was linked to a scientific american article of high bias against the hypothesis article as reference, not one of Sheldrakes own publications as one would normally expect in a formal definition. However I was mistaken in regards to the quote not being attributed to Sheldrake directly, and I responded ( if you pull up the discussion we had) with "Apologies, I withdraw my argument".

What *may* be in question regarding the Scientific American article is regarding that quote being used out of context by Scientific American to frame how Sheldrake's hypothesis is defined academically or formally by Sheldrake. This reads as bias to me from the Scientific American journalist himself and he may be taken out of context to show that bias. If this is the case, and that quote is not a formal definition of Sheldrake's theory, then I will remove it and request for a formal definition, cited from his own works on the matter, replace it. I am still researching this as well as to other issues effecting this page. As for now, your edit stands as well as all edits on this page until I complete my task and finish diligence here.

In terms of my comment that you mention regarding bias in the over all article - it was in regards to the whole page of talk now in previous archives, it was my reaction to both sides of the argument - and yes I still do see evidence of bias on this page and will edit and clean when I have completed my tasks. Hope this clears things up. Thank you. The Tumbleman (talk) 22:44, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

First "mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms" was a "horribly biased definition of authors own work". Then you pull back, "I withdraw my critique". Then you say "my first edit may still stand". Now we have "Apologies, I withdraw my argument" juxtaposed in the same comment with "academically speaking, it is not how Sheldrake presents his hypothesis".

Sheldrake's own words are "horribly biased" against him and "not how Sheldrake presents his hypothesis". I give up.

I would still like to know why you think (or thought) "mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms" was "horribly biased" -- not the genetic argument of where it came from (a fallacy), but what about the quote itself, the quote alone, is (or was in your mind) "horribly biased".

P.S. In the edit in which your above comment was created, you have an indented paragraph lacking a signature. Vzaak (talk) 03:25, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Vzaak - getting very unclear to me why this is still a source of confusion for you. I already addressed this once above. I was mistaken about attribution and therefore withdrew my claim based on that error since I assumed you were giving attribution to the journalist and not sheldrake, therefore making it 'horribly biased'. I was mistaken there. My claim of potential bias however, which I am still researching, is about the possible bias of the context in which Sheldrake's quote was used by Scientific American. "mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms" does not appear at face value to sound like a formal definition of Sheldrake's hypothesis, but rather a loose and informal *explanation* of what his hypothesis suggests. Sheldrake is a formally trained scientist and one would expect a formal definition of the subject matter of his own hypothesis. A formal definition is not an informal explanation and an informal explanation is not notable unless the context it was given in was notable to the subject matter. The two are not the same. An informal explanation could be used by an author in a specific context (for example if the author is speaking to children he may explain something in simple to understand terms or metaphors). Since the Scientific American article is written with a negative bias regarding Sheldrake, he may be framing Sheldrake's words against him to make his hypothesis read more pseudoscientific which is the opinion of the journalist. Therefore, if this is the case, and i research the reference in question and I determine it to be taken out of context or not how Sheldrake formally defines his hypothesis, I will remove it once again with this argument specifically because it would lean towards a bias on the page and in violation of WP: NPOV. Until then, there is no reason for you to keep addressing this to me because until I do this, your edit stands. The Tumbleman (talk) 04:51, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

TEDx talk

Looking for WP:RS. Google News gives nothing on this. User:Barney the barney barney pointed to the Independent, which is the only news source I know about. The article lacks detail, and it may not be possible to treat the topic appropriately without doing original research.

Previous TEDx talks were removed because they violated the TEDx guidelines on pseudoscience, including TEDxCharlotte, TEDxValencia, and TEDxWestHollywood. The latter even had their TEDx license revoked per the Independent article. It's not at all surprising that Sheldrake's TEDxWhitechapel talk was also removed, given the TEDx guidelines on science which existed before Sheldrake's talk and was explicitly sent to TEDxWhiteChapel prior to the talk. I'm not trying to do WP:OR, just saying that there's no indication that TED has treated Sheldrake specially in this regard. The online response from those who were riled up with a "censorship" framing of the issue doesn't translate to notability for WP, of course. WP:RS have to cover it. Vzaak (talk) 18:45, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Google News only gives 30 days of reference and the controversy was 6 months ago so it would make sense that is why it would not pull up much. A simple search in Google proper may assist you within correct date frame will provide you with adequate sourcing. The Tumbleman (talk) 05:16, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

If you click on the google link, you'll see 1984, 1983, 2007, etc. Also, earlier I asked you to add new comments below previous ones. This is at least the third time you've added new above old. Vzaak (talk) 06:12, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I think it is worth briefly mentioning. It is part of a pattern of behaviour (see what happened with the British Association talk [1]. Also, Sheldrake can be relied upon as a reliable source for what Sheldrake thinks. Similarly, sources such as PZ Myers's and Jerry Coyne's blogs can be relied upon to present viewpoints of sceptics/scientific community. Barney the barney barney (talk) 20:27, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

But as far as I can tell there is just one short news article that has ever been written about it. Can this really suffice for notability per WP standards? A TEDx affiliate produced a talk which violated the TED policy on science, something that had happened many times before. I suspect news organizations didn't pick it up because it's not very newsworthy. The blog activity surrounding it seems not far from gossip to me. I think a brief description of the facts of what happened is appropriate, but I'm not so sure WP should be reporting the spin that blogs have put on it. Vzaak (talk) 22:05, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Tumbleman argues that the TEDx blog is a news organization and a reliable secondary source

Not sure how 1 scientist and 1 clearly biased blogger would constitute view points that can be relied upon as the voice of the skeptic or scientific community, that seems like a bit of a reach and potentially in violation of Notability. In this article here on Huffington Post [2] 10 scientists lend their support to sheldrake. For the same reason one could not claim that because 10 scientists give him public support as evidence the scientific community supports him, you cannot use simply 1 blogger and 1 scientist to say the same to the contrary. You have no references that would justify giving them that voice. that would be a violation of WP:NPOV. Let's try to stay neutral here guys, these kind of arguments are what makes it appear to me to be some bias amongst the editors here and that there may be ideological reasons for them editing this page.The Tumbleman (talk) 05:08, 4 September 2013 (UTC) TED's own publication reported on the controversy - and TED obviously is notable. As the TED controversy was also reported on by various other publications, it makes the TED controversy notable by wiki standards. Chris Anderson's own comments on the talk after the controversy also notable. I am still doing diligence on the TEDX issue and have not yet presented my formal edit.The Tumbleman (talk) 22:51, 3 September 2013 (UTC) TED's own publication is a primary source. A primary source can be used for facts, but hardly anything else. That's why I said "the facts of what happened". WP policy is, "Do not analyze, synthesize, interpret, or evaluate material found in a primary source yourself" (WP:PRIMARY). Vzaak (talk) 00:01, 4 September 2013 (UTC) TED's primary source in this regard is the Youtube Channel for TEDx (because that is where it is sourced that video was been removed) or at best TED.com (which is the hosting brand for TED channel) - Not TED's blog . TED.blog is a notable news outlet that covers events happening with TED events. It is reasonable the promote on the controversy as TED.BLOG reported on the controversy and use TED.BLOG as the source for TED's position editorially. The Tumbleman (talk) 00:23, 4 September 2013 (UTC) I don't understand your comment, but if you're suggesting that TED's blog is a secondary source, it's not. The TED blog is also not a news outlet as far as WP is concerned, WP:RS. It is. I believe You are mistaken here. I don't see how blog.ted would not be considered a secondary news source for TED events, nor do I see how how it's not a news outlet is covered in WP:RS - that seems a little extreme and quite a broad interpretation. so if you have a specific interpretation of this you need to be a little more clear. I hope you can make the distinction between TED as a forum for live events that are recorded, and TED as a publisher of news regarding it's own events. Clearly blog.TED is a reliable source to reference in terms of TED events. Your original suggestion was that TED's own reporting on a controversy would not qualify a wiki editor from using that source to define the controversy. I hope you are not confusing comments on the blog.ted site with what I am suggesting. blog.ted published a few articles on the controversy and many of the articles or comments there are directly from TED director Chris Anderson directly on TED's position. This is indeed relevant because TED officially retracted many of the claims it gave towards removing the talk. Many other publishers also picked up on this controversy. The controversy is notable to the bio of Sheldrake since Sheldrake has a long history with such controversy and this is the most recent historical example, so it's relevant to his bio. To suggest that a wiki editor can not use that as a notable reference for the controversy does not seem reasonable to me and I see no violation of wiki rules that you mention.The Tumbleman (talk) 02:54, 4 September 2013 (UTC) Is this a joke? This is the third time you have split my comment, immediately following my third explanation and my second request to stop. This is common sense. Don't split comments. People need to know who said what. You are confusing a news organization -- as in an organization with professional journalists and an editorial staff that hold themselves to journalistic standards -- with a blog about events of a random organization. The former is (typically) a reliable secondary source. The latter is not a news organization and not a secondary source. I did not say that "TED's own reporting on a controversy would not qualify a wiki editor from using that source". Indeed before you wrote those words I added material to the article using the TED blog as a source. I think you missed my point about the limitations WP places on primary sources (WP:PRIMARY). (P.S. Put the Sheldrake page on your Watchlist; you'll be able to see changes to the article and the talk page at the same time.) Vzaak (talk) 03:51, 4 September 2013 (UTC) I am quite clear on what constitutes a news organization and so is WP. There is nothing in the WP that would disqualify blog.TED from qualifying as a news organization relative to that channel, considering TED is a massive online publisher. Your issue revolved, and correct me if I am mistaken, that reporting the event as a controversy and using blog.ted as a primary source to reference the event as a controversy was against WP and the only source you could find was the independent which also referenced the event as a controversy, which you then questioned as notable. Your exact words "Can this really suffice for notability per WP standards?". To me your words clearly show you are seeking to limit the notability of the event as a controversy or even referencing it as one. Perhaps you can share your thoughts here regarding this specifically? This does not seem like a complex issue so not sure why you have any issue with simply providing a NPOV on the matter as an unbiased editor. Any organization that reports news in any channel or interest is, in principle, a news organization relative to that channel. WP allows us guidelines to determine the veracity of what any organization reports and gives editors leeway under those guidelines, including (WP:PRIMARY). Again, I have not made my edits yet to this page so I guess we will be visiting this issue once I do. Secondly, on this page you wish to show how the removal of the sheldrake talk was akin to issues regarding Tedx events such as TEDxCharlotte, TEDxValencia, and TEDxWestHollywood. While those events may have faced similar issues related to TED TOS with event organizers, Sheldrake's video was called out specifically by TED on the TED site which later retracted the claims that Sheldrake's talk was removed for gross errors and pseudoscience. Clearly you can see the distinction there. As to the splitting of comments, apologies please do not assume it is a joke or take it personal. wiki TALK is naturally a very sloppy format in principle to handle these discussions and I am sure myself, like most wiki editors, have good intentions and I will make sure not to make this mistake again.The Tumbleman (talk) 04:30, 4 September 2013 (UTC) Vzaak, my concern is that you use WP a little to strictly to enforce what appears to me to be a loose opinion or interpretation, when in fact WP is clear when it is meant as a guide or heuristic instead of a policy for deletion. From (WP:PRIMARY) "Appropriate sourcing can be a complicated issue, and these are general rules. Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are appropriate on any given occasion is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense, and should be discussed on article talk pages." As long as we keep a firm commitment to maintain a NPOV, these issues should be easy to resolve since these are quite rational distinctions. I look forward to working with you one this page over time to maintain this standard. The Tumbleman (talk) 05:50, 4 September 2013 (UTC) This is getting close to personal attacks again. Focus on article content and arguments, don't comment on people. WP:NPA. No more vacuous accusations of bias directed toward people. Remember that I declined to take that shot despite the easy target you presented in your mistaken first comment on this talk page. You missed that I said "I think a brief description of the facts of what happened is appropriate" in the same comment as "Can this really suffice for notability per WP standards?". The TED blog is clearly not a news organization and clearly not a secondary source. I'm not going to argue about this. Take it up with WP:RSN, they'll tell you the same thing. You really need to read WP policies and understand them. WP:RS WP:V WP:NOR and more. Vzaak (talk) 06:41, 4 September 2013 (UTC) It is completely appropriate to mention the voice of an editor if that voice is influencing the actual content of the page. For example if an editor has a voice which suggests bias, it is not a personal attack to mention the concern of bias to that editor in TALK. I am merely commenting on your language and your evaluations and how you are using WP to make those evaluations and broad sweeping judgements which so far have been based on what appears to be very loose interpretations of WP. I stand by my comment and in no way is this a violation of WP:NPA. I have concerns of an ideological bias here on this and I have every right as a wiki editor to address that within reason. Please try to maintain a NPOV here. The Tumbleman (talk) 07:01, 4 September 2013 (UTC) I may very well take it up with WP:RSN but appeal to an authority as a basis for your argument here is a logical fallacy. If you cannot explain how TED's own organization that reports on TED's news and events would not qualify as a news organization relative to that channel or blur the lines between primary and secondary sources within the WP, then it would be fair for you to no longer comment in the TALK section about this issue. The Tumbleman (talk) 07:08, 4 September 2013 (UTC) Comment on content, not on contributors. Warned. Vzaak (talk) 07:15, 4 September 2013 (UTC) Comment was on "content" specifically and I have addressed my concerns with you on your personal page especially in relationship to WP:AOHA. Please let's be civil and genuine in accordance with WP. If you want to resolve this with me on my personal page please feel free to message me there. The Tumbleman (talk) 07:48, 4 September 2013 (UTC) Note you can't use "<ref>" here since this page has no "{{reflist}}", i.e. the link you gave doesn't work. Use [] instead. (There's also an extra slash in your URL.) Vzaak (talk) 01:25, 4 September 2013 (UTC) My full apologies, I am in between projects now and writing quickly. Have been away from wiki editing for awhile so please be patient with my while I re orientate. Here is the reference in mention [3] The Tumbleman (talk) 02:55, 4 September 2013 (UTC) I wasn't confused about where the TED blog was; I already cited it myself. I was just letting you know about "ref". (FYI that link is still wrong.) Vzaak (talk) 04:00, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

This is my first time on Wikipedia, so if I make any mistakes here, please be patient. Here are a variety of sources for establishing notability for the TED controversy: Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Anderson Huffpo response, and rebuttal, WeHoville, The Independent (UK), The Belfast Telegraph

Notable people commenting on the controversy on their own or lesser known blogs: Ben Goertzel Ray Kurzweil Charles Eisenstein Of Course PZ Myer, Jerry Coyne and Kylie Sturgess, who started it all. Notable people who commented on the TED website include philosopher Bernardo Kastrup and Nobel Prize winning physicist Brian Josephson.

Lesser news blogs commenting on or linking to commentary on the controversy: Natural News Reality Sandwich1, Reality Sandwich2 Stargate News Doubtful News Collective Evolution Conscious Life News The Daily Grail Alpha Minds Philosopher's Stone Skeptic Ink Digital Journal Intellihub Circular State of Mind Et Vita The McGill Daily NHNE Pulse Compassionate Action Network International Patheos Newshour 24 The Hollywood Vine

Other: Summarys of the Controversy for reference: The Big TED Controversy Part 1 The Big TED Controversy Part 2

http://www.c4chaos.com/2013/03/rupert-sheldrake-and-graham-hancock-ted-ideas-not-worth-spreading/ https://docs.google.com/document/d/12F-enpa8eUH73m6wS-GDsWa19Lw1a7S2Sla9kxzZtfY/edit

There were also personal blogs commenting on this controversy or reposting that were too numerous to count. You can find a short list about 25 pro Sheldrake, et. al. blog posts here: Craig Weiler (talk) 19:47, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I saw the Belfast Telegraph too; it's the same article as the Independent with a different opening paragraph. The problem is that we cannot synthesize primary sources together. Especially considering the polarizing nature of the issue, what we can write is greatly constrained without reliable secondary sources, and apparently only one such article exists. The LA Times article is about TEDxWestHollywood and doesn't mention Sheldrake. Wehoville has been used as a source exactly once on WP, but in any case with regard to Sheldrake it doesn't offer much that isn't already covered by the WP article. I'm not arguing for anything here, just stating what the challenges are. Vzaak (talk) 21:02, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

My main goal was to establish the notability of the TED controversy, and that does not appear to be in question now. I'm sure a NPOV can be created from the available sources. The main goal here should be to not slander a living person by misrepresenting the controversy. And on that point the record is very clear. Whatever opinions people had, and they were quite diverse, the fact was simply that at the end of the controversy there was no claim of any kind made against the quality or accuracy of Sheldrake's video. As this is the truth, the editing should reflect this. Craig Weiler (talk) 21:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I have added a little material by citing the Independent article. It's a short article and there's not much to gleam from it about Sheldrake specifically. It looks like you're suggesting original research. I also don't understand "no claim of any kind" because the TED statement is sourced and quoted directly in the WP article. Vzaak (talk) 00:50, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The section of the article which deals with the controversy contains factual errors. The most glaring of these is this: According to a statement from the TED staff, TED’s scientific advisors "questioned whether his list is a fair description of scientific assumptions" and believed that "there is little evidence for some of Sheldrake’s more radical claims, such as his theory of morphic resonance". The advisors recommended that the talk "should not be distributed without being framed with caution". The science advisors only provided input once and that was to create a list of complaints about Sheldrake's talk. They later withdrew these complaints and never created any new ones. The area in quotes is mis-attributed. No one at TED or the science board made those claims. (Here are the claims. They are crossed out by TED to demonstrate that they are no longer valid. but even so they are different than what is quoted in the article.) The last statement that the talk "should not be distributed . . ." is Chris Anderson's and it was a general statement directed at no one in particular and it is superseded by his closing statement. Note how vague it is and how it's not directed at anyone in particular.

It's completely understandable that people are confused about this. First there were claims, then there weren't claims, then there were vague not-quite-claims of pseudo science. It's not at all easy to sort out. I only know this because I was right in the middle of the thing at the time following it every tortured step of the way. You might find it helpful to read the two part summary I provided from my blog. Like everyone else I do not have a neutral viewpoint, but it is factually accurate and has the necessary links.

Just as a bit of background for you, I was the one who initially brought the controversy to wider attention when my initial blog post on the controversy started getting spread around and I was the one who broke the TEDxWestHollywood story. I'm focusing on this section because it's something that I know extremely well. Craig Weiler (talk) 02:21, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I double-checked those three quotes, "questioned whether his list is a fair description of scientific assumptions", "there is little evidence for some of Sheldrake’s more radical claims, such as his theory of morphic resonance", and "should not be distributed without being framed with caution". They exactly match the source cited in the WP article and therefore are not misattributed. Vzaak (talk) 03:07, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see where this was pulled from. As every single claim by the science board was later retracted, this initial statement on that blog post no longer applies and cannot be in this article. It is part of the original blog post which was very obviously updated at a later date to include the speaker's responses and changed to strike out all of the initial complaints. It is no longer representative of the blog post and is therefore misleading. As this is a biography of a living person, this amounts to slander at this point and should be changed immediately.Craig Weiler (talk) 03:51, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The source cited in the WP article is the final blog post by TED on Sheldrake. The post states the action TED took and their reasons for it, and WP cites that. Anderson's closing statement links to that post. It still appears as though you wish to incorporate original research. Vzaak (talk) 05:04, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The closing statement has no links, so I don't know what you're referring to there. In any case, this is an incorrect understanding of the timeline of the controversy. This is verified by Sheldrake's response: "I appreciate the fact that TED published my response to the accusations leveled against me by their Scientific Board, and also crossed out the Board’s statement on the “Open for discussion” blog. http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/

There are no longer any specific points to answer. I am all in favour of debate, but it is not possible to make much progress through short responses to nebulous questions like “Is this an idea worth spreading, or misinformation?”" (This response shows up in multiple second sources so it is not primary.)

Vzaak, like many new editors on Wikipedia I am here to lend my expertise in a specific area. It is very important that the article be both accurate and neutral. I would hope that you are glad to have someone around who can sort out the controversy and put it into the proper context.Craig Weiler (talk) 17:08, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The source cited in the WP article is right there at the top of Anderson's closing statement. The closing statement capped off the two-week discussion starting March 19 for which the TED blog post -- the source cited in WP -- gave context along with the video itself. Again, this was the the final blog post by TED on Sheldrake, not the initial/original one as you claimed. Vzaak (talk) 20:22, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea why I need to explain this to you, but the closing statement is in gray with black lettering and it is delineated with a border around it. It contains no links. All other information on that web page is irrelevant to the closing statement. As this is a summary of the controversy, it supersedes all other TED statements that came before it. This is very obvious and it demonstrates that the current quote on Rupert's page is taken out of context. Craig Weiler (talk) 15:30, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Go to the closing statement. This is a TED discussion titled "The debate about Rupert Sheldrake's talk". The title appears at the top of the page. Directly underneath the title it says, "Please use this space to comment on the debate around Rupert Sheldrake's TEDx talk, as described here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-rupert-sheldrakes-talk/". That link is the source used in the WP article. It provides the context for the discussion. It is the final post by TED on Sheldrake, not the initial one as you previously thought. It's an official, final statement from TED describing the action they took and their reasons for it. The WP article cites this statement with three direct quotes. Anderson's closing statement does not describe the reasons for TED's actions, it only alludes to them by mentioning "curatorial role" and "science board". In order to find the reasons for TED's actions (and to see the talk itself), readers are invited to visit the link at the top of the page, the link that WP cites. The WP article should state the reasons for TED's actions. This cannot be done if we confine ourselves to Anderson's statement as you suggest. Vzaak (talk) 23:20, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

You have this all mixed up. The last update to the blog post was on March 19th. The closing statement (that is specifically referred to as the closing statement) occurred on April 2nd, almost two weeks later. The part that you are missing here, that is of great significance, that I have already pointed out to you, is that there WERE NO REASONS GIVEN for the removal of Sheldrake's video. The statements that you are referring to were part of the initial complaints against Sheldrake's talk. Those were ALL RESCINDED after Sheldrake responded to those complaints. That's why Sheldrake stated that "there are no longer any specific points to answer." Because there weren't any.

This makes the account of the TED controversy in the Sheldrake article grossly misleading. Craig Weiler (talk) 14:53, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

WP should cite the reasons TED gave for moving the video. TED did not retract this official statement, which contains the reasons TED gave for moving the video. Therefore, WP cites that statement. It is the final statement TED made on Sheldrake. They made the statement on March 19, opened a planned two-week discussion linking to the statement, the discussion ensued, and then Anderson ended the discussion in his closing statement. Vzaak (talk) 16:29, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

TED can be assumed to have retracted the statement when all of the complaints by the science board were crossed out. Furthermore, those were not the official reasons for taking down the Sheldrake video. The official reasons, the only ones that count, can be found crossed out below the Sheldrake video. If there were any reasons still outstanding, those would have been dealt with in an update to the blog and/or mentioned in the closing statement or referenced in the closing statement. And they were not. What your are doing is second guessing what the source might have intended after they changed their official position. That's not appropriate for a NPOV. Craig Weiler (talk) 23:40, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Look at this google link. You will see three TED blog posts on Sheldrake. They are different posts, with different contents. The March 19 statement, the source cited in WP, is not retracted. It is not the initial post. The initial post was on March 14. You are saying, I think, that "TED can be assumed to have retracted" the March 19 statement. That doesn't make sense to me, but if you can provide a source that says TED retracted the March 19 statement then that should go into the WP article. Vzaak (talk) 02:01, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Confirming TED retracted statements regarding the controversy arising from statements from the science board is found here. [4]. Any summary of this controversy on WP must allow for the statement "TED later retracted statements from the Science Advisory Board" or this article is in violation of NPOV. This is an editorial retraction directly by the TED blog editors and there is absolutely no argument to support that TED's own editorial retraction is not allowed for primary or secondary source causes, as WP gives us flexibility to determine when issues of NPOV arise. The Tumbleman (talk) 17:01, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

TED Talks are available under Creative Commons license "Attribution - Noncommercial - Nonderivative" (see THIS). Are there objections to including a Sheldrake TED talk as an external link, provided that the link gives proper attribution to TED? Lou Sander (talk) 02:21, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

The video of the talk has been there in the ref, The debate about Rupert Sheldrake’s talk. That's the source that should be used. Vzaak (talk) 02:27, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Belfast TEDx coverage gives us a wee bit of additional info, or at least another slightly different take on the matter. Sadly, the most useful sentence is marred by a transcription typo.

"TED reserves the right to take down talks from the web, as with Rupert Sheldrake, author of 'The Science Delusion', who was censored. Are some ideas not worth spreading?" [Interviewer, Maggie Armstrong]

"TED have a healthy approach to this. It is their event, so if a speaker doesn't follow the rules, they aren't obliged to put it up. Any speaker who doesn't get their talk put online – and that's very rare – can always share their viewpoint elsewhere.

In Sheldrake's case, the speaker got more press by accusing TED of sponsorship – and they did eventually post it online with an explanation (see: blog.ted.com/ 2013/03/19/the-debate-about-rupert- sheldrakes-talk)." [Science Gallery's Ian Brunswick, the organiser of TEDxDublin]

"sponsorship" ARRRRRGH! [David in DC, commenting on Murphy's Law]

Ideas for Everyone, Irish Independent, 14 September 2013. David in DC (talk) 12:05, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Ha, sponsorship. Thanks for finding that; too bad the article apparently wasn't copy-edited at all. The lack of formatting of the Q and A is confusing. Vzaak (talk) 13:27, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

It's probably better in the hard copy version. So in 30 years, we can probably link to a google image version. In the meantime, anyone up for a field trip to a Dublin library? The first pint of lager's on me. David in DC (talk) 17:43, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Unclear what this editor is suggesting, David in DC can you clarify the sponsorship issue raised here and how it affects edits to this controversy on WP? The Tumbleman (talk) 17:06, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

It's a typo on the newspaper's website. In context, the word is almost certainly censorship. If the formatting issue Vzaak identifies in the online version and the typo I've identified in the online version weren't there, arguably this article might be used to further source the controversy. But as it stands, the link would add confusion, rather than clarity. Hence my "ARRRRRGH" and my reference to Murphy's Law. David in DC (talk) 20:42, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Concerns with article

The user Barney the Barney Barney has 2 concerns that seem to inform the current tone of this article: 1) As inferred by this dialogue with him, he relates Sheldrake's work to telepathy experiments and claim that they are inconsistent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Barney_the_barney_barney#Re:_Consistency 2) He sources Lewis Wolpert to claim that Sheldrake's ideas are inconsistent with modern science (there are superior sources refuting Wolpert), and he claims that Sheldrake has no evidence for his theories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Vzaak#Please_understadn

I will deal with both of these concerns: Concern Number 1: Refutation of this is important, because the general opposition to Sheldrake revolves around misconceptions concerning psi research in general. There was a recent Baysean analysis entitled "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: The Case of Non-Local Perception, a Classical and Bayesian Review of Evidences", published in 2011 in the journal "Frontiers in Psychology": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114207/ A table from that showed that Baysean analysis of Ganzfeld ESP experiments yielded a Bayes factor of 18,861,051: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114207/table/T1/

A Bayes factor of greater than 100 is considered to be "decisive".

Incidentally, according to an Epoch Times article, "Two surveys of over 500 scientists in one case and over 1,000 in another both found that the majority of respondents considered ESP “an established fact” or “a likely possibility”—56 percent in one and 67 percent in the other.":  http://m.theepochtimes.com/n2/science/does-telepathy-conflict-with-science-211214.html

So the classification of this as WP:FRINGE is uncalled for.

Concern Number 2: In this revision of the Sheldrake article I noted replication of his experiments using solid sources (and that Wiseman, while earlier claiming that he had discredited Sheldrake, later admitted that he replicated Sheldrake's results). I also refuted the idea that it is not consistent with current science by noting the support given with the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics, and that Bohm believed that Sheldrake, via a different angle, came to the same realizations: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rupert_Sheldrake&diff=572407570&oldid=572407366 - and the Bohm interpretation leads "to experimental results compliant with quantum mechanics", and has been presented as a useful means of understanding quantum phenomena in top journals like Foundations of Physics: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1018861226606

From p. 271 of his biography we find the following praise for David Bohm from Richard Feynman, one of the world's most important physicists: "When he mentioned his own lack of interest in the philosophical issues of science, one of the Ojai group, David Moody, joked, "Dave knows a little bit about both." Feynman became angry, saying "I can tell you one thing. David Bohm knows a lot more than a little about physics." Booth Harris, a teacher at the Ojai school, remembered Feynman saying, "You probably don't know how great he is," and noticed the considerable respect Feynman showed towards Bohm.": [5]

The Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson has also defended Sheldrake: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v293/n5833/pdf/293594b0.pdf - you can read the text of the defense here: https://ia601001.us.archive.org/18/items/Rupert_201309/293594b0.pdf

And Hans-Peter Dürr, former executive director of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, has shown that Sheldrake's work is indeed consistent with modern science in his article "Sheldrake's ideas from the perspective of modern physics" in the journal "Frontier Perspectives": http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-182664602.html - you can read the article here: https://ia601001.us.archive.org/18/items/Rupert_201309/Sheldrake%C2%B4s%20Id%C3%A9er_07,pdf.pdf

Regarding replication, I sourced Sheldrake's refutation of Rose, published in a quality journal (the same journal Rose's criticism was in), and also sourced Sheldrake's defense of the idea that morphic resonance applies to crystal formation and rat behavior. I have noted Wiseman's admission of replication of Sheldrake's results with dogs knowing that owners are coming home, and also that Wiseman is on record of being skeptical of "normal" evidence for psi claims. As an aside, I recently sent Wiseman the aforementioned Baysean analysis by email, and he replied "how interesting", and thanked me for sharing. I also provided a meta-analysis to a quality journal showing an effect with "sense of being stared at" experiments.

Some replication of Sheldrake's Telephone Telepathy experiments have occurred - an example is this article - this was a paper presented at a parapsychology convention, so I assume that you would be skeptical of it - however, consider the Baysean analysis given above: http://www.metapsychique.org/Who-s-calling-at-this-hour-Local.html

In another replication published in journal "The Open Psychology Journal" entitled "Do You Know Who is Calling? Experiments on Anomalous Cognition in Phone Call Receivers", the abstract concludes "We conclude that we could not find any anomalous cognition effect in self-selected samples. But our data also strongly suggest that there are a few participants who are able to score reliably and repeatedly above chance." - so such telepathic ability varied with individuals. This does not nullify it - it just shows that it is more prevalent in some people than others. The conclusion of the article specifically states that " Based on our findings we suggest that future research in this area should focus more on experiments with few well selected and gifted participants rather than testing the general population on their anomalous cognition ability. This has already be shown in other fields of anomalous cognition research.": http://www.benthamscience.com/open/topsyj/articles/V002/12TOPSYJ.pdf

I have given examples concerning replication of Sheldrake's major theory of morphic resonance, but key evidence for it is in the article "Adaptive state of mammalian cells and its nonseparability suggestive of a quantum system", published in the journal "Scripta Medica", the abstract of which states: "Established mammalian cells were assayed for their resistance to different selection conditions which had not been used against these cells before, including exposure to thioguanine, ethionine, high temperature and a protein-free, chemically defined culture medium. Single assays were negative, showing that the cell lines contained no spontaneous mutants, or that these were present in a number below detectable limits. To obtain such mutants, we designed experiments of mutant isolation by serial assays. The cells were kept growing without selection and, at each passage, cell samples were withdrawn and assayed for resistance in separate cultures. As a result, we found no mutants at the beginning, then a few and, finally, a great number. This was in conflict with the postulate of random occurrence of mutants and, furthermore, with their spontaneousness. On the contrary, the results provided evidence that mutants occurred as an appropriate response to selection pressure. The most amazing feature was that this response could be detected in cells growing without selection and never exposed to selection pressure before. If one tried to explain the adaptive response in terms of signals, the signals would have to travel from the exposed to the unexposed cultures. The results are instead discussed in terms of adaptive states and the nonseparability of cellular states due to quantum entanglement of cells, in particular daughter cells, distributed between the exposed and unexposed cultures. Whatever the mechanism, we concluded that the finding of resistant cells in growing unexposed cultures, as a response to selective pressure on cells in physically separated cultures, tends to render meaningless any theory based on the spontaneous origin of mutants.": http://www.med.muni.cz/biomedjournal/pdf/2000/04/211-222.pdf

Another example of morphic resonance at work occurs in the article "Analyzing ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ Concerning Brand Logos" in the journal "Innovative Marketing", which states: "Based on the assumption that there exists a kind of collective knowledge beyond individual experience, the authors found that in respect to logos humans are more likely to respond to stimuli if many people in other parts of the world do or did know them, even though they personally are not consciously familiar with the logos. An improved favorability of 20% for original symbols versus comparable control symbols can be regarded as a solid competitive advantage. This benefit regarding brand logos was analyzed by means of latent class models. Additionally, the heterogeneity in the participant’s characteristics as well as the heterogeneity in the analyzed symbols were incorporated by means of random and fixed effects models. Furthermore, this effect was shown to be neither culture-specific nor linked to age, gender, level of extraversion, and education of the participants. ": http://businessperspectives.org/journals_free/im/2006/im_en_2006_01_Schorn.pdf

Ans also, see the article "Evidence of Collective Memory: a test of Sheldrake's theory", published in the Journal of Analytical Psychology: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3804853 - the article can be read here: https://ia601001.us.archive.org/18/items/Rupert_201309/Evidence%20of%20Collective%20Memory.pdf

The conclusion notes that "The presence of collective memory was tested by having three groups of students learn the morse code, which had been previously learned by a large number of people, and a novel code that had never been learned by others and was constructed to be of equal intrinsic difficulty. As predicted, the Morse code was initially easier to learn, and the Novel code itself became easier over the three groups. The results confirm Sheldrake's theory and lend credibility to Jung's concepts of the archetype and the collective unconscious while suggesting that the ladder contains much more than archetypal memories." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.210.61 (talk) 06:40, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

First of all, Meta-Analyses are useless if the publication bias and/or amount of fraud are unknown. Occam's razor obliges us to assume those two possibilities. The solution are few and big studies and I know only one reason why parapsychologists wouldn't conduct them.

Secondly: A survey in the "Epoch Times" isn't sufficient to label pseudoscience like parapsychology now as real science. Such surveys (if they are representative at all) have been there for decades which clearly doesn't speak in favor of parapsychology - PSI is always just around the corner, science just about to change etc. blah.

Thirdly: The claim that Wiseman admitted that he replicated Sheldrake's findings of telepathic abilities of the dog is an outright lie by Sheldrake which is based on a quotation out of context.

Fourthly: Sheldrake's claim about telephone telepathy is that many people report it and that it's a very widespread phenomenon. This contradicts your "replication" which claims that there are few individuals with the ability to "sense" the caller. You also concealed studies which observed no effect at all.

I haven't even looked at the rest of your - obviously cherry-picked - "scientific" studies after reading ‘Spooky Action at a Distance' - as if there'd be any "action at a distance" involved in quantum entanglement. That's just another example for quantum-woo. Your ridiculous argument from authority (quoting Bohm, Josephson and Dürr) also won't impress anybody. It gets even more pathetic if you consider that most scientists reject Sheldrake's claims. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.51.174.219 (talk) 23:17, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Scientific community rejects him, not just a few scientists

A good ref is http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/feb/05/rupert-sheldrake-interview-science-delusion. MilesMoney (talk) 02:24, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

“Science,” according to the renowned physicist Richard Feynman, “is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.” It is not the intellectual communism that is so popular here. It is also notable, as shown above, that leading physicists, including the Nobel laureate Brian Josephson, have defended Sheldrake. Also, points of concern regarding Rupert Sheldrake have been addressed in the section above. Also, his morphic resonance hypothesis has been corroborated with other research, as shown above. What's left then is the atmosphere of intellectual communism that Sheldrake directly addresses. It is notable, also, the surveys concerning telepathy, related to Sheldrake's inquiry, given above showing that acceptance of it is not as fringe as some might imply, and the above given Baysean analysis of ESP experiments that proves the phenomenon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.210.61 (talk) 05:57, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

The article already says "widely rejected by the scientific community". A better lede would be, "rejected by many in the scientific community, but has been defended by notable physicists like David Bohm, Brian Josephson, and Hans Peter Durr."71.202.210.61 (talk) 06:11, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Nah, our sources say it's widely rejected. MilesMoney (talk) 16:58, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

To say that the scientific community rejects Sheldrake is misleading and biased no matter the source. It is impossible to define "scientific community." There is no comprehensive list of scientists who reject Sheldrake's work. It is on the level of gossip and not suitable for an article and should be removed. It is also not a NPOV and therefore violates Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons. Craig Weiler (talk) 23:31, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Craig Weiler. Also, the sources supporting Sheldrake (Bohm, Josephson, Durr) are actually more eminent than the sources rejecting him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.19.195 (talk) 02:24, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Craig, you're asking us to choose between your personal opinion and our sources. The sources win every time. MilesMoney (talk) 04:10, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Again, the sources supporting Sheldrake (Bohm, Josephson, Durr) are actually more eminent than the sources rejecting him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.19.195 (talk) 16:50, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't care. We have reliable sources saying that the scientific community rejects his theories. Deal with that. MilesMoney (talk) 16:53, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The comparison of sources is equivalent to saying that Einstein or Newton defends his theories, but a cadre of purportedly "skeptical" science columnists reject them.

It's pretty clear from the references that there's a lot of skepticism about Sheldrake's work. IMHO, that is fairly stated and strongly backed up by the material in the article. If, indeed, some credible people have defended his work, NPOV requires that that be mentioned and referenced. If somebody will post some verifiable references here, I'll be glad to put these points of view into the article, hopefully in a way that will be acceptable even to skeptics. I'll have to be able to see the references myself, though -- I'm not willing to accept their verifiability on faith. Lou Sander (talk) 01:16, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I've got absolutely no problem with mentioning his supporters. I just don't want to lie by making it sound as if the scientific community as a whole takes him seriously. It doesn't, and that's not just my opinion, it's what our sources say. MilesMoney (talk) 01:56, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Josephson, Bohm, and Durr are now in the article, with corresponding references. Josephson came up coincidentally after I discovered that the Roszak reference was about the wrong book and subsequently searched for something else to counterbalance to Maddox. Vzaak (talk) 02:31, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Lou Sander - the sources you seek are here - scroll down to "concern number 2": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake#Concerns_with_article198.189.184.243 (talk) 17:45, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Positive reactions from colleagues can be included but they need to be given sufficient context, i.e. what the person is saying and who it is that is saying it. Barney the barney barney (talk) 11:26, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I will summarize the Durr article, which defends Sheldrake, and shows how his argument is not inconsistent with modern science: https://ia601001.us.archive.org/18/items/Rupert_201309/Sheldrake%C2%B4s%20Id%C3%A9er_07,pdf.pdf

Points of interest are the second paragraph of the article, where Durr states that while biology moved away from holism towards reductionism, physics moved towards holism.

In the fourth paragraph, Durr criticizes biology for not keeping up with physics, and states that "For me, it is difficult to understand why biologists do not make more use of the revolutionary ideas of modern physics, seeing that the processes of life, as Sheldrake makes obvious, seem predestined to act as a bridge."

In the fifth paragraph, he notes the misconception that the features of the "microcosm" are irrelevant to the "macrocosm", and states that "Numerous examples show us in what unexpected ways the new laws of the microcosm manage to effect the macrocosm that is directly accessible for us."

He gives examples (pp. 30-32) of macroscopic structures. A note on this - I feel that that this is important to bring out in some detail, because the feeling I got from the Bohm-Sheldrake dialogue was that Sheldrake came to many of the same conclusions Bohm did, but his argument dealt with macro systems, and it is traditionally argued that quantum effects have no application to macro systems. The traditional claim that quantum explanations do not hold in this case is beginning to break down as more and more information is coming in - like this paper by Anton Zeilinger showed the wave-particle duality occurring with buckyballs, large molecules: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v401/n6754/abs/401680a0.html Also, it is now being shown that quantum decoherence is not necessarily a preventor of these effects occuring - a recent paper showed that "One of the major obstacles to realizing quantum computers and simulators is the environment, which disturbs quantum systems. In the ideal regime, information from the system leaks slowly to the environment. Such unidirectional flow of information in which the noise acts the same way at all times characterizes a Markovian process. However, soft- or condensed-matter systems are strongly coupled to the environment and this leads to a regime where information also flows back into the system; a non-Markovian process. Now, writing in Nature Physics1, Bi-Heng Liu and co-workers report an all-optical experiment in which the flow of information between the system and environment is controlled and the system can be steered between these two regimes.": http://www.mpq.mpg.de/~jbar/files/Barreiro-Nature%20Phys.-7-927-928.pdf Consider also the paper "Physics of Life: The Dawn of Quantum Biology", which states, "discoveries in recent years suggest that nature knows a few tricks that physicists don't: coherent quantum processes may well be ubiquitous in the natural world. Known or suspected examples range from the ability of birds to navigate using Earth's magnetic field to the inner workings of photosynthesis — the process by which plants and bacteria turn sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into organic matter, and arguably the most important biochemical reaction on Earth. Biology has a knack for using what works, says Seth Lloyd, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. And if that means "quantum hanky-panky", he says, "then quantum hanky-panky it is". Some researchers have even begun to talk of an emerging discipline called quantum biology, arguing that quantum effects are a vital, if rare, ingredient of the way nature works.": http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110615/full/474272a.html The following article states that "Until the past decade, experimentalists had not confirmed that quantum behavior persists on a macroscopic scale. Today, however, they routinely do. These effects are more pervasive than anyone ever suspected. They may operate in the cells of our body.": http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=living-in-a-quantum-world And also, consider a paper by Andreas Albrecht, "Origin of probabilities and their application to the multiverse", which argued that all probabilistic effects, including macroscopic effects, can be traced to quantum uncertainties: http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.0953 The article "Adaptive state of mammalian cells and its nonseparability suggestive of a quantum system", cited in the above section, would specifically seem to justify these ideas and, as it corroborates Sheldrake's argument, it shows how his thesis is consistent with the framework being described.

Returning to Durr's text - p. 32, the section entitled "The Quantum Interpretation of Life" is interesting. It is also interesting in light of the dialogue between David Bohm and Rupert Sheldrake.

He states on p. 34 that he wants to investigate "if and under what conditions Sheldrake's ideas have a chance of being accepted on the terrain of the present day established modern natural sciences." And that he is "not as pessimistic" as those who completely disregard Sheldrake, accusing one such person of "dumping the baby out with the bathwater". He states also that "considerations should not be restricted to what seems immediately plausible to us from our macroscopic view."

On p. 34 of the text he commends Sheldrake for making practical proposals for how his thesis can be validated and notes, "Since he himself does not have a suitable laboratory and funds at his disposal, he explicitly requests support by others. This book is intended to provide a constructive contribution to this. Sheldrake is familiar enough with the natural sciences to know how a scientifically well-founded set of measurements must be set up, and what the readings must look like, for there to be a significant confirmation."

He states on p. 38 (and this is not some ignoramus with no understanding of the subject, this is Hans Peter-Durr, of the Max Planck Institute), that the "processes of quantum physics might in principle contain a fruitful potential for an explanation of Sheldrake's morphic fields."

I would also like to note that this argument can show how telepathy arguments are not inconsistent with modern science, and why the results from the Baysean analysis given above show an effect that is not as "paranormal" as we might think, but possibly quite normal. For more on this, see the article "The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox in the Brain: The Transferred Potential": http://physicsessays.org/doi/abs/10.4006/1.3029159

The abstract reads: "Einstein‐Podolsky‐Rosen (EPR) correlations between human brains are studied to verify if the brain has a macroscopic quantum component. Pairs of subjects were allowed to interact and were then separated inside semisilent Faraday chambers 14.5 m apart when their EEG activity was registered. Only one subject of each pair was stimulated by 100 flashes. When the stimulated subject showed distinct evoked potentials, the nonstimulated subject showed “transferred potentials” similar to those evoked in the stimulated subject. Control subjects showed no such transferred potentials. The transferred potentials demonstrate brain‐to‐brain nonlocal EPR correlation between brains, supporting the brain's quantum nature at the macrolevel."198.189.184.243 (talk) 21:47, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Reference list

Somehow the references in the list are not numbered. I don't know how this happened, but I do see that the reflist tag is set up in an unusual way, with many paragraphs apparently being inserted before the closing curly brackets. Somebody please fix it. (I'm reluctant to try it myself, for fear of messing up whatever is intended with those many paragraphs.) Lou Sander (talk) 13:34, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I bisected the problem to this diff (at bottom). Now fixed. Vzaak (talk) 13:45, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Misleading lead section

The second paragraph of the article says

"Sheldrake's morphic resonance hypothesis is widely rejected within the scientific community and has been labelled pseudoscience and magical thinking. Concerns include the lack of evidence for the hypothesis and its inconsistency with established scientific theories."

There are lots of inline references that appear to back up these claims (though I haven't checked them all), so I have no problem with what this paragraph says. But other stuff is missing.

The lead paragraphs of WP:LEAD tell what should be in an article's lead, including that it should summarize the material in the article, including important controversies, and be written from a neutral point of view. The latter is especially important in biographies of living persons.

In looking at the article, I see much material that is favorable to Sheldrake, often of the form "X says Sheldrake is a big windbag, but that mightn't be entirely correct." None of this material is mentioned in the lead. Neither is there anything in the lead about Sheldrake's important criticism of the current state of scientific inquiry.

Based on these facts, I believe that the lead fails to summarize important controversies (mentioning only the predominant anti-Sheldrake side of them) and fails to include important material (the fact that Sheldrake attacks the very science that the anti-Sheldrake folks base their careers on, and that therefore might color their opinions). These omissions, IMHO, mean that the lead isn't written from a neutral point of view. The strict requirements of WP:BLP allow this paragraph to be removed immediately. It would be much better, IMHO, to add some material that would create a neutral point of view. A few sentences would probably suffice.

I'm not highly familiar with Sheldrake material myself, so I'm reluctant to try fixing the defective lead. Maybe some of the Sheldrake experts will work on it. Lou Sander (talk) 14:52, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

If you read WP:UNDUE, you'll see that it requires us to give weight based on the weight of our sources. We have a few sources supporting Sheldrake, but the majority are starkly critical. The article reflects this fact. MilesMoney (talk) 14:54, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I think that's what Lou Sander is suggesting, reading WP:UNDUE the lead section in Sheldrakes's biography is misleading, written in a voice to demean his biography as a way to disprove a hypothesis of his. This lead section shows clear signs of bias and violations of WP NPOV. WP UNDUE states "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." Consider - this is not an article on Sheldrake's hypothesis, it is a biography page and any application of WP must be applied strictly to WP:ALIVE. It appears that editors on this page are confusing mainstream scientific critique of an hypothesis with a critique on Sheldrake on his biography page. I vote for a re - edit of this entire page and will be making suggestions shortly. The Tumbleman (talk) 16:05, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Regarding WP:UNDUE, there also appears to be bias as to how Sheldrake's hypothesis is being defined under WP:FRINGE/PS. Because there are sourced quotes claiming his hypothesis to be Pseudoscience, that is not strong enough to apply it as Pseudoscience in editing under WP:NPOV. Consider - WP:FRINGE/PS lays out a framework for editors to determine the application, specifically "Other things usually should not be called pseudoscience on Wikipedia: 4. Alternative theoretical formulations: Alternative theoretical formulations from within the scientific community are not pseudoscience, but part of the scientific process. Such theoretical formulations may fail to explain some aspect of reality, but, should they succeed in doing so, will usually be rapidly accepted. For instance, the theory of continental drift was heavily criticised because there was no known mechanism for continents to move. When such a mechanism was discovered, it became mainstream as plate tectonics". This is why String Theory is allowed a full voice on Wikipedia although technically, it falls under Pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific definition. Additionally, the over all biased voice of the whole page appears to violate. WP:TE The Tumbleman (talk) 17:08, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Comparing Sheldrake's "morphic resonance" with string theory is a disingenuous false analogy. Barney the barney barney (talk) 18:00, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I believe it's actually quite an appropriate analogy. There is no reasonable claim an editor can make regarding Morphic Resonance as Pseudoscience as the term is used and defined in science unless you are claiming it is PS because it is not falsifiable. That appears to me to be the only supportive claim an editor can make to hold Morphic Resonance under WP:FRINGE. That's the exact same issue with String Theory, and under the terms, string theory is pseudoscience. This is a problem in academia regarding this definition, as this article in Scientific American points out.. that is why WP:FRINGE has section four. Editors cannot put an hypothesis in a WP:FRINGE category just because they have a quote from a scientist who says it is PS, and if they do, and it's from inside the scientific community, then it's considered an alternative theory and not PS. Help me understand your thinking here, what reasons do you as an editor support Morphic Resonance being held to WP:FRINGE as pseudo science? I am not seeing a clear case here and want to understand. The Tumbleman (talk) 18:37, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Clarifying my point: The article itself discusses Sheldrake's (relatively few) supporters. The lead section (which should be a fair summary of the article's content) does not mention them. That is not proper, and needs to be fixed. A neutral point of view can be established by adding something about them to the lead section, or by deleting the offending paragraph. Adding something, IMHO, is the better way. Lou Sander (talk) 19:11, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

As MilesMoney said, the lead reflects the weight of sources. That you got the impression that Sheldrake has much support suggests the article has gone too far in including such support. The article failed to accurately convey the level of acceptance of Sheldrake in the scientific community, and should therefore be more critical. Vzaak (talk) 19:40, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

As I responded to that point the editor made. This appears to violate a number of WP. This article needs to follow WP in the appropriate order. There appears to be 'cherry picking' of WP policy which is making this article appear to be guilty of WP:TE. first the fundamental principle of WP, WP:NPOV, must be followed. Secondly, what needs to be followed on this page are the guidelines for WP:ALIVE. This is a biography page, not a page about Morphic Resonance. Considering Sheldrake has had quite a notable career criticizing mainstream scientific thinking, excluding that from his biography and the context within editors 'sources' here looks suspicious. In the interest of protecting wikipedia, I am requesting for a massive re -edit to this page in a WP:NPOV in accordance with WP:ALIVE. Help me understand your thinking here Vzaak, how does removing the historical, archived context of the debate between sheldrake and his critics improve his biography page according to WP, can you explain? The Tumbleman (talk) 19:58, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

The lead section does not mention his supporters, but neither does it suggest that he has no supporters at all. Calling his morphic resonance theory "widely rejected" seems if anything a generous summary of the article. --McGeddon (talk) 13:16, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

By omitting the context of the debate of Sheldrake within the scientific community, the entire lead section slants bias against sheldrake. By omitting 'supporters', lead section is omitting context of debate around sheldrake by default.The Tumbleman (talk) 14:07, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Vzaak: The article says that Sheldrake has supporters, and provides some detail. The lead does not mention that he has them. It is therefore not written from a neutral point of view. That is enough to justify deletion of its second paragraph. Also, the article mentions that Sheldrake is critical of the foundations of mainstream science. The lead doesn't mention that, but does quote many mainstream scientists who are bitterly critical of Sheldrake. That is another failure to provide a neutral point of view in the lead. This, also, is enough to justify deletion of the second paragraph. IMHO, editors need to acknowledge the basic correctness of what I just said: that the lead lacks a neutral point of view. (Since this is a BLP, their acknowledgement is not even necessary. It would be best to have it, though. IMHO, it would also be better to improve the second paragraph rather than to delete it.) Lou Sander (talk) 23:14, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

We are going to be suggesting numerous edits to the lead section shortly. We will propose these edits before we make them and editors here can evaluate the edits within NPOV and ALIVE. There are more problems than the one you mention. The lead section is written in a voice which appears to detract from Sheldrake's credentials as a scientist and appears to seek to create a false impression of his academic history.The Tumbleman (talk) 01:20, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

1. Who's the we?
2. You must achieve consensus before making changes. Your failure to understand this will likely get you a topic ban. Barney the barney barney (talk) 12:57, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

"We" means the community of editors. Specifically, I am going to be submitting changes for the community's consensus and will be doing this strictly according to WP. Any editors failure to understand or abuse any WP Policy, especially WP:GAME, are likely to find themselves removed from the page.The Tumbleman (talk) 13:53, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I see you're pretty much in a minority of 1 when it comes to thinking that WP:FRINGE will not apply to this article. Barney the barney barney (talk) 16:23, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Not sure that's relevant. Remember WP:DEM. WP policy is clear of when and when not to apply WP:FRINGE. If editors can explain their application of WP:FRINGE in relationship to a WP:ALIVEwith me or any other editor, then their edits will stand. If they are unable to support their edits within the framework of WP:DEM by making reasoned unbiased arguments, then edits will be removed or perhaps taken into mediation if WP:TE ensues. I will be making my formal argument on this at a later date after the lead section is cleaned up to support WP:ALIVE and WP:NPOVThe Tumbleman (talk) 16:39, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I had a look at the sourcing for the statement that "morphic resonance is widely rejected."  ;891011 [[6]] None of these sources support that statement in any meaningful way. 8 and 12 are book reviews, which can hardly be regarded as sources of scientific opinion. #9 is just a single statement by Martin Gardner, a member of CSICOP, a known radical atheist pressure group. In any case, it's nothing more than an assertion. #10 is taken totally out of context. In any case, it's just another assertion. #11 seems to be an article, but does not appear to have a working link.

This is terrible sourcing. This is just a handful of people, most of whom aren't even qualified to speak on this subject, speaking in broad terms. For the assertion "morphic resonance is widely rejected" to be properly sourced it needs sources that specifically address that assertion in a meaningful way. The source should explain why it is widely rejected and present a scholarly approach to supporting the assertion. Perhaps morphic resonance is widely rejected, but the sources that are there now wouldn't hold up in a high school term paper.Craig Weiler (talk) 00:30, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Scientific community

The section on A New Science of Life and The Presence of the Past makes the claim that

...the scientific community continues to regard Sheldrake's morphic resonance as pseudoscience.

The references provided seem to say nothing about "the scientific community". That claim seems to be original research through synthesis. WP:ALIVE allows the removal of such material without discussion. I plan to do that later today. Before removing it, I will welcome being shown references that mention "the scientific community" and morphic resonance, but the window for this is short.

On the other hand, two paragraphs below, the article says

Sheldrake's morphic resonance hypothesis is discredited by numerous critics on many grounds. These grounds include the lack of evidence for the hypothesis and the inconsistency of the hypothesis with established scientific theories. Morphic resonance is also seen as lacking scientific credibilty for being overly vague and unfalsifiable. Further, Sheldrake's experimental methods have been criticised for being poorly designed and subject to experimenter bias, and his analyses of results have also drawn criticism.

IMHO, this is a fair and properly referenced statement, meeting the strict requirements of WP:ALIVE. Lou Sander (talk) 13:01, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

From a quick skim, although it's attached to a different sentence, reference #9 (Supernatural America: A Cultural History) says "most biologists considered Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance hogwash". --McGeddon (talk) 13:11, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

"Most biologists" cannot be synthesized into "the scientific community". My gripe is with the loose and unsourced use of "scientific community" in a way that implies universal agreement among scientists. Lou Sander (talk) 13:41, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

It's reasonable, IMHO, to say the mainstream scientific community rejects his hypothesis as long as it's put into historical context within Sheldrake's bio, considering his career has spanned 30 years criticizing mainstream scientific thinking which he also rejects philosophically. It's more important to consider that even if there is a quote that says "many biologists think his theory is hogwash" this does not mean "biologists think Sheldrake is Hogwash" so the article should not be written in a POV of the mainstream scientific community about sheldrake as a man.The Tumbleman (talk) 13:59, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I see your point Lou Sander that you clarified in your last edit to your comment. I think the wording of the scientific community can be changed to adjust for that. It's fair to say it has been widely rejected 'within' the *mainstream* scientific community, with notable critics of his work accusing it of PS, as long as the bio reflects Sheldrake's responses and critics back to the community. It's the historical exchange between Sheldrake and quite a number of scientific luminaries that has highlighted his career. Sheldrake himself responds and critics the mainstream scientific *thinking*, so much of the controversy historically has been philosophical between Sheldrake and his opponents, who clearly engage with him in public debate, books, and television documentaries.Thanks for helping to make this page have an unbiased voice. When I do get to making suggestions for an entirely new lead section edit, I would invite you to approve or change if you feel your point was not well served. The Tumbleman (talk) 15:40, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

The sources support the fact that he has little to no support within the scientific community, and his work has no standing whatsoever. Trying to weasel out of this isn't going to work, whateve social experiments you're plotting. Barney the barney barney (talk) 16:26, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Page is using biased and incomplete sourcing out of context. I believe that's the issue editors are currently discussing here. Please be respectful to editors and personal attacks. WP:PERSONAL. You will have a voice when edits are suggested.The Tumbleman (talk) 16:45, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Please don't patronise me with "personal attack warnings" that serve only to try to detract from your bizarre opinion that policies, including WP:FRINGE, WP:NPOV shouldn't apply to this article. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:48, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure your reasoning here regarding WP:FRINGE is coming through or is doing much to support these edits. There is only a rational and logical application of WP that is consistent, or there isn't. Editors have made a claim to apply WP:FRINGE to an WP:ALIVE page with very vague arguments and now personal attacks. I think if editors can support their edits with reasoned arguments and address reasonable questions, their edits and decisions will have a chance to stay. WP:FRINGE/PS is pretty clear that certain issues need care amongst editors. If you want your edits to maintain WP:FRINGE, then perhaps you can explain your thought process here? It's not coming through to myself and other editors on this page.

1.)Can you please explain how WP:FRINGE applies to a WP:ALIVE biography and what references support it?

2.)Can you explain how Sheldrake's hypothesis does not fit WP:FRINGE/PS as an alternative theoretical formulation from within the scientific community?

The Tumbleman (talk) 00:21, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

The references to support the WP:FRINGE status are in the article. WP:IDONTSEEIT isn't an excuse for this. With regard to WP:FRINGE/PS, some of Sheldrake's work falls into #2 "Generally considered pseudoscience"; although some of the more absurd and bizarre claims are category 1 "obvious pseudoscience". Most of it doesn't even come close to category 3 "Questionable science", yet alone category 4 "Alternative theoretical formulations". Which part of this is difficult for you to grasp? So WP:FRINGE applies, whether you like it or not. Barney the barney barney (talk) 08:29, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Excellent Barney the barney barney you're suggesting that the arguments for applying WP:FRINGE are found solely in the references on the page and do not rest on any other reasoned argument. If this is the case, then we have strong grounds to remove this format from the page. Consider, the sourcing on the page is incomplete, taken from biased sources and out of context and there are plenty of sources and references out there to justify a WP:FRINGE/PS 'alternative theoretical formulation' status that is allowed. Once I finish collecting these sources, both Primary and secondary, I will be removing this WP:FRINGE claim since there is no reasoned argument for it other than the current incomplete references you mention. To answer your question "What part of this is difficult for me to grasp?" it's again, the following unaddressed questions I have. Until I have reasonable answers other than 'this is what our sources say' these edits are unlikely to stand because the sources are incomplete and poorly applied to WP:ALIVE

1.)Can you please explain how WP:FRINGE applies to a WP:ALIVE biography and what references support it?

2.)Can you explain how Sheldrake's hypothesis does not fit WP:FRINGE/PS as an alternative theoretical formulation from within the scientific community?

I assume Barney the barney barney has nothing more to contribute to this issue, but invite any editor on this page to kindly address these questions because it appears there is a mis application of WP for the purposes of WP:TE which is violating WP:NPOV and WP:ALIVE. The Tumbleman (talk) 14:17, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I have shown considerable patience with your POVPUSHING and ignorance of Wikipedia policy and whining here. I have tried to explain at length the policies on this issue but you continue to ignore my advice and patronise me. I don't see much need to repeat myself; it's quite simple WP:BLP does not mean that fair criticism should be suppressed. Barney the barney barney (talk) 14:24, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Barney the barney barney Your POV is valued here and I am performing a reasonable inquiry. You claim you have explained things at length and I accept you have done this to the best of your skills as a valued member of the Wikipedia editors. If you believe I have missed a point, please address. Your other points, as mentioned in this talk section for any admin to read, are not consistent with WP policy for ALIVE and I look forward to hearing your thoughts when I make the first edit. The Tumbleman (talk) 14:53, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Lemme jump in here. I read up on WP:FRINGE and I gotta say it applies here in spades. Rupert's ideas are widely rejected by science, and he broadly rejects science. We have to report on them because they're what he believed, but we can't treat them as if they're anything but fringe. MilesMoney (talk) 19:11, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for jumping in MilesMoney. We agree that his hypothesis has been rejected within the scientific community, I assume that is what you mean by being rejected by 'science'. However that does not qualify a hypothesis as pseudoscience in WP:FRINGE/PS. You claim that Sheldrake 'broadly rejects science'. There does not seem to be any evidence of that in any sources. That may be a personal interpretation so if that supports a specific edit, please explain your thoughts as to how. It's not coming clear phrased that way.

As for the rest of your commentary, I am not sure I understand the implication. I agree that the article must frame the reactions from the mainstream scientific community. I'm just not seeing anything that qualifies this article which is governed under WP:ALIVE to fall under jurisdiction of WP:FRINGE. Yes, some prominent scientists have said it is pseudoscience, and the article should reflect that, but some prominent scientists have said it is not. Considering it technically is an 'alternative theoretical formulation', that's a discussion for scientists and philosophers of science, not wikipedia editors. In science, technically anything that cannot be falsified is pseudoscience.[edit: this is how I made the comparison with String Theory. By definition, String Theory is 'hard science' but technically falls under pseudoscience as well] I am not seeing any source material state that the hypothesis Morphic Resonance is not falsifiable as a matter of scientific consensus. We just want to show the context on the page so a WP:NPOV is presented. I look forward to hearing your commentary when I make these edits. The Tumbleman (talk) 22:45, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

The part that's relevant is:

"Pseudoscience generally proposes changes in the basic laws of nature to allow some phenomenon which the supporters want to believe occurs, but lack the strong scientific evidence that would justify such major changes. Pseudoscience usually relies on attacking mainstream scientific theories and methodology (as is common among Biblical creationists), relies on weak evidence such as anecdotal evidence or weak statistical evidence (as for example in parapsychology), or indulges a suspect theoretical premise (such as the claims of water memory made by advocates of homeopathy)."

By this definition, Sheldrake's ideas aren't just scientific hypotheses that remained unconvincing, they're pseudoscience. Here's the checklist:

1. Attempt to change the basic laws of nature: Conservation of mass/energy.
2. To allow for phenomena that he wants to believe occurs: morphic resonance, perpetual motion.
3. Attacking mainstream theories: Conservation, again.
4. Attacking mainstream scientific methodology: "modern science has become a series of dogmas"
5. Relies on weak evidence such as anecdotal evidence: the dog stories

I could go on, but the perpetual motion machine alone should be enough to show that Rupert is a pseudoscientist by Wikipedia (and scientific) standards.

Now that we know this, the policy you pointed at says we aren't allowed to present the two sides as if there's any sort of equality. Does that help? MilesMoney (talk) 02:33, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so much MilesMoney for summarizing your concerns with the NPOV of the page. This is quite a list and deserves a thorough deliberation. I will probably initiate a new section of the talk page at some point when this gets addressed in the coming edits so these can have more attention to all the editors here. In the meantime, I am not sure much of list addresses what I mention, there appears to be a lot of conflating and confusion regarding applying WP:FRINGE to much of what your list mentions. I'll list my basic objections now so you can have a think on it, and then we can work it out when it gets addressed in the coming edits and talk.

Much of this list I find unconvincing because

1.) Rupert Sheldrake only has two distinct and notable works in his career to qualify under your claim. His hypothesis of Morphic Resonance and his research into telepathy amongst members of social groups. Most of everything else you mention does not apply because it would be conflating Sheldrake's critiques of the Philosophy of Science as a scientific hypothesis in and of itself, which does not come to follow reason. That he questions 'dogmas of science' and critiques a philosophy is no ground to lump everything he writes philosophically as pseudo science. You may have a definition of pseudo science, but philosophy isn't mentioned in it, and philosophy should never be confused as pseudoscience so most of your list is a misappropriation. Consider, a mainstream academic philosophical idea is Panpsychism, which of course has absolutely no hard scientific evidence which would also question by default many assumptions of scientific thinking if it were true. It would be unfair to hold a philosophical idea under the lens of mainstream science.

2.)Where I give your list an allowance, and this remains to be deliberated on for consensus, is regarding his hypothesis of Morphic Resonance or his research into telepathy. I am not seeing any references of scientific consensus that Morphic Resonance is not falsifiable. And even if it is, it still may not qualify under WP:FRINGE because it is an alternative theoretical formulation which WP allows for. So this is still unaddressed. Now his research into telepathy technically falls under Pseudoscience because telepathy is informed by parapsychology, which WP defines as pseudo science. But this makes the concern more tautological than meaningful and WP gives us room to be considerate. So that's not enough for me to take a WP:ALIVE page, which over rides any WP:FRINGE guidelines, and lump everything about his biography under such restrictions because Sheldrake did scientific experimentation which itself falsifies his ideas, making the pseudoscience claim somewhat up for academic debate and that is not what we are here for. We are just here to show a NPOV and make sure all relevant voices are heard regarding notable events that cover a 30 year history of an individual on a WP:ALIVE page. The Tumbleman (talk) 04:06, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point: we have to let Rupert's voice be heard, but we can't pretend it carries as much weight as the mainstream view. It's just fringe. MilesMoney (talk) 04:33, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm not missing that point MilesMoney, that's the point that is directly being challenged here. If this were a page about Morphic Resonance, then perhaps that argument would apply, but since this is a biography page, to suggest that we should give Sheldrake a lesser voice on significant events in his own notable history does not seem to follow reason or WP:ALIVE. Consider, Sheldrake's career for 30 years has been critiquing mainstream philosophical scientism. You're suggesting Sheldrake's page should be framed by the POV of the very critics Sheldrake himself is critiquing. I'm not saying this is your intention, but taking that approach makes it appear that Wikipedia is suppressing information and taking sides, which is clearly not what WP is about and puts WP in a potential conflict of interest. The Tumbleman (talk) 05:03, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I would like the community of editors here to review this context. Sheldrake's critiques of modern mainstream scientism is a genuine philosophical debate and he is not the only one making it. There is no justification to apply WP:FRINGE to genuine philosophical and academic debates. Just like WP does not frame the page Holism as WP:FRINGE because it provides a strong critique to reductionism in science, which is highly similar to Sheldrake's rebuttals, all of us editors here must be careful not to enter into a philosophical debate about science to justify edits to this page and apply a philosophical viewpoint to a man's biography. The Tumbleman (talk) 05:28, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying: Even in his own biography, his beliefs are fringe. We can discuss them in great detail, but we can't pretend they're taken seriously as science. MilesMoney (talk) 05:34, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying MilesMoney. At least we are both clear on where we have a clear disagreement in application of WP and I look forward addressing this with you when I make the edits and changes. The Tumbleman (talk) 06:12, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Philosophy and motivation

I don't believe anyone would object to someone adding more material on Sheldrake's philosophy and motivation, perhaps in a new section called "Philosophy and motivation" or elsewhere. That certainly sounds like the easiest / most natural / most cooperative next step in the evolutionary process, in contrast to these rumors of quixotic giant changes which would necessarily be disruptive. vzaak (talk) 13:41, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

There are quite a few statements on the depth of his religious belief in various pieces on him including how he likes to pray lots. Barney the barney barney (talk) 13:50, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

::"Philosophy and motivation" seems like a terribly cryptic title for a subheading about his philosophy and motivation. I demand an immediate ArbCom case, over this purposely provocative title. David in DC (talk) 15:02, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

agree with David in DC somewhat here. Opposed to this idea. First off, Sheldrakes personal religion is not relevant to his reviews of the philosophy of science and it could be just as misleading as other issues with this page. Sheldrake first and foremost is a scientist and a scholar, he literally is *one of them*, he comes from the mainstream scientific community, which is why many prominent scientists and philosophers have engaged with him directly in debate or interview. Secondly, the title allows for too much subjective interpretation. The point of what is raised on the talk page does not even need it's own section, the point is that there seems to be some confusion regarding Sheldrake's philosophical works and assuming they are scientific hypothesis and using that to justify the WP:FRINGE in a way that appears to look like WP:WL section 3 and 4. It's not a line or two that needs to be added or removed, it's the entire context of how his notable history is framed on the page WP:TE. This is why I am proposing what I am. I will make an offer, quite soon, that I suggest will address all issues editors are discussing but in a NPOV. Then, each editor can inform the suggestion to make sure their concerns are addressed. I can assure all the editors here that any changes proposed to this page will be done for the purposes of consensus and everyone will have a voice. I only have one agenda, which is proper NPOV and WP:ALIVE. The Tumbleman (talk) 15:59, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I will add however that in the 'personal life' section, it is fine to mention his affiliations with a religious belief as a simple biographical note. Personally, after all the diligence I have been doing here on his biography, i find it safe to assume that Sheldrake is neither a conventional scientist nor a conventional Christian - so we must be careful how we frame this on an WP:ALIVE page and with great care. The Tumbleman (talk) 16:04, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

More trouble with the lead

The lead formerly had a few words about why Sheldrake questions conservation of energy. An editor removed it, and replaced it with another mention of something that Sheldrake doubts (the impossibility of perpetual motion).

Then, in another paragraph, somebody mentioned that the latter idea is pseudoscience.

This seems to me to be an attempt to marginalize Sheldrake's ideas in the lead. Enough of that has been done in the paragraph about how many people are critical of them.

I intend to restore his justification for doubting conservation of energy, and to delete both of the perpetual motion mentions. I just want people to know my thinking, so edit wars don't result. Lou Sander (talk) 21:12, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Just to be fair Lou Sander, there is a reasonable justification for having absolutely no mention of COE issue in lead, primarily because Sheldrake is only pondering the issue philosophically, along with 9 other scientific theories or assumptions. I think it's fine to mention these things in the section about the book, but the lead section in my opinion should not contain editors 'picking' one of 10 topics in one of his books because that would require an interpretation of what sheldrake is pondering on philosophically. There is no reason any editor should mistake a philosophical discussion about science as pseudoscience as it's not an hypothesis or theory, sheldrake is just critiquing the principles that guide science to investigate such things. His only point on COE and perpetual motion machines is that science should be more open to testing them, so it's just a rhetorical suggestion on his party and not by any means a focus of his work or POV. It's not notable enough for a lead section if the lead section was written appropriately. Since the lead section here is not written appropriately, I am going to be making a very strong edit to it shortly and seek to reach a new consensus. The Tumbleman (talk) 22:06, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Perpetual motion is ruled out by... conservation of energy. MilesMoney (talk) 22:25, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Understood, but philosophical discussions about COE do not qualify as suggesting otherwise either, so an editor making that inference and using it to justify a WP:FRINGE/PS claim around it or the page is inappropriate. The Tumbleman (talk) 22:36, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

As I noted in the edit comments, the relation of perpetual motion to conservation of energy is simpler and more suited for the lead. WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE require the mainstream view to be clearly stated. This was not an attempt to marginalize, but to conform more closely to policy while saving space in an already-long lead. The marginalization was already done by challenging conservation of energy, and there is hardly a more effective route to marginalization than that. vzaak (talk) 23:05, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE does not apply to philosophical conversations, ideas, or thought experiments, so it makes the argument for WP:NPOV to remove it, not keep it. No problems with stating the mainstream position, it's sheldrake's position that is being stated outside of a WP:NPOV. The page can't have both. The Tumbleman (talk) 23:13, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

You're simply mistaken. It's not our fault that Rupert says wild stuff that makes scientists snicker, and we don't have to pretend otherwise. MilesMoney (talk) 23:21, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

MilesMoney, You don't have to pretend that you accept such an idea, you just can't pretend that a philosophical idea can qualify as pseudoscience as that would be quite a claim that has no support academically. Making scientists snicker is not enough to qualify an idea as WP:FRINGE/PS, unfalsifiability is. language like that makes it appear that that sort of editing is biased and there is nothing in the definition of pseudoscience which includes philosophical ideas such as Holism, Panpsychism, or a host of other philosophical ideas that are discussed academically and also on Wikipedia and to do so would be WP:WL and not in the spirit of wikipedia. I've heard your opinions, but now I would like to hear your reasoning, specifically, why should WP:FRINGE apply to philosophical ideas specifically in relationship to Sheldrake, can you explain? Perhaps if you could present your case as a reasoned argument editors here would be willing to consider it in the coming request for new consensus. The Tumbleman (talk) 23:52, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Conservation of energy is firmly within the domain of science. MilesMoney (talk) 00:18, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

you are correct MilesMoney . And the domain of philosophy is not within pseudoscience. Other than stating what is common knowledge, I am not seeing anything here in your reasoning to assume a philosophical exploration should fall under WP:FRINGE on an WP:ALIVE page. I'm hoping another editor can make the case as to how that makes this page better but so far I am not seeing much of anything to support it and WP allows for it to be removed under WP:ALIVE which is what is going to happen unless an editor can provide some reasonable and consistent argument for it remaining. The Tumbleman (talk) 01:30, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Hey, Sheldrake is who he is, and he claims what he claims. One of his important claims is that science has lost its way as an engine of inquiry, and has become a series of dogmas. Another is the morphic resonance hypothesis. The job of the article is to tell about him and his work. Though it can mention his detractors, they are not what the article is about (and if it mentions them, it needs to mention his supporters, giving appropriate weight to each).

The lead needs to summarize what the article is about. If it says something about his work, it should be specific about that work, especially if it is going to mention people who knock it (scientists, of whose field he is strongly critical). If it mentions his criticism of conservation of energy (one of his ten major criticisms), it should provide a few words of background. It is then suitable to mention, briefly, that there are those who criticize that view. But if they are mentioned, those who support him also need to be mentioned. That's what neutral point of view is all about. Lou Sander (talk) 04:40, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

That's actually the opposite of neutral. Policy says we must give prominence to the mainstream view and a bit of space to minor views, but can't pretend that fringe views are anything but. Rupert's ideas, such as perpetual motion machines, are totally fringe. MilesMoney (talk) 03:03, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Latest Edit in Lead Section very problematic, requesting explanation of editing changes

vzaak Thank you for working on helping make this page have a more NPOV. I have a question regarding your latest edit, and request a reasonable explanation before it gets changed back to it's previous version. "sheldrakes hypothesis has been widely rejected" has been changed to "Sheldrake's morphic resonance hypothesis has been dismissed by almost all scientists who have examined it". The only reference you have for that is , These are referenced opinions. That's fine that they are mentioned, however they cannot be stated as facts as a NPOV on the page. They must either be quoted to give attribution to the opinion, or removed. To state an opinion as fact would mean that an editor would be doing WP:OR and that's not what we are here to do. I would like to offer you a chance to explain your thought process here before it gets reverted because there is no consensus on this edit. The Tumbleman (talk) 03:51, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Additionally - the reason the edit was made is claimed to be that 'widely rejected by the scientific community' is problematic because 'widely' is a weasel word. This I find a very perplexing reason, considering WP:WEASEL suggests that "Weasel words" are statements which appear to assert something but subtly imply something different, opposite, or stronger in the way they are made." I am not sure what 'widely ' means other than to 'cover a large or expansive area' inferring only that a significant number in a majority reject the hypothesis. I see absolutely no use of WP:WEASEL here, there is only one inference and that inference is 'widely' used when large groups, areas, people, or references are referred to as a common journalistic standard without bias. Let's work towards a more NPOV here, we don't want to stretch the WP:NOT policy here beyond common sense, because it just looks like wikilawyering is happening and it's hard to build consensus that way. The Tumbleman (talk) 04:07, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

IMHO, user:Vzaak strongly wants to paint Sheldrake as a quack, and his hypotheses as pseudoscience. He wikilawyers it pretty strongly. I removed a hugely one-sided paragraph on WP:BLP grounds. He restored it without justification on this page. I don't care for edit wars, but we need to see some sensible justification for user:Vzaak's work. Otherwise the offending paragraph going to be deleted again on WP:BLP grounds -- not that it's badly referenced (though a lot of them are questionable) but that it is not written from a neutral point of view. Example: "almost all" scientists. We need to get real here -- the summary of an article is not the place to hammer on one side of the arguments about its subject's work. Lou Sander (talk) 09:42, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, earlier you were arguing that "widely" is WP:OR. The consensus on that discussion was that "widely" is bad, either via WP:WEASEL or WP:OR or WP:SYNTH or whatever. An apparently high-profile person said "widely" would prevent GA status. There has been a history of arguing over the wording of how morphic resonance is viewed in the scientific community, with most complaints being that the article doesn't reflect the terminology in the source, e.g. "reject" or "scientific community" or "widely". I thought using the same terminology as in a given source would finally end such concerns -- but apparently not! I suspect at this point that no consensus can be made, because it seems everything has now been tried. I've asked for advice here. vzaak (talk) 12:56, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Vzaak: Why don't you just ask for advice here on the talk page? There are reasonable people here who have an interest in the article, and who have a lot of experience in Wikipedia. Lou Sander (talk) 13:05, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Lou Sander, your edit was unreasonable; removing the criticism paragraph entirely from the lead directly violates WP:PSCI, an important section of WP:NPOV. As I was going to be away, it seemed prudent to notify FTN and ask for advice. Had you restored the old paragraph, I would have just said, "OK, let's try again." vzaak (talk) 13:27, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Worsening the lead

A recent edit to the last paragraph of the lead has made it worse, IMHO. It formerly had three ideas: 1) Concern about his effect on understanding science, which follows other concerns in the previous paragraph, 2) New Age people favor him, and 3) In spite of that, he is an Anglican.

Now it has only two, and they aren't properly sequenced with the rest of the lead: 1) New Age people favor him, and 2) Concern about his effect on understanding science (now out of sequence). His Anglican religion, which bears directly on the New Age stuff, has been removed without explanation.

I propose to change it back, and I seek rational comments before I do it. I also propose that further edits to this article be aired here for consensus before they are put into the article. Many of the edits recently made are controversial, and many, like the one above, disrupt the flow of the article, or are not as well-written as they could be, etc. Lou Sander (talk) 11:55, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

My only motivation here was to ease off the criticism after the harsh 3rd paragraph. Starting the 4th paragraph with more criticism seemed too much, and putting it at the end gave the impression that it was less important, which it is. As I said in the comment, I thought this was a softer approach. If you like the old way then go ahead and change it -- this doesn't matter to me at all. Inserting Anglicanism suggested a conflation between his scientific status and his religion -- maybe diminishing the former. Again this was a softening attempt, and if you think the old way is better then that's fine. This also doesn't matter as I see it. vzaak (talk) 13:02, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks! Lou Sander (talk) 13:24, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for the lead

Sheldrake has two big ideas: "morphic resonance" and "science has lost its way". There has been a lot of strong criticism of the first big idea, but not much criticism of the second. The lead has to summarize what is said further down in the article, so we really need to be sure that what we say in it also appears down below. Where criticism of his stuff is concerned, we need to mention it in the lead, but we really shouldn't rag on it. After all, the article is about Sheldrake. If there are contrary opinions to the criticism, they need to be mentioned in the lead. If the negative opinions outweigh the positive ones, which they seem to do, the lead should give the negative more emphasis than the positive. But this is the lead, and the article is about Sheldrake, not his critics or their views, so we shouldn't spend a lot of words on the combined negative/positive stuff. We certainly shouldn't amplify the criticism (in the lead) by saying stuff like "the scientific community", "most scientists", "think it is balderdash", etc. (That stuff is fine down below, as long as it's balanced, etc.)

I propose that the lead should look like this, bearing the above principles in mind:

Paragraph 1, about his life and big idea #1. I'm happy with it as it is.

Paragraph 2, about big idea #2. I'm not happy that it presently includes a little about what his idea is, and a lot about why it isn't good. I didn't check, but I think that the negative stuff isn't covered in the main article. Sheldrake devotes an entire book to big idea #2; thirty pages of it are a rational evaluation of conservation of energy. Surely the article and the lead can present some more about what he is saying. Surely if the article mentions criticism of it, there need to be reliable sources.

Paragraph 3, about the controversies over both big ideas. It needs to give appropriate weight to the pros and cons, and it shouldn't amplify them to the point where they overwhelm the stuff about Sheldrake. Somewhere, maybe in paragraph 3 or 3a, it should mention that some folks are concerned about all the attention he gets.

Paragraph 4, about New Age and any other minor stuff that deserves to be mentioned.

There's nothing magic about this proposal, but I think it could be something good to work from. Lou Sander (talk) 14:01, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I think we need to find a way to fit the sentence "Sheldrakes ideas are regarded as batshit insane by most scientists" into the lede somewhere. All the scientists I know believe this. --Roxy the dog (quack quack) 15:14, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

This kind of commenting from editors shows a biased POV and is not what wikipedia is about and this comment is not being accepted as relevant to the rational consensus of this page. This is an WP:ALIVE page, and thus puts WP in a very sensitive, and very responsible position. This is a place of public media, please do not put WP in a place where libel could be raised. We are not just making sure the page has a NPOV, we are also protecting Wikipedia. The Tumbleman (talk) 15:55, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

You clearly don't understand libel, WP:NPOV or WP:FRINGE or WP:BLP or WP:WEIGHT. --Roxy the dog (quack quack) 16:04, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Well Roxy the dog, if you believe that to be the case, then I look forward to deliberating a reasoned argument based on common sense with any editors that present them. I think if editors focused more on making a reasoned case, and responding to reasonable questions with proper wiki etiquette, editors will find their voices having more value in the rational consensus for this page. The Tumbleman (talk) 16:11, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Tumbleman, your claims that you are the only one on here with an agenda and everyone else is pov pushing is getting a little tiring, when consensus is that WP:FRINGE applies here. Roxy the dog might have chosen her words better but her POV is at least consistent with Wikipedia policies and consensus on this issue. Barney the barney barney (talk) 16:20, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your input here Barney the barney barney. I agree, working to make a page better can be very tiring work. There is no consensus on WP:FRINGE claims on this page based on arguments any editor has provided here. It just looks like a bunch of Wikilawyering happening. It looks this way because everytime I request some sort of reasonable answer or question, none seems to be provided other than just a repetition of the claim that it's fringe. I'm trying to help your side of the argument here make a reasoned case. If you would care to make a reasoned case, I would indeed honor it. We can't make a reasoned case based on opinions or original research, it makes it hard to build a rational consensus that way. The Tumbleman (talk) 21:05, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

There is community consensus to implement WP:FRINGE throughout Wikipedia. This isn't a vote - just because you and other supporters of Sheldrake apparently want to whitewash the biography doesn't mean "there is no consensus", it means that you're not following policies. The WP:IDONTHEARYOU over WP:FRINGE is extremely tedious and obfuscates any real contribution that you might otherwise make. Barney the barney barney (talk) 21:48, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Barney the barney barney we are addressing concerns and making reasoned arguments that editors are avoiding by repeating WP:FRINGE over and over in what appears to be highly biased and misinformed argument, preventing any rational exchange from occurring. I guess WP does refer to that as WP:IDONTHEARYOU, that's what I have been experiencing here. It's odd that you would raise this issue with this editor, please address on my talk page if this is personal. If you believe that I have failed to miss a key argument, please supply it with references, common sense, and WP Guidelines. I am sorry if the deliberation is tedious. But you can always take a 'wiki break' and I am not holding you personally responsible for helping to make this page better. But unless someone can make a reasoned argument for WP:FRINGE based on my direct queries, I still find no reason to honor it and it's in violation of WP:NPOV, so it will be removed and a request for new and rational consensus will emerge. The Tumbleman (talk) 22:00, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

You are incapable of editing this page to the required standard per WP:COMPETENCE because of your inability to comprehend and implement Wikipedia policies. I could ask for a topic ban, but in effect you have this already since all of your ill-advised attempts at editing this page have been reverted. It only takes a posting to WP:FRINGE/N and it will be so. Meanwhile, if I want to discuss editing changes generally, I can't because any discussion gets rudely interrupted with whining about WP:NPOV and WP:BLP from a single editor who clearly doesn't understand those policies. Barney the barney barney (talk) 22:22, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Barney the barney barney I think you have me confused with someone else. I haven't made any edits to the page yet. I am going to be introducing some suggestions for a new consensus and opening invite you to participate in that process. I am willing to have a reasoned exchange with you, I am just unsure how claims that an editor is incompetent have to do with applying WP:FRINGE/PS to a biography of a living person's philosophical ideas and look forward to hearing your explanation. The Tumbleman (talk) 23:00, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

This editor takes WP:GAME very seriously, and encourages all editors to be familiar with these guidelines as they advise us what to avoid in seeking a rational consensus. The Tumbleman (talk) 23:32, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I shall not be participating in any discussion instigated by Tumbleman as part of his bizarre social media / conflict resolution experimentation. I shall however be maintaining a watch, and look forward to sensible discussion with other editors. Teh internetz is a huge place and many historical traces remain. --Roxy the dog (quack quack) 23:35, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Roxy the dog, Naturally 'teh internets' leave traces of activity, not only is this common knowledge, using these traces to focus on an editor is directly contradictory to the spirit and guideline of WP. The only thing this editor is engaging in on this talk page in 2013 is creating a more NPOV, and providing reasoned arguments based on references and WP. Avoiding reasonable questions from editors, citing past edits that go over 7 years, doesn't look like a way to build a consensus, it looks like WP:HARASS and WP:HOUND and is a violation of core WP principles. . The Tumbleman (talk) 15:56, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Re paragraph 2

User:Lou Sander, on a scale of 1 to 10 of how readily a person can attract the label of pseudoscientist, challenging conservation of energy is about 11. Such an extraordinary claim is highly notable and deserves to be mentioned. There isn't really a way to make this softer, and moreover, I'm afraid that mentioning "evidence" in the lead would be even more embarrassing, like the old lady who claimed to be violating this law of physics but was deemed credible because of her "sincere religious faith". My view is that mentioning perpetual motion is a quick and merciful route out of that sandpit. vzaak (talk) 02:42, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

vzaak: Please don't include in the article your opinions about Sheldrake's challenge of COE. He makes reasonable arguments to back his challenge. It is not for editors to insert their opinions about his arguments, or to insert material from unrelated sources that says COE is an unchallengable truth. Nobody wants edit wars. Nobody wants unreasonable editing, either. Lou Sander (talk) 21:14, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

vzaak I see you are very diligent here making the page have a more NPOV. There still is no consensus on the lead section. I am going to list the issues I am seeing and request you explain in relationship to my query.

1.)This editor believes the paragraph on COE is misleading, because Sheldrake is not questioning the principle of COE, he is questioning the assumptions the scientific community has about it and his core message is that science should falsify claims of perpetual motion to enrich their case with the general public. He does not endorse Perpetual Motion machines and framing it they way the article does, it makes it appear that way. . The book that is referenced a 'thought' exercise and a philosophical tome, every chapter turns every assumption into a question. Considering it's a philosophical exercise, and no different than what physicists are already doing[[7]]. Using this as a prop to prove he is guilty of PS is disingenuous. I don't believe it makes the page have a better NPOV. The fact that this needs to be clarified is every reason to treat this with care because the lead section is framing Sheldrake out of context to qualify him as a pseudoscientist to justify the WP:FRINGE guideline. Editors are not here to interpret works of authors, and if there is no consensus that such a paragraph is without bias and provides an out of context interpretation by an editor.

2.)It's not just one paragraph on COE that does this, it's the context of what Sheldrake does inside of the mainstream scientific community. The lead section appears to seek to diminish his very real and notable career as a scientist and a scholar and seeks to highlight interpretations of his work to justify the pseudoscience claim, making the page a product of WP:TE. Remember, Sheldrake is FROM the mainstream scientific community, Reactions from the scientific community and the debate around Sheldrake's ideas has often been analyzed in books, documentaries, television programs, public debate, scientific and skeptical journals, and academia. Withholding this from the page does not seem to meet the principle of notability and neutrality. Sheldrake is not even a parapsychologist, has no degree in parapsychology, has made it a public point to note that his research into telepathy falls on natural, not supernatural principles. yet the lead section puts WP:UNDUE on any reference to frame sheldrake outside of his actual, notable career, removes references to his work as a biologist, and focuses solely on the viewpoint of his critics to frame the page. We can't build consensus that way.

3.)Although there are references to a few scientists who hold the opinion that sheldrake's work is pseudoscience, and I would be the first to include them on the page, I am still not seeing any evidence of consensus in the scientific community that is the case yet I am seeing plenty of evidence that Sheldrake provides theory, research, evidence, and scientific experiment for falsification. This just appears that editors are doing WP:OR to come to conclusions without appropriate sourcing. Can you provide sourced evidence of scientific consensus regarding the pseudoscience claim? I am not talking about opinions of scientists, which are not considered facts. I am talking about a consensus that was arrived at through peer review. Until I see this sourced somewhere, there is no consensus on this page especially the lead section.

4.) I look forward to engaging with any editor that can explain this reasonably and I look forward to reaching a new consensus. The Tumbleman (talk) 15:56, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

It's one of the more transparently stupid things Sheldrake has said. However, I'm not sure it's entirely worth discussing in the lead. Barney the barney barney (talk) 21:28, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Kudos

Since the recent round of editing this actual began, we've all contributed to making it a better example of how the interplay between WP:BLP and WP:FRINGE should be dealt with. (The purposeful gamesmanship exhibited on this talkpage, not so much.)

But this truly impressive, elegant and praiseworthy edit is sui generis. The rigorous sourcing of the debunkery graf in the lede, by way of the far-too-infrequently employed "Notes" device, is retiring my very own, personal supersecret edit-of-the-month award before the first day of October has fled into the past, at least in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone.

Please do not spoil the moment with quibbling. Please do that on other threads. I know some of us cannot fathom a tension between WP:BLP and WP:FRINGE when applied to living fringe theorists, rather than fringe theories. I know that others cannot abide any suggestion that one policy, or the other, is anything but absolute. We can talk about that elsewhere, too. Please simply look at what this particular edit accomplishes and nod approvingly in User:Vzaak's general direction. From looking briefly at his talk page, it seems I've been editing here longer than he has. Thus thoroughly debunking the myth that longer is better. I virtually doff my virtual cap to thee, Vzaak. David in DC (talk) 02:21, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

User:David in DC has humbly not mentioned that he wrote the paragraph in question, which finally brings pieces together in an elegant and dispassionate manner. I expect the paragraph will be effectively frozen now, as it seems about the best that can be done; and David should really get the credit here. vzaak (talk) 03:07, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I feel like puking at this sick display of mutual admiration, but instead, I'll say "Bravo". --Roxy the dog (quack quack) 06:21, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I noticed the joining of all the references into the [a] note, and came to the talk page to praise it. I found that others had gotten here first. I endorse the praise that has been showered upon this work. It preserves the reader's ability to see the large number of citations against Morphic Resonance (and to draw their own conclusions), without cluttering the paragraph with a large number of (fully appropriate) references that, by their number alone, suggest the absence of a neutral point of view. VERY good work, IMHO.

And to Roxy the dog, I say that perhaps the reason you feel like puking is that generations of canines before you have ALSO felt like puking at similar material. You can't help it, since all of you are magically connected through (hypothetical?) morphic fields. You can look it up. ;-) Lou Sander (talk) 23:11, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Tumbleman Talk Page

This is a discussion taking place on my talk page and I am reposting it here in the interests of transparency. If any editor wishes to discuss this please do so on my talk page. The Tumbleman (talk) 04:18, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Questioning scientific principles

Paragraph 2 as recently edited is not written from a neutral point of view. Barney the barney barney: Please help us understand why you object to including one of the bases on which Sheldrake questions conservation of energy (finding weak evidence of it in living systems, a field in which he is an expert). This section is a summarization of his work, yet you remove key points of that work.

Also please explain why you object to including "...he questions some of its fundamental principles" (a basic statement of his work in this area), but then you gratuitously quote some of those challenged fundamental principles, seemingly as evidence that he doesn't know what he's talking about? This reader doesn't see the reason for that, unless someone is trying to demean Sheldrake. Lou Sander (talk) 23:40, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Lou Sander, WP policy says that we should state the mainstream view alongside the fringe view. That's why your recent edit went afoul of policy. It's not appropriate to leave it "out there" that Sheldrake found a way around conservation of energy. The scientific consensus has to be prominently stated. That's why perpetual motion is mentioned, because the mainstream view of that is very short and simple to state.

User:Barney the barney barney, I don't know what the alternative would be. He has a list of ten dogmas, and of course we can't just list them. Picking the first one seemed appropriate. Anything we pick has to be countered, and countering conservation of energy is easy. vzaak (talk) 23:49, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Wow, this is amazing.

1.Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, ‘lumbering robots’, in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

2.All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.

3.The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).

4.The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same for ever.

5.Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

6.All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

7.Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not ‘out there’, where it seems to be, but inside your brain.

8.Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

9.Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

10.Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

Basically, Rupert is opposed to all of science. He seems to want magic or religion, or magical religion, or maybe religious magic. Whatever it is, it's way over the top! MilesMoney (talk) 23:55, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Please respond to the questions asked above. Yakking about how crazy Sheldrake is is not helpful. It is also very close to violating WP:BLP and therefore being removable without comment. And please, vzaak, try hard not to lecture other editors on policy. And all of you, please try harder to keep your disrespect for Sheldrake out of the article and off of the talk page. It makes it harder for all of us to present Sheldrake from a neutral point of view. Lou Sander (talk) 02:25, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I'll note that you're misrepresenting my views: I didn't call him crazy. I did accurately describe his views as contrary to science. This is important because WP:FRINGE tells us that we have to make the mainstream view more prominent. To do this, we'd need to explain how each of his 10 claims is rejected by the mainstream, and that would take up more space than they deserve. Perhaps you could break them out into an article of their own. MilesMoney (talk) 03:15, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Lou Sander, since this is the second time you violated WP:PSCI, I naturally tried to explain the policy a second time. Your penultimate edit was even worse: completely deleting the criticism paragraph from the lead. This is well in the direction of a discretionary sanctions warning, if not already there. vzaak (talk) 03:54, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Please, fellows. We are trying to fix a summary section of a BLP here. At least I am. I do not give you gratuitous advice or explanations about policy, and I do not scold or threaten you. I try hard not to "state your views", and I do not respond to simple questions with great walls of text that are only peripherally related to them. Please return the courtesy.

It seems to me that editors are reluctant to include descriptive material about Sheldrake's criticism of science. Please help me understand the objection to including one of the bases on which Sheldrake questions conservation of energy (finding weak evidence of it in living systems, a field in which he is an expert). Lou Sander (talk) 08:21, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Sheldrake is not an expert. He did some postdoc work, 30 years ago. He massively fails WP:PROF. If you want an expert on living systems (i.e. a real biologist), try Prof. Lewis Wolpert CBE FRS or Prof. Steven Rose or similar. Barney the barney barney (talk) 10:53, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Could you please be more specific about the objection to including the stuff about weak evidence in living systems? Lou Sander (talk) 01:58, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

We don't have anything that addresses Sheldrake's claims of weak evidence for conservation of energy. We can say something about conservation of energy generally, but that would mislead the reader ("Hey look, he has the evidence and it can't be refuted!"). We have assessments of his last book as a whole ("woolly credulousness" etc), but that can't be applied to a specific claim. Claims of perpetual motion machines, on the other hand, have been addressed by the scientific community. vzaak (talk) 07:05, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I am all for including some of Sheldrake's more idiotic claims (he makes quite a few), but they need to be put in proper context, which means stating the obvious that such claims cannot be supported by science. Barney the barney barney (talk) 12:28, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

This kind of language from editors clearly shows a bias on the page and I find no reason to include this kind of reasoning into any rational consensus. There is no reason to use ONE topic in a book to show evidence of Sheldrake's POV in the LEAD section. That's what the section on the Science delusion is for.

And sheldrakes's POV on COE is NOT NOTABLE in his career, so placing it in the lead section is disingenuous and out of sync with WP:GOODARTICLE and makes it look like editors are trying to justify a 'fringe' claim on the page to meet their own agenda.

This is a page of a living autobiography, there is no argument to make that says 'Rupert is a fringe scientist' so therefore we MUST show the skeptical or mainstream view. Fringe/PS does not apply to people, it applies to research. Editors here are not being transparent, it appears there is only one agenda on this page, to make sure the skeptical POV is represented, above all else, and this POV should frame the context of his autobiography. I absolutely object to include an out of context reference to sheldrake's 'philosophical' idea. Not only is it academically inaccurate (applying a PS claim to a philosophical argument, which flies in the face of reason and common sense), it shows that there is only one agenda amongst a few of the editors, to support a skeptical POV. We are not here to promote ANY viewpoint other than a NPOV. There is NO consensus regarding vzaak edits and I request NO more edits are made to this page until we have a consensus. The Tumbleman (talk) 18:40, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Sheldrake's influences

User Vzaak recently added in the section mentioning the work of Henri Bergson. I also recommend adding a mention of Samuel Butler (novelist). It's briefly mentioned on a page in the book "History as an Art of Memory" by Patrick H. Hutton [8]. The foundation of Sheldrake's concept of "resonance" is the idea that there is a memory inherent in nature, he took this idea from Samuel Butler a 19th century novelist who published a series of crank books advocating a pseudoscientific view of evolution.

Sheldrake mentions Butler on his website in an article;

"The most interesting such theorist was English writer Samuel Butler, whose most important books on this theme were Life and Habit (1878) and Unconscious Memory (1881). Butler contended that the whole of life involved inherent unconscious memory; habits, the instincts of animals, the way in which embryos develop, all reflected a basic principle of inherent memory within life. He even proposed that there must be an inherent memory in atoms, molecules, and crystals." [9].

He also mentions Butler in his book "The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature" [10].

Unfortunately those are primary sources so not sure if they can be used. It's clear to me that Sheldrake took his views from other authors. All of his ideas are second-hand. I also found a review of Sheldrake's book that compared his theories to the theistic evolutionary views of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Dan skeptic (talk) 02:34, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I like this suggestion. Various people have commented on Sheldrake's influences, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Karl Jung and I think a couple of others that I've forgotten about but will have to go back and reread the sources. Barney the barney barney (talk) 08:54, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd be fine with it if we can source the connections, so nobody can accuse any of us of original research for stating the obvious. MilesMoney (talk) 03:19, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:BLP and WP:FRINGE

In my view, this talk page displays a lack of sensitivity to the interplay between BLP and FRINGE. The shorthand I've used in the past is that there are differences, based on policy, between the way we treat fringe theory and the way we treat biogrophies of living fringe theorists.

In my view, this article page is exponentially better on this score than it was a couple of weeks ago. The lede is much, much better in describing Sheldrake with the care required by BLP while describing his work with deference to FRINGE. To cite just one example, "is a former X and Y at Z institution" is far superior to "is a former x and y."

The subsequent grafs up until we get to his books and public appearnces are also much better.

Putting the block quote in Sheldrake's mouth in the full article, is totally different (and totally better) than cherry-picking the most derogatory words, putting them in the lede, and relegating the fact that they are Sheldrake's words to a footnote. Self-effacement is entirely different from pointed criticism by others.

In the book sections there's far less of a BLP problem, so long as the language reviews the books and their content, taking care not to review the author. And I think the book sections meet that challenge, mostly. The edits that might improve these grafs, I think, would be matters of nuance and prose style, rather than wholesale reorientation.

The same is true, mostly, of the grafs below the "books" grafs. They might benefit from slightly more robust editing, but not a whole lot of it and not as urgently as the rescue work that's been accomplished in the lede.

In sum, I think there's waaay too much heat in the comments on the talk page - provoked, in part, by some edits here that seem purposely designed to stir the pot on the talk page for reasons that appear to have been less for the purpose of improving the article than for the purpose of observing the interactions on the talk page. But I think the work on the article has been admirable. If one wanted to illustrate the axiom "Focus on the edits, not the editor" one might well point to the article as the end result of the former and the talk page as the end result of the of the latter.

Which, in an imperfect world, is a pretty good result. David in DC (talk) 11:13, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Gotta agree with you there. MilesMoney (talk) 12:35, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree, too. Though I haven't read the article thoroughly lately, it seems like a decent account of Sheldrake, his work, and the controversy surrounding it. But IMHO there is a residual effort to make sure that the lead besmirches him, particularly in paragraph 2, about his challenging of foundational scientific principles. That stuff isn't as controversial or scorned as is the morphic resonance hypothesis, yet editors can't seem to resist introducing words like "pseudoscience", and giving their own opinions about the foundational principles he challenges. I wish they would stop. I've got some pretty good words to put into that paragraph, but I can't do it if I'm fighting that 'residual effort'. Lou Sander (talk) 02:11, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

It's not a residual effort, it's a requirement of WP:FRINGE. His beliefs are contradicted by the mainstream, and we have to make that painfully clear. MilesMoney (talk) 03:17, 5 October 2013 (UTC)