Rupert Sheldrake today reported to the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science that he studied 63 people who were asked to give researchers names and phone numbers for four relatives or friends. Then, each of these relatives or friends was randomly asked to call the test subject, who was directed to identify the caller before picking up the phone.
"The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected," Sheldrake said. "The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one."
Sheldrake conducted the same experiment on 50 email users, reporting similar results, but his small sample numbers -- along with the fact that video proof is only available for four telephone subjects and five email participants -- has stirred up skepticism among experts.
This doubt has not shaken Sheldrake's resolve, and he plans to further investigate his theories of interconnectedness of the minds of people within a social grouping, this time with cell phone text messages.
"While this is all quite interesting," notes Mike Adams, a holistic health journalist, "significantly more evidence will be needed to convince even the 'quantum thinkers' in the world that this phenomenon is, indeed, happening with such frequency. This early study looks promising, but the sample size and documentation needs to be significantly expanded," he said.
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