[Sheldrake] believes that there is a memory in nature with which animals resonate and which produces, in effect, an invisible elastic band that stretches through the cosmos between the pigeons and their lofts.
For the purposes of the television show, Rupert's "theory" was put up against other ideas about pigeon navigation, such as magnetism, smell and landmark identification. Rupert's pigeons, which had a morphically resonant elastic band connection to their loft, failed to find it when it was towed out to sea.
Like any good scientist, in the face of the failure of his "theory", rather than reassess the "theory" or its assumptions he instead came up with a list of excuses.
Pigeons don't home much in November, which was when the filming had to take place.
They may not home "much" in November, but apparently not at all when psychic powers are required.
They don't fly in storms like the one experienced on the day of filming.
Which may be the only legitimate concern. EoR wonders how the pigeons in the other tests fared.
The birds had no experience of flying over the open sea and there was no time to train them.
Train them? If they're sufficiently trained to fly out to sea, how does that prove psychic powers?
Rupert also demonstrated his post-facto psychic powers:
Sheldrake says he agreed to it happening because it was "then or never", but he put on record beforehand how he didn't think the birds stood a chance. "They filmed me saying this," he adds, "but of course left it out of the film."
What's the point of having a testable "theory" when you don't believe an experiment will be capable of proving it? "You see! I said it wouldn't work! I was right all along! Bwahahahaha!!!".
This comment was deleted in error:
ReplyDeleteBronze Dog said:
If you can't conduct an experiment under the protocols your hypothesis requires, you don't.